Today's This I Believe on NPR

This responds to the former interrogator who NPR's Weekend Edition's Liane Hansen calls "Alex Anderson." Speaking under a made-up name to protect herself, today's This I Believe commentator just about made me physically ill with the vile propaganda she spewed. If you were lucky enough to miss it, you can read the text at that link, and also listen to it for yourself.

Her self-justifying, hateful nonsense was deeply, profoundly offensive. While I basically found almost every line disgusting, I'll give a few of the highlights:

She claims that "I don't have any torture stories to share. I think many people would be surprised at the civilized lifestyle I experienced in Guantanamo. The detainees I worked with were murderers and rapists." I'll try to put aside that these three sentences are so inherently contradictory as to make almost no sense. Worse, they indicate that she is either willfully and wantonly ignorant, in the most bizarre, dishonest, and hypocritical tradition of the Bush administration, or simply an outright liar, if she has no "torture stories to share."

"Alex" says she served a year in Iraq as a military interrogator, then returned for a year as a civilian contractor, supposedly because she didn't feel like she'd done enough to make a difference:

"First I served as a soldier for a year, and then returned as a civilian contractor because I felt I hadn't done enough to make a difference the first time."

Hmmm... are you sure that you didn't just want to get paid a hell of a lot better to abuse people and engage in "torture lite"? See, e.g., former US Army interrogator Tony Lagouranis, in his outstanding and brutally honest book Fear Up Harsh, An Army Interrogator's Dark Journey Through Iraq. He writes about a civilian contract interrogator he calls "Eliza" who could quite easily be the despicable woman talking on This I Believe:

"Eliza was former military intelligence. She'd left the army and then came back to Iraq with a private firm, making somewhere between a hundred and two hundred thousand dollars per year to do the same thing we were doing. (Actually, these contractors did a lot less; they didn't have guard duty, latrine duty, or any other of the little bullshit jobs that the army uses to put you in your place.)"

She makes the preposterous suggestion that everyone she interrogated at Guantanamo were "murderers and rapists":

"The detainees I worked with were murderers and rapists."

But as bizarre and offensive as the commentary was on the whole, the really revolting part was while she talks about how "You never forgot for a moment that, given the chance, they'd kill you to get out" she nevertheless describes her interrogation, and her "clients" conditions, as basically a highly paid (for her) or all-expenses paid (for the prisoners) pleasure cruise:

"We'd meet, play dominoes, I'd bring chocolate and we'd talk a lot."

Yes, really: that's a copied and pasted quote. I couldn't make that up if I tried.

Her basic theme is the "redemption" she received through torturing, oops, interrogating people:

People say, "Hate the sin, not the sinner." That is easier said than done, but I learned that there is true freedom in accepting others unconditionally.

Uhhh, yeah: it's easy to accept someone unconditionally when they are imprisoned, and sitting across from you shackled while you interrogate them.

She tells one of her PRISONERS (I summarily reject her glibly describing her dominoes and chocolate party partners "clients") that her God expects her to "...love my neighbor as myself. That means you." Loving your neighbor as yourself means interrogating them while they are imprisoned and held incommunicado, without contact with their families, or legal representation, or basic civil and human rights, halfway across the world from their homes?

Nearing her conclusion, she writes that "My clients may never know this, but my year with them helped me to finally heal. My nightmares stopped." Well, "Alex Anderson", it sure is nice for you that playing dominos and eating chocolate with involuntary guests at your little Gitmo tea parties helped you heal. But how do you think this quality time felt for the prisoners?

I've listened to a lot of these "This I Believe" segments on NPR. They've been touching, poignant, banal, fascinating, and funny in turn. But this offensive, loathsome, hypocritical, dishonest propaganda makes me sick.

I'm quite sure that "Alex" doesn't care what I have to say (though she's certainly welcome to contact me through this blog, and I'd be happy to chat.) But while she might "believe we help to redeem each other through the power of acceptance" I should assure her that I won't be helping her with redemption by accepting her evil acts or her bizarre, dishonest story about them. She is going to need to look to her God that tells to her love her prisoners as herself for that redemption.