http://www.pjvoice.com/v34/34402neocons.aspx

EXCERPT
 

Neoconservatism As A Betrayal Of Jewish Values
Compounding the pathology of terrorism.

-- Dr. Paul Maltby

A few weeks ago I was listening to NPR's "All Things Considered", when they mentioned a test of a new military weapon, "coming up" as they say in the radio biz. I "stayed tuned" while parked in my driveway and heard this report:
Non-Lethal Weapon Emits Invisible Rays of Pain
by Guy Raz, All Things Considered, October 29, 2007 (listen at link)

The Pentagon's research arm has come up with a weapon that can neutralize an individual — or a crowd — from a distance of more than 500 yards.

Recently, a Fox News correspondent underwent simulated waterboarding for a special report. The entire segment seemed a far-more sterile version of the real practice.

This video, produced for Current TV, seems to be a more realistic recreation. As difficult as it is to watch, it's important to remember that the participant (1) has received military training on being waterboarded and (2) was not plucked from the street, blindfolded, stripped naked and "disappeared" to a foreign country.

On September 28, the House approved legislation giving President Bush broad authority to decide techniques U.S. interrogators can use while interrogating terrorist detainees. At his discretion, U.S. interrogators can continue to use techniques which violate the Geneva Conventions and are considered to be torture by its signatories.

I am a retired army intelligence officer, trained as an interrogator, including methods used to avoid providing useful information under torture. I want to discuss two aspects of torture: why intelligence professionals and military lawyers oppose it and why widespread conventional wisdom that it is effective is incorrect.

Update:

Passaro seems to have had plenty of help in this. Four soldiers from the 82nd Airborne assisted Passaro, placing Abdul Wali in stress positions and holding him while Passaro beat him. Two more guards were aware of the proceedings. The statements they gave to the Army Criminal Investigation Command investigator who first looked into the case were not nearly as detailed and complete as their statements in the Federal court trial. The Raleigh N&O reported new details in a story today:

The 82nd Airborne soldiers' testimony helped convict Passaro of felony assault Thursday but also raised questions about why they didn't face charges as well. Not only could the four guards who assisted Passaro have been charged as accomplices, but all six of the guards who knew about the abuse could have been charged under military law with failing to report a crime, according to experts and witness testimony.

An investigator with the Army Criminal Investigation Command said he found the soldiers had done no wrong, but it appears based on the testimony during Passaro's trial that the soldiers were less forthcoming with that investigator than they were on the stand.

George Wysocki, a former Army investigator, testified that the soldiers never told him that they held Wali in the "iron chair" position during the interrogations. The iron chair -- an accepted technique among military interrogators at the time -- involves a detainee having his back against the wall and his legs bent as if sitting in a chair.

Wysocki said his inquiry could have led to court-martial charges against the soldiers. Based on what the soldiers told him at the time, Wysocki concluded: "There was no severe wrongdoing."

But at trial, Sgt. Kevin Gatten testified that he and another guard held Wali while Passaro smacked and kicked him. Gatten described the force of Passaro's blows as "just enough so that it was hard to hold him up."

In a statement to N&O reporters, Scott Silliman, executive director of Duke University's Center on Law, Ethics and National Security stated:

"You're asking a soldier to make a judgment call on a nonuniformed member operating ostensibly under different rules," he said. "You had military officers mixing with CIA and private contractors. Each one was marching to a different standard. That might have constituted sufficient confusion in the uniformed folks that they were hesitant to report it up."

Even so, Silliman said, every U.S. fighter, regardless of organizational affiliation, should use common sense.

"Beating somebody with a two-foot flashlight obviously violates any standard of law," he said. "If you think a crime is being committed, you should try to do something to stop it instead of standing by and allowing it to happen."

Given on September 12, 2005. Transcribed by Reg.

I've given you the setting. Here's what we should be doing:
Number one. We've got to correct the over-reliance on the military. The military is this powerful, wonderful image. You can (inaudible). It's like Chris Matthews was saying, (shouts) "Hey, can't we appoint a - get a czar? Can't we get a MacArthur down there and fix all these problems? What about Tommy Franks?" Well listen, the military is wonderful. I love to military. I spent 34 years in it, but you cannot win the war on terror by using predominantly the US armed forces. Winning the war against terrorism is not primarily a matter of killing people. It's primarily a matter of persuading people that they don't want to be terrorists. That they've got more to gain by staying within the system working in normal lives and contributing to society positively rather than having to give up their life to commit horrible acts against us and our allies. It's a matter of persuasion, not a matter of killing, primarily. You cannot secure facilities by armed guards indefinitely. There's no fixed number of terrorists out there, by the way. It's not like there's a genetic marker, 1/10th of 1% of the population of certain countries is predisposed to be terrorists. These are just ordinary people. They're enraged. They're misled, but they're enraged. They've seen a certain image of the world. It jars them. The best we can tell, these are not ignorant people. These are not the poorest people. These are not malnourished people. These are, by and large, people from educated backgrounds, from middle income homes, who feel the same kind of urge to stand up and protect what they believe is their society that American did during WWII when they flocked, our countrymen, flock to enlist in the United States armed forces. So, we have a problem in approaching the war on terror as predominantly a military exercise. We're not going to win that way. What we have to do to win is stop making so many enemies and start making more friends.