Better Human Intelligence is Needed!

Last Tuesday, I turned on the television to check the weather. Two CNN reporters were talking about a recent on-air interview with GWB. I then watched as correspondent, John King, asked President Bush to tell him what he considers his highest priority over the next four years.

"Human intelligence, the ability to get inside somebody's mind, the ability to read somebody's mail, the ability to listen to somebody's phone call -- that somebody being the enemy," Bush said.

The pause between the first part of the sentence and GWB's last five words was so long, King actually gulped while I gasped. Bush's little throw-away explanation of "somebody" was supposed to reassure King and people like me, I think, but I'm still unsettled and unsure about his meaning. (Link to info.)

My "human intelligence" wonders about three things: who does GWB consider "the enemy" today, who will be considered his enemy tomorrow, and what methods will he condone to pry open these minds?

I suspect that the "detainees" and "enemy combatants in Guantanamo and other more secret places are GWB's guinea pigs in his quest for knowing the mind of the enemy. Unfortunately for them and for anyone else that wanders into the cross-hairs of his "human intelligence" gathering sights, the torture tactics of interrogators are gaining ascendancy in the Bush administration's arsenal and more benign, monitoring programs, like the touted but failed FBI, Carnivore, sniffing program are being junked.

If you scan the newspapers and internet today, there are articles reporting that the Bush administration and its lawyers, abhor torture. They point to the scape goat Army reservist "ringleaders" as the "masterminds" behind the Abu Ghraib torture scandals. These are plain people. They may be sadistic and cruel but hardly the kind of people who would sit around and try to figure out the fastest and most bloodless way to "get inside the mind of the enemy." Bush and Rumsfeld hired corporate goons, CACI and Titan, to work up some strategies. By "privatizing" our armed forces, it's clear to me that the chain of command, accountability, SOP, morals and conscience of our military operations slip in and out of some very large cracks and become virtually impossible to track. When elected officials like Barbara Boxer ask our leaders if they knew or even now know about torturing people in US custody, they pass the buck back and forth as if this event is a sideshow shell game.

How can anyone support the cruelty of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo? Don't they know what our government is doing in our name. Or, do they figure, "Hey! The terrorists aren't attacking us anymore so whatever Bush is doing is working. I'll just ignore the problem and focus on the hundreds of drug and junk food ads on TV for a while." Meanwhile, people who want the world to know that they do not condone the torture of "detainees" - many of whom are completely innocent, can't even get a paid ad published in the NY Times! .