Courting 44: How a .. group of retired military leaders made their issue Obama's top priority

Courting 44: How a loosely organized group of retired military leaders made their issue Obama's top priority
They lobbied for clean-up of national security abuses long before the election.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune
Updated: 01/23/2009 07:38:16 PM MST

... It began with e-mails shared in confidence between former colleagues. It fermented in hallways outside military banquets. It took on form as former military leaders stepped out of retirement to write opinion pieces and give interviews critical of President George W. Bush on rendition, torture and human rights ...

"It's important to note that we didn't get into this project because we thought it was unfair that the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were not being given a choice between strawberry or pistachio ice cream," said David Irvine, a Republican attorney and retired Army brigadier general from Utah who spent two decades teaching soldiers how to interrogate war prisoners ...

A few months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Massimino, the Washington, D.C. , area director of the nonprofit Human Rights First, met Rear Admiral John Hutson, the Navy's former chief attorney, for a debate on National Public Radio ...

Hutson and Massimino were supposed to be on opposite sides -- but found their agreements far outnumbered their disagreements. As America went to war they stayed in contact. Four years later, when Hutson and other retired flag officers wanted to turn their common opinions into a common cause, they turned to Massimino for help ...

http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_11541213

Our military are supposed to defend our country, and we're supposed to be a democracy/republic, not an empire. At their best, military are about following rules and they have a strict code of honor. But our Constitution has a civilian at the head of government and as CIC for a reason...

General Taguba (like General Shinseki and President Obama, he is from Hawai'i) clearly felt the institution he'd spent his life in had been dishonored by the abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, but he also believed it could be restored.

I am so grateful that Rear Admiral John Hutson and other retired officers reached out to Barack Obama. And that he listened. We have the right man in the Oval Office at last.

Hekate

:patriot: