The Tortured Lives of Interrogators

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Veterans of Iraq, N. Ireland and Mideast Share Stark Memories
The American interrogator was afraid. Of what and why, he couldn't say. He was riding the L train in Chicago, and his throat was closing.

In Iraq, when Tony Lagouranis interrogated suspects, fear was his friend, his weapon. He saw it seep, dark and shameful, through the crotch of a man's pants as a dog closed in, barking. He smelled it in prisoners' sweat, a smoky odor, like a pot of lentils burning. He had touched fear, too, felt it in their fingers, their chilled skin trembling.

But on this evening, Lagouranis was back in Illinois, taking the train to a bar. His girlfriend thought he was a hero. His best friend hung out with him, watching reruns of "Hawaii Five-O." And yet he felt afraid.

"I tortured people," said Lagouranis, 37, who was a military intelligence specialist in Iraq from January 2004 until January 2005. "You have to twist your mind up so much to justify doing that."

(snip)
Once a week, an Iraqi councilman and an American colonel visited. "We had to hide the tortured guys," Lagouranis said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/03/AR2007060301121.html?hpid=topnews

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1. You pick yer Gods.

And the ones you pick give you power, be it fear or lust or love or whatever, but at the end of the day you still have to bow down before the ones you served.