By Swopa
Via Spencer Ackerman, Eli Lake of the neocon-friendly New York Sun is allowed to watch an interrogation in Iraq with a happy ending, brought about by a deus ex machina-style twist:
QUOTE
Colonel Rahim some 12 hours earlier declared Dheyaa, "Prince of Hatin." In the Baghdad street vernacular, a prince is a man who has beheaded at least 10 people. . . .
. . . while Dheyaa is not touched by the Iraqi military, he is indirectly threatened. Captain Amjed says he will send him to a facility "where they will not treat you like a human being. We will treat you like a human being." Another soldier chimes in that he can fix him some eggplant and a Pepsi, if only he admits to being who they think he is.
When this tactic fails, the soldiers try an Expray test, a chemical spray that purports to detect the residue of explosives. After the test comes up positive for TNT, Captain Amjed crows that he now has evidence that the suspect is the prince.
Faced with the results, Dheyaa points to the ceiling and cries out, "Allah, you know better! Allah, you know better!" But he does not confess to being the prince.
. . . It turns out that the Expray test often mistakes the residue of cigarette smoke for TNT. The American intelligence officer witnessing the interrogation, Lieutenant Ellison, later tells Major Christopher Norrie — whose Military Transition Team, a 16-man unit that fights along side Colonel Rahim's men every day in the east Mansour neighborhood of Baghdad — that the tests would not be acceptable in America. Captain Amjed decides to tell Colonel Rahim that the prince is really a pauper.
. . . while Dheyaa is not touched by the Iraqi military, he is indirectly threatened. Captain Amjed says he will send him to a facility "where they will not treat you like a human being. We will treat you like a human being." Another soldier chimes in that he can fix him some eggplant and a Pepsi, if only he admits to being who they think he is.
When this tactic fails, the soldiers try an Expray test, a chemical spray that purports to detect the residue of explosives. After the test comes up positive for TNT, Captain Amjed crows that he now has evidence that the suspect is the prince.
Faced with the results, Dheyaa points to the ceiling and cries out, "Allah, you know better! Allah, you know better!" But he does not confess to being the prince.
. . . It turns out that the Expray test often mistakes the residue of cigarette smoke for TNT. The American intelligence officer witnessing the interrogation, Lieutenant Ellison, later tells Major Christopher Norrie — whose Military Transition Team, a 16-man unit that fights along side Colonel Rahim's men every day in the east Mansour neighborhood of Baghdad — that the tests would not be acceptable in America. Captain Amjed decides to tell Colonel Rahim that the prince is really a pauper.
I'm sorry, but who taught the supposedly American-trained Iraqis to use spray to detect explosive residue to begin with? I'm guessing there wasn't much call for that during Saddam's era. Either way, are we supposed to believe that four years into the war, the American officer just now informs the Iraqis in this story that the spray is essentially useless?
I have to admit, though, that a spray which interprets cigarette smoke as TNT residue would explain a lot of the "terrorists" the U.S. has claimed to have detained over the past four years.