The National Security Network, an organization “founded in June 2006 to revitalize America’s national security policy, bringing cohesion and strategic focus to the progressive national security community,” is having a series of town hall meetings, including one in Norfolk on Thursday, August 14, at 7pm at Nauticus. Speakers will be General James Cullen and Sergeant Erik Saar and the topic will be “Security and Humanity: Keeping America Safe and Safeguarding American Values.”
If you have time, this might be an interesting way to spend a couple of hours with some smart folks who have a progressive outlook on national security. At a minimum, check out their policy page. Some really interesting stuff in there.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Citizens should go there and insist on talking about our LIBERTY.
The government is intent on frightening the population into surrendering all of our civil liberties by using the contrived “war on terrorism.”
Make the topic LIBERTY, not “security.”
Those who are willing to give up liberty for security shall have neither.
You should check into this organization, Mr. Ballance. You might very much like what they have to say.
Vivian et. al.,
I went to the presentation and can provide a short summary:
Gen. James Cullen, who retired from the JAG corps in the U.S. Army, talked first. He taught that the standards of conduct for the Army treatment of prisoners of war was originally established by Gen. George Washington after several incidents in which British forces tortured or killed colonial soldiers. His orders were to treat prisoners respectfully, feed and house them honorably, and not torture them. In 1863 The Lieber (sp) Code was prepared at the request of President Abraham Lincoln and was used as the basis for treaties on the handling of prisoners of war. A general in the Phillipines was court marshaled in the Phillipines for violating rules of conduct based on the Lieber Code.
Gen. Cullen said there had been field manuals on the handling of interrogations. One wsa FM 34-52, but these were overruled by VP Cheney, Sec. Rumsfeld, John Yu (Office of Legal Council), and others. At that time David Addington pointed out that the War Crimes Act could be applied to the architects of the new interrogation policies that they were developing, but this did not stop them from authorizing the use of treatment that had beforehand been considered torture. He said that initially the incidents at Abu Grieb were passed off as a random incident, but subsequent patterns of conduct made it clear that the abuses and torture were not coincidental.
The book/movie The Battle of Algiers was recommended.
Sgt. Eric Saar had joined the Army to help defend the country long before 9/11 and was trained to be fluent in Arabic (probably in Monterey, CA) and in intelligence. However, the Army put him into unrelated tasks such as setting up chairs for meetings, which was what he was doing on 9/11. He then volunteered to help and was sent to New York City shortly after 9/11 to work with the FBI and others at the scene. His talk briefly described the things work he was doing and the tactics that were being used over the course of his time up to his leaving the Army. He said that he felt that a fair number of the prisoners in Gitmo had not done anything wrong but had been sent there because Afghans of the Northern Alliance were paid $5k per “terrorist,” so they also turned in people that were their own enemies or people they did not like.
It was pointed out that before the news of the torture tactics there was good cooperation by groups in other Arabic-speaking countries and by civilians in Iraq, but this stopped after the news of Abu Grieb and the other Gitmo stories began circulating. He said a captain showed up at Gitmo to give a PowerPoint presentation to explain why the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the prisoners at Gitmo and that someone would show up to explain what the new rules really were, but nobody ever provided any training or documentation about what was allowed and how they were supposed to do their job. A Cpt. Ian Feshbeck sent a letter to people at the top levels of the DoD and then to elected officials including John McCain asking what the rules were, but they never got a response.
The conjecture, which was apparently shared among others at Gitmo, was that the people at the top did not have any rules and did not want to provide any rules so that if there were war crimes trials or Congressional investigations that the people in the field would get the blame, would be left hanging in the wind. Sgt. Saar said he discussed things that he thought were a problem with his superior officer but nothing happened. He did not think he would be successful trying to go further up the chain of command, so he left when his enlistment was up.
One comment that was made was that there exists and attitude that you can’t be loyal to American if you do not go along. These bullying and intimidation tactics are being used to keep people in their place and to scare the American people now.