When the Pentagon announced in March that Major General Jay Hood would become the senior officer based in Pakistan, it reflected the military’s aim to put a crisis-tested veteran in a critical job at a pivotal time in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
But nearly two months later, the military has quietly canceled Hood’s assignment after the 33-year army officer was excoriated in the Pakistani news media for one of his previous jobs: commander of the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
During Hood’s command from 2004 to 2006, military authorities force-fed with tubes detainees who were engaging in hunger strikes at the prison, a step they described as necessary to prevent the prisoners from committing suicide to protest their indefinite confinement. Also during Hood’s tenure, reports that an American guard may have desecrated a Koran incited wide protests in the Islamic world.
The decision to withdraw Hood’s assignment has not been announced, but it appears to reflect the widening shadow that the military prison at Guantánamo is casting over U.S. foreign policy.
Might be interesting, someday, to try a foreign policy that included a reluctance to torture, invade and bully the rest of the world.
I can’t comment on US military field command policy, but elsewhere in the western World we avoid deploying personnel in areas where there are vendettas and prices on their heads. It offers an un-necessary complication, when those personnel cannot perform their duties as normal soldiers would. They also need an army of body guards.
There have been a few times in my lifespan when and where the United States was lauded and applauded by most of the world. Accepted as a force for freedom and democracy.
In fact, our response to 9/11 could have returned that mantle to our nation’s shoulders for the first time since the cruel foolishness of VietNam.
George W. Bush, PNAC and the idiots who kept him in office guaranteed that would not happen. And of course it has not.
This man belongs in a prison, if somehow allowed to continue breathing.
So now Al Qaeda and the Taliban are a critical mission in that area – imagine that. What the hell was the delay?
OH my, they were force fed with tubes. Why that’s just like waterboarding!
They should have given the Terri Schiavo treatment and had their tubes withdrawn. Why if you’r not going to respect the wishes of the conscious, then who will you listen to?
So essentially the General’s ass was saved from any possible harm he might encur for his past deeds. While the same leadership sends thousands of lesser ranked troops into harm’s way without the slightest concern for their future. It’s connections, all about connections. And when they get to choose their wars, then the wars themselves are mostly political. This one is turning out to be more and more like Vietnam.
#5, Glenn,
Good comment.
“The Supreme Court says foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts. The justices, in a 5-4 ruling Thursday, handed the Bush administration its third setback at the high court since 2004 over its treatment of prisoners who are being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba.”
Bush’s toilet-bowl legacy continues to swirl incessantly towards the waste treatment plant.