It is not a lost art, it just needs to be practiced at the top as well as the bottom.

“…. For this issue, one Nuremberg case forms the key precedent: United States v.
Altstoetter, also called the Reich Justice Ministry case. That case stands for some
simple propositions. One of them is that lawyers who dispense bad advice about law
of armed conflict, and whose advice predictably leads to the death or mistreatment of
prisoners, are war criminals, chargeable with potentially capital offenses. Another is
that cute lawyerly evasions and gimmicks, so commonly indulged in other areas of
the law, will not be tolerated on fundamental questions of law of armed conflict
relating to the protection of civilians and detainees. In other words, lawyers are not
permitted to get it wrong….

Page 3
The Justice Department lawyers were indicted and charged with crimes against
humanity and war crimes arising out of the issuance and implementation of the Nacht
und Nebelerlass. The United States charged that as lawyers, “not farmers or factory
workers,” they must have recognized that their technical justifications for avoiding
the application of the Hague and Geneva Conventions were unavailing, because these
conventions were “recognized by all civilized nations, and were regarded as being
declaratory of the laws and customs of war.” That is to say, they were customary…..”

But the article itself reads like an alibi for JPRA, the agency that ran SERE. If JPRA was so much against the abusive use of SERE techniques, why were the agency pushing them, time and again, with DoD and CIA?

The SASC report has many other quotes, perhaps from different officials (since the WashPo article quotes an unsigned document), exalting its expertise in interrogations, and offering the assistance of their own people. By the time of the “warning” cited in the WashPo article (July 2002), JPRA had already been collaborating with DoD, DIA, and CIA for roughly six months. Even two months after this “warning” memo, JPRA is lining up to provide “expertise” for the torture at Guantanamo (see email from September 2002 below).

IMHO, someone wants to clean up JPRA’s image, when in fact they are central actors in the torture scandal. I will soon write about this in more detail, so stay tuned.

The theme of JPRA promoting SERE expertise surfaces in Iraq a little less than two years after the first DoD approach. A September 9, 2003 email from Col. Randy Moulton, Commander of JPRA to Col. Mike Okita and a redacted addressee (could this be Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who, coming from his command in Guantanamo, on September 9 was just concluding his evaluation of interrogation procedures in Iraq) again makes the same point about JPRA “expertise”.

There is a strong synergy between the fundamentals of both missions (resistance training and interrogation). Both rely heavily on environmental conditions, captivity psychology, and situation dominance and control. While I think this probably lies within DHS responsibility lines, recent history (to include discussions with DHS, USSOCOM, CIA) shows that no DoD entity has a firm grasp on any comprehensive approach to strategic debriefing/interrogation. Our subject matter experts (and certain Service SERE psychologist) have the most knowledge and depth within DoD on the captivity environment and exploitation.

See fuller account of above here.

Let’s think about this for a bit. Does the CIA really want to promote that concern to the public? Because essentially what is being communicated is that all the bells and whistles of intel result in nothing and thuggery reaps results.

Really! Do CIA and Cheney want to communicate such a message with the economy the way it is? Because, we can trim back their budget and save homeowners and create healthcare.

Thank you. I am sorry you stopped when you did.

I have been trying to wrap my mind around how these people think and you just stepped my understanding forward by a long way.

I believe that people always try to “do the right thing”, not in the traditional use of that term, but by their own provincial world as they see it, for their own benefit. The key to understanding and predicting their actions is understanding the world that they believe they live in.

In a simple example; it sure helped me survive my first wife, the hard core alcoholic.

I’ve heard him express regret that the memo was misused.

Wha? What different use of his memo could Bybee possibly have had in mind?