Former torturer for US Army: I blame myself for our downfall in Iraq

A former US Army torturer has laid bare the traumatic effects of US interrogation techniques in Iraq -- on their victims and on the perpetrators themselves. Tony Lagouranis conducted mock executions, forced men and boys into agonizing stress positions, kept suspects awake for weeks on end, used dogs to terrify detainees and subjected others to hypothermia. But he confesses that he was deeply scarred by the realization that what he did has contributed to the downfall of US forces in Iraq. Lagouranis, 37, suffered nightmares and anxiety attacks on his return to Chicago, IL, where he works as a bouncer. Between January 2004 and January 2005, first at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison -- by then cleaning up its act as the prisoner abuse scandal was breaking -- and then in Mosul, north Babil, he tortured suspects, most of whom he says turned out to be innocent. He says that he realised he had entered a moral dungeon when he found himself reading a Holocaust memoir, hoping to pick up torture tips from the Nazis. Lagouranis told The Sunday Telegraph: "When I first got back I had a lot of anxiety. I had a personal crisis because I felt I had done immoral things and I didn't see a way to cope with that. I saw a psychologist. I had a lot to work through." He says that helped prevent him becoming "a totally broken human being." Disturbingly for the British military, which has distanced itself from the worst excesses of Abu Ghraib, Lagouranis says the US soldiers learned much of their uncompromising approach from British interrogators. "We heard about interrogators in Northern Ireland who were successful. Some of our interrogators went on the British interrogation course, which was tough. People wanted to emulate that, but we went too far." Lagouranis, who held the rank of specialist, equivalent to a lance corporal, says he never beat a prisoner. But he said: "These coercive techniques -- isolation, dogs, sleep deprivation, stress positions, hypothermia - crossed a legal line because they violated the Geneva Convention. "They also crossed a moral line. If you keep a man awake for a month, that's torture. If you subject a man to hypothermia, that's torture. If you keep him on his knees off and on for a month, that's torture." Torture at Abu Ghraib prison cost the US its moral authority, says Lagouranis His revelations raise disturbing questions about the effectiveness of enhanced interrogation techniques. British intelligence has used information supplied under torture in Uzbekistan, and the Government has been accused of turning a blind eye to the extraordinary rendition of suspects to secret prisons where they could be tortured. Lagouranis, who has written a recently published book about his experiences, added: "These techniques were developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War because they are successful in breaking a person's will and spirit. That doesn't mean they work in terms of extracting intelligence. "I didn't get actionable intelligence using the harsher methods, I got it using manipulation and lying and by promising them things I didn't deliver on. No one wants to give you intelligence if they think you are going to brutalize them." He added: "The FBI never advocates torture. It says it will give you bad intelligence." He is highly critical of the Pentagon for issuing instructions to pursue enhanced interrogation techniques. "Some commanders tacitly allowed harsher things like beating detainees and breaking their bones," he said. Lagouranis is scathing about a system in which inexperienced young interrogators copied what they saw in Hollywood and on television programs such as 24, whose lead character Jack Bauer regularly uses torture on terrorists. "The interrogators need to be smarter and better trained. I did one tour in Iraq, but if I had gone back again I would have been behind a desk and inexperienced people would be in the interrogation room. Interrogators are trained by people who have no experience of interrogation. It's the stupidest thing in the world." In his book, Fear Up Harsh -- a term for intimidating a detainee by shouting at him -- he makes clear that torture has cost the US its moral authority in Iraq by detaining innocent people and treating them badly. He writes: "My actions, combined with the actions of the arresting infantry who left bruises on their prisoners, and the actions of the officers who wanted to get promotions, repeated in microcosm all over this country, had a cumulative effect. "I could blame Bush and Rumsfeld, but I would always have to also blame myself." The Pentagon's policy on torture is still in turmoil. The Bush administration is reviewing whether to outlaw waterboarding -- making a suspect think he will drown unless he talks. Last week the US Supreme Court ruled that inmates at Guantánamo Bay can take their case that they are unlawfully imprisoned to the American courts. The campaign group Human Rights Watch and two of Lagouranis's fellow interrogators have confirmed the details of his account. His book was cleared for publication by the Pentagon.