DDay had a great post on this over at Hullabaloo (for link to post, click my sig), including this illuminating excerpt:

(Staff Judge Advocate at Guantanamo Diane) Beaver told me she arrived in Guantánamo in June 2002. In September that year there was a series of brainstorming meetings, some of which were led by Beaver, to gather possible new interrogation techniques. Ideas came from all over the place, she said. Discussion was wide-ranging [...]

Jack Bauer had many friends at Guantánamo Bay, Beaver said, "he gave people lots of ideas." She believed the series contributed to an environment in which those at Guantánamo were encouraged to see themselves as being on the frontline - and to go further than they otherwise might [...]

The younger men would get particularly agitated, excited even: "You could almost see their dicks getting hard as they got new ideas." A wan smile crossed Beaver's face. "And I said to myself, you know what, I don't have a dick to get hard. I can stay detached."

Words fail me. This is the country I was raised in.

Cheers,

I think you misunderstood the quotes I listed. Dave(Petraeus?) was talking with Barry Posen one of the Military Analyst that was a ex-teacher at Princeton. Dave(Petraeus?) was the one that said Barry Posen was a mentor to him at Princeton.

So you have a Princeton educated General named David fresh from Iraq that is conducting a secret briefing with these military analysts. I think this is pretty strong evidence.

I also think its very important if David Petraeus was part of the Military Analyst PSYOP and I think the DOD feels the same way and thats why his name is redacted. If rumsfeld or a bunch of retired military are lying it not a big deal because they are gone. But if the DOD's man in Iraq is lying thats a big problem. David Petraeus is being groomed for something very big and I think he just got nominated to be centcom commander so its very important that his hands are clean.

Check out this document.

06-F-01532 doc 14

http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/milanalysts/13%20Apr%2007/06-F-01532%20doc%2014.pdf

Example text from the document:

"Mr.Ruff: So with that (name redacted - Petraeus?) will open up with a couple of minutes just to set the stage....So general, if you'd like to start off."

"Q: Hey, Dave. This is Jeff McCausland. First of all, welcome home."

"(redacted name - Petraeus?): Hey Barry, How are you? ....I do want to note that you were at the woodrow wilson school.

Barry: And I didn't even graduate from it.

(redacted name - Petraeus?) And you didn't. But you did teach there. And you did mentor a few of us.

Or, for that matter, why haven't they been up in arms about any of the torture revelations except the initial ones from Abu Ghraib?

I doubt it's because Americans simply don't care. In fact, many do care deeply, and it doesn't matter whether it's a majority or not. This country, after all, is being ruled by a tiny minority of depraved psychopaths. There are far, far more Americans who are righteously outraged -- or would be, if they were informed of what is and was going on.

But they are not informed, even when the "news" is released about more torture of more captives under more horrifying circumstances. They are not informed because what is done to our captives is never called "torture," EVER in the mainstream mass media, unless by reference to "what critics call torture."

The "techniques" are always referred to as "harsh interrogation" or "enhanced interrogation tactics." The captives are never referred to as "suspects," they are always guilty of being terrorists. In the al-Qahtani case currently in the news, the fact that he was beaten relentlessly is not mentioned in most of the mainstream reports, but there most certainly is reference to forcing him to wear women's lingerie, which has been transformed into a joke by people like Limbaugh and Drudge.

So consequently, Americans by and large have no real conception of what is being done to these captives, and practically everything they see, hear, or read about it is deliberately sanitized to prevent them from knowing what's really going on.

It is a conspiracy of silence, mitigation and propaganda, conducted by government and its Palace Media to keep Americans ignorant, passive, and accommodating .

It works relatively well -- for a while.

And then, with a snap, it doesn't work at all.

How close are we to that point?

Such brilliance.

I see that Arlen Specter, he who sometimes talks a good game but seldom backs his words with votes or actions, wants more investigation into the football "scandal" where one team spied on another.

Fill in the rest yourselves.

Thanks for linking to that -- even though most of it isn't new, it's put together perfectly and is (therefore) quite difficult to read.

You're right, I did misunderstand the quotes. I would have understood if I had checked the document, but I didn't. Thanks for clarifying it for me (and everybody else).

Redaction itself is not a sign of guilt or criminal intent. I've done some redaction myself, following guidelines that have been in place for some time, which follow a non-political logic that most people would agree are reasonable. I'm still reading these things, but nothing has raised my eyebrows yet about 'why was this person's name or email removed'.

Please understand, I'm not trying to minimize what's happened here. A crime has been committed. I've been clear in here (see my other letters) how I feel about that. We'll all take our collective work and collective review and hopefully talk to friends (not just the converted) about it, write letters about it, pen op-eds for the local papers. It would be a lot more effective if we focus on things where there's a strong case, and do our best to see the people who are actually responsible for this 'program' held accountable.

A lot of stuff (on TPM) that people are exercised about reads like simple prepping, which isn't illegal and which provides a smokescreen others will hide behind. If Petraeus rehashed his congressional testimony to the analysts, which is what I would expect him to do, then I don't see him as culpable. I see the guy who set up that meeting as culpable.

I'm very wary of Petraeus, but he's also been very careful about managing his scope. There's a fine line between emphasizing the positive aspects of the disaster, within the scope of his responsibility to maintain support, and misrepresenting what's going on. We won't get him on that, and can rally more support behind him and this idiotic war if we choose our targets poorly.

Targeting those who closely managed a supposedly independent set of assets, and marketed the war to the media through them, you don't run into this problem. They don't have any fine lines. That's why I take the position I do wrt Petraeus.