Word: pentagonal
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Both the APA and the Rand study call upon the Pentagon to do more to promote better mental health care among its troops. On Thursday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is expected to announce a policy shift to no longer require military personnel applying for security clearance to disclose psychiatric counseling. Currently applicants are asked whether they've undergone therapy within the last seven years. The most recent data showed less than 1% of some 800,000 people investigated in 2006 were denied solely due to their mental health profiles, according to the Associated Press. Still, the new change seeks...
...every question focuses on negative aspects of China's rise - whether it will undercut efforts to promote better governance in Africa, and whether China's thirst for oil will push out Western firms while boosting Chinese weapon sales to Africa. In part to shore up its position there, the Pentagon has launched a new Africa Command, its first unit designed to focus on the continent...
...military court will hear key pre-trial motions in the terrorism case against Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the onetime driver of Osama bin Laden. Among the defense witnesses will be Air Force Col. Morris Davis, who resigned in protest last fall as Gitmo's chief prosecutor. His allegation: that top Pentagon officials - who are legally required to remain neutral - have tried to exert political influence on the conduct and outcomes of a whole series of high-profile trials scheduled for later this year...
...lawyers say they will challenge the basic fairness of the proceedings. Indeed, this week, Hamdan's lawyers will allege "unlawful command influence" over their client's prospective trial. Col. Davis, Guantanamo's former chief prosecutor, is expected to testify that Gordon Englund, the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Pentagon's second-highest civilian, told him last year, "We need to think about charging some high-value detainees because there could be strategic value before the [November] election." Davis is also expected to repeat, as he has in court filings, that the Defense department's former top lawyer, general counsel...
...those upcoming trials, the defense may try to use Davis's statements to show that the Pentagon crossed a variety of legal red lines. In Mohammed's case, however, that will include the issue of torture. The CIA held him in a secret prison for years, and has admitted that his interrogation included techniques such as simulated drowning, infamously known as waterboarding. Most experts say that, as a form of mock execution, there is no doubt that waterboarding constitutes torture. (The technique is banned by the U.S. military.) If defense lawyers can show that confessions obtained from Mohammed or others...