Are you pitching for a presidential candidate

DI: No. I am part of a group of about 50 retired admirals and generals who have come together in the last two years to speak up in opposition to torture as an instrument of United States policy. And, we are in Florida today and tomorrow hopefully to meet with a few presidential candidates if we can line up those arrangements with their staffs. We are a non partisan group. We are not endorsing anyone, but we are available to these campaigns as a source of information about an important topic currently.

HOST: The waterboarding topic?

DI: Well, that is one of the issues. We believe that torture is unnecessary, that it produces unreliable information. It’s morally wrong, and frankly, its dangerous to the army and to the nation.

HOST: Well we agree with each other. I agree with that too. I know a lot of people disagree with us on this – Rush Limbaugh being one of them – he is a strong voice, so he makes a strong case for it. But, I agree with what you are saying about it.

DI: A strong voice, but never the less, one voice.

HOST: I agree with you. I think that once we have them, if we have to torture them to get the information out of them, then we are just as bad as we say they are.

DI: Well, that is true. And, the other problem obviously is that it has been shown time and time again that torture will produce information that is not necessarily reliable information. And that is one reason that General Petraeus made it very clear to the troops in Iraq presently that we are not going to torture, that we are not going to abuse prisoners. We are going to follow the guidelines of the army field manual outline on human intelligence collector field operations.

HOST: Alright, this is the part that always confuses me. If there are already guidelines in place, why do we still hear these stories?

DI: Well, frankly, because in 2003 and 2004 the White House and the civilian leadership at the Department of Defense rather deliberately fuzzed those legal guidelines in an effort to take the gloves off and imbue soldiers with the notion that they should be doing whatever it takes to get information that would be of assistance in the war on terror.

HOST: You and I agree on this issue. However, in fairness, let me be the devils advocate for a minute. And, the devils advocate would say, as someone in opposition would say we have heard a lot of arguments that the other side – the bad guys – will go to extremes. They will cut off our heads to get information from us. Obviously they don’t get information once the head is cut off, but to scare others into giving information.

DI: Yes, and that comes up frequently. I’m not so sure that the other side has tortured anyone in an effort to get information. I think that they have beheaded people in an effort to instill terror, which is a rather effective device. But, just because they choose not to abide by those standards doesn’t mean that it is wise for us to drop to that level. Again, if we expect our people to be treated humanely as prisoners, we have to lead the way and treat others humanely in order to have any moral authority to complain when our soldiers are taken prisoner and perhaps not. We know that certainly if they are taken captive by this particular enemy, they can probably expect harsh treatment. But over the long run, and for the long haul, we have done more damage to our national interests by abusing prisoners than has been worth for any information that we have possibly gained. Which I would argue to be very very little.

HOST: While we were in school we learned about the Geneva Convention and how there were rules about this type of thing. Was that just a smoke screen to appease the American people that their loved ones were being treated nicely?

DI: Absolutely not. The Geneva Conventions have been signed and honored by a majority of the nations in the world. That is the gold standard in terms of international law, and anyone who violates the Geneva Conventions in a significant way is subject to prosecution for war crimes

HOST: Our guest is General David R. Irvine. I don’t know a lot about you, but so far I think that we would get along.

DI: Let me just say very briefly that…

HOST: I would just like to ask you to re-mention you are in Tallahassee and you are part of a campaign to get the truth to the candidates to do something about the torture.

DI: Yes, we would like to see the next Commander in Chief do a couple of things. First of all, we would like that person, him or her, to make it clear to the world that we not only oppose torture, but that we oppose some of the specific techniques that have been argued as necessary for the CIA, such as waterboarding or sleep deprivation or exposure to extreme variation in temperature. Second, that as a nation we are going to close Guantanamo, we are going to stop secret renditions, and we are going to aggressively prosecute anyone who fails to abide by those standards.

HOST: Why are you in Tallahassee? What is going on there?

DI: Well, Florida obviously is a significant primary state. We are here because we hope to engage the presidential candidates. We have met with seven already on this topic – not as a matter of political debate, but simply as a source of information. We have met with these women and men privately, separately. We have had good exchanges with those with whom we have spoken and we hope that we might still have an opportunity to meet with Governor Romney and Mayor Gulliani.

HOST: We do this show live, and what I like usually to do with our guests is that we like to have some information in advance. In your case we just got the call you were coming on. General, I apologize for not knowing a whole lot about you. You don’t know, I guess, that we do this show live, so that means that our listeners can call in. Let me allow one to you. Maybe this is the devil’s advocate himself. Good morning! You are on the air with General David R. Irvine.

CALLER: Good morning this is Mark and I would not like to use the word devil in regards to (voice covered by laughter) but with all due respect general, I am ex-military. I won’t go any further than that because a lot of it is not declassified at this time but I have heard you make the statement many times, using our troops using the word torture. I would like to hear you agree that the other side is torturing our people. Because so far you’ve said rough treatment and various other words but I’ve not heard you agree and state that these people are torturing our men and women. Second and last; I am a chaplain and I know many men and women that are coming back that I council with. I know of none, of the thousands that I’ve dealt with in Desert Shield, that have done any torture, so you need to be cautious when you say ‘Our Troops’. Because you know as well as I do that when it comes to army unintelligence, its not our troops, it’s the people that are put in place in brass. General again I do appreciate your service and I thank you for what you do and I will shut down so I can hear you on the radio.

HOST: Alright, good call, great call and he makes a good point there too.

DI: I appreciate the comment. I want to make it clear that we are not trying to minimize the bad things that anyone else does. We are concerned that Americans adhere to the law and I appreciate the comments about ‘Our Troops’. Certainly 98% of the men and women in uniform who serve do so with honor and distinction and unfortunately and probably because of poor supervision and a lack of sufficient exercise of command responsibility there are a small percentage who have been in serious trouble because of their conduct with prisoners. And that’s unfortunate, but for most troops we absolutely commend their service and believe that they have done an outstanding job.

HOST: And I guess that the obvious question is if we have already established guidelines, but they are simply being broken, what would anything you say to any presidential that they could accomplish. A candidate or an elected official can only establish guidelines, they can’t enforce them.

DI: We would disagree with that. We believe that the Commander in Chief absolutely can enforce the law and particularly when it comes to the military-

HOST: Enforce it after the fact I understand, I said it wrong. You can enforce a broken law, but after the law is broken. So if the candidate is already in the position where he says ‘Yeah I agree we shouldn’t have any torture’ and that’s already in place I’m trying to figure out. We don’t have any candidates saying ‘Oh man, we need torture.’ We don’t have any candidates saying that do we?

DI: Well, yes we have had some who have said that, who have said for example that we should double Guantanamo, whatever that may mean. That was Governor Romney.

HOST: Now does that mean torture or just doubling the size.

DI: Well in terms of Guantanamo being the icon that it is, and has become for the abused prisoners. We are concerned about statements like that. It’s one of the reasons that we would like to engage the governor in a discussion on this topic because if he were to become the president he then set the standard that the Army, Air Force and Marine Corps are going to follow.