Fuel for the Meme Game

Hey, look. I’ve been tagged by the brilliant counterinsurgency theorist-practitioners at Abu Muqawama with a meme! The name of the game is to find the book nearest you, open to page 123 and post the sixth, seventh and eighth sentences. For me, that would be Alfred W. McCoy’s A Question of Torture . Here goes:

Above all, [assistant attorney general Jay Bybee] had exposed CIA and military interrogators to possible criminal charges and certain international opprobrium. Washington’s original ratification of the UN antitorture convention, by exempting most forms of psychological torture, had already placed American interrogators, even when following the letter of U.S. law, at or beyond the bounds of international law. But now, by reaching his extraordinary definition of "severe pain," Bybee had, remarkably, breached many of the relevant military regulations — the Army field manual and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

I feel this is a milestone in the short lifespan of the Streak. (Look, he’s walking, like a big boy! Doris, get the camcorder!) Since the rules demand it, I hereby tag: Amanda at Blogstretch; Malcolm at Small Wars Journal; Noah at Contentions; Ilan at Democracy Arsenal; and RJ at The Spy Who Billed Me.