Surprise, Surprise

Headline: "Pentagon lawyers sought harsh interrogation" from the Associated Press.

Here's some excerpts:

The Pentagon in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks pursued abusive interrogation techniques once used by North Korea and Vietnam on American POWs despite stern warnings by several military lawyers that the methods were cruel and even illegal, according to a Senate investigation...

"The guidance (administration lawyers) provided will go down in history as some of the most irresponsible and shortsighted legal analysis ever provided to our nation's military and intelligence communities," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., an Air Force Reserve colonel who teaches military law for the service.

The hearing is the Senate Armed Services Committee's first look at the origins of harsh interrogation methods and how policy decisions were vetted across the Defense Department. Its review fits into a broader picture of the government's handling of detainees, which includes FBI and CIA interrogations in secret prisons.

The panel is expected to hold further hearings on the matter and release a final report by the end of the year.

Among its initial findings is that senior Pentagon lawyers, including the office of general counsel William "Jim" Haynes, sought information as early as July 2002 regarding a military program that trained U.S. troops how to survive enemy interrogations and deny foes valuable intelligence.

Much of the training program, known as "Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape," or SERE, is based on experiences of American prisoners of war in previous conflicts, including those in Korea and Vietnam.

In response, SERE officials provided Haynes' office a list of tactics that included sensory deprivation, sleep disruption and stress positions.

For more, click here.

Aside from the government knowing that what they were doing was illegal and being advised against such actions by their own employees and advisers, is it troubling to anyone else that one is no longer enraged by the Bush Administration's actions and has simply come to accept the fact that one will be lied to many times a day?


Life will begin to pick up the pieces and put itself back together on January 20, 2009. Inshallah!

Talking Heads

From the New York Times:

Hidden behind [the] appearance of [the] objectivity [of retired generals-cum-network analysts], though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

But would retired generals really put a positive spin on the situation in Iraq just to maintain favor with the Pentagon?

“I saw immediately in 2003 that things were going south,” General [Paul E.] Vallely, one of the Fox analysts on the trip, recalled in an interview with The Times.

The Pentagon, though, need not have worried.

“You can’t believe the progress,” General Vallely told Alan Colmes of Fox News upon his return. He predicted the insurgency would be “down to a few numbers” within months.

Unacceptable

The Pentagon's inspector general released a report three days ago faulting KBR, a former Halliburton subsidiary, for providing our soldiers unclean water. The water was only used for washing and shaving, but still may have been responsible for "38 reported illnesses that 'an attending medical official said could be attributed to water, such as skin abscesses, cellulitis, skin infections and diarrhea.'"

Instead of expressing anger, disappointment, or anything remotely sensible, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell defended KBR, saying that no definitive connection had been found linking KBR's water and the soldiers' medical problems, and that servicemen "are constantly reminded only to drink bottled water"...Even though they weren't drinking it, merely showering in it.

For more.