Attack Slogans Are the Most Fun

MRE as Punishment for Detainees

In the controversy over Pentagon interrogation techniques, little notice has been given to one approved in Category II, the harsher techniques for use in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Some of the methods approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in December 2002 -- using dogs, making prisoners stand for four hours, "hooding during transportation & interrogation" and "removal of clothing" -- apparently were not used initially.

But others, such as "forced grooming" (shaving) and light deprivation, were approved and used, as was perhaps the harshest punishment of all: "switching detainee from hot meal to MRE" -- the Meals Ready to Eat rations that all the troops have out in the field.

This was a form of punishment for uncooperative detainees? Certainly a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Back in Good Graces

Meghan O'Sullivan, an aide to the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) and more recently part of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, is in line to be senior director for Iraq at the National Security Council.

She had fallen out of favor with neo-cons awhile back because of her enthusiasm for sanctions as opposed to war against Iraq and because she had worked for insufficiently hard-line State Department policy chief Richard Haass. She's back in good graces now and, we hear, is a rising star.

Award for Enterprising Diplomacy

The Loop Award for Enterprising Diplomacy for last week goes to Fathulla Jameel, foreign minister of the Maldives, a collection of 1,000 tiny coral islands. He heard Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was refueling there en route from Khartoum, Sudan, to Jakarta, Indonesia, so he requested a bilateral meeting at 4:30 a.m.

Powell had to oblige, and Jameel (who had to take a boat to the airport, which is on its own island), got an hour with Powell.

What can the Maldives do to help the war on terrorism? a local reporter asked during a photo session. Powell said even small countries are a help, and he credited Jameel for being in the "forefront of leading the effort" against terrorism. Yup, right there up front.