The Men Who Stare at Goats

The Men Who Stare at Goats

by Jon Ransom

Pan Macmillan, $120

At Fort Bragg in North Carolina, home to 45,000 US Army personnel and their families, is a dilapidated group of buildings housing Goat Lab, a unit of military intelligence, where soldiers try to read minds, see the future and stare 100 de-bleated goats to death. 'It was apparently determined within Special Forces that it was just about impossible to form an emotional bond with a goat,' writes British journalist Jon Ronson. He talks to military types about Goat Lab, including its former commanding general, who believes it's possible to walk through walls. With the war against terrorism, the goats are being stared at again, and Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay are just the latest manifestations of America's quite open penchant for psychological warfare that dates to 1953. The public laughs when it learns the songs of Barney the Purple Dinosaur and Sesame Street, played on a loop, are used to soften up prisoners. But what of the Briton released from Guantanamo, who says he can understand most of the torture, except the Kris Kristofferson CDs?