Our Little Scandals - in Perspective
Fri May 14th, 2004 00:10 MSTTotally disgusted with the thinly disguised attacks on Bush from the leftist media, via their orgy of pontificating about the few cases where we mistreat prisoners, I thought a little perspective was needed, especially since the press has already forgoten about the beheading of Mr. Berg. For those who breathlessley read the “torture” techniques used by the CIA, as “revealed” by the New York Times today, you should know that the techniques are used against our own servicemen in Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) training (which I have been through). But somehow when we do it to those who are planning to kill a few million innocent Americans, the New York Times get’s all hot and bothered.
Perhaps they should find out what kind of people were are subjecting this terrible action.
The following is copied from The Messopotamian, a very good Iraqi blog, from article. In addition to putting the situation in perspective, I’d suggest that the Fedayeen are the sort of people we are often interrogating. Go ahead and feel sorry for them. I don’t.
But I would like to inform the American friends that beheading was known to be one of the techniques of the Fedayeen Saddam. The late Uday, the son of Saddam commanded that particular outfit. I think it was the summer of 1999 when we woke up some morning to be shocked by some horrible news. Before we tell you about that it is necessary to recount something that has some bearing on the subject. You might have heard that an assassination attempt against Uday had taken place in 1996, which left him with injuries that caused impotency. This made him even more cruel and sadistic than his usual self. It has been revealed after the fall of the regime that he shot the doctor who broke the news to him (c.f. interview with one of the close bodyguards of Uday at Al Arabia last year). This added one more complex to his extensive repertoire of psychological problems. He started to hate anything to do with other people having any kind of sexual pleasure.
Well, that horrible day we learnt that the night before the Fedayeen had attacked scores of houses and dragged women and young girls to streets and beheaded many with swords leaving the heads at the doorsteps of the victims houses. Some of these heads were left in place for more than twenty-four hours. The atrocities lasted for several weeks. The pretext for this behavior was a campaign against prostitution. The women who were beheaded were alleged to be prostitution madams and some of their young girls. I remember that my young boys came home suffering from shock as one of these houses was in our area and they knew the occupants quite well. The victims were taken by surprised and there was nothing to arouse their fears before that night. This was typical of the Baathists when they planned some atrocity to attack suddenly at some predetermined moment without any previous warning. Throughout the reign of the Baath party and particularly the Saddam era, it was customary to suffer periodic atrocities carefully planned and imaginatively variable to keep the people terrified all the time. It was considered necessary not to leave the people too long without some thing awful to keep them intimidated properly. The Baathists were masters of the “Terreur”, and it was the essential means of their hold on power. In fact what we see now is something rather similar. It is a similar technique; they are trying to intimidate both the Iraqi people first but mainly the western people. They will stop at nothing. You must understand that this is their only expertise; their sole training and method and way of thinking. They think they can inspire fear and terror into the Coalition forces and their people and leadership exactly in the same way that they did with the Iraqis. They think that they can intimidate the whole world exactly in the same way that they did with us.
I went through the camp at Fairchild AFB in 1973. I remember being forced to stand outside our shelter for close to a half hour dressed only in skivvies while sleet poured down on us. A few got the pleasure of standing in a ditch filled with freezing water for some violation of rules. Nobody thought a thing about it. As you know, the idea was to deal with it and go on.
The current furor over the Iraqi mistreatment shows how naive and misguided we have become as a nation. I doubt that our institutions have the capability to survive in the long run against the pc media and political opportunists. God help us.
John,
Can you tell us more about what you went through in your SERE training? Also if you can post a link to the malignant NYT article, I would love to read it. Thanks.
Some days, I think that Bush & Co. are concentrating on the wrong enemy. The American Fifth Column is far more dangerous in the long run that a bunch of murderous clowns with scarves over their head. We can deal with the latter by brute (i.e. nuclear) force if necessary. But can we really nuke boston during the dem convention? I don’t think so.
This guy has been doing some interesting background reading, and gives us his take on the Fifth Column.
Sammy,
It sounds like your experience was equivalent to one day of my Navy boot camp! Waukeegan, Il, Feb-May. Every day, standing at attention in ice-water at 4AM. I ended up with pneumonia.
The furor over treatment is probably coming mostly from those who have never even been spanked.
Leslie
I don’t have time right now to tell the full tale of SERE school. I don’t want to reveal information which may still be of value to an enemy, even though legally everything I learned is unclassified by expiration and I know the school has changed in some ways.
I’ll tell you just a bit now… I attended around Dec 15, 1967 (don’t remember exact dates).
First, we needed to have an unlimited duty physical and sign a waiver allowing the school to do anything they wanted to us.
NOTE: MORE RECENT ATTENDEES HAVE REQUESTED THAT I REMOVE DETAILS. I have done so for security reasons.
At the time, about one person a year was dying in the training.
The first day was at the point of North Island, San Diego, California. We tried to catch and eat food without having any implements. My little group caught a good sized crab but it tasted terrible.
The remaining days were at Warner Springs, CA, next to a prison. This is a wooded, mountainous area next to Mt. Palomar. There were a little over 100 people in our class. We were each issued half of a parachute to use to construct shelter, and instructed in building tents with these. The night temperature was around freezing, and in the day it was pretty warm.
We had classes during the day, […]
During the entire SERE school, we were not fed except at two times. The first was a few days in, in an outdoor survival class. An instructor strangled a rabbit, popped out an eyeball and ate it, and then cut up some rabbits and handed out raw pieces. I ended up cooking a rabbit lung and eating it.
We were supposed to forage for food, but there wasn’t anything left, not even ants. Previous classes had eaten them all, one of the instructor’s dogs, and a neighbor’s steer (these were subsequently placed off limits).
We also had a night evasion course. The goal was to get from the starting line to a light bulb maybe a mile away. In between were aggressors (instructors dressed up in NVA uniforms, speaking pidgen English, and carrying AK-47s), a [deleted], and [removed]. It was pitch black – no moon – when we did this. I made it through without capture or [removed]). It was less fun hearing guys being beaten for being caught. At one point I heard an aggressor nearby, so I knelt down and froze. His boot missed my hand by inches. I never saw him.
We also had a long navigation hike (around 18 miles – that’s long for a sailor, nothing to a Marine… I was a sailor) where we were forbidden from using roads or trails, and where there were two objectives. At the first objective, we were given the location of the second objective. We had a topographic map and were in squads of about 6 people. I was an E3 in a group where the next lowest rank was E7 and the rest were officers, including an aircraft navigator. After walking in straight lines over mountains, I finally convinced him that I knew an easier way (boy scout training paid off). That involved going downhill to the first wash, and following washes to the objective. It was a piece of cake.
The next morning we had “day evasion.” This involved getting through a 3 mile long course to a flagpole without being captured. The reward was fresh fruit near the flagpole, and our cigarettes (those who didn’t give up their smokes ended up eating them if they were caught). I also made it through that without being caught (thank you, James Fennimore Cooper),. To be honest, I was scared to death because I’m not very physical and the idea of [deleted] (the price of getting caught) was very unappealing. About 10 of us made it. The rest were caught.
I got to the flagpole early – the first hour it was a red flag meaning you couldn’t touch it and be safe. My time sense was so dilated that I thought I had gotten there too late (at 4 hours they put the red flag back up). I hid in the bushes by it and just then, a guy came out and ran up the green flag. I jumped out of the bush and grabbed the flag. So did about five other guys! None of us knew the others were there, and it was broad daylight. I’m not kidding about James Fenimore Coopere, when I was a kid used to ride my bike to the Albuquerque Public Library and read every book he wrote, and some other series on the French/Indian war. There were lots of tricks about tracking and sneaking in there.
[deleted]
I should mention that all of our instructors had been POWs in Korea. They were doing this because they didn’t want us to suffer as they had – in the Korean war the U.S. was not ready for an enemy that did not follow the Geneva Convention.
Good lord, folks…
At first, after only briefly perusing the previous posts, I was going to whine to you just how ‘bad’ I had it while stationed on Okinawa, where we once went two-weeks without liberty and even a thimble-full of typhoon sake! (And then there was the time at the AFEES station in Kansas City, Missouri, when gruffy, World-War II-era Air Force staff-NCO’s refused to buy us lunch at Hallmark’s “Top of the Crown” Restaurant! Imagine the indignity!)
But then, following a thorough re-reading of each of your posts, I figured, “Nah, better not go there!” Frankly, your responses made me realize just how GOOD I had things while in-service!
I too have been to SERE and really wonder whether or not you should be discussing this in such detail.
What we saw and learned at SERE should stay there and in your memory, not shared on the WWW.
I went to SERE 37 years ago. I doubt there are any secrets from that time left. The CONFIDENTIAL classification expired long ago.
I did leave out some of the more important details, as you may have noticed (like what the signal really was).
Thirty years ago or last month has no bearing. What we learned should not to be discussed with outside circles, period.
Gordon, I first learned about SERE from “Leatherneck” magazine (”The Magazine of the Marines”) in 1968 or ‘69. Much of what John revealed was already common knowledge. Besides, as he added, in 37 years procedures have perhaps so changed with SERE as to be virtually unrecognizable to today’s students. Can you agree?
I think I still have that particular issue of Leatherneck, incidentally, tucked away in a bookcase in my office.
Gordo Magnifico:
My oldest son, combat MP, is named Gordon; amused and in touch with a man of your modesty.
Anyway, I disagree with you too. I carry a similar order not to discuss crypto procedures and equipment which, over the course of thirty-seven years, have become laughingly obsolete. I never discussed any of it because no one cared.
What details about the SERE ordeal should be kept confidential? Some of it maybe for matters of delicacy, to wit: the blue-flame maneuver, but the rest is less detail than a description of a real test of endurance.
I’m not proposing we argue about this. Just that I don’t see anything that can be used by the opposition.
If there’s doubt, there is no doubt.
For all you know, hardly anything you have discussed has changed at all since the sixties. Discuss survuval and evasion ’til your blue in the face, but I find the resistance discussion innappropriate for the WWW.
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Kevin. What a pansy name.
I’m in the NAVY delayed entry program and will be attending SERE camp as an Aviation Warfare Specialist (AW/aircrew). I live 4 miles from the camp in warner springs. Yesterday I sat at the enterance and debated whether or not to check in at the main building and see if an enthusiastic DEP recruit could help out around base or get a tour. From what I’ve read on this forum I’m doubting that they’d appreciate my company.
i am a united states marine and i just graduated sere school very recently. john, i find your stories very much like the ones you can read in “bravo two zero”. and gordon is right, although the course may have changed here and there throughout the years, it is still something that should be discussed with other sere grads. nobody else really needs to know. if you are that curious, sign up.
Dan,
Thank you for the input. I have redacted it. If you think more should be removed, please let me know.
What is bravo two zero? The SAS movie?
In any case, please accept my thanks for your service to our country in a time of great peril.
If an ex squid can say this, Semper Fi!
John
Hello Gentlemen,
I am a graduate of S.E.R.E. Myself and thought that I would join a conversation with fellow servicemen who have all endured the same. From what I read above, the school has changed in great deal from what it used to be to what is is today in the way of techniques used, As for wether it should be discussed or not I am at odds with myself for the reason that I wouldn’t want anyone on the other side being able to use the information against our own servicement and women, but at the same time anything that is in written public publication is fair game I guess. I have both read Bravo Two Zero and have seen the movie as well. If I am rambeling I do appologize but after I read everything from the top to here it’s alot to comment on. At any rate gentlemen. My thanks to you all for hearing me out and also for doing your time in your countries service. Take care and good luck
P.S. I agree with the article. I don’t feel shame for the acts committed of interogating the prisoners. I just feel shame that someone was dumb enough to take pictures so that an unknowing, judgemental society could get ammo for their PC Guns.
To all:
IF the photos of abu grabbie(sp) offends anyone, but has saved just one American life then it was well worth the effort.
That said, do I think it was the right way to go probably not, however we as citizens of this great wonderful country have not heard the whole story. All we get is, what makes America look bad and shaped by the likes of ‘great american urinalists’like Rather and Jennings. The left has come out via kennedy, Byrd, kerry and the rest of their hate-America first crowd to denounce to the world how rotten the United States of America is.
When in stark contrast to the foolness at the prison, Nick Berg is beheaded on al jazerra t.v. and not one peep from the U.S. urinalists in protest, for fear they might offend the sensibilities of some whacko Islamo-fascist over there, or that they might piss-off the al quaeda more how much more angry can they get they already slaughtered 3000 + Americans, its time to take to them.
I just looked at the definition of SERE, when I was in it was merely called ‘Escape and Evasion’.
Mark
I whole Heartedly agree with Mark and his statement. Maybe it’s time some of our folks quit pointing the finger at our own country and study up on what has been done boh past and present to our own fighting forces when captured. Might make them think twice before throwing a fit that some bomb toting terror freak was mentally abused to scare him out of his wits to open his mouth, besides from what I saw of the pictures it seems to me that all that was done was mainly offending their religious values ( No offense meant to anyones religion )and that got them talking I bet. I’m no interrogator or MP but I am sure willing to bet that the info they got from those days has saved more lives then it has ruined so I’m damn sure not going to point a finger and say ” You meany, your hurting his sensibilities” Oh well, Just me and seems the rest of us here thinking that way.
Bill
interesting article
asdf
I went through Warner springs in 1980, when I was a 20yr old 3rd class.
Having been an aviation maintenance rate, Avionics Tech (AT3), who volunteered to fly, I didn’t even know that I was going to be “high risk of capture” until I got to SERE school.
I agree, we don’t need to tell the world about what happened there, but I will say that this was one of the most defining experiences of my 20 year career.
Everything since then has seemed relatively easy..It kills me to hear some people whine about how “hard” they have it in the civilian world.
Try a week out in the desert, in the winter, naked, hungry, cold, and scared shitless, and that’s the good stuff…I won’t go into detail about the “bad” stuff..
sellsell59@comcast.net
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