The Chieftains & Alison Krauss - Molly Ban
Add comment July 7th, 2007
Archive for July 7th, 2007
Military spokesman in Iraq straight from White House
It turns out that the current US military spokesman in Iraq came to that position straight from the White House.
Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner made his on-camera debut today as the new spokesman of the US-led coalition in Iraq, which is officially known as Multi-National Force-Iraq.
He succeeds Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, who after 13 months as coalition spokesman is moving on to command the Army’s Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
Here is Bergner’s bio from his previous job in which he served at the White House as the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Iraq:
Brigadier General Kevin Bergner currently serves with the National Security Council staff as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Iraq.Prior to this assignment, he served as the Deputy Commanding General for Multi-National Forces in Mosul, Iraq. He also served as the Director for Political-Military Affairs (Middle East) on the The Joint Staff in the Department of Defense.
He graduated from Trinity University, in San Antonio, Texas where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration and a commission in the Regular Army as a Field Artillery officer.
His assignments over the past 26 years include service with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in both Germany and Iraq; the United States Military Academy at West Point; the 24th Infantry Division Artillery in Operations Desert Shield / Storm; the 1st Infantry Division in Bosnia; the 3rd Infantry Division Artillery; The Joint Staff; U.S. Central Command in Operation Iraqi Freedom; and Multi-National Force Northwest in Mosul, Iraq.
He is a graduate of the Field Artillery Officer Basic and Advanced courses, the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, and the Army War College. He earned a Masters Degree in Public Administration from City University of New York.
No wonder he never utters an honest word:
The U.S. command in Baghdad this week ballyhooed the killing of a key al Qaeda leader but later admitted that the military had declared him dead a year ago.
A military spokesman acknowledged the mistake after it was called to his attention by The Examiner. He said public affairs officers will be more careful in announcing significant kills….
Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner began his Monday news conference with a list of top insurgents either killed or captured in recent operations. He said they had been eliminated “in the past few weeks” and were “recent results.”
“In the north, Iraqi army and coalition forces continue successful operations in Mosul,” he told reporters. “Kamal Jalil Uthman, also known as Said Hamza, was the al Qaeda in Iraq military emir of Mosul. He planned, coordinated and facilitated suicide bombings, and he facilitated the movement of more than a hundred foreign fighters through safe houses in the area.” All told, Bergner devoted 68 words to Uthman’s demise.
Uthman was indeed a big kill, and the military featured his death last year in a report titled “Tearing Down al Qaeda.”
[h/t Iraq Slogger.]
2 comments July 7th, 2007
Madison on the Dangers of War
Thanks to Scott Horton, here is James Madison on the dangers of war:
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
–James Madison, Political Observations, Apr. 20, 1795 in: Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, vol. 4, p. 491 (1865)
Add comment July 7th, 2007
Valtin: Fact Sheet: Psychologist Participation in Torture
Blogger Valtin, on Daily Kos, Never In Our Names, and his own Invictus, details the evidence that psychologists are involved in US torture. Here is the introduction:
Fact Sheet: Psychologist Participation in Torture
Psychologists organized into “Psychologists for an Ethical APA” plan to meet at the August convention of the American Psychological Association with education, protests, and political pressure. The protest will be at noon, August 18 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, and will feature a number of prominent speakers from the psychology community. The aim of the protest is to support the proposed moratorium within APA to stop psychologist participation in national security and military interrogations associated with torture and abuse.
Opposition to stopping such collaboration often centers around claims that there is no documented evidence of psychologist participation in torture or abusive methods. The following brief fact sheet addresses such claims. I will follow with a more comprehensive essay on the subject in the near future.
This fact sheet documents the activities of a number of military psychologists in planning and participation in actions that can only be called torture. Names are not usually available, due to redaction in classified records. In such cases, we can only say that a psychologist is specifically named as a party to a particular activity.
He goes on to discuss the following “cases”:
Case No. 1 – Major John Leso and the Interrogation of Mohammed al-Qahtani
Case No. 2 – Psychologist at the Secret Prison Interrogation of Marwan Jabour
Case No. 3 – Psychologist Participation in the Interrogation of a German Citizen Kidnapped by the CIA
Case No. 4 – Psychologist Present During Abusive Use of Military Dogs
Case No. 5 – Sharing of Confidential Psychologist Evaluations of Prisoners
Case No. 6 – Military Psychologists Transfer SERE-POW Training for Use in Abusive Interrogations
Case No. 7 – SERE Psychologist Pushes “Harsher Methods” in Interrogation
Learn about these cases by reading the entire Fact Sheet.
Add comment July 7th, 2007