Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
CNN
April 28, 2008
CNN Newsroom, 1:00 PM
DON LEMON: Take a look at some of the aftermath of the heavy fighting in Baghdad. By some accounts, the most violent clashes in weeks. The United States and Iraqi forces are taking on Shiite militias in the Sadr City slum. U.S. military says the militants have suffered 38 deaths in the path two days.
Now to say it's a rough neighborhood -- well it doesn't quite describe Camp Bucca. It is the biggest military prison camp in Iraq. Once it was another PR nightmare just waiting to happen, but now, as we see, it's an American asset.
Here's an exclusive report from CNN's Nic Robertson. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is a new front line in the fight against terrorism. Camp Bucca, the United States' biggest detention facility in Iraq.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Over here this is al Qaeda here.
ROBERTSON: We're the first TV crew to get a tour.
Marine General, Douglas Stone, leads the way. This is the most dangerous part.
MAJOR GEN. DOUGLAS STONE, U.S. MARINE CORPS: We've got about 2,000 identified al Qaeda here in the internment facility (ph). They are hard to break.
ROBERTSON: Right now, we're wearing protective glasses. You've got shields up here to protect us. Everyone down here is crowded around looking at us now?
STONE: Right. But this is not a place that you want to hang around. So we really don't want to stand here that much longer, because they will now organize around us. And you can already see the lieutenant is ready to move.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you go back this way, I'll take you up the center.
ROBERTSON: We move on through the massive razor wire as alleged al Qaeda members gather below. We can't show their faces, or talk to them. To do so would violate Geneva conventions and Red Cross rules. It's the only special condition of our visit.
STONE: We want you to see everything. I mean everything.
ROBERTSON: Inside Camp Bucca, there are more than 19,000 civilian detainees. They are neither criminals nor prisoners of war. For Stone, Bucca is a terror trove like another.
STONE: This is the only place notice world where U.S. and coalitions forces day in and day out, engage with al Qaeda. Day in and day out -- we meet them, we talk to them, we understand them. That's an advantage for us as it a disadvantage for them.
ROBERTSON: But it wasn't always this way. When Stone arrived last year, the camp was literally in flames.
At its worst, the violence involved between 1,000 and 10,000 detainees, rioting spread across half of the compounds in the camp, some of them were set on fire. Detainees also planned to kidnap guards and kill them. It was so bad, it was considered a strategic threat.
So bad, Stone says the detainees were effectively running the institution.
STONE: But it most assuredly was a jihadist university -- unquestionably.
ROBERTSON: So bad, Stone was on the verge of shooting rioting prisoners. Action, he says, would have made the abuses at Abu Ghraib pale in comparison, and undermine the United States' moral authority.
STONE: Those were certainly my turning points. I can't speak to others before them, but I could only see bad things coming for the command, for the overall effort here in Iraq and for what was really a lost opportunity.
ROBERTSON: Since then, Stone has radically reshaped the camp, changed the attitude of guards and detainees.
STONE: Detainees now tell us more about the network of al Qaeda, about the training techniques of al Qaeda, about how they fund their operations.
ROBERTSON: But he's met plenty of resistance to his reforms along the way from within the U.S. military.
STONE: Always been a block. Every single time somebody has said, no, no, no, because it's not doctrine, it's not the way we've done it. And so somebody has tried to block that except for one guy, one guy.
ROBERTSON: When we come back, how Camp Bucca was turned around, and who helped Stone. (END VIDEOTAPE)
LEMON: Part II of Nic Robertson's exclusive report come yours way next hour.
*****
MELISSA LONG: Last hour we took you inside the U.S. military's biggest prison camp in Iraq. Well this hour, CNN's Nic Robertson goes deeper into the heart of Camp Bucca.
Here's Part II of his exclusive report. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good to see you. We're going to go in here?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Very good, sir.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right.
ROBERTSON: As we continue our tour of America's largest detention facility in Iraq, gates normally barred to journalists are opening up. General Douglas Stone leads the way.
He's showing us how he's turning the company from jihadi university, to model lockup. And this is where it begins -- religious reeducation. Suspected insurgents listen to an imam, who preaches a moderate interpretation of Islam far removed from the far ideology that fuels al Qaeda and the very (ph) extremist brethren. In Camp Bucca, classrooms are the new battle ground. Victory is a detainee converted to moderate Islam.
While we've been here, the imams explain to the detainees that they have to respect other people. It is also said, that we all make mistakes, but it's up to us to correct those mistakes. It is also said it's no good just being a good Muslim and keeping to the tenets of Islam if you go ahead and kill people. He said that's wrong.
Stone takes us to his other battle front. Hard-core extremists he keeps isolated to stop them indoctrinating the moderates.
STONE: There's no way we'd put these guys in a class. I don't know what's going to happen right now. And I don't know what's going to happen right now, either.
ROBERTSON: You never brought a camera in this close before?
STONE: I've never seen this, to be honest with you, because we've been working on getting guys out and broken apart.
ROBERTSON: Even the hard-core are getting the chance to reform, but their teacher stands outside their wired cage.
STONE: This is cooperation with the coalition forces.
ROBERTSON: This is what they -- whoever they're with, this is what they do to stop it?
STONE: These guys have systematically stopped anybody else from doing it. So, these are the guys we had to remove to we could get here so that we could get to the other guys.
ROBERTSON: Stone's doctrine doesn't stop with the detainees. He wants to win over their families too. He's improved visitation. Detailed research, he says, shows most detainees at Bucca got familiarly permission to fight to make money.
STONE: The reality is this is the battlefield of the mind. It's all about what they're willing to think and what they're willing to do when they do think it. These family units are integral to that decision.
ROBERTSON: Art therapy, he says, has opened up some of the most extreme. Others get English classes. Even civics courses teaching Western-style democracy. But one of the biggest motivators for reform is the revamped review hearings that Stone instituted.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're not serving a sentence here. You've been held because you're been determined to be a security threat.
ROBERTSON: For the first time, detainees are actually present for their six-monthly review hearings, and can argue their case for release.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If we decide to recommend your continued detention, we may also recommend that you participate in the vocational skills training program.
ROBERTSON: Stone has let 7,000 go. Some had been locked up for as long as three years. Only seven have come back. Before Stone arrived, mass releases put al Qaeda indoctrinated detainees right back into the fight. Now Stone's refined release program is even releasing detained imams to spread their new message of moderation.
STONE: Each detainee represents the possibility of being a moderate missile, if you will, fired into a community to spread a degree of moderacy, and that's the way we view it, with 20-some or 19,000 detainees, 23,000 overall, if we had half of them hitting the target, it's makes a huge difference.
ROBERTSON: So why wasn't anyone doing this before?
STONE: I can't answer that.
ROBERTSON: He can answer who is helping.
STONE: General Petraeus.
ROBERTSON: Why hasn't he blocked (ph) in?
STONE: Because General Petraeus understands this war fighting. Because when I walk in with an idea, he'll challenge me, he'll slice and dice it, but if he thinks it has merit and he understands the context in which it's being done, he has the bigger picture. He understands how this population fits in that population.
ROBERTSON: A war where the battle doesn't end when the enemy is captured.
Nic Robertson, CNN, Camp Bucca, Iraq. (END VIDEOTAPE)
April 28, 2008
CNN Newsroom, 1:00 PM
DON LEMON: Take a look at some of the aftermath of the heavy fighting in Baghdad. By some accounts, the most violent clashes in weeks. The United States and Iraqi forces are taking on Shiite militias in the Sadr City slum. U.S. military says the militants have suffered 38 deaths in the path two days.
Now to say it's a rough neighborhood -- well it doesn't quite describe Camp Bucca. It is the biggest military prison camp in Iraq. Once it was another PR nightmare just waiting to happen, but now, as we see, it's an American asset.
Here's an exclusive report from CNN's Nic Robertson. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is a new front line in the fight against terrorism. Camp Bucca, the United States' biggest detention facility in Iraq.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Over here this is al Qaeda here.
ROBERTSON: We're the first TV crew to get a tour.
Marine General, Douglas Stone, leads the way. This is the most dangerous part.
MAJOR GEN. DOUGLAS STONE, U.S. MARINE CORPS: We've got about 2,000 identified al Qaeda here in the internment facility (ph). They are hard to break.
ROBERTSON: Right now, we're wearing protective glasses. You've got shields up here to protect us. Everyone down here is crowded around looking at us now?
STONE: Right. But this is not a place that you want to hang around. So we really don't want to stand here that much longer, because they will now organize around us. And you can already see the lieutenant is ready to move.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you go back this way, I'll take you up the center.
ROBERTSON: We move on through the massive razor wire as alleged al Qaeda members gather below. We can't show their faces, or talk to them. To do so would violate Geneva conventions and Red Cross rules. It's the only special condition of our visit.
STONE: We want you to see everything. I mean everything.
ROBERTSON: Inside Camp Bucca, there are more than 19,000 civilian detainees. They are neither criminals nor prisoners of war. For Stone, Bucca is a terror trove like another.
STONE: This is the only place notice world where U.S. and coalitions forces day in and day out, engage with al Qaeda. Day in and day out -- we meet them, we talk to them, we understand them. That's an advantage for us as it a disadvantage for them.
ROBERTSON: But it wasn't always this way. When Stone arrived last year, the camp was literally in flames.
At its worst, the violence involved between 1,000 and 10,000 detainees, rioting spread across half of the compounds in the camp, some of them were set on fire. Detainees also planned to kidnap guards and kill them. It was so bad, it was considered a strategic threat.
So bad, Stone says the detainees were effectively running the institution.
STONE: But it most assuredly was a jihadist university -- unquestionably.
ROBERTSON: So bad, Stone was on the verge of shooting rioting prisoners. Action, he says, would have made the abuses at Abu Ghraib pale in comparison, and undermine the United States' moral authority.
STONE: Those were certainly my turning points. I can't speak to others before them, but I could only see bad things coming for the command, for the overall effort here in Iraq and for what was really a lost opportunity.
ROBERTSON: Since then, Stone has radically reshaped the camp, changed the attitude of guards and detainees.
STONE: Detainees now tell us more about the network of al Qaeda, about the training techniques of al Qaeda, about how they fund their operations.
ROBERTSON: But he's met plenty of resistance to his reforms along the way from within the U.S. military.
STONE: Always been a block. Every single time somebody has said, no, no, no, because it's not doctrine, it's not the way we've done it. And so somebody has tried to block that except for one guy, one guy.
ROBERTSON: When we come back, how Camp Bucca was turned around, and who helped Stone. (END VIDEOTAPE)
LEMON: Part II of Nic Robertson's exclusive report come yours way next hour.
*****
MELISSA LONG: Last hour we took you inside the U.S. military's biggest prison camp in Iraq. Well this hour, CNN's Nic Robertson goes deeper into the heart of Camp Bucca.
Here's Part II of his exclusive report. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good to see you. We're going to go in here?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Very good, sir.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right.
ROBERTSON: As we continue our tour of America's largest detention facility in Iraq, gates normally barred to journalists are opening up. General Douglas Stone leads the way.
He's showing us how he's turning the company from jihadi university, to model lockup. And this is where it begins -- religious reeducation. Suspected insurgents listen to an imam, who preaches a moderate interpretation of Islam far removed from the far ideology that fuels al Qaeda and the very (ph) extremist brethren. In Camp Bucca, classrooms are the new battle ground. Victory is a detainee converted to moderate Islam.
While we've been here, the imams explain to the detainees that they have to respect other people. It is also said, that we all make mistakes, but it's up to us to correct those mistakes. It is also said it's no good just being a good Muslim and keeping to the tenets of Islam if you go ahead and kill people. He said that's wrong.
Stone takes us to his other battle front. Hard-core extremists he keeps isolated to stop them indoctrinating the moderates.
STONE: There's no way we'd put these guys in a class. I don't know what's going to happen right now. And I don't know what's going to happen right now, either.
ROBERTSON: You never brought a camera in this close before?
STONE: I've never seen this, to be honest with you, because we've been working on getting guys out and broken apart.
ROBERTSON: Even the hard-core are getting the chance to reform, but their teacher stands outside their wired cage.
STONE: This is cooperation with the coalition forces.
ROBERTSON: This is what they -- whoever they're with, this is what they do to stop it?
STONE: These guys have systematically stopped anybody else from doing it. So, these are the guys we had to remove to we could get here so that we could get to the other guys.
ROBERTSON: Stone's doctrine doesn't stop with the detainees. He wants to win over their families too. He's improved visitation. Detailed research, he says, shows most detainees at Bucca got familiarly permission to fight to make money.
STONE: The reality is this is the battlefield of the mind. It's all about what they're willing to think and what they're willing to do when they do think it. These family units are integral to that decision.
ROBERTSON: Art therapy, he says, has opened up some of the most extreme. Others get English classes. Even civics courses teaching Western-style democracy. But one of the biggest motivators for reform is the revamped review hearings that Stone instituted.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're not serving a sentence here. You've been held because you're been determined to be a security threat.
ROBERTSON: For the first time, detainees are actually present for their six-monthly review hearings, and can argue their case for release.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If we decide to recommend your continued detention, we may also recommend that you participate in the vocational skills training program.
ROBERTSON: Stone has let 7,000 go. Some had been locked up for as long as three years. Only seven have come back. Before Stone arrived, mass releases put al Qaeda indoctrinated detainees right back into the fight. Now Stone's refined release program is even releasing detained imams to spread their new message of moderation.
STONE: Each detainee represents the possibility of being a moderate missile, if you will, fired into a community to spread a degree of moderacy, and that's the way we view it, with 20-some or 19,000 detainees, 23,000 overall, if we had half of them hitting the target, it's makes a huge difference.
ROBERTSON: So why wasn't anyone doing this before?
STONE: I can't answer that.
ROBERTSON: He can answer who is helping.
STONE: General Petraeus.
ROBERTSON: Why hasn't he blocked (ph) in?
STONE: Because General Petraeus understands this war fighting. Because when I walk in with an idea, he'll challenge me, he'll slice and dice it, but if he thinks it has merit and he understands the context in which it's being done, he has the bigger picture. He understands how this population fits in that population.
ROBERTSON: A war where the battle doesn't end when the enemy is captured.
Nic Robertson, CNN, Camp Bucca, Iraq. (END VIDEOTAPE)