On Using Happy Flowers Tunes to Interrogate Iraqi Prisoners

In a post last year (link), I related how a WFMU listener serving in Iraq had requested some MP3s of the band Happy Flowers (mp3 sample) so that he could use them as audio aids for his interrogations of Iraqi prisoners.

Well, the listener in question is home now between his second and third tours of duty in Iraq, and he stumbled across that blog post. He sent me an e-mail discussing his use of the tunes, and he indicated it would be OK to print them here as long as I didn't reveal his name:

"I just came across your Soundtrack for Torture blog entry. Just a follow up. I finally found a couple of Happy Flowers records from a seller in England, thanks for the link, by the way. I wasn't able to convert them to MP3 until I got back to the states but I did use them during my second deployment to Iraq.

Now, don't get me wrong. Abu Ghraib bothers me. Not that the Soldiers there got caught, but that they were doing the wrong thing in the first place. The problem with being part of an organization is that you are judged as a whole. When one element makes a mistake it makes us all look bad.

As a member of the Armed Forces it is not my place to speak on policy and my comments do not represent current military practices, but I would like to share some of my personal experiences. I did use Happy Flowers effectively during my latest deployment.

Here is the problem in Iraq. The Iraqis understand that we follow a code of conduct and the answer to every question we ask is always "I don't know anything about that" Unless you catch a terrorist red handed, they know you will release them in 2 days. We are not allowed to harm a prisoner and I have absolutely no problem with that, but you have to be creative to get information. That's Psychological Warfare comes in. It doesn't work on the hardened terrorist, but it does work on the guy who knows who the terrorist is, or is involved but not in a major way. Such as the Farmer who hides bombs because he is told if he doesn't he will be killed. If we can make his stay with us unpleasant and make him feel that it will continue until he is willing to give a statement that will allow us to apprehend the real bad guys and put them away, that's all we can really hope for.

For example; We came across a bomb in the road and while waiting for EOD to arrive to disarm it, I noticed a guy on the other side of a canal watching the area with binoculars. So we have a bomb, we have a triggerman... unfortunatly, by the time we can get around the canal he managed to escape. The triggerman was within 50 meters of a house. We go to the house and of course the gentleman living there has seen nothing. We had questioned this guy before and not gotten any information so this time, we put him in the Humvee, tell him we are taking him with us and start playing "Mom, I Gave the Cat Some Acid" over and over.

After about an hour of Happy Flowers and being told that we don't want to take him, and that if he would tell us what he knows we will take him back home, he finally tells us who the triggerman is, where we can find him, where other bombs are hidden and ID's 3 corrupt policemen. All without having to threaten, imprison, or break any of our rules of conduct. I couldn't tell from your article whether you were against the use of music to obtain military goals or whether it was just a talking point, but I wanted to just let you know why we do it, how it works, and to hopefully convince you the as a whole the US Army is not malevolent and we don't just drive around trying to torture innocent people.

Thanks, (name and rank withheld)"

After asking him if it was OK to post his comments on the blog, he replied:

"I just ask that you don't post my name. I don't want to sound as though I have anything to do with current army policy. I am not aware of any restriction or procedure for using music or for questioning insurgents and don't want to come across as someone in authority within the military. Thank you for the response."

Comments

[pants]

I love it how Iraqis who fight the occupation are always called "terrorists."

I appreciate this guy's candor, but we shouldn't fucking be there and I certainly wouldn't nark on my paisanos if, say, the Soviets and Cubans invaded Colorado.

WOLVERINES!

[bartelby]

What constitutes noise as differentiated from what constitutes music is culturally determmined. What would you call coercion through noise trauma?

[Bill V]

Any chance of posting the album? It was one of my faves!!

[Richard]

I don't know about you, but I'm really glad this soldier is on our side. We need more like him (though I'm pretty sure we've got plenty already).

[Steve PMX]

I just read somewhere that they used Throbbing Gristle as part of some interrogation tactic in Guantanamo Bay. Sounds like bullshit but I can see how it could actually work.

[Rix]

More evidence that a "surge" is hopeless.

[Kenzo (lastever)]

"I don't know about you, but I'm really glad this soldier is on our side. We need more like him (though I'm pretty sure we've got plenty already)."

Yeah, we need more people like him who can be in a country they invaded, and decide that those people with weapons who live in that country are the "bad guys," but somehow he and his invading colleagues are "good guys."

Yes, the world (err, I mean, "our side") needs more rationalizers with huge guns.

[Brian Turner]

I saw the Happy Flowers play in Texas this past year, I thought it was really enjoyable.

[jummy]

the most nuanced of us see everyone with dark skin within the borders of iraq as one people in noble resistance of the occupation. nuance. complexity. you see, the occupation is completely wrong, and its opponents are completely right. any details finer than that are "propaganda".

you can see a lot of these examples of "nuance" from the complex thinkers. for instance, if one tries to establish a dialogue about radical arab/islamic nationalist terrorists, they accuse you of attacking all muslims in a racist fashion. in other words, the nuanced, complex minds of the progressive social justice movement regard all muslims as terrorists and all terrorists as muslims. you can either be on the wrong side of the issue by opposing radical nationalism or the right side by raising a fist in solidarity.

you see, when they demand "complexity" or "nuance" of an audience, they don't in fact want "complexity" or "nuance". they want the audience to quickly and cursorily traverse the complex path required to morally reverse themselves on an issue so large, so as to bring themselves in line with whatever bianary trope is fashionably "complex". "nuanced".

[Foamer]

Did you guys miss the part about "the bomb in the road"?

You know... the ones that tend to indiscriminately kill anyone nearby, American, Iraqi or (in honor of David Wu) Klingon?

[Patrick S Lasswell]

Hey Mom, I said I wanna go Jihad!
Hey Mom, I said I wanna cut faces off!

jummy, don't make me get Jeff Golstein in here to mop up the floor with your "semiotics."

At certain extremes of behavior, nuance loses significance. You are trying to reconcile the actions of people who engage in the most savage brutality available to them with people who follow constraints so overwhelmingly that their most questionable coercion is their choice of music. The soldier is slightly down the block and the jihadi's blowing up schools are on another planet. You are attempting to reconcile the difference with a micrometer, and the only way you do that is by ignoring vast differences as a precondition of discussion. At many points of this conflict the differences are so extreme as to justify binary thinking.

[listener mark]

quite naturally, there's going to be some use of Judgement
by individuals in an occupation situation.
I don't blame the G.I.'s for most of what goes on over there.
obviously the USA should not be in Iraq.

so where are the happy FLowers MP3's?

[Bobby Bunny]

Can I suggest using BunnyBrains songs as torture methods? It worked on our audiences.

[whalleywhat]

What I'd really like to know is what Happy Flowers members think of this. What a musical legacy. They could put it in the press kit.

[FireEye]

Those of you who think these "insurgants" are the Iraqi people fighting off "Invaders" are fucking clueless! I did three tours over there and I can tell you that I was NEVER in a firefight with Iraqi's! These insurgants come from all over the Middle East, head to Iraq so they can kill an Infidel - it has NOTHING to do with "occupation".

We are not over there trying to convert them or make Iraq into another US State - we are trying to give these people a chance to live as free people, not under some brutal dictator that kills on whim. Most Iraqi's support us being over there, despite what you clowns "see on tv".

There is a whole REAL World out there beyond your video screens & TV - why don't you all get out and experience it for yourself instead of making your minds up from what you see on TV!

[TJ Welch]

I can think of no band more appropriate to use in an interrogation than The Happy Flowers. They were even worse than the legendary Shaggs. Horrible. Hooray to the soldier who used them for that purpose. Regarding foks who argue that US is evil and radical extremist muslims are good guys ..... Im sure that there were plenty of good people among the Nazis 60 years ago. Not all Nazis were bad people. It was the facist ideology that was severely flawed. The Al Queda terrorists and Iranian backed resistance in Iraq are part of a global Radical Islam facism that is no different than Nazi Germany in it's goals. Don't be so naive. Take off your turban and see the light traitor..