Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

Skulls. Black cats. A naked woman riding a killer whale. Grim reapers. Snakes. Swords. Occult symbols. A wizard with a staff that shoots lightning bolts. Moons. Stars. A dragon holding the Earth in its claws.

No, this is not the fantasy world of a 12-year-old boy.

It is, according to a new book, part of the hidden reality behind the Pentagon’s classified, or "black," budget that delivers billions of dollars to stealthy armies of high-tech warriors. The book offers a glimpse of this dark world through a revealing lens — patches — the kind worn on military uniforms.

"It’s a fresh approach to secret government," Steven Aftergood, a security expert at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, said in an interview. "It shows that these secret programs have their own culture, vocabulary and even sense of humor."

One patch shows a space alien with huge eyes holding a stealth bomber near its mouth. "To Serve Man" reads the text above, a reference to a classic "Twilight Zone" episode in which man is the entree, not the customer. "Gustatus Similis Pullus" reads the caption below, dog Latin for "Tastes Like Chicken."

Military officials and experts said the patches are real if often unofficial efforts at building team spirit.

-- WILLIAM J. BROAD

The Pentagon made public a now-defunct legal memo that approved the use of harsh interrogation techniques against terror suspects, saying that President Bush's wartime authority trumps any international ban on torture.

The Justice Department memo, dated March 14, 2003, outlines legal justification for military interrogators to use harsh tactics against al-Qaida and Taliban detainees overseas — so long as they did not specifically intend to torture their captives.

Even so, the memo noted, the president's wartime power as commander in chief would not be limited by the U.N. treaties against torture.

-- LARA JAKES JORDAN

The media has continously treated McCain as a foreign policy 'expert' in the face of his utter cluelessness about the situation on the ground in Iraq. Perhaps that will change as it becomes impossible to ignore that all those fact-finding trips he's taken don't appear to have given him a grasp on the reality the ground.

He clearly doesn't have a clue on Sadr's role and can't even keep his rhetoric consistent. He was surprised by the Basra offensive and wrongly painted it as a defeat for Sadr when in fact even the most casual observers can see that Maliki was the one looking like a whipped dog coming out of that power play designed to influence the dynamics of the upcoming regional elections. You would think a man who intends to take charge of the occupation and wants to continue it for 100 years would be better informed. Maybe McCain thinks it will take a hundred years to figure out what's really going on there.

-- LIBBY

The Pentagon is expected to shut a controversial intelligence office that has drawn fire from lawmakers and civil liberties groups who charge that it was part of an effort by the Defense Department to expand into domestic spying.

. . . The intelligence unit, called the Counterintelligence Field Activity office, was created by Mr. Rumsfeld after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as part of an effort to counter the operations of foreign intelligence services and terror groups inside the United States and abroad.

Yet the office, whose size and budget is classified, came under fierce criticism in 2005 after it was disclosed that it was managing a database that included information about antiwar protests planned at churches, schools and Quaker meeting halls.

The Pentagon's senior intelligence official, James R. Clapper, has recommended to Mr. Gates that the counterintelligence field office be dismantled and that some of its operations be placed under the authority of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the officials said.

-- MARK MAZZETTI

It doesn't take much to gain a reputation in Washington as a straight-shooter, and it takes a lot to lose it.

Adm. Mike McConnell came in as the Director of National Intelligence with a rep for being professional and non-partisan, a calling card the Bush Administration has put to its own uses. He has been the point man in what Marty Lederman has correctly identified as the Administration's standard operating procedure when caught in conduct of dubious legality.

-- DAVID KURTZ

So now we're inviting Ukraine and Georgia into NATO.

Great. Uh… then what?

NATO used to mean something. It used to do something. Namely: defend Western Europe from a Soviet attack. If Russian tanks ever came streaming across the North German Plain, we had a plan in place to deal with it. We had REFORGER sites up and down Germany, where pre-positioned equipment waited for our flown-in soldiers to “mate up” and drive (hopefully) eastward into battle. We had transport ships and naval escorts nearly at the ready to bring in more troops and fresh supplies. We kept nuclear subs in place to slow the Soviet Red Banner Northern Fleet, surging out of bases on the Kola peninsula. We even, Whomever help us, had nukes trained on the enemy. Most importantly, we trained — and trained hard — with our West German and British allies on the actual terrain we’d be forced to defend.

In other words, NATO had a plan.

If we’ve learned one thing from the disastrous first three years in Iraq, it's that you’ve got to have a plan. It doesn't need to be perfect, but it does need to be in place. I've even offered my own modest plan for the Long War against Islamic terrorism.

And if Russia were to attack Ukraine, what would we do? Lithuania? How about even Poland, or eastern Germany? Do we have a plan? Have we trained with the Poles? Do we have units tasked to the defense of the roads leading into Warsaw?

Well, no.

-- STEPHEN GREEN

Senior officers from the nation's four military branches testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday, where the U.S. Army and Marine Corps—the two branches that have borne the brunt of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan—warned that the current operational tempo is straining their capabilities to the breaking point.

The stronger warning came from General Richard A. Cody, the Army's vice chief of staff, who characterized the Army's current stress level as "a significant risk" to the future of the all-volunteer military.

-- BRUCE FALCONER