Speaking Of Remembering A Lesson, ...
by pessimist
Remember the other day when Germany agreed to opening Nazi records on 17 million Jews, slave labourers and other Holocaust victims to historians and relatives long anxious for more information about their fate?
How long will it be before someone reveals the contents of certain American files recording information of sinister acts?
Documents on flash drives for sale at a bazaar across from the American military base over the weekend contained ... instructions on using pain to control prisoners who put up resistance.
by pinching or striking nerve and pressure points on their face, neck, arms and legs.
[I]n a folder titled 'Police Study Guides', a document described methods of controlling suspects, such as techniques that "utilize reasonable tactics that do not increase the risk of injury beyond an acceptable level."
The control tactics' five principles include:
* pain compliance — the use of stimulus pain to control resistance behavior* mental stunning techniques — stimulation of overwhelming sensory input that is sudden, intense and unexpected
* motor dysfunction — a controlled striking technique which overstimulates motor nerves, resulting in a temporary impairment...
There are other relatively minor crimes of which evidence appears on these drives - ones which lend credence to our interrogators being poorly supervised, out of control, and extremely dangerous:
Internet pages were copied to the same drive, including news reports on a February prison riot at Pul-i-Charki prison, near Kabul, the Afghan capital, that left at least seven inmates dead.
What was this, a trophy??? Hard to say with these doped-up thugs:
Other Web pages on the drive explained how to buy anabolic steroids, such as Liquid Anodrol, to quickly build up muscles. "The Ultimate Stack for Hard-Core Bodybuilding Warriors Who'll Use 'Any Means Necessary' to Pack Up to 25 Pounds of Raw Brutal Muscle in Just 8 Weeks!" declares one of the Web pages.
prohibits service members from using steroids
unless they are prescribed for medical reasons.
That's a loophole wide enough to drive through a squadron of Humvees in batle formation. Considering that the military courts are very forgiving of transgressions by certain individual officers...
An Army report found Maj. Gen. Miller did not lie when he told Congress he held no "direct discussions" with top Pentagon officials -- even though he met with Rumsfeld aide Stephen Cambone after visiting Abu Ghraib - [BuzzFlash, 4/25]
... while landing like a ton of bricks on others because "they bore responsibility for what happened even though they were not directly involved in abusing prisoners", can one doubt that CYA will demand that some Army doctor will be ordered to create an excuse for steroid useage by prison interogators in order to protect the Army's public image and reputation? That's what likely happened to the Navy doctor who autopsied JFK!
But I digress.
Will this responsibility standard be applied to Rummy-Dummy? Shooter? The Crawford Kid? It should! But it won't - the active-duty military is clearly biased in the radical GOP direction:
[T]he Air Force's IT people put a block on DailyKos... Atrios... TalkingPointsMemo...
Free Republic and Little Green Footballs came through just fine,
thank you very much.
I can certainly understand a policy that permits airmen to use their computers at work for work reasons only, but that hardly explains why some of the more outrageous examples of high wingnuttery are given a pass.
No explanation is necessary. Bu$hCo's back is against the proverbial wall, and every remaining effort will be exerted to attempt maintaining control of the flow of information.
But they overlook something - no Internet filtering is going to prevent the truth from getting out, no matter how the wrong-wingers attempt to spin it. The truth is like a gyroscope - you might knock it off-balance for a while, but it will correct itself. It doesn't matter which end of the spectrum performs the instability. For every Jacobin Terror, for every Napoleonic reign, for every autocratic Tsar, for every totalitarian dictator - there will be a return to balance.
Just check in the historical record if you doubt me. That involves reading, for those who rarely do so - George!
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