Continued :
From Sanchez' testimony of May 19, 2004:
U.S. SENATOR JACK REED (D-RI): "General Sanchez, today's USA Today, sir, reported that you ordered or approved the use of sleep deprivation,intimidation by guard dogs, excessive noise and inducing fear as an interrogation method for a prisoner in Abu Ghraib prison. Is that correct?"
SANCHEZ: "Sir, that may be correct that it's in a news article, but I never approved any of those measures to be used within CJTF-7 (Abu Grhaib) at any time in the last year."
However, according to the newly released memo, signed and authorized by Sanchez, he did approve the use of guard dogs, excessive noise, and inducing fear as an interrogation method, as well as acts that certainly fit the physical -- if not legal -- description of sleep deprivation.
The memo specifically details his approval for the following techniques, as expressed verbatim from the document :
Presence of Military Working Dog: Exploits Arab fear of dogs ...Sleep Management: Detainee provided minimum of 4 hours sleep per 24 hour period, not to exceed 72 continuous hours. Yelling, Loud Music, and Light Control: Used to create fear... (Sanchez'
wording, not mine.)
Specifically, in at least two instances, he signed off on practices that by his own admission were intended to create and exploit fear. He approved,
frankly, the exact practices he said under oath that he did not approve.
Here is the early breaking MSM story on the ACLU release :
The Globe and Mail
The full memo is available here:
http://www.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/032505/index.html
Sanchez' sworn testimony before the Congressional committee is available here:
http://www.torturers.net/info/iraq/con-army.html
___________________________________
Shaping the new citizen journalism : as a commodity, or as populism - it's your choice
The fact that bloggers or, because they are starting to merit this title, citizen journalists have made this rather obvious connection - that somehow evaded the still immense resources of the mainstream media - points in only one direction.
It is time for the people to make their own media. Not in an anarchic fashion that undercuts their authority - but in a collaborative, professional, disciplined manner which will earn their construction of that fact-based narrative that we call news the attention and respect which we on DailyKos know those efforts - ever more with each passing day - merit.
Citizen journalism will come to you, and it will come very soon. What you on this forum have in your power to decide - for the tremendous power that lies in your pooled talents and resources, of the more than 50,000 members here - is what citizen journalism will be :
Will citizen journalism in America and this hemisphere - around the World even - be defined, branded, and marketed as a product, as a thing to be bought and sold. That future could and very well might - look like this :
The Backfence team has extensive experience in creating and managing news, information and community Web sites. We've worked for big media companies and been key players in venture-backed startups...
Not the worst fate, but a sadly shrivelled, dessicated vision next to the abundance that could be if citizen journalism becomes something other than a product to be designed and marketed as if it were a sugared breakfast cereal or a newer, better microwave oven or any other consumer product that - in the end - merely serves to make a few individuals very wealthy.
Will you help citizen journalism to be something more than that ? As a collaborative venture designed and built by the people themselves to serve the common good ?
As I said, citizen journalism is rushing towards you - some of the models are more noble, others less so or, at least, profit driven. There is one such effort sprung from this very forum which is not for profit. I think you know the name already, and you may have some sense already of where we are going.
There is so much to do : Many hands make light work.
Think of ePluribus Media as a communal barn raising : make it your barn.
People used to do things like that once upon a time not too long ago even. I live in a house that was once a barn and so I know that many hands, from the surrounding close knit farming community, built my house one summer day. I can guarantee to you that day was not a sad one :
This is what we are - we find our greatest joy in shared enterprise which is even better expressed - and much, much, more joyous - as group play. Play can be hard, yes, and challenging. It can take effort. That is not a bad thing, for we are diminished without challenge.
If there is one thing, one change you can make here and in your own life to change your own being and the course of a nation, the World even, it is this : support this effort, and all efforts which build not commodities, things to be bought and sold, but which rebuild the commons - in the construction of news, and in the restoration of that space - which includes all and excludes none - in that messy, imperfect process we call politics and even Democracy :
Join the barn raisings, the building of grange halls and town halls, the restoration of the commons - in joyous, sweaty collective labor and enterprise that builds for the common good. You'll never regret that effort, I can assure you.
Thanks for reading this. If it seems a sermon, well that runs in the family. But in my family, God, the divine, and the ethic of the common good were ever interwined, wound so tightly together that I can hardly discern the strands let alone pluck those things from my being ; nor can you leave the joy and satisfaction you can feel in group effort behind. You can forget it, yes. But that forgetting would be a sad tehing and as unecessary as walking out your door one day into the bright sunshine of the first day of Spring.
Oh, I digress. It is beautiful out today.
Best, T
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