Bloggers' Roundtable With Gen. Douglas M. Stone

So that determination is much more steep in the basics of the program that I've put in place. So I got to identify -- I got to find and identify the extremists and segregate them. I don't know that robotic would help me with that. I've got to dig into their mind. I've got psychiatrists and psychologists, you know, and interrogation work and counseling work. I'm not sure robotics are there yet on that. I've got to work with the -- knock the edge off their understanding or frankly their misunderstanding of the Koran, and you know, so I've got moderate imams that are working with that.

And you can -- if I walk through counseling or I walk through family involvement or multi-layer evaluations, all those, job placement, you know, continuing education, I think there's a role for automation there. And you know, we're working hard on how we might use programming, you know, TV programming or on-demand kinds of things to try to get these guys to basically destroy the destructive ideology that's there.

But once they're no longer a threat, then I -- you know, I'm working to keep them off the streets. And most of these guys are here because they were either threatened or they are unemployed. And I don't know yet how robotics would help. But when they form a prison -- and I don't run prisons; I run detention facilities -- the Iraqis could easily use some form of robotics for primitive security. And I could see how that would -- how that might work.

Q: Thank you.

Holt: Thank you very much. CJ Grisham.

Q: Yes, sir. General, how are you doing?

Stone: I'm doing fine. Thank you.

Q: CJ from A Soldier's Perspective. I'm an active duty soldier also and also an interrogator, did a little more than 300 interrogations while I was in Iraq.

One of the things that, I think, impresses me about having you in charge of this is the fact that I've read in numerous places that you actually read and understand the Koran. And my question to you is, our team did the same thing while we were there, and it seemed to be highly successful. What is being done in our prison system to educate our soldiers, not to indoctrinate them, you know, or change their religion, but to educate them in what the Koran says so that they can intelligently interrogate the detainees that are there? And is there any training going on in theater that makes them a little more capable and able to attack those problems that they have right now with Sunni extremists?

Stone: Well, it's a great question, and I wish I could give you a -- you know, a remarkably brilliant answer on how these programs sort of taken off and we've done all kinds of things to train.

I was training, as you know, all the Marines before they came over, and we had brought in cultural awareness. Since I've been here, the two colonels that I've had that are -- the commanders over the -- all interrogation for detainees have absolutely glommed on to this perspective. I mean, I do read the Koran every morning every day. I -- in fact, I do not give a presentation in Arabic without sourcing the Koran. We are increasingly making the fundamental mistakes that are made in interpretation, whether by omission or commission, of the many Shari'a court, and, you know -- I call them fraudulent, but, you know -- fraudulent imams that are actually inside the compounds. We have a directory now where we can take those arguments and tear them apart.

The many religious leaders, all imams that we have working for us teach out of a moderate doctrine, which brings to bear every one of -- you know, the seven mortal sins and that sort of thing, and tears apart, particularly the Takfirs in al Qaeda's arguments, you know, for things that are -- you know, I mean sort of the basics like, you know, let's kill innocents; you're not allowed to -- you can do various things, which they believe that they can. And once they can read -- and I mean, you're talking about the basics here -- once they can actually read the words themselves and they believe the Koran they're reading -- this is something that we changed, which is a bizarre thing but true -- then they actually can begin a conversation between the two of them.