In counterinsurgency operations, the human terrain is the decisive terrain.
General David Petraeus
To populate this information "battle space," the military has funded a range of contractors, specialists, training programs and initiatives.... Gen. David Petraeus, the Centcom commander who oversees that region, has been one of the military's most vocal proponents of aggressive information operations.
David Ignatius, Washington Post
Wars are no longer fought on battlefields. They are fought in the battlespace.
Battlespace doctrine came up from the artillery. Intelligence finds the decisive terrain, artillery can then concentrate firepower on it.
The human terrain is the decisive terrain. Decisive terrain is what you target. General Petraeus is talking about conducting military operations on human opinion. He is talking about military operations that target the mind.
Psychological operations and psychological warfare describe operations directed primarily at our adversary's mind rather than his body.
Alvin Bernstein, "Political Strategies in Coercive Diplomacy and Limited War"
Sophisticated torture methods today can destroy the personality and self-respect of human beings.
Inge Genefke, quoted at 114 Congressional Record 20216 (1998)
(1) "torture" means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering.
18 U.S.C. §2340
General Geoffrey Miller Goes to Guantanamo
Major General Geoffrey Miller was an artillery officer. He had training and doctrine about concentrated and overwhelming application of force, against small areas of decisive terrain.
General Miller was put in charge of Guantanamo. He applied the doctrine of overwhelming application of force, as practiced in the artillery, to naked men held in cages.
Torture is a planned and sustained assault on the enemy's mind. The military purpose is to break and destroy it. It is overwhelming application of force.
Abu Zubaydah was repeatedly slammed against a wall. Then he was put in a tall cramped confinement box. Then he was slammed against the wall. Then he was placed in a small cramped confinement box. Then he was waterboarded. Then he was placed in the tall cramped confinement box. Then he was slammed against the wall. Finally, he was made to sit up in a coldroom until the next session.
The next day, and the next, every day for a week, Abu Zubaydah got the same techniques applied, and in the same order.
IT SHOULD BE DULY NOTED THAT FEAR OF RE-RE WILL BE USED, AS WELL AS GAY UP HARSH, AND GROUND-HOG DAY APPROACH.
Abu Ghraib Interrogator
The destruction strategy worked. The sustained and overwhelming application of force doctrine worked. Nearly all of our tortured went crazy. Their minds were broken down and destroyed.
General Geoffrey Miller Goes to Abu Ghraib
General Miller brought the doctrines of overwhelming application of force, applied against naked men held in cages, to Abu Ghraib as well.
General Miller's trip to set up the prison was at the request of Stephen Cambone and Paul Wolfowitz in the Department of Defense. The trip was about one month before the known abuse started.
Under recognized, I think, is that the planned and sustained military assault on the minds of the naked men at Abu Ghraib drove them crazy, too.
After the abuse scandal broke, General Miller was transferred from Guantanamo, to Abu Ghraib, to clean the mess up.
Donald Rumsfeld and General Miller at Abu Ghraib.
The Law of War
Artillery Generals may be ruthless and deadly in their application of military force against the enemy. This is the Law of War.
Once the enemy is captured, they stop being the enemy. They are out of combat. They start being humans. They must be treated with a certain level of humanity. This is the Law of War.
These laws can be said to have come about because of the inhumanity of what would otherwise be unleashed on an artillery officer, on being captured.
The law makes distinctions of combatant and non-combatant. Our continuous and systematic running afoul of the Law of War comes from our not respecting the distinctions.
How a Soldier is Different than a Death Squad
Then he heard boots crunching on gravel and men’s voices outside his bedroom. "Their guns killed without a sound," he said. By dawn three of Taleb’s sons, two of his brothers, three nephews, a shepherd boy staying with them and a neighbour were dead.
All the victims were aged 12 to 18. Eight of them were enrolled in the local school. Most were shot at close range where they slept but one was dragged from the bed that he shared with his wife and killed with his nephews in a different room, Taleb said.
Times Online (February 25, 2010)
If they drag you to the next room before the shooting, it is a death squad. That aspect demonstrates an "extra-legal" component to the operation. The operation exists outside law, including military law and law of war. The death squad here was U.S. Special Forces, in joint operation with Afghan militias. It happened this year.
The lack of respect for the captured by death squads, is the same as the lack of respect for the captured by torturers. Torture and death squads so often travel together. Taleb's brother was being held at Bagram.
The Battle for Your Mind
Success has been only vaguely defined, and progress will be monitored through what the military calls "atmospherics reporting," including public opinion polls and levels of commerce in the streets.
Washington Post (May 23, 2010)
This is the planned and sustained military assault on your mind. The battlespace of media and opinion.
In counterinsurgency operations, the human terrain is the decisive terrain, General Petraeus says, and he partly means you. Your opinion is a part of his battlespace.
There has been some longstanding policy that the U.S. military cannot conduct military operations against the U.S. opinion.
Like rules against torture, like rules against death squads, the rule that your mind is out of bounds in military operation, that you are hors de combat, has fallen.
Further Reading
Afghans 'abused at secret prison' at Bagram airbase. The BBC reports on torture and conditions of confinement at an unacknowledged Bagram prison. Sleep deprivation, noise machines, constant lighting or constant darkness, cold rooms, toilet humiliation, sensory deprivation techniques, beatings. These are breakdown of the personality techniques, in current practice.
Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorism in the United States, an OLC opinion by John Yoo and Robert Delahunty. "First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully." The authorities asserted about conducting military operations targeted inside the United States derive from war, not terrorism.
Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand. David Barstow's 2008 New York Times report on the Pentagon's information campaign using retired military officers.
A Deeply Unfair Cast of Mind. My detailed timeline of events at Abu Ghraib. It focuses on the systematic use of a variety of sexual abuse and sexual assault techniques. General Miller bringing techniques from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib is included.
Field Artillery and Firepower. The Cold War-era battlefield was rigidly structured. Battlespace ideas came later.
Hillary Clinton Speaks about the Death Squads and Joe Biden Speaks about the Death Squads. In the Kandahar offensive, we are running joint U.S. Special Forces and Afghan militia operations against insurgents. The militias are under the control of Ahmed Wali Karzai. The military has used battlespace shaping language when discussing these operations. In these two diaries, I parse Administration statements for insight into how we are conducting the Kandahar offensive.
ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen High Value Detainees. The best glimpse into treatment at our black sites. Leaked to the New York Review of Books in 2009.
Information Operations, Electronic Warfare, and Cyberwar: Capabilities and Related Policy Issues. A Congressional Research Service report.
Intelligence Preparation of the Battlespace, from Field Manual 100-12. Battlespace, terrain, intelligence, artillery and air power, and other issues.
Joint Forces Quarterly, April 2005. General Richard Meyers gives a high level overview of battlespace metaphor in the war against terror.
Learned helplessness at Wikipedia. Psychologist Martin Seligman conducted experiments on dogs, giving them electric shocks that the dogs were powerless to prevent or escape. Theories of the intentional induction of learned helplessness and breakdown of the personality can be considered foundational to our torture program. For example, randomized administration of punishment is sometimes used.
Modern Torture's Scientific Bible. Kossack Valtin, psychologist Jeffery Kaye, traces the influence of Seligman's experiments on our torture program.
Smith-Mundt Act and at Wikipedia. Authorization for the State Department to disseminate information outside the United State. Restrictions on dissemination aimed at U.S. audiences. The military is not covered by the act.
Torture and Breakdown of the Personality, and with SERE. Google queries on the terms. The queries find some quotes from official documents, that we were doing it knowingly and intentionally.