(updated below)

Ten days ago, twelve retired Generals and Admirals met with key members of the Obama transition team -- including Attorney General-designate Eric Holder and White-House-Counsel-to-be Greg Craig -- in order, as the Associated Press put it, to "press[] their case to overturn seven years of Bush administration policies on detention, interrogation and rendition in the war on terror."  One of those military officers was John Hutson, a retired Rear Admrial with the U.S. Navy and current Dean and President of the Franklin Pierce Law Center.  Admiral Hutson is my guest today on Salon Radio, and we discuss:

• what took place at that meeting, who said what, and what he perceived the positions and intentions of Holder and Craig to be with regard to these issues;
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• the level of resistance Obama is likely to encounter from the CIA and other factions within the Surveillance State if he attempts any genuine reform of our interrogation and detention policies;
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• the standard objections raised by those who oppose prohibitions on coercive interrogation techniques;
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• whether the Army Field Manual is the only, or even best, means of compelling the CIA to engage in lawful interrogations; and,
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• the various issues surrounding the need for investigations and prosecutions arising out of past war crimes.

Admiral Hutson offers a very compelling military case for why an absolute ban on torture and reform of our detention policies are so imperative.  The discussion was roughly 20 minutes and can be heard by clicking PLAY on the recorder below.  A transcript will be posted very shortly (within a few minutes).  

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A couple programming notes:  I'm traveling today and posting may be light to non-existent over the next day.

This Friday night, at 9:00 p.m. EST, I'll be a guest on Bill Moyers' Journal on PBS.  The show is repeated throughout the weekend, and local listings can be found here.  

UPDATE:  The transcript is now posted here.

Three related notes:  

(1) Joan McCarter has some observations arising out of a conference call several of us did last night with ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero, who called in from Guantanamo where he was witnessing the military commissions debacle taking place there this week.

(2) Oral argument in the case of Maher Arar -- the Canadian citizen abducted ("rendered") by the U.S. in October, 2002 and sent to Syria for a year to be tortured despite having no terrorist ties of any kind (I wrote about Arar's case here)  -- is taking place today in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and can be viewed live, here.  The Bush administration claimed, and federal courts have thus far accepted, that courts cannot hear Arar's lawsuit because the "state secrets" privilege bars judicial examination of what was done to him (the Canadian government, by stark and revealing contrast, has compensated Arar with several million dollars and formally apologized to him for its role in his abduction).

As Armando noted yesterday, the Arar travesty illustrates the human cost -- not just the abstract injustice -- spawned by those, such as John Brennan, who have advocated and defended "rendition."

(3) On Friday night's Moyers show referenced above, I'll be discussing the rule of law in the U.S., the fundamental defects of the American establishment media, and related topics.