Army Psy Ops Units Targeted American Senators 391
Weezul writes "The US Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in 'psychological operations' to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war. An officer who tried to stop the operation was railroaded by military investigators. (see also the Hatch Act of 1939)."
This article is psy-ops (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Starship Troopers (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it is more like the character George Clooney played in The Men Who Stare at Goats [imdb.com].
Re:You mean lobbying? (Score:4, Interesting)
It might not be ethical, but how is this different than organizations that lobby congress?
Well, in terms of being unethical, it clearly isn't any different from organizations that lobby congress. I'm not sure how that makes it OK.
Your honor, I realize I killed that guy in cold blood, but people with more influence than I get off on technicalities all the time, so you should let me go too...
However, if it makes you feel better, I'm fine with banning lobbyists as well.
Civil Rule (Score:4, Interesting)
The civilian government is defined by three co-equal branches of government, which, many forget, incudes the judiciary who have all rights to govern as any other branch of government. They may not be directly elected, but so was the case of the executive branch when the Constitution was written.
The problem is that the Military has become too big for it's britches. They think they matter, they think that they can throw temper tantrums and not follow orders and directive from the civil rulers simply because they do not want to. They think that somehow their confort is more important than the comfort of the taxpayers that fund their livelihoods. Sure they have a tough and dangerous jobs, but they made a choice. Many of us had made equivalent choices. The military is voluntary, if one person is not willing to the job they are paid to do, then some one else will. Hell, we have people who are willing to earn the money they are paid but are prevented to do so due to bigotry.
We have to fund the people who protect us. The fact that we have a tax cut exactly when our solider were dying due to lack of equipment is something this country is never going to live down. Anyone who voted to send our troops into battle then voted to not fund them has an issue with basic human decency. OTOH, the military has to respect civilian rule even if they don't agree with it. They do not have the freedoms of a civilians to effect rules.
Re:Too late (Score:5, Interesting)
Except we had the First Bank of the United States and the Second Bank of the United States, which were essentially central banks and they didn't help.
And the Fed not only didn't help avert the Great Depression, they admitted to making it worse thru over contraction of the monetary supply.
Considering the number of recessions, the modern name for bank panic, after the creation of the Fed, what exactly is your argument? They certainly haven't either slowed down or flattened out the severity of any, including the current, the ones in the 1980s and all the ones past.
How is this news?? (Score:4, Interesting)
This PsyOps division engaged in heavy persuasion sounds like what everyone else does everyday. Lets see...
"compiling detailed profiles of the VIPs, including their voting records, their likes and dislikes, and their "hot-button issues."
Okay. To some degree this is what a lot of people do before a romantic date. You try to find out what the other person will like by checking their Facebook page, checking with mutual friends, and maybe floating a few vague questions to the date. People going to a job interview does their back research on the president of the company, the company history, and any industry issues so that they appear professional, competent, and knowledgeable. How can it be wrong for the army to do the same commonsense action?
"deeper analysis of pressure points we could use to leverage the delegation for more funds." "What do I have to plant inside their heads?"
So what? This is called management. Anyone that has ever been given a job performance warning or given one to an employee has had the same thing. The message is clear. You will do better. You will work harder, longer, and smile while doing it. You are lucky to have a job, and we can fire you. The police are training on how to give clear voice commands to keep order. Mothers constantly work with just this technique to train their children not to do what's fun like hurting the family pet, breaking furniture, and generally dangerous behavior (no, you WILL NOT jump backwards down the stairs. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!? Good. Now TELL ME what you WON'T DO.) Is the article seriously expect the army not to use the most basic management techniques?
"CIA to put together background dossiers on congressional opponents"
Yep, and employers routinely run background checks on all job candidates. Drunk driving, sorry, no job for you. Bad debt means you are irresponsible and untrustworthy.
"exploiting new technologies like blogging and Wikipedia"
Companies now monitor all social media sites. I know of one that has software key loggers on all company computers to get the blog passwords and monitor the content. Any negative posting about the company and the person is fired within three weeks for general performance issues (including the use of non-work related blogging on company computers). This is not illegal. Should it be illegal for the army to do the same?
"Holmes learned that he was the subject of an investigation, called an AR 15-6"
Yep, and hopefully Holmes will be thrown in prison. In business this is called either insider trading (in finance), or ethical misuse of corporate information (business). It is a felony and there have been a lot of people that have gone to jail for it (ex, Martha Stewart). In the military Bradley Manning (Wiki leaks) has been facing military court martial for basically the same thing. Apparently Holmes feels he special and that he is immune from investigation for exposing serious military intelligence.
"After being reprimanded, Holmes and his team were essentially ignored for the rest of their tours in Afghanistan"
Yes, that sounds about right. Who in their right minds pays attention to a general screw-up? In relationships that break up the people remain separated and generally ignore each other afterward. People that are fired are escorted carefully to the door and then forgotten (and replaced). If you switch from one bank to a different bank you don't keep going to the previous bank to make sure they are doing okay. This is only common sense. Holmes is indeed very special.
"there is no way to tell what, if any, influence it had on American policy."
Little to none, certainly not illegal or even questionable.
Re:Too late (Score:5, Interesting)
Thus far in my life, I have never gone to the bank and asked to make a withdrawal of money I had in account, and been denied. I think this is nearly unheard of. My great-grandmother told us some different stories (before and after 1913). My parents do not in their lifetime recall having been denied, nor did my grandmother who was born somewhere around 1928 (though during her early years it must certainly have been common, she would have been too young to recall it).
In my lifetime I recall 3 major economic downturns, each worse than the last, during which I personally experienced temporary devaluation of my investments, and generally slower growth than I might have expected based on prior data. In spite of this, all my investments are worth more than what I put in to them, even right now, though I do expect when dealing with "investments" that I may lose money. If I didn't want to lose money I wouldn't "invest", I'd put it in an insured bank account, or not trusting that, buy non-perishable commodities and try to hide them around the house.
So though I suspect your comment was snarky, I think we did put a stop to that. The question is have we let enough safeguards erode such that our overall economic stability might return us to my great-grandmothers time of bank panics and shortages.