I blame myself for our downfall in Iraq | International News | News | Telegraph

I blame myself for our downfall in Iraq | International News | News | Telegraph: "I blame myself for our downfall in Iraq

By Tim Shipman in Washington, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:56am BST 10/06/2007


I blame myself for our downfall in Iraq, says US torturer
Confession: Tony Lagouranis, conducted mock executions

A former American army torturer has laid bare the traumatic effects of American interrogation techniques in Iraq - on their victims and on the perpetrators themselves.

Tony Lagouranis conducted mock executions, forced men and boys into agonising 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 realisation that what he did has contributed to the downfall of American forces in Iraq.

Mr Lagouranis, 37, suffered nightmares and anxiety attacks on his return to Chicago, 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 p"