Abu Gonzalez was Chair Force JAG

Col. Boyd (OODA Loop) was an air force guy, that's one redeeming feature. They aren't all nuts like Bombs Away LeMay.

Paul R.,

Bacevich is one military writer I can think of that has been influenced by Williams.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195173384/nationbooks08

Effective Engagement in the Public Opinion Arena:

A Leadership Imperative in the Information Age

Col. Morris D. Davis

Historically, the military ranks as one of the most trusted institution in America. In an annual poll conducted by the Gallup Organization, the public consistently rates the military as the institution in which it has the highest level of confidence placing it well ahead of the President, Congress and the church.1 Public confidence remains high despite questions about operations in Iraq, prisoner abuse allegations at military confinement facilities, the on-going hunt for al Qaida in Afghanistan, concerns about the anthrax vaccination program, headlines over sexual assault allegations within the Department of Defense and questions over business dealings with Haliburton and Boeing.

To maintain the public’s trust and confidence, particularly considering today’s age of instantaneous access to news and information, requires greater effort and more attention than ever before. The public, rightfully, has a strong interest in its military and the military has a duty to the public to be as transparent as possible, and to the extent practicable, to serve as an honest, straightforward source of information. Communicating effectively and openly with the public enables the military to keep the public informed while highlighting the positive aspects of military service and the nature of on-going military operations. This communication through the media serves the military’s interest in staying connected with society and the public’s interest in monitoring its military.

Leaders must recognize the communications process is a continuum that starts at the decision-making stage and ends with an effect on public opinion after the communication is accomplished. A coherent communications process and strategy saves time and effort, more consistently promotes the military’s long-term interests and provides the public the information it needs to assess its trust and confidence in the military.

(...)

Conclusion — Offensive Engagement in the Battle for Public Opinion

The military, the media, the public and Congress are inextricably linked in an information loop. The military acts, the media reports, the public forms opinions that can influence their elected representatives, and Congress provides oversight and direction to the military through appropriations and statutory guidance . . . and the process flows in an unending circular pattern. The military is locked in the current and has a choice to either fight it or facilitate its flow. The public understands that it is necessary to protect some things: plans for future military operations, classified information, data that would intrude on personal privacy and things of that nature.91 The military cannot, however, use the “it’s secret” card too often before it begins to appear as a subterfuge for hiding dirty laundry.

A commitment from senior leadership to promote the maximum transparency possible will facilitate change in attitudes at all levels. This attitude of openness and honesty promotes the military’s interests in the long run. Proactive engagement enables the military to help shape the debate and maximize or mitigate, as the case may be, its influence on public opinion. It is time to take the offensive and influence the story rather than wait until forced to go on the defensive. The impetus must start at the top, but the practice must be engrained from the bottom up. More times than not the military has a good story to tell. Even when bad news happens preparation can lessen the impact. Time spent early on in training current and future leaders, and time spent thinking through how decisions will “play in Peoria” before they are made, can save time and much embarrassment later. For the military to preserve its standing as a trusted institution it must show the public it is forthright and it does not hide the truth. The public has the right to expect when its military speaks they can trust “that’s the way it is.”

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/cc/davis1.html

Does this guy really not understand that he sounds like an evangelist about to try to sell us a Christian Insurance Policy?

Why on earth, ondelette, if you're reading this thread, should we try to hold a respectful conversation with the likes of this?

I just wish that Salon would require that each troll register with a unique screen name so that we can tell them apart and hold them to their previous statements.

IOW, no Publish Anonymously option.

Gitmo's a Navy base, but the Army doesn't always tell the Navy what's happening.

http://newyorker.com/archive/2006/02/27/060227fa_fact

[Alberto Mora, the general counsel of the Navy,] called his friend Steven Morello, the general counsel of the Army, and asked him if he knew anything about the abuse of prisoners at Guantánamo. Mora said that Morello answered, “I know a lot about it. Come on down.”

In Morello’s office, Mora saw what he now refers to as “the package” — a collection of secret military documents that traced the origins of the coercive interrogation policy at Guantánamo.

[ . . . ] According to a participant in the meeting, Mora was “ashen-faced” when he read the package. The documents included a legal analysis, also dated October 11th, by Lieutenant Colonel Diane Beaver, who was then the top legal adviser to J.T.F.-170.

[ . . . ] Beaver reasoned, however, that U.S. soldiers preparing to violate [the U.C.M.J.] in their interrogations might be able to obtain “permission, or immunity” from higher authorities “in advance.”

[ . . . ] (Beaver was later promoted to the staff of the Pentagon’s Office of General Counsel, where she specializes in detainee issues.)

Mora was less impressed. Beaver’s brief, his memo says, “was a wholly inadequate analysis of the law.”

[ . . . ] Then, on December 20th, [ . . . ] Mora went to William Haynes, the Pentagon’s general counsel.

[ . . . ] In confronting Haynes, Mora was engaging not just the Pentagon but also the Vice-President’s office. Haynes is a protégé of Cheney’s influential chief of staff, David Addington.

[ . . . ] In 1989, when Cheney was named Secretary of Defense by George H. W. Bush, he hired Addington as a special assistant, and eventually appointed him to be his general counsel. Addington, in turn, hired Haynes.

[ . . . ] Addington has played a central part in virtually all of the Administration’s legal strategies, including interrogation and detainee policies. The office of the Vice-President has no statutory role in the military chain of command. But Addington’s tenacity [ . . . ] One former government lawyer described him as “the Octopus” — his hands seemed to reach into every legal issue.

[ . . . ] On January 15th, Mora took a step guaranteed to antagonize Haynes, who frequently warned subordinates to put nothing controversial in writing or in e-mail messages. Mora delivered an unsigned draft memo to Haynes, and said that he planned to “sign it out” that afternoon — making it an official document — unless the harsh interrogation techniques were suspended. Mora’s draft memo described U.S. interrogations at Guantánamo as “at a minimum cruel and unusual treatment, and, at worst, torture.”

By the end of the day, Haynes called Mora with good news. Rumsfeld was suspending his authorization of the disputed interrogation techniques. The Defense Secretary also was authorizing a special “working group” of a few dozen lawyers, from all branches of the armed services, including Mora, to develop new interrogation guidelines.

[ . . . ] A week later, Mora was shown a lengthy classified document that negated almost every argument he had made. Haynes had outflanked him. He had solicited a separate, overarching opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel, at the Justice Department, on the legality of harsh military interrogations — effectively superseding the working group.

There was only one copy of the opinion, and it was kept in the office of the Air Force’s general counsel, Mary Walker, whom Rumsfeld had appointed to head the working group. While Walker sat at her desk, Mora looked at the document with mounting disbelief; at first, he thought he had misread it. There was no language prohibiting the cruel, degrading, and inhuman treatment of detainees. Mora told me that the opinion was sophisticated but displayed “catastrophically poor legal reasoning.” In his view, it approached the level of the notorious Supreme Court decision in Korematsu v. United States, in 1944, which upheld the government’s internment of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War.

The author of the opinion was John Yoo, a young and unusually influential lawyer in the Administration, who, like Haynes, was part of Addington’s circle. (Yoo and Haynes were also regular racquetball partners.) In the past, Yoo, working closely with Addington, had helped to formulate the argument that the treatment of Al Qaeda and Taliban suspects, unlike that of all other foreign enemies, was not covered by the Geneva conventions; Yoo had also helped to write the Torture Memo. Before joining the Administration, Yoo, a graduate of Yale Law School, had clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas and taught law at Berkeley. Like many conservative legal scholars, he was skeptical of international law, and believed that liberal congressional overreaction to the Vietnam War and Watergate had weakened the Presidency, the C.I.A., and the military. However, Yoo took these arguments further than most. Constitutional scholars generally agreed that the founders had purposefully divided the power to wage war between Congress and the executive branch; Yoo believed that the President’s role as Commander-in-Chief gave him virtually unlimited authority to decide whether America should respond militarily to a terror attack, and, if so, what kind of force to use. “Those decisions, under our Constitution, are for the President alone to make,” he wrote in a law article.

A top Administration official told me that Yoo, Addington, and a few other lawyers had essentially “hijacked policy” after September 11th. “They thought, Now we can put our views into practice. We have the ability to write them into binding law. It was just shocking. These memos were presented as faits accomplis.”

In Yoo’s opinion, he wrote that at Guantánamo cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment of detainees could be authorized, with few restrictions.

“The memo espoused an extreme and virtually unlimited theory of the extent of the President’s Commander-in-Chief authority,” Mora wrote in his account.

- - The New Yorker, February 27, 2006

A brave Navy man fought the Cheney/Addington octopus.

Too bad the Navy, and nation, lost that battle.