It seems to me we’re never going to see that report until after the eight-year statute of limitations on torture expire for everything described in the report that clearly exceeded John Yoo’s expansive interpretation of what constitutes torture.

As part of a new investigative story, Truthout has published two documents written by the former psychologist for SERE, and later CIA contract interrogator for the Bush torture program, Bruce Jessen. Jessen’s notes describe an “exploitation” survival course that was “reverse-engineered” to provide a blueprint for the interrogation and detention policies of the Bush administration, which emphasized not just the ways to coercively interrogate an individual for intelligence purposes, but to “exploit” the detainee for a number of uses, including production of false confessions, recruitment of prisoners as U.S. spies, putting on show trials, and medical experimentation.

So, for those who have gotten confused by DOD’s pushback: they are still taking away Manning’s very dangerous boxers at night (though they allow him to wear such dangerous items during the day). And then, in a bid to pretend they’re not trying to drive Manning crazy, they basically make him sleep in an uncomfortable duffel bag-like garment.

The London Times is reporting (behind the greed wall) that General David Patreus’s days as leader of coalition forces in Afghanistan are numbered.

A National Research Council (NRC) 2008 report on a conference on Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies examined briefly what it characterized as a “contemporary problem,” the possibility of doing research on “war on terror” detainees, removed by the U.S. government from Geneva protections against experiments done on prisoners of war.

The DOD website features an article about a speech by Jeh Johnson, DOD General Counsel, that seems to say King would approved of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, in part because the world is a more complicated place these days.

Sorry, but theologically speaking, that’s crap. As King’s “A Time to Break Silence” speech lays out in detail, there’s no asterisk to King’s commitment to non-violence and his disdain for war.

For the DOD to suggest otherwise is offensive as hell.

The U.S. Department of Justice just announced that Assistant Attorney General David Kris just resigned, effective March 4. No reason for his departure was given, though Kris did mention his two year tenure; that might explain the March departure, two years after he was confirmed.

A new story at Truthout, which I co-authored with Jason Leopold, takes up the investigation of the story into the mass drugging of Guantanamo detainees with the controversial drug mefloquine, aka Lariam, which we originally reported earlier this month. In an interview with the former commander of the Guantanamo Naval Hospital, who signed off on the mefloquine use, Captain Albert Shimkus said “There were certain issues we were advised not to talk about.”

While everyone’s attention is on the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, there are far more nefarious sections that demand the public’s attention and action.

Today’s exciting release of the long-awaited Pentagon report for the Secretary of Defense on the effects of repealing Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell will say that allowing gay and lesbian military servicemembers to serve openly would have little lasting impact on the U.S. armed forces.