Dunleavy described the chaos he found when he arrived: a lack of security and control over detainees who would riot and throw food and turned items like spoons, magnets and welding rods into weapons. He said his interrogators were virtually inexperienced and that the military linguists "were worthless."Do I need to remind folks, that when constructing a TortureState, it is NOT about extracting information. IT is not about extracting Actionable Intelligence.
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"I got my marching orders from the president of the United States," he said.
He also wrote, "The mission was to get intelligence to prevent another 9/11."
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Dunleavy said his "best interrogator" was prosecuted and that another officer was removed after it became apparent he was an alcoholic who secretly drank in his room every night.
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Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who commanded Guantanamo from late 2002 to March 2004, said in another newly released document that he had rejected a proposal to use the harsh techniques employed by survival trainers to prepare American troops for combat. He said some of the techniques "went beyond what I felt comfortable with."
Some of the same harsh techniques had already been secretly adopted by the CIA with White House approval.
Another set of memos, dated 2004, described how a detainee was knocked unconscious for several minutes by guards while he was being forcibly removed from his cell.
[ cf Documents describe chaos of Gitmo's early months ]
It is about communicating to one's own citizens that the game has changed. That they will support the policies of the TortureState, or they are the enemies.
So none of this offers any change in the knowledge base, other than to confirm that the DOD and the StateSponsorsOfTorture were prepared to do what ever it took to create a TortureState, but not to engage in any of the dull tedium of actually doing Information Extraction and ANALYSIS!!!
Blaming the kids for Abu Ghraib is probably the worst of the 'stabbing our troops in the back', since it seeks to avoid the core mission, the core problems, and the core players responsible for the catastrophe!
What if citizenship really required a wider range of knowledge skills than knowing which was the guy who walked on the moon, and which was a moon walker....