ADK_Forever
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Re: U.S. soldiers encouraged to spread message of their Christian faith in Afghanista
And yet, here you are. :roll:
For someone so involved in the military you are very NOT educated with what really goes on, ehh? :roll:
Cheney and Rumsfeld sent a group of not professional CIA interrogators, from Gitmo, over to Abu Ghraib to do the same thing there that they were doing at Gitmo. Since you're in the military, you are aware of this... right? :roll: Oh, that's right, your "Yes Sir!" mind set prevents you from seeing reality. No problem. There will always be that population of the military that is only as open minded as they think their superiors want them to be.
For your education of what really went on in your military:
Happy Memorial Day, Sarge. :2usflag:
You're quite welcome for the lesson. :2wave:
Some would call this childish.
And yet, here you are. :roll:
Oh here it is in the CIA handbook....."stack naked bodies up in pyramid formation for fun." Oh and here it states to..."have sex with married superior and have baby."
These were idiot civilians in uniform behaving badly. Nothing more. It's not about defending anybody. It's about seeing it for what it is and not invoking exaggeration to cling to crap. And given your avatar, it would appear that you are more interested in the exxageration over the simple truths. What do you say to all those civilians "murdered" under Obama in Afghanistan? Not as delicious when "Bush" isn't in the sentence is it?
For someone so involved in the military you are very NOT educated with what really goes on, ehh? :roll:
Cheney and Rumsfeld sent a group of not professional CIA interrogators, from Gitmo, over to Abu Ghraib to do the same thing there that they were doing at Gitmo. Since you're in the military, you are aware of this... right? :roll: Oh, that's right, your "Yes Sir!" mind set prevents you from seeing reality. No problem. There will always be that population of the military that is only as open minded as they think their superiors want them to be.
For your education of what really went on in your military:
The Washington Independent More Cheney Truth-SquadderyWithin months, concerns over the efficacy of interrogations in Iraq led the commander of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, to visit Iraq from Aug. 31 to Sept. 10, 2003 and deliver to the commanding general there, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, instructions to “Gitmo-ize” Abu Ghraib. At the same time, Abu Ghraib’s interrogations chief, Capt. Carolyn Wood, who had served as the interrogation operations officer at Afghanistan’s Bagram detention facility, submitted a “wish list” of interrogation techniques to her chain of command. This is what the Senate Armed Services Committee’s report had to say about that, on page 170 of its report:
Techniques in CPT Wood’s proposed policy can be traced back to the [Special Mission Unit Task Force] in Iraq to Afghanistan and, ultimately, to techniques authorized for use at GTMO by Secretary Rumsfeld in December 2002. The GTMO techniques were, in turn, influenced by techniques used by the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency and the military service SERE schools to train U.S. personnel to resist illegal enemy interrogations.
Sanchez, on Sept. 14, 2003, issued a new interrogation policy for Abu Ghraib after Miller’s visit, incorporating Wood’s request and the “Gitmo-ization” rules. Central Command was so shocked by its call for “military working dogs, stress positions, sleep deprivation, loud music, and light control” that it ordered him to revise the policy, which he did on Oct. 12, taking away most of those techniques, but adding, “Should working dogs be present during interrogations, they will be muzzled and under the control of a handler at all times to ensure safety.” Dog teams arrived at Abu Ghraib; lax controls over the separation between prison guards and prison interrogators broke down; and what happened at Abu Ghraib between September and December 2003 — “numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses,” as an investigator, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba determined — was the result.
Notice that this is a straight line between the the CIA interrogation program at Abu Ghraib, moving like a game of telephone. At each stage, an important safeguard or restriction assumed at an earlier stage — the techniques apply only to the CIA; the techniques are to be used only on Geneva-exempted enemy combatants; the techniques are to be applied only by interrogators — breaks down. Not once do you have to assume that the Bush administration’s principals wanted abuse to happen to reach this conclusion. This is why the law exists, after all: to prevent unintended consequences by well-meaning individuals that veer off into horror. Redefining the law on torture leads to what a 2004 Pentagon investigation called the “migration” of so-called “enhanced interrogation” techniques — even if that investigation didn’t have any mandate for discovering that the origins of those techniques came from CIA programs approved at the highest levels of the Bush administration
Obsidian Wings: A "Disappointment"In reading over Bush’s press conference transcript, I was almost starting to feel some sympathy for him. Until I got to this part, which responded to a request to identify his mistakes:
There have been disappointments.
Abu Ghraib, obviously, was a huge disappointment, during the presidency.
A “disappointment.” That’s the type of language parents use when they catch their kids drinking. It implies that they didn’t really have control. The parents certainly didn't cause anything -- they were just disappointed that their very high standards weren’t being met.
That’s not at all what we have here though. President Bush – authorizer of illegal torture – is not entitled to use the word “disappointment” to describe Abu Ghraib, as if it were some frat party gone horribly awry. Abu Ghraib was – as both Jane Mayer and the Senate Armed Forces Committee have extensively documented – the direct result of the President’s and his top officials’ authorization of torture. And he knows it – and everyone else knows it too.
Indeed, what’s striking is how obvious the trail from SERE to Abu Ghraib is to anyone who cares to look. It's almost embarrassingly clear.
The SERE tactics, as Sullivan notes, were designed to help the American military withstand illegal torture. Here’s how the report (p.2) describes them. See if any of these tactics sound vaguely familiar when thinking about the pictures from Abu Ghraib:
The techniques used in SERE school, based, in part, on Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean war to elicit false confessions, include stripping students of their clothing, placing them in stress positions, putting hoods over their heads, disrupting their sleep, treating them like animals, subjecting them to loud music and flashing lights, and exposing them to extreme temperatures. It can also include face and body slaps and until recently, for some who attended the Navy’s SERE school, it included waterboarding.
Wow. What a crazy coincidence that a few bad low-level apples just happened to mimic – precisely – Chinese Communist torture tactics.
Anyway, everyone should read the report to see the trail in all its glory. But the nickel version goes something like this: There’s a division with the Defense Department (DoD) – JPRA – that oversees the SERE tactics and the resistance training. Beginning in December 2001 and beyond, the JPRA briefed, trained, and instructed both senior DoD officials and Gitmo interrogators.
Amazingly, after Gitmo interrogators were actually flown to the US to be trained by JPRA people, SERE tactics started popping up at Gitmo. Some months later, the Gitmo commander traveled to Iraq to toughen up interrogations of detainees. Lo and behold, these very same tactics started popping up in Iraq as well. No one could have predicted ...
Happy Memorial Day, Sarge. :2usflag:
You're quite welcome for the lesson. :2wave: