By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 1, 2004; Page A01
A confidential report to Army generals in Iraq in December 2003 warned that members of an elite military and CIA task force were abusing detainees…
The report, which was … recently obtained by The Washington Post, concluded that some U.S. arrest and detention practices at the time could "technically" be illegal. It also said coalition fighters could be feeding the Iraqi insurgency by "making gratuitous enemies" as they conducted sweeps netting hundreds of detainees who probably did not belong in prison and holding them for months at a time.
[The report] added that some detainees were arrested because targets were not at home when homes were raided. A family member was instead captured and then released when the target turned himself in -- a practice that, Herrington wrote, "has a 'hostage' feel to it."
In other news, a man in South Central Los Angeles made what police described as an "attempt to access funds via bona fides whose provenance had not been established beyond a reasonable doubt" was turned away by a teller at a local bank, after which the man held six people at gunpoint for several hours in what the police described as a situation with a 'hostage feel' to it. The situation was resolved with a "light misting" of what was described as "not so much tear gas as a whimsical blend of lacrimators and condiment-themed sprays." Asked if the condiment in question was pepper, the response was "technically, yes."
Meanwhile, the Iraqi report's author was honored today by the American Society of Euphemism, Circumlocution, and Less-Than-Perfectly-Direct Verbiage (ASECLTPDV). "This report is a masterpiece of delicate phrasing," said Phonebank Tolliver, head of ASECLTPDV. "We especially like the use of 'technically illegal,' since that's such a useful phrase in everyday life." Asked for an example, he said "Well, as I told my wife last month, that weekend I spent in Reno with my secretary may have been 'technically adultery,' but I think we have to look beyond technicalities. Now I'm in a divorce-like situation."
White House officials were said to "less than overjoyed" at the release of the report, with one calling the incident "an example of some people's difficulty in weighing the relative merits of differing choices in a national-security environment." The official suggested that the leaker, if found, might need to be undergo "cognitive therapy" to help him remember said rules, the therapy including an extended stay in a "prison-like" environment" and treatment that has a "beating the crap out of him" feel to it.
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Remember, Kids, the part in bold is actual 100% news-flavored media product.
The rest is the fakey part.
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