I chose a document at random. It's 06-F-01532 doc 07 from the April 13, 2007 entry at the master DOD website for the document dump (http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/milanalysts/).

I've only made it to page 7 of 10, but I have to present two passages that are disgusting. The document is labeled as a transcription of a background briefing for a number of the analysts in a conference call on July 13, 2005.

Here is a passage making a hurried admission to what must be the Yoo memos, beginning on page 5, in response to a question from our buddy Shepperd about differences in practices among Iraq, Afganistan and Guantanamo:

I will tell you, Don - first of all Guantanamo Bay is a separate, closed-loop detention interrogation operation. The connection between any other operation really begins to open up a basket of worms and it does not pertain.

At Guantanamo the rules changed when they had these resistance trained - particularly one high-value - ISN-063 - high-value detainee - that was resistance trained and they were getting nowhere with him. And they thought, and later proved to be fairly accurate, that he had valuable information on the Global War on Terror.

The Joint Task Force requested additional interrogation techniques from a higher authority, and they went up through the Office of the Secretary of Defense. They did recieve that authority on the 2nd of December 03 (sic, 2002, see below with Craddock) to open up the envelope a little bit with more aggressive techniques.

/snip/

However, the authorities to open up the interrogation techniques in response to Guantanamo, and it did not mean it went anywhere else, Guantanamo under the closed crucible of the controls they have down there were approved on the 2nd of December. They were rescinded on the 15th of January. A new set came out on the 16th of January through 16 April, and on the 16th of April another set came down that sort of resolved it all and for the guide for interrogators.

So, although the purpose of the briefing was to convince the analysts that the interrogations were legal, we see that the definition of legal was changing quite quickly over time, as the various Yoo memos were written and withdrawn.

Then, on page 6, we get down to actual techniques, with a bonus of the involvement by the President in determining what is appropriate:

Another example is ego down. And this is the one where we start seeing a different sort of thing, and it gets into possible sexual humiliation. Ego down, that's an approach based on attacking the source's sense of personal worth. Goes through the same process. That NCO, written plan, vets it through the O-5 level, GG14 level, and then conducts the interrogation with translator.

In GTMO, that ego down translated down to telling the detainee that his mother and sister were whores, he was forced to wear women's lingerie, multiple allegations of his homosexuality, he was forced to dance with a male interrogator, he was strip searched for control measures, and he was forced to perform dog tricks on a leash.

Now, the basic line there - you say that sounds, you know, like I did - that sounds like degrading. Well, we said yes, it could be. The basic line though in the charter for those interrogations was humane treatment. And humane treatment is spelled out by the President. It's a safe, secure environment that provides medical care, food, water, and the basics of that person's security. Not this. Was this person injured, harmed? No. Were they denied any medical care, anything? No. So there was a line there with don't cross the line between inhumane, and that's where it went, Don.

So there, it wasn't inhumane, because humane means what the President says it means. Any questions?

"...I want to know why this is, why some relatively few people never stop wanting answers and the rest don't care? ..."

The rest care, but life itself is more interesting than a lot of things. For many young lads, the chasing of skirts is all important, for others it is fishing. For most it is raising a family and "fitting in" with their crowd.

Most like to learn, it is just that they are interested in other things than we are; and they often take the easy way out on where to get their "learning" from. The local newspaper was never a great place to learn history for example.

And TV? Oh, Lord!

I think the conventional wisdom has swung back to "global cooling" as the current meme.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7376301.stm

On the other hand one can't be too surprised to see this...
Global warming can cause global cooling
by Jeff Poling

It's stuff like this that makes you people so darn entertaining.

I totally agree. Wanting answers is a mindset that should be taught at home and in school. It is all part of having the personal confidence to love an open mind and learning new things. Our education system not only doesn’t inspire of love of learning, we are getting worse not better because of stupid political nonsense like No Child Left Behind and teaching to the test. The closed or confused minds that result do not make good decisions in the ballot box and are too easily led astray by politicians and the M$M and support using force far too soon instead of talking to your opposition and using negotiations and compromise first and foremost.

I know, I'm reading through this stuff now, shaking my head. I think I'm going to start drinking early today ...

Seriously: All this clarifies a couple things. Barstow's piece includes some excellent quotes from MAs who knew, if belatedly, that they were being had. They went along because they didn't want to go up against the attack machine, or for whatever reason (they failed, in other words, to live up to the standards they were taught and the ones the unwitting public believed them to be exhibiting), but at least went on the record later about it (probably after being confronted with emails and memos and a timeline by Barstow), as any good reporter would count on. Hersh taps exactly this kind of discomfort all the time.

But there are also people who actually believe all this stuff, have insane ideas they want to turn into realities, and/or have deep contempt for the citizens they allegedly serve (see Allard's op-ed). Barstow was very generous (though I think he took the correct line) in dealing with them. None of this group were duped or deceived by the Pentagon: they sold out their principles willingly, ideologically. They've obviously been quite at home the last few years, even in the face of Rumsfeld's bullying, and the creeping threat to the integrity (and prerogatives) of the institution where they spent their professional lives.

Which takes me back to my original comment on your first post. I'm furious, and take this personally. There's no small number of other ex-military people who will feel the same, and who are likely allies in whatever we want to do about this. I've been out almost twenty years, and have other interests, accomplishments and commitments ... someone more recently closer to the kill-zone is bound to be even angrier than I am.