The U.S. army reportedly deployed a specialized "psychological operations" team to help convince American legislators to boost funding and troop numbers for the war in Afghanistan.
Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops, ordered the operation, Rolling Stone Magazine reported in a story published late on Wednesday. An officer in charge of the unit objected when he was ordered to pressure the visiting senators and was harshly reprimanded by superiors, according to the magazine.
"My job in psy-ops is to play with people's heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave," the officer, Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, told Rolling Stone. "I'm prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you're crossing a line," he added.
---"Report: Army targeted U.S. senators with psy-ops," msnbc.com (2.21.11)
You just can't make up stuff like this! I want to wax indignant about how unbelievable this is--but if you really think about it, it's not unbelievable at all. This is the military establishment we had already been given good reason to distrust over the last half century, the authors of a lot of unscrupulous, unjustifiable secret "research," testing on human subjects, questionable secret ops, and misleading reports on the progress of some of our military misadventures. They had often taken liberties beyond their charter, and then lied to us about it. This episode just confirms that that is still part of who they are, part of what they do.
We had come to think that the military of Petraeus, Mullin and Gates was credible, straight up, whether we supported their view on Iraq or Afghanistan, or not--or at least some of us had. But if this report is at all credible--and it reads like we have reason to expect that it is--the Pentagon and military trustworthiness and credibility are now back in the dumper, and now with one of the most troubling, unnerving indictments in their history hanging over them.
We had come to think that the military of Petraeus, Mullin and Gates was credible, straight up, whether we supported their view on Iraq or Afghanistan, or not--or at least some of us had. But if this report is at all credible--and it reads like we have reason to expect that it is--the Pentagon and military trustworthiness and credibility are now back in the dumper, and now with one of the most troubling, unnerving indictments in their history hanging over them.
Yes, you could argue or spin this as just the military making its case, just old-fashioned jaw-boning, making sure legislators--especially those most friendly to their case--understand it and how to present it in the most convincing terms. But that would be spin indeed. This appears clearly over the line into wilfull manipulation without any pretense of balance or respect for their role and the role of our government. The Lt. Colonel whose job it was to do carry out authorized psyops was so troubled by what he was asked to do that he was willing to deliver a fatal blow to his career to go public with it. You've got to sense that the actions ordered were well over the line.
To say they have squandered any trust or good will they may have established in the last decade doesn't even begin to approach the seriousness, the presumption, the threatening disregard of their role relative to the civilian government that is implied by all this--threatening to our government and to us. Questions have been raised in the past about Petraeus' apparent overwillingness to be aggressive in his advocacy of the war, and whether he had served the president well and fairly in that posture. Gates has also been accused of indulging or supporting that posturing, or at least not reining it in. Is this more evidence of that? It's more than a little frightened that a second rogue flag officer--Gen. Stanley McChrystal being the first--was so willing and felt so justified to go so far off the reservation. One is arguably an exception, two suggests a leadership climate that allows it to operate, perhaps even encourages it.
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