Word: pentagonal
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...Sachs' article should be required reading for every Senator and Representative in this great country - before it's not great anymore. The one point that really blows my mind is that the U.S. in 2006 spent $3.2 billion on energy research - nuclear, wind, coal, solar and biofuels - while the Pentagon spends that much in about 40 hours. Howard Sandt, BIG STONE...
...doubt, partisan Democrats who equate bipartisan government with namby-pamby policymaking are horrified by the thought that Republicans might keep control of the Pentagon. But Gates has been neither ideological nor namby-pamby. He has demanded accountability. He fired the Secretary of the Army after the Walter Reed hospital scandal and the Secretary of the Air Force for lax stewardship of the nuclear arsenal. Early on, Gates encouraged the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq; he has been one of the few Bush officials open to negotiations with Iran. He has called for a larger budget for diplomacy - "which makes...
...variety of witnesses called before the committee tried to explain how the abusive interrogation system evolved, while minimizing their own responsibility. Richard Shiffren, a former deputy general counsel at the Pentagon dealing with intelligence, explained that the U.S. military lacked expertise in interrogation after 9/11, but was desperate to extract intelligence from prisoners captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan. Instead of consulting the FBI - an agency with long experience in conducting effective interrogations using lawful methods - the Pentagon opted to use the enemy tactics taught in the SERE program. Many of those have since been found to be illegal...
...Witness Alberto Mora, the Navy's former top lawyer, called the abusive interrogation program a "mistake of massive proportions." He had been one of very few senior Pentagon officials to protest at the time, and his objections led to the cancellation of some of the program's worst aspects. But both Beaver and Rear Admiral Jane G. Dalton, the former top legal advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave answers that were repeatedly challenged by Senators. When both asserted that the use of dogs and stripping prisoners naked had never been authorized at Guantanamo, their attention...
...final witness of the day was former Pentagon general counsel William Haynes. He admitted that he had never read the strongly worded objections to the harsh techniques filed by lawyers from all four branches of the military. Instead, Haynes said he approved many of those harsh methods based on a memo written by Beaver - a memo described by a number of experts as riddled with errors and flawed legal reasoning...