We're passing on this fascinating item from Foreign Policy magazine's website and dug up by our colleague Jeff Stein. It's too good not to.

Back in 2007, former CIA operative John Kiriakou appeared in an exclusive ABC News interview, claiming that the technique of waterboarding--which many observers consider a form of torture--worked, and worked quickly, in the case of senior al Qaida official Abu Zubaydah. (Zubaydah was the first top AQ man to come into US custody). As the Foreign Policy item recounts, Kiriakou claimed at the time that Zubaydah cracked after a single waterboarding session and answered every question he was asked.

The claims of Kiriakou and others who called waterboarding effective were challenged by former FBI agent Ali Soufan, who led the initial questioning of Zubaydah and said that actionable intelligence was elicited from the detainee with traditional interrogation technqiues. Others questioned Kiriakou's level of knowledge, since he was not at the secret site in Thailand where Zubaydah was held.

We now know, from released Bush administration memos, that Zubaydah was actually waterboarded 83 times in a single month.

Kiriakou--and it should be noted that he is *not* a fan of waterboarding--has now revised his story.

In a new book, Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror, he writes, according to Stein's piece: "What I told (ABC News') Brian Ross in late 2007 was wrong on a couple counts."

"I suggested that Abu Zubaydah had lasted only thirty or thirty-five seconds during his waterboarding before he begged his interrogators to stop; after that, I said he opened up and gave the agency actionable intelligence. .. I wasn't there when the interrogation took place; instead, I relied on what I'd heard and read inside the agency at the time."

There has been a lot of controversy this week about news that some high powered rifle sights used by U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq have small Biblical references engraved on the side. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation and ABC broke the news Monday, reporting the one inscription read, "2COR4:6," apparent referring to 2 Corinthians 4:6 of the New Testament: "For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ."

Today, U.S. CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus condemned the placing of the practice, saying it contributed to the perception problem the military is already fighting in the region. It was the strongest statement yet to come from a military commander about the issue.

“This is a serious concern to me and to the other commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan because it indeed conveys a perception that is absolutely contrary to what we have sought to do,” Petraeus said at a CSIS presentation, adding: “I can assure you that there is much greater sensitivity among our troops about this sort of thing than apparently there is from the contractor.”

Various other leaders have expressed the dismay; there was even talk that the military would sever ties with the company.  In response, Trijicon of Wixom, Michigan said it would hand out kits to remove the inscriptions from the guns.  And it promised to stop placing the inscriptions on guns it manufactures for the U.S. military.

But given the company’s history, how could the military possibly claim it was surprised by the news? The military strictly prohibits proselytizing. Yet, according to some reports, company president Glyn Bandon started the practice when he founded the company some 30 years ago. And a quick visit to the company website shows they proudly boast their Christian roots. Under a bullet labeled “Morality,” the website reads: “We believe that America is great when its people are good. This goodness has been based on biblical standards throughout our history and we will strive to follow those morals.“

The incident, once again, raises questions about how the military doles out and filters contract distribution.  At the minimum, shouldn't someone have asked the company about its practice of putting biblical references on its products before awarding the company a $660 million contract, especially given the destination of these weapons? The military practices continue to haunt troops on the field, most notably when Blackwater shot unarmed Iraqis in September 2007. After years of time in the battlefield, I have come to believe that the behavior of contractors has hurt the military’s effort, and in fact, turned some local residents against the military because of they mistake one for the other.

Petraeus’ comments were a noble effort to mitigate the damage but the military can do more; it can start by better managing how it hands out contracts.

It's no secret that paying bribes is a part of everyday life in Afghanistan. A report released today by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime that attempts to quantify the problem shows just how daunting it will be to reduce the corruption that permeates the government and helps power recruiting for the Taliban-led insurgency.

The report concludes that Afghans in 2009 paid bribes totally about $2.5 billion, or the equivalent of about 23 percent of GNP. That means that bribery and opium production, which accounted for an estimated $2.8 billion last year, represent the country's largest income generators.

"It is almost impossible to obtain a public service in Afghanistan without greasing a palm," writes Antonio Maria Costa, the UNODC executive director, in the report. "During the past 12 months, one Afghan out of two, in both rural and urban communities, had to pay at least one kickback to a public official."

The report was based on a survey of 7,600 people in 12 provincial capitals and more than 1,600 villages across the war-torn country. It provides sobering reading for U.S. and allied officials who are pressing Afghan President Hamid Karzai to clean up corruption as part of the strategy to contain the Taliban-led insurgency.

The average bribe amounts to $158, the incidence of bribery is somewhat higher in rural areas than urban areas - 56 percent versus 46 percent, and it is more prevalent in the country's north and the east, according to the UNODC report.

"A kickback is so commonly sought (and paid) to speed up administrative procedures that more than a third of the population (38 percent) think that this is the norm," it found.

In the midst of the looting, violence and chaos that is engulfing Haiti, the U.S. military is trying to strike a delicate balance – reaching out and providing aid,  while signaling to the Haitians it has no interest in occupying their country.

It is a challenging task. While the United States has been Haiti’s largest foreign aid contributor for decades, it's also been its most frequent occupier.   It's a role the U.S. would like not to repeat.

The U.S. military has said that it wants the Haitian people to see troops passing out food, water and other needed items. En route to India today, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates addressed concerns that the U.S. presence could look like an occupation, telling reporters that while U.S. forces would provide some security, “I haven't heard of us playing a policing role at any point."  U.N. forces would take the lead he said, adding: "We are there in support of them and the government of Haiti."
 
But that might be difficult. The Haitian government is weak, its infrastructure frail and its security situation so precarious that it demands a show of force.  On Monday, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon asked the Security Council immediately to  send 3,500 security officers to address the security problem.
 
So how does the  U.S. military support a weak government without looking like occupiers? That is, to properly support this government, the U.S. may have to step in and be the government because Haitian officials simply cannot do the job. And what are the consequences of looking like an occupation force?

The news from Afghanistan is mostly grim these days -- including the deaths reported Monday of six members of the NATO-led force there, including three Americans.

But a new poll of the Afghan public seems to offer some small rays of hope for the country's future. The poll, by ABC News, the BBC and ARD German TV finds that Afghans overwhelmingly believe their country is headed in the right direction, blame the Taliban insurgency for violence, and give higher ratings than they did before to President Hamid Karzai; his government; the Afghan national army; and even the U.S. presence in the country. (Performance ratings of the U.S. are still low, with less than 40 percent positive).

Full poll results can be found in this PDF file. According to ABC, the poll was conducted through in-person interviews with 1,534 Afghan adults from Dec. 11-23.

Some results in brief:

* 70 percent of Afghans say the country is headed in the right direction, the most since 2005.

* Corruption remains a huge problem (surprise, surprise), with 95 percent of Afghans, i.e, almost the entire country seeing it as a problem, and 76 percent saying it's a big problem. Both are new highs.

* Support for the Taliban is low, around 10 percent for most of the country, and rising only to 27 percent in the movement's "home turf," in the southwest.

* Afghans are about evenly divided over who they blame primarily for civilian casualties caused by NATO airstrikes -- NATO for its targeting, or the insurgents for deliberately mixing in with civilian populations.