Light Weekend Reading

In U.S. Report, Brutal Details of 2 Afghan Inmates' Deaths

Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him.

The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, was hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, at around 2 a.m. to answer questions about a rocket attack on an American base. When he arrived in the interrogation room, an interpreter who was present said, his legs were bouncing uncontrollably in the plastic chair and his hands were numb. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.

More:

Specialist Damien M. Corsetti, a tall, bearded interrogator sometimes called "Monster" -he had the nickname tattooed in Italian across his stomach, other soldiers said - was often chosen to intimidate new detainees. Specialist Corsetti, they said, would glower and yell at the arrivals as they stood chained to an overhead pole or lay face down on the floor of a holding room. (A military police K-9 unit often brought growling dogs to walk among the new prisoners for similar effect, documents show.)

"The other interrogators would use his reputation," said one interrogator, Specialist Eric H. Barclais. "They would tell the detainee, 'If you don't cooperate, we'll have to get Monster, and he won't be as nice.' " Another soldier told investigators that Sergeant Loring lightheartedly referred to Specialist Corsetti, then 23, as "the King of Torture."

A Saudi detainee who was interviewed by Army investigators last June at Guantánamo said Specialist Corsetti had pulled out his penis during an interrogation at Bagram, held it against the prisoner's face and threatened to rape him, excerpts from the man's statement show.

Comment: Read this article even if you don't want to. Heartbreaking if even half of its true. Where the hell was the leadership? I could barely stomach reading this. I did not join an Army that lets asshole E-4 with "Monster" tatooed on their chests run amok and beat people to death. We can do better.

The rush to fight missiles aimed at planes

You can be pretty sure that when those two lost pilots in a little Cessna wandered out of Pennsylvania and into highly restricted air space near the Capitol and the White House last week, it wasn't just F-16 fighter jets and Blackhawk helicopters that were prepared to end their journey. Government men in black likely were posted atop key buildings with shoulder-fired missiles as well.

Such weaponry has been part of the US arsenal for decades. But just as many "bad guys" as "good guys" may be armed with MANPADS (man-portable air defense systems) these days, and some experts say that it would be far too easy for one of them to attack an American airliner. As a result, diplomats and engineers are scrambling to reduce the threat.

Comment: If we spend billions to protect the fleet of US Commercial Aircraft, all the terrorists have to do if shoot one from another country. Down an Aero Mexico plane as it makes it approach to the Austin airports, and you will still suceed in damaging the airline industy. Then you've got the public screaming "what did we spend all that money on?"

The best defense against terrorism is a good offense--military, politically, diplomatically. How about we take a billion dollars and invest it in language training programs so we can produce better HUMINT.

The Best P.R.: Straight Talk

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

The fact that the White House spokesman Scott McClellan spent part of his briefing on Tuesday excoriating Newsweek - and telling its editors that they had a responsibility to "help repair the damage" to America's standing in the Arab-Muslim world - while not offering a single word of condemnation for those who went out and killed 16 people in Afghanistan in riots linked to a Newsweek report, pretty much explains why we're struggling to win the war of ideas in the Muslim world today. We are spending way too much time debating with ourselves, or playing defense, and way too little time actually looking Arab Muslims in the eye and telling them the truth as we see it.

Comment: Worth reading.

Lessons for Iraq From Gettysburg

By David Ignatius

GETTYSBURG, Pa. -- The most famous battlefield of the American Civil War might seem an unlikely place to look for lessons about Iraq. But as historian James McPherson leads a group of Pentagon officials in a discussion of postwar reconstruction, some startling common themes emerge.

Comment: History is fun and useful.

A Report Card on Iraqi Troops

HILLA, Iraq, May 17 -- The Iraqi colonel had just finished telling Army Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, about the successful raids his brigade had carried out, the suspected insurgents captured and the weapons rounded up.

Then, on a screen at the far end of a narrow, cramped conference room where Casey was sitting, the colonel flashed a slide rating his brigade according to a system just devised by the U.S. military. The slide showed a nearly complete sea of red squares -- red for staffing levels, red for training, red for equipment and so on through several more categories.

Comment: Ah Jesus (or Allah whichever your prefer), now its death by powerpoint Iraqi style.

Mail-order Quran arrives with slurs

LOS ANGELES - A Muslim woman who said she ordered a Quran through Amazon.com only to find profanity and religious slurs written inside asked Wednesday for an apology and a full investigation by the online retailer.

Comment: Will Jeff Bezos get burned in efagy in a riot in Jalalabad?