…SERE training has nothing to do with effective interrogation, according to military experts. Trained interrogators don’t work in the program. Skilled, experienced interrogators, in fact, say that only a fool would think that the training could somehow be reverse-engineered into effective interrogation techniques.
But that’s exactly what the Bush government sought to do. As the plan rolled forward, military and law enforcement officials consistently sent up red flags that the SERE-based interrogation program wasn’t just wrongheaded, it was probably illegal.
On Tuesday, the Senate Armed Services Committee conducted a hearing on the evolution of abusive interrogations under the Bush administration. Through a series of memos and documents released by the committee, some old and some new, the following timeline has now been established.” (Salon)
“U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said numbers were rising again after several years of decline in which refugees returned to countries including Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Angola.” (Associated Press)
“New York City is now 10 days away from the unveiling of “Waterfalls,” the much anticipated (and hyped) $15 million public art project by the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson. The project, the biggest public art installation since “The Gates,” the Christo and Jeanne-Claude work in Central Park in 2005, is already being hyped, with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg saying the work could evoke the awe that led 16th-century European explorers to compare the New York shoreline to the Garden of Eden. (Seriously.)” (New York Times)
![//graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/06/16/nyregion/waterfalls-533.jpg' cannot be displayed]](http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/06/16/nyregion/waterfalls-533.jpg "21st Century Falling Water")
