Summarize this article:

The CIA’s armed drones and paramilitary forces have killed dozens of al-Qaeda leaders and thousands of its foot soldiers. But there is another mysterious organization that has killed even more of America’s enemies in the decade since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

 CIA operatives have imprisoned and interrogated nearly 100 suspected terrorists in their former secret prisons around the world, but troops from this other secret organization have imprisoned and interrogated 10 times as many, holding them in jails that it alone controls in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 Since 9/11, this secretive group of men (and a few women) has grown tenfold while sustaining a level of obscurity that not even the CIA has managed. “We’re the dark matter. We’re the force that orders the universe but can’t be seen,” a strapping Navy SEAL, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said in describing his unit.

 The SEALs are just part of the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command, known by the acronym JSOC, which has grown from a rarely used hostage rescue team into America’s secret army. When members of this elite force killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May, JSOC leaders celebrated not just the success of the mission but also how few people knew their command, based in Fayetteville, N.C., even existed.

 This article, adapted from a chapter of the newly released “Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State,” by Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, chronicles JSOC’s spectacular rise, much of which has not been publicly disclosed before. Two presidents and three secretaries of defense routinely have asked JSOC to mount intelligence-gathering missions and lethal raids, mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in countries with which the United States was not at war, including Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, the Philippines, Nigeria and Syria.

 “The CIA doesn’t have the size or the authority to do some of the things we can do,” said one JSOC operator.

 The president has given JSOC the rare authority to select individuals for its kill list — and then to kill, rather than capture, them. Critics charge that this individual man-hunting mission amounts to assassination, a practice prohibited by U.S. law. JSOC’s list is not usually coordinated with the CIA, which maintains a similar but shorter roster of names.

 Created in 1980 but reinvented in recent years, JSOC has grown from 1,800 troops prior to 9/11 to as many as 25,000, a number that fluctuates according to its mission. It has its own intelligence division, its own drones and reconnaissance planes, even its own dedicated satellites. It also has its own cyberwarriors, who, on Sept. 11, 2008, shut down every jihadist Web site they knew.

 Obscurity has been one of the unit’s hallmarks. When JSOC officers are working in civilian government agencies or U.S. embassies abroad, which they do often, they dispense with uniforms, unlike their other military comrades. In combat, they wear no name or rank identifiers. They have hidden behind various nicknames: the Secret Army of Northern Virginia, Task Force Green, Task Force 11, Task Force 121. JSOC leaders almost never speak in public. They have no unclassified Web site.

 Despite the secrecy, JSOC is not permitted to carry out covert action as the CIA can. Covert action, in which the U.S. role is to be kept hidden, requires a presidential finding and congressional notification. Many national security officials, however, say JSOC’s operations are so similar to the CIA’s that they amount to covert action. The unit takes its orders directly from the president or the secretary of defense and is managed and overseen by a military-only chain of command.

 Under President George W. Bush, JSOC’s operations were rarely briefed to Congress in advance — and usually not afterward — because government lawyers considered them to be “traditional military activities” not requiring such notification. President Obama has taken the same legal view, but he has insisted that JSOC’s sensitive missions be briefed to select congressional leaders.

 Lethal force

 JSOC’s first overseas mission in 1980, Operation Eagle Claw, was an attempted rescue of diplomats held hostage by Iranian students at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. It ended in a helicopter collision in the desert and the death of eight team members. The unit’s extreme secrecy also made conventional military commanders distrustful and, as a consequence, it was rarely used during conflicts.

 Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, smarting from the CIA’s ability to move first into Afghanistan and frustrated by the Army’s slowness, pumped new life into the organization. JSOC’s core includes the Army’s Delta Force, the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, the Air Force’s 24th Special Tactics Squadron, and the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment and 75th Ranger Regiment.

 The lethality of JSOC was demonstrated in the December 2001 mountain battle at Tora Bora. Although bin Laden and many of his followers eventually escaped across the border into Pakistan, an Army history said that on the nights of Dec. 13 and 14, JSOC killed so many enemy forces that “dead bodies of al-Qaeda fighters were carted off the field the next day” by the truckload.

 It also made mistakes. On July 1, 2002, in what the Rand Corp. labeled “the single most serious errant attack of the entire war,” a JSOC reconnaissance team hunting Taliban came under attack and an AC-130 gunship fired upon six sites in the village of Kakarak. The estimates of civilian deaths ranged from 48 to hundreds. The “wedding party incident,” as it became known because a wedding party was among the targets accidentally hit, convinced many Afghans that U.S. forces disregarded the lives of civilians.

 Nevertheless, on Sept. 16, 2003, Rumsfeld signed an executive order cementing JSOC as the center of the counterterrorism universe. It listed 15 countries and the activities permitted under various scenarios, and it gave the preapprovals required to carry them out.

 In Iraq and Afghanistan, lethal action against al-Qaeda was granted without additional approval. In the other countries — among them Algeria, Iran, Malaysia, Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia and Syria — JSOC forces needed the tacit approval from the country involved or at least a sign-off from higher up on the American chain of command. In the Philippines, for example, JSOC could undertake psychological operations to confuse or trap al-Qaeda operatives, but it needed approval from the White House for lethal action. To attack targets in Somalia required approval from at least the secretary of defense, while attacks in Pakistan and Syria needed presidential sign-off.

 In the fall of 2003, JSOC got a new commander who would turn the organization into arguably the most effective weapon in the U.S. counterterrorism arsenal. From his perch as vice director of operations on the Joint Staff, Brig. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal had come to believe there was an aversion to decision making at the top of government. No one wanted to be wrong, so they asked more questions or added more layers to the process. The new emphasis on interagency cooperation also meant meetings were bigger and longer. Any one of a multitude of agencies could stifle action until it was too late.

 McChrystal believed he had “to slip out of the grip” of Washington’s suffocating bureaucracy, he told associates. He moved his headquarters to Balad Air Base, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad, and worked inside an old concrete airplane hangar with three connecting command centers: one to fight al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq, one for the fight against Shiite extremists in the country and a third for himself, so he could oversee all operations.

 He coaxed the other intelligence agencies to help him out — the CIA presence grew to 100, the FBI and National Security Agency to a combined 80. He won their loyalty by exposing the guts of his operation to everyone involved. “The more people you shared your problem with, the better you’d do in solving it,” he would say.

 McChrystal installed a simple, PC-based common desktop and portal where troops could post documents, conduct chats, tap into the intelligence available on any target — pictures, biometrics, transcripts, intelligence reports — and follow the message traffic of commanders in the midst of operations.

 Then he gave access to it to JSOC’s bureaucratic rivals: the CIA, NSA, FBI and others. He also began salting every national security agency in Washington with his top commandos. In all, he deployed 75 officers to Washington agencies and 100 more around the world. They rotated every four months so none would become disconnected from combat.

 Some thought of the liaisons as spies for an organization that was already too important. But those suspicions did little to derail JSOC or McChrystal.

 Stories spread that he ate just one meal and ran 10 miles every day. He looked the part, with his taut face, intense eyes and thin physique. A sign inside the wire at Balad said it all: “17 5 2.” Seventeen hours for work, five hours for sleep, two hours for eating and exercise.

 McChrystal’s legendary work ethic mixed well with his Scotch Irish exuberance and common-man demeanor. He viewed beer calls with subordinates as an important bonding exercise. He made people call him by his first name. He seemed almost naively trusting. (This trait would become McChrystal’s undoing in 2010, after he was promoted to commander of forces in Afghanistan. He and members of his inner circle made what were seen as inappropriate comments about their civilian leaders in the presence of a Rolling Stone reporter. McChrystal offered to resign, and Obama quickly accepted.)

 Harnessing technology

 The Iraqi insurgency’s reliance on modern technology also gave tech-savvy JSOC and its partners, particularly the National Security Agency, an advantage. The NSA learned to locate all electronic signals in Iraq. “We just had a field day,” said a senior JSOC commander, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe secret operations.

 One innovation was called the Electronic Divining Rod, a sensor worn by commandos that could detect the location of a particular cellphone. The beeping grew louder as a soldier with the device got closer to the person carrying a targeted phone.

 Killing the enemy was the easy part, JSOC commanders said; finding him was the hard part. But thanks to Roy Apseloff, director of the National Media Exploitation Center, the U.S. government’s agency for analyzing documents captured by the military and intelligence community, JSOC’s intelligence collection improved dramatically. Apseloff offered to lend McChrystal his small staff, based in Fairfax, to examine items captured in raids. Apseloff’s team downloaded the contents of thumb drives, cellphones and locked or damaged computers to extract names, phone numbers, messages and images. Then they processed and stored that data, linking it to other information that might help analysts find not just one more bad guy but an entire network of them.

 The major challenge was how to find the gems in the trash quickly enough to be useful. The key was more bandwidth, the electronic pipeline that carried such information as e-mail and telephone calls around the world. Luckily for the military and JSOC, the attacks of 2001 coincided with an unrelated development: the dot-com bust. It created a glut in commercial satellite capacity, and the military bought up much of it.

 Within a year after McChrystal’s arrival, JSOC had linked 65 stations around the world to enable viewers to participate in the twice-daily, 45-minute video teleconferences that he held. By 2006, JSOC had increased its bandwidth capability by 100 times in three years, according to senior leaders.

 The other challenge JSOC faced was a human one: Ill-trained interrogators had little information about individual detainees and didn’t know what questions to ask or how to effectively ask them. Worse, some members of the JSOC’s Task Force 121 were beating prisoners.

 Even before the Army’s Abu Ghraib prison photos began circulating in 2004, a confidential report warned that some JSOC interrogators were assaulting prisoners and hiding them in secret facilities. JSOC troops also detained mothers, wives and daughters when the men in a house they were looking for were not at home. The report warned these detentions and other massive sweep operations were counterproductive to winning Iraqi support.

 An investigation of JSOC detention facilities in Iraq during a four-month period in 2004 found that interrogators gave some prisoners only bread and water, in one case for 17 days. Other prisoners were locked up in cells so cramped they could not stand up or lie down while their captors played loud music to disrupt sleep. Still others were stripped, drenched with cold water and then interrogated in air-conditioned rooms or outside in the cold.

 Eventually, 34 JSOC task force soldiers were disciplined in five cases over a one-year period beginning in 2003.

 McChrystal ordered his intelligence chief, Michael Flynn, to professionalize the interrogation system. By the summer of 2005, JSOC’s interrogation booths at Balad sat around the corner from the large warren of rooms where specialists mined thumb drives, computers, cellphones, documents to use during interrogations. Paper maps were torn down from the walls and replaced with flat-panel screens and sophisticated computerized maps. Detainees willing to cooperate were taught how to use a mouse to fly around their virtual neighborhoods to help identify potential targets.

 JSOC had to use the rules laid out in the Army Field Manual to interrogate detainees. But its interrogators were — and still are — permitted to keep them segregated from other prisoners and to hold them, with the proper approvals from superiors and in some case from Defense Department lawyers, for up to 90 days before they have to be transferred into the regular military prison population.

 The new interrogation system also included an FBI and judicial team that collected evidence needed for trial by the Iraqi Central Criminal Court in Baghdad. From early 2005 to early 2007, the teams sent more than 2,000 individuals to trial, said senior military officials.

 Body counts

 Al-Qaeda used the U.S. invasion of Iraq as a call to arms to terrorists and recruits throughout the Middle East who flooded in from Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Saudi Arabia — as many as 200 of them a month at the high point. By the end of 2005, a shocking picture emerged: Iraq was rife with semiautonomous al-Qaeda networks.

 Al-Qaeda had divided Iraq into sections and put a provincial commander in charge of each. These commanders further divided their territory into districts and put someone in charge of each of those, too, according to military officials. There were city leaders within those areas and cells within each city. There were leaders for foreign fighters, for finance and for communications, too.

 By the spring of 2006, using the expanded bandwidth and constant surveillance by unmanned aircraft, JSOC executed a series of raids, known as Operation Arcadia, in which it collected and analyzed 662 hours of full-motion video shot over 17 days. The raid netted 92 compact discs and barrels full of documents, leading to another round of raids at 14 locations. Those hits yielded hard drives, thumb drives and a basement stacked with 704 compact discs, including copies of a sophisticated al-Qaeda marketing campaign. Operation Arcadia led, on June 7, 2006, to the death of the al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, when JSOC directed an airstrike that killed him.

 JSOC’s lethality was evident in its body counts: In 2008, in Afghanistan alone, JSOC commandos struck 550 targets and killed roughly a thousand people, officials said. In 2009, they executed 464 operations and killed 400 to 500 enemy forces. As Iraq descended into chaos in the summer of 2005, JSOC conducted 300 raids a month. More than 50 percent of JSOC Army Delta Force commandos now have Purple Hearts.

 The most intense Iraqi raids reminded McChrystal of Lawrence of Arabia’s description of “rings of sorrow,” the emotional toll casualties take on small groups of warriors. Greatly influenced by T.E. Lawrence’s life story, McChrystal thought of his JSOC troops as modern-day tribal forces: dependent upon one another for kinship and survival.

 If killing were all that winning wars was about, the book on JSOC would be written. But no war in modern times is ever won simply by killing enough of the enemy. Even in an era of precision weaponry, accidents happen that create huge political setbacks.

 Every JSOC raid that also wounded or killed civilians, or destroyed a home or someone’s livelihood, became a source of grievance so deep that the counterproductive effects, still unfolding, are difficult to calculate. JSOC’s success in targeting the right homes, businesses and individuals was only ever about 50 percent, according to two senior commanders. They considered this rate a good one.

 “Sometimes our actions were counterproductive,” McChrystal said in an interview. “We would say, ‘We need to go in and kill this guy,’ but just the effects of our kinetic action did something negative and they [the conventional army forces that occupied much of the country] were left to clean up the mess.”

 In 2008, Bush also briefly sent JSOC into Pakistan. To soothe the worries of U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson about the mounting civilian deaths from JSOC raids in other countries, commandos brought her a Predator console so she could witness a raid in real time. Because of public outcry in Pakistan, U.S. officials canceled the mission after only three raids. The CIA has continued to conduct drone strikes there.

 Targeting bureaucracy

 The Defense Department has given JSOC a bigger role in nonmilitary assignments as well, including tracing the flow of money from international banks to finance terrorist networks. It also has become deeply involved in “psychological operations,” which it renamed “military information operations” to sound less intimidating. JSOC routinely sends small teams in civilian clothes to U.S. embassies to help with what it calls media and messaging campaigns.

 When Obama came into office, he cottoned to the organization immediately. (It didn’t hurt that his CIA director, Leon E. Panetta, has a son who, as a naval reservist, had deployed with JSOC.) Soon Obama was using JSOC even more than his predecessor. In 2010, for example, he secretly directed JSOC troops to Yemen to kill the leaders of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

 The Arab Spring forced the White House to delay some JSOC missions. In the meantime, the organization is busy with its new 30,000-square-foot office building turned command center. Unlike previous offices, it is not in some obscure part of the world. It sits across the highway from the Pentagon in pristine suburban splendor, just a five-minute drive from McChrystal’s civilian office and the former general’s favorite beer-call restaurants.

 As its name implies, the focus of Joint Special Operations Task Force-National Capital Region is not the next terrorist network but another of its lifelong enemies: the Washington bureaucracy. Some 50 battle-hardened JSOC warriors and a handful of other federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies work there.

 Mexico is at the top of its wish list. So far the Mexican government, whose constitution limits contact with the U.S. military, is relying on the other federal agencies — the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security, the Drug Enforcement Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement — for intelligence collection and other help.

 But JSOC’s National Capital task force is not just sitting idly by, waiting to be useful to its southern neighbors. It is creating targeting packages for U.S. domestic agencies that have sought its help, including the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, the second-largest federal law enforcement agency and the latest to make a big play for a larger U.S. counterterrorism role. ||||| The CIA’s armed drones and paramilitary forces have killed dozens of al-Qaeda leaders and thousands of its foot soldiers. But there is another mysterious organization that has killed even more of America’s enemies in the decade since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

 CIA operatives have imprisoned and interrogated nearly 100 suspected terrorists in their former secret prisons around the world, but troops from this other secret organization have imprisoned and interrogated 10 times as many, holding them in jails that it alone controls in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 Since 9/11, this secretive group of men (and a few women) has grown tenfold while sustaining a level of obscurity that not even the CIA has managed. “We’re the dark matter. We’re the force that orders the universe but can’t be seen,” a strapping Navy SEAL, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said in describing his unit.

 The SEALs are just part of the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command, known by the acronym JSOC, which has grown from a rarely used hostage rescue team into America’s secret army. When members of this elite force killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May, JSOC leaders celebrated not just the success of the mission but also how few people knew their command, based in Fayetteville, N.C., even existed.

 This article, adapted from a chapter of the newly released “Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State,” by Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, chronicles JSOC’s spectacular rise, much of which has not been publicly disclosed before. Two presidents and three secretaries of defense routinely have asked JSOC to mount intelligence-gathering missions and lethal raids, mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in countries with which the United States was not at war, including Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, the Philippines, Nigeria and Syria.

 “The CIA doesn’t have the size or the authority to do some of the things we can do,” said one JSOC operator.

 The president has given JSOC the rare authority to select individuals for its kill list — and then to kill, rather than capture, them. Critics charge that this individual man-hunting mission amounts to assassination, a practice prohibited by U.S. law. JSOC’s list is not usually coordinated with the CIA, which maintains a similar but shorter roster of names.

 Created in 1980 but reinvented in recent years, JSOC has grown from 1,800 troops prior to 9/11 to as many as 25,000, a number that fluctuates according to its mission. It has its own intelligence division, its own drones and reconnaissance planes, even its own dedicated satellites. It also has its own cyberwarriors, who, on Sept. 11, 2008, shut down every jihadist Web site they knew.

 Obscurity has been one of the unit’s hallmarks. When JSOC officers are working in civilian government agencies or U.S. embassies abroad, which they do often, they dispense with uniforms, unlike their other military comrades. In combat, they wear no name or rank identifiers. They have hidden behind various nicknames: the Secret Army of Northern Virginia, Task Force Green, Task Force 11, Task Force 121. JSOC leaders almost never speak in public. They have no unclassified Web site.

 Despite the secrecy, JSOC is not permitted to carry out covert action as the CIA can. Covert action, in which the U.S. role is to be kept hidden, requires a presidential finding and congressional notification. Many national security officials, however, say JSOC’s operations are so similar to the CIA’s that they amount to covert action. The unit takes its orders directly from the president or the secretary of defense and is managed and overseen by a military-only chain of command.

 Under President George W. Bush, JSOC’s operations were rarely briefed to Congress in advance — and usually not afterward — because government lawyers considered them to be “traditional military activities” not requiring such notification. President Obama has taken the same legal view, but he has insisted that JSOC’s sensitive missions be briefed to select congressional leaders.

 Lethal force

 JSOC’s first overseas mission in 1980, Operation Eagle Claw, was an attempted rescue of diplomats held hostage by Iranian students at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. It ended in a helicopter collision in the desert and the death of eight team members. The unit’s extreme secrecy also made conventional military commanders distrustful and, as a consequence, it was rarely used during conflicts.

 Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, smarting from the CIA’s ability to move first into Afghanistan and frustrated by the Army’s slowness, pumped new life into the organization. JSOC’s core includes the Army’s Delta Force, the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, the Air Force’s 24th Special Tactics Squadron, and the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment and 75th Ranger Regiment.

 The lethality of JSOC was demonstrated in the December 2001 mountain battle at Tora Bora. Although bin Laden and many of his followers eventually escaped across the border into Pakistan, an Army history said that on the nights of Dec. 13 and 14, JSOC killed so many enemy forces that “dead bodies of al-Qaeda fighters were carted off the field the next day” by the truckload.

 It also made mistakes. On July 1, 2002, in what the Rand Corp. labeled “the single most serious errant attack of the entire war,” a JSOC reconnaissance team hunting Taliban came under attack and an AC-130 gunship fired upon six sites in the village of Kakarak. The estimates of civilian deaths ranged from 48 to hundreds. The “wedding party incident,” as it became known because a wedding party was among the targets accidentally hit, convinced many Afghans that U.S. forces disregarded the lives of civilians.

 Nevertheless, on Sept. 16, 2003, Rumsfeld signed an executive order cementing JSOC as the center of the counterterrorism universe. It listed 15 countries and the activities permitted under various scenarios, and it gave the preapprovals required to carry them out.

 In Iraq and Afghanistan, lethal action against al-Qaeda was granted without additional approval. In the other countries — among them Algeria, Iran, Malaysia, Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia and Syria — JSOC forces needed the tacit approval from the country involved or at least a sign-off from higher up on the American chain of command. In the Philippines, for example, JSOC could undertake psychological operations to confuse or trap al-Qaeda operatives, but it needed approval from the White House for lethal action. To attack targets in Somalia required approval from at least the secretary of defense, while attacks in Pakistan and Syria needed presidential sign-off.

 In the fall of 2003, JSOC got a new commander who would turn the organization into arguably the most effective weapon in the U.S. counterterrorism arsenal. From his perch as vice director of operations on the Joint Staff, Brig. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal had come to believe there was an aversion to decision making at the top of government. No one wanted to be wrong, so they asked more questions or added more layers to the process. The new emphasis on interagency cooperation also meant meetings were bigger and longer. Any one of a multitude of agencies could stifle action until it was too late.

 McChrystal believed he had “to slip out of the grip” of Washington’s suffocating bureaucracy, he told associates. He moved his headquarters to Balad Air Base, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad, and worked inside an old concrete airplane hangar with three connecting command centers: one to fight al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq, one for the fight against Shiite extremists in the country and a third for himself, so he could oversee all operations.

 He coaxed the other intelligence agencies to help him out — the CIA presence grew to 100, the FBI and National Security Agency to a combined 80. He won their loyalty by exposing the guts of his operation to everyone involved. “The more people you shared your problem with, the better you’d do in solving it,” he would say.

 McChrystal installed a simple, PC-based common desktop and portal where troops could post documents, conduct chats, tap into the intelligence available on any target — pictures, biometrics, transcripts, intelligence reports — and follow the message traffic of commanders in the midst of operations.

 Then he gave access to it to JSOC’s bureaucratic rivals: the CIA, NSA, FBI and others. He also began salting every national security agency in Washington with his top commandos. In all, he deployed 75 officers to Washington agencies and 100 more around the world. They rotated every four months so none would become disconnected from combat.

 Some thought of the liaisons as spies for an organization that was already too important. But those suspicions did little to derail JSOC or McChrystal.

 Stories spread that he ate just one meal and ran 10 miles every day. He looked the part, with his taut face, intense eyes and thin physique. A sign inside the wire at Balad said it all: “17 5 2.” Seventeen hours for work, five hours for sleep, two hours for eating and exercise.

 McChrystal’s legendary work ethic mixed well with his Scotch Irish exuberance and common-man demeanor. He viewed beer calls with subordinates as an important bonding exercise. He made people call him by his first name. He seemed almost naively trusting. (This trait would become McChrystal’s undoing in 2010, after he was promoted to commander of forces in Afghanistan. He and members of his inner circle made what were seen as inappropriate comments about their civilian leaders in the presence of a Rolling Stone reporter. McChrystal offered to resign, and Obama quickly accepted.)

 Harnessing technology

 The Iraqi insurgency’s reliance on modern technology also gave tech-savvy JSOC and its partners, particularly the National Security Agency, an advantage. The NSA learned to locate all electronic signals in Iraq. “We just had a field day,” said a senior JSOC commander, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe secret operations.

 One innovation was called the Electronic Divining Rod, a sensor worn by commandos that could detect the location of a particular cellphone. The beeping grew louder as a soldier with the device got closer to the person carrying a targeted phone.

 Killing the enemy was the easy part, JSOC commanders said; finding him was the hard part. But thanks to Roy Apseloff, director of the National Media Exploitation Center, the U.S. government’s agency for analyzing documents captured by the military and intelligence community, JSOC’s intelligence collection improved dramatically. Apseloff offered to lend McChrystal his small staff, based in Fairfax, to examine items captured in raids. Apseloff’s team downloaded the contents of thumb drives, cellphones and locked or damaged computers to extract names, phone numbers, messages and images. Then they processed and stored that data, linking it to other information that might help analysts find not just one more bad guy but an entire network of them.

 The major challenge was how to find the gems in the trash quickly enough to be useful. The key was more bandwidth, the electronic pipeline that carried such information as e-mail and telephone calls around the world. Luckily for the military and JSOC, the attacks of 2001 coincided with an unrelated development: the dot-com bust. It created a glut in commercial satellite capacity, and the military bought up much of it.

 Within a year after McChrystal’s arrival, JSOC had linked 65 stations around the world to enable viewers to participate in the twice-daily, 45-minute video teleconferences that he held. By 2006, JSOC had increased its bandwidth capability by 100 times in three years, according to senior leaders.

 The other challenge JSOC faced was a human one: Ill-trained interrogators had little information about individual detainees and didn’t know what questions to ask or how to effectively ask them. Worse, some members of the JSOC’s Task Force 121 were beating prisoners.

 Even before the Army’s Abu Ghraib prison photos began circulating in 2004, a confidential report warned that some JSOC interrogators were assaulting prisoners and hiding them in secret facilities. JSOC troops also detained mothers, wives and daughters when the men in a house they were looking for were not at home. The report warned these detentions and other massive sweep operations were counterproductive to winning Iraqi support.

 An investigation of JSOC detention facilities in Iraq during a four-month period in 2004 found that interrogators gave some prisoners only bread and water, in one case for 17 days. Other prisoners were locked up in cells so cramped they could not stand up or lie down while their captors played loud music to disrupt sleep. Still others were stripped, drenched with cold water and then interrogated in air-conditioned rooms or outside in the cold.

 Eventually, 34 JSOC task force soldiers were disciplined in five cases over a one-year period beginning in 2003.

 McChrystal ordered his intelligence chief, Michael Flynn, to professionalize the interrogation system. By the summer of 2005, JSOC’s interrogation booths at Balad sat around the corner from the large warren of rooms where specialists mined thumb drives, computers, cellphones, documents to use during interrogations. Paper maps were torn down from the walls and replaced with flat-panel screens and sophisticated computerized maps. Detainees willing to cooperate were taught how to use a mouse to fly around their virtual neighborhoods to help identify potential targets.

 JSOC had to use the rules laid out in the Army Field Manual to interrogate detainees. But its interrogators were — and still are — permitted to keep them segregated from other prisoners and to hold them, with the proper approvals from superiors and in some case from Defense Department lawyers, for up to 90 days before they have to be transferred into the regular military prison population.

 The new interrogation system also included an FBI and judicial team that collected evidence needed for trial by the Iraqi Central Criminal Court in Baghdad. From early 2005 to early 2007, the teams sent more than 2,000 individuals to trial, said senior military officials.

 Body counts

 Al-Qaeda used the U.S. invasion of Iraq as a call to arms to terrorists and recruits throughout the Middle East who flooded in from Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Saudi Arabia — as many as 200 of them a month at the high point. By the end of 2005, a shocking picture emerged: Iraq was rife with semiautonomous al-Qaeda networks.

 Al-Qaeda had divided Iraq into sections and put a provincial commander in charge of each. These commanders further divided their territory into districts and put someone in charge of each of those, too, according to military officials. There were city leaders within those areas and cells within each city. There were leaders for foreign fighters, for finance and for communications, too.

 By the spring of 2006, using the expanded bandwidth and constant surveillance by unmanned aircraft, JSOC executed a series of raids, known as Operation Arcadia, in which it collected and analyzed 662 hours of full-motion video shot over 17 days. The raid netted 92 compact discs and barrels full of documents, leading to another round of raids at 14 locations. Those hits yielded hard drives, thumb drives and a basement stacked with 704 compact discs, including copies of a sophisticated al-Qaeda marketing campaign. Operation Arcadia led, on June 7, 2006, to the death of the al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, when JSOC directed an airstrike that killed him.

 JSOC’s lethality was evident in its body counts: In 2008, in Afghanistan alone, JSOC commandos struck 550 targets and killed roughly a thousand people, officials said. In 2009, they executed 464 operations and killed 400 to 500 enemy forces. As Iraq descended into chaos in the summer of 2005, JSOC conducted 300 raids a month. More than 50 percent of JSOC Army Delta Force commandos now have Purple Hearts.

 The most intense Iraqi raids reminded McChrystal of Lawrence of Arabia’s description of “rings of sorrow,” the emotional toll casualties take on small groups of warriors. Greatly influenced by T.E. Lawrence’s life story, McChrystal thought of his JSOC troops as modern-day tribal forces: dependent upon one another for kinship and survival.

 If killing were all that winning wars was about, the book on JSOC would be written. But no war in modern times is ever won simply by killing enough of the enemy. Even in an era of precision weaponry, accidents happen that create huge political setbacks.

 Every JSOC raid that also wounded or killed civilians, or destroyed a home or someone’s livelihood, became a source of grievance so deep that the counterproductive effects, still unfolding, are difficult to calculate. JSOC’s success in targeting the right homes, businesses and individuals was only ever about 50 percent, according to two senior commanders. They considered this rate a good one.

 “Sometimes our actions were counterproductive,” McChrystal said in an interview. “We would say, ‘We need to go in and kill this guy,’ but just the effects of our kinetic action did something negative and they [the conventional army forces that occupied much of the country] were left to clean up the mess.”

 In 2008, Bush also briefly sent JSOC into Pakistan. To soothe the worries of U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson about the mounting civilian deaths from JSOC raids in other countries, commandos brought her a Predator console so she could witness a raid in real time. Because of public outcry in Pakistan, U.S. officials canceled the mission after only three raids. The CIA has continued to conduct drone strikes there.

 Targeting bureaucracy

 The Defense Department has given JSOC a bigger role in nonmilitary assignments as well, including tracing the flow of money from international banks to finance terrorist networks. It also has become deeply involved in “psychological operations,” which it renamed “military information operations” to sound less intimidating. JSOC routinely sends small teams in civilian clothes to U.S. embassies to help with what it calls media and messaging campaigns.

 When Obama came into office, he cottoned to the organization immediately. (It didn’t hurt that his CIA director, Leon E. Panetta, has a son who, as a naval reservist, had deployed with JSOC.) Soon Obama was using JSOC even more than his predecessor. In 2010, for example, he secretly directed JSOC troops to Yemen to kill the leaders of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

 The Arab Spring forced the White House to delay some JSOC missions. In the meantime, the organization is busy with its new 30,000-square-foot office building turned command center. Unlike previous offices, it is not in some obscure part of the world. It sits across the highway from the Pentagon in pristine suburban splendor, just a five-minute drive from McChrystal’s civilian office and the former general’s favorite beer-call restaurants.

 As its name implies, the focus of Joint Special Operations Task Force-National Capital Region is not the next terrorist network but another of its lifelong enemies: the Washington bureaucracy. Some 50 battle-hardened JSOC warriors and a handful of other federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies work there.

 Mexico is at the top of its wish list. So far the Mexican government, whose constitution limits contact with the U.S. military, is relying on the other federal agencies — the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security, the Drug Enforcement Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement — for intelligence collection and other help.

 But JSOC’s National Capital task force is not just sitting idly by, waiting to be useful to its southern neighbors. It is creating targeting packages for U.S. domestic agencies that have sought its help, including the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, the second-largest federal law enforcement agency and the latest to make a big play for a larger U.S. counterterrorism role. |||||

– The super-secret Joint Special Operations Command first came to most people's attention when its members killed Osama bin Laden. The Washington Post provides new details on the group it calls "America's secret army" and its explosive growth in size and importance since 9/11. For one thing, JSOC has gone from 1,800 troops prior to 2001 to about 25,000 today, with much of its transformation coming under Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It has killed more al-Qaeda leaders and soldiers than CIA operatives, and it has jailed and interrogated 10 times more suspected terrorists than the agency. “The CIA doesn’t have the size or the authority to do some of the things we can do,” one JSOC operator tells the Post. As one Navy SEAL who belongs to the unit puts it (in a quote that wouldn't be out of place in a Tom Clancy novel): “We’re the dark matter. We’re the force that orders the universe but can’t be seen." The group has its own drones, recon planes, satellites, and cyberwarriors, along with the "rare authority to select individuals for its kill list—and then to kill, rather than capture, them," write Dana Priest and William M. Arkin. Click to read the full article, which comes from a new book (Top Secret America) written by the two reporters.


Write a summary based on this article:

Dove is one of the originators of femvertising—the practice of harnessing feminism or “girl power” in advertising. And there are certainly aspects of its iconic “Real Beauty” campaign that resonate. The company’s ads have tackled the culture’s focus on youth, how stereotypical ideas about beauty can undermine young girls’ confidence, and the gap between women’s self-perception and how others see them. Given that beauty industry has historically spent a lot of time making women feel bad about themselves, it’s refreshing to see any message of positivity and self-love.

 But Dove took a wrong turn yesterday when it released its latest body wash bottles, which come in a variety of shapes to… well, I’ll let the company explain: “From curvaceous to slender, tall to petite, and whatever your skin colour, shoe size or hair type, beauty comes in a million different shapes and sizes. Our six exclusive bottle designs represent this diversity: just like women, we wanted to show that our iconic bottle can come in all shapes and sizes, too,” said Dove in a statement.

 Sign up: Click here to subscribe to the Broadsheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the world’s most powerful women.

 Not surprisingly, Twitter users had some fun with the new bottles. While the campaign isn’t a misfire on the scale of Pepsi’s recent “protest” commercial, it still feels silly at best, condescending at worst. I don’t know about you, but I have never felt oppressed by the shape of my toiletry bottles—and I do not appreciate a company that so oversimplifies the complicated issue of how our society views women’s bodies.

 It’s a good reminder: Companies that use feminist themes in their ads may well buy into some of the messaging they use and can even help spread important ideas. But at the end of the day, they create those campaigns for one reason—to sell you their stuff.

 A version of this post ran in the May 9th, 2017 edition of The Broadsheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter about the world’s most powerful women. ||||| Here’s me.

 Close your eyes and picture the last bottle of bodywash you used in the shower. What was it shaped like? Was it tall and thin? Short and squat? Did it in any way resemble the shape of your own body? If no, were you deeply offended? Dove’s latest campaign aims to help you overcome those (likely nonexistent) feelings of soap-induced self-loathing by selling bodywash in bottles with varying degrees of curves to promote body positivity. (The Real Beauty bottles are a limited run and currently only available in the U.K.)

 Naturally, the Dove bottles quickly jumped from promotional gag to Twitter meme. Just pick a bottle — a wine jug, two liters of Cheerwine, a plastic container of Draino, one of those blender things swole people use at the gym to let you know how swole they are — and let Dove know your body type is already being properly represented by a bottle out there.

 .@Dove matches its new body wash bottles to your body type pic.twitter.com/zzxy21DYuH — chekov's mankrik (@vrunt) May 8, 2017

 sorry, Dove, I already found my body type pic.twitter.com/mBLzHgGzIw — Brett _______ (@BrettRedacted) May 8, 2017

 thanks Dove but I already have a body wash that matches my natural curves :) pic.twitter.com/IIkKAn0LjQ — Tim Federle (@TimFederle) May 8, 2017

 sry @Dove but i already have a body wash that looks like me pic.twitter.com/uT2oAtZ9f0 — sarah gorman (@thesarahgorman) May 8, 2017

 Y'all are late to this game. Dove been on my body type pic.twitter.com/xgYndlzxdI — Aia (@aiadriano) May 8, 2017

 Little does Dove know I've already got a bottle that suits my body type. pic.twitter.com/A2OWL51c16 — isabel 🤷🏽♀ (@isa_alcantara) May 8, 2017

 thanks dove but i already found a bottle for my shape pic.twitter.com/asuo1vci0O — Carina Hsieh (@carinahsieh) May 8, 2017 ||||| Most women can tell you what fruit they are.

 At some point in their coming of age, women learn that their shape can be compared with a fruit, mostly by figuring out exactly what is wrong with it. Hips larger than the bust? Pear. Waist larger that the hips? Apple. No curves? Banana.

 But now there’s a new choice: Dove says women can also be soap bottles.

 The Unilever brand that’s been on a mission to get women to embrace their “real beauty” for a few years—while other Unilever brands teach other women to change the color of their own skin—has launched a new campaign to empower women to embrace their body shape.

 In the UK, the company will sell a limited edition of six Real Beauty Bottles: unusually curvy shampoo bottles that look like they were inspired by a mix of illegal drugs and Constantin Brancusi.

 “We’ve created a limited edition range of Dove Body Washes, designed to show how beauty is diverse and diversity is beautiful,” said Unilever in a press release, explaining how these are intended to depict real women’s bodies. All body wash bottles—I mean, women—are beautiful as they are.

 Many women do not seem pleased. Not only are they not running to the drugstore, they are making fun of the bottles.

 This is the apotheosis of Dove’s misguided brand of “empowering advertising,” which tends to end up exploiting the very female insecurities that it claims to destroy. Well-intentioned or not, the message behind all of these campaigns is the same we’ve always heard: Be beautiful.

 Of course, Dove is selling soap, not programming classes, so it makes sense—but the attempt to mask that mandate as stereotype-busting is ineffective at best. It’s just not that empowering to overhaul the ideals of feminine beauty: We’re never going to find all people and bodies equally beautiful, no matter how many commercials feature women getting teary-eyed after embracing their own outer beauty. Some women will always be more beautiful than others, just like men are. The only way to actually help women escape the “beauty trap” is to simply make beauty less important—just like it is for men. ||||| But even those ads are too ordinary to notice over time. So marketers also try to get creative with form. Here’s one example. A public-transit staircase sits next to an escalator. The treads of the escalator are painted yellow, and the DHL brand mark is imprinted on the landing. Next to it, the word “OtherServices” is applied to the floor in blue and orange—which just happen to be the colors of the FedEx logo. The implication is clear: DHL is faster than FedEx.

 Clever advertising by DHL pic.twitter.com/MxlqIIwaKz — Brilliant Ads (@Brilliant_Ads) May 7, 2017

 Here’s another. The wall of a bus shelter is encased in 3M Security Glass, which is also the product to be advertised. The wall appears to contain be hundreds of bundles of currency. The ad dares its subject to test the promise the product makes.

 This is how a security glass company shows their products are "unbreakable"! pic.twitter.com/8YPh3wALUq — Brilliant Ads (@Brilliant_Ads) April 26, 2017

 In both of these cases, the ads work because they give consumers an experience of the product advertised. In the DHL ad, the comparison of the escalator and the stairs lets the consumer feel the speed differential. In the 3M Security Glass ad, the consumer almost can’t help but accept the invitation to try to test the glass's durability. These advertisements mix reason and emotion, creating delight in coming to understand the product.

 And then there’s the Dove Real Beauty Bottle. Like 3M and DHL, Dove aims to mix reason and emotion. The setup is right—a product that embodies its message. But the problem is that the result is incoherent and contradictory. The bottles negate rather than support the advertiser’s associative claims.

 Consider some scenarios. A pear-shaped woman has run out of body wash. She visits the local drug store, where she finds a display of Dove Real Beauty Bottles. To her chagrin, now she must choose between pear- and hourglass-shaped soap. She must also present this proxy for a body—the one she has? the one she wishes she did?—to a cashier to handle and perhaps to judge. What otherwise would have been a body-image-free trip to the store becomes a trip that highlights body-image.

 Now imagine actually using the bottles. In the shower, they become slippery. The pear shapes are unwieldy, all their weight pressed to the sides. That will make them hard to hold in a single-hand. The tall, thin bottles are gangly. They fall over easily when bumped on the shelf.

 Ah, but which bottle is least cumbersome? The hourglass-shaped bottles, of course. The ones with big “bosoms” and “hips,” providing firm grip around the “waist” when wet. And just like that, against the campaign’s hopes, Dove engineered bottles that, through functional differences, inadvertently imply there is a best body after all.

 * * *

 Capitalism doesn’t care about you. But usually it takes some work to uncover that truth. Dove is owned by the conglomerate Unilever, which also owns Axe. Axe makes the same kind of products Dove does, but markets them to young men, often in overtly sexist ways. That’s a hypocrisy that reveals advertising’s true scruples, which involve extracting incremental value from your wallet as efficiently as possible. But at least hiding the hypocrisy in the common ownership of a parent company also obscures it from the consumer’s view. ||||| We know we’re not alone in this – women around the world are using their influence to advance the real beauty debate, in their everyday lives and across social media. We’ve been gifting these bottles to them as a ‘thank you’ (the range is not available to purchase).

 Beauty comes in all shapes and sizes.

 From curvaceous to slender, tall to petite, and whatever your skin colour, shoe size or hair type, beauty comes in a million different shapes and sizes. Our six exclusive bottle designs celebrate this diversity: just like women, we wanted to show that our iconic bottle can come in all shapes and sizes, too.

 Recent research from the Dove Global Beauty and Confidence Report revealed that one in two women feels social media puts pressure on them to look a certain way. Thankfully, many women are fighting with us to spread beauty confidence. Women using their influence to advance the real beauty debate across social media, and helping women embrace their own individuality as a source of confidence. ||||| Of course this is how it ends.

 Dove, friendly soap company and bastion of body-positive marketing, finally goes too far and literally engineers its packing to reflect the women to whom it markets.

 According to Dove:

 "Each bottle evokes the shapes, sizes, curves and edges that combine to make every woman their very own limited edition. They’re one of a kind–just like you. But sometimes we all need reminding of that.

 Recent research from the Dove Global Beauty and Confidence Report revealed that one in two women feels social media puts pressure on them to look a certain way. Thankfully, many women are fighting with us to spread beauty confidence."

 And apparently the best way to make sure women are reminded daily of our special snowflakeness is to turn our soap bottles into literal reminders of our figures. Because bathing isn't just a time to get clean and enjoy a hot shower and some peace, but also to be, you know, empowered. By our soap bottles.

 We've reached out to Dove to ask a few of our most burning questions, including:

 Will the bottles all contain the same amount of soap?

 Do the body-positive cost bottles cost the same as normal ones, or will we pay a premium for our empowerment?

 How long will we be able to purchase these limited-edition keepsakes?

 Where in the world did this idea come from?

 The shade is already starting to roll in.

 @Dove Is this real? I don't care what the bottle looks like, I care if the product inside works. https://t.co/kKGZTmh1gd — Allison Churchill (@Aloe9678) May 8, 2017

 i don’t want fat representation in soap bottle form. i’d prefer it in the form of fat people not being systematically treated poorly. https://t.co/NfdEP6lXPA — nicolle (@rogueclown) May 8, 2017

 Can someone come over and help me measure my butt so I know which dove body wash to buy — Anna Fitzpatrick (@bananafitz) May 8, 2017

 thanks Dove but I already have a body wash that matches my natural curves :) pic.twitter.com/IIkKAn0LjQ — Tim Federle (@TimFederle) May 8, 2017

 Who at Dove thought this was a remotely good idea? https://t.co/MGdg2SgMOc — Steph Haberman (@StephLauren) May 8, 2017

 For a company that has spent years building up a store of good will through their 'Real Beauty' campaigns, we'll have to see whether they have enough in reserve to see them through what could be a major misstep. Or is the benefit of the doubt something that simply doesn’t exist for brands today? ||||| In an inspired packaging stunt, Ogilvy London has created a limited-edition set of Dove Body Wash bottles that come in various shapes and sizes, communication the brand’s longtime celebration of body-diverse beauty.

 “Every woman’s version of beauty is different, and if you ask us, these differences are there to be celebrated,” Dove said in a statement. “That’s what real beauty is all about—the unique things that set us apart from each other and make us one of a kind. We’ve championed this version of beauty for the past 60 years, and celebrated diverse women in our groundbreaking real beauty campaigns. But we wanted to bring this to life through our products, too.”

 “The Real Beauty Bottles is one of those rare ideas which condenses decades of a brand’s legacy in two seconds”, said Andre (Dede) Laurentino, global executive creative director for Unilever at Ogilvy U.K. “It’s deceivingly simple and quite nuanced: a message about our body conveyed by Dove bottles themselves, it cares for the physical and the emotional, and it brings brand essence and product design seamlessly together.” |||||

– Dove's latest ad idea doesn't appear on its bottles—it is the bottles. The company has rolled out "limited edition" body wash in the UK packaged in bottles of various shapes, the idea being that women come in various shapes, too. "Every woman’s version of beauty is different and, if you ask us, these differences are there to be celebrated," says a company statement on the Real Beauty Bottles campaign. (See a company video.) Unfortunately for Dove, reaction has been less than kind. At the Atlantic, Ian Bogost digs into the nuances of advertising to point out the campaign's failings. Among the points: Imagine a pear-shaped woman in a drug store having to choose between the bottles. "She must also present this proxy for a body—the one she has? the one she wishes she did?—to a cashier to handle and perhaps to judge," he writes. "What otherwise would have been a body-image-free trip to the store becomes a trip that highlights body image." Ditto the general sentiment at Quartz: This type of "empowering advertising" just winds up "exploiting the very female insecurities that it claims to destroy," writes Annalisa Merelli. "Well-intentioned or not, the message behind all of these campaigns is the same we’ve always heard: Be beautiful." At AdWeek, however, Tim Nudd thinks it's an "inspired packaging stunt," one in sync with Dove's theme of celebrating "body-diverse beauty." The post includes a quote from creator Ogilvy UK saying it's "one of those rare ideas which condenses decades of a brand’s legacy in two seconds." And a post at Creativity has the ad among its top five "brand ideas of the week." But that's the minority view. A Jezebel blogger puts the problem in question form: "What doorway would you walk through if one was labeled 'Beautiful Bottle' and the other was labeled 'Average Bottle'?" writes Aimee Lutkin. "Until every woman sees herself as a beautiful bottle, Dove’s lessons on #RealBeauty aren’t over." Mashable blogger Alex Hazlett has some questions, including, "Do the body-positive bottles cost the same as normal ones, or will we pay a premium for our empowerment?" It's "silly at best, condescending at worst," writes Kristen Bellstrom at Fortune. Companies that champion messages like this might occasionally do some good, but this is a reminder that these campaigns have but one real purpose: "to sell you their stuff." New York rounds up mocking memes with a common theme: People choosing a different bottle that captures their essence, like one of those bear-shaped honey bottles. And Twitter is on fire with put-downs, including this gem: "Can someone come over and help me measure my butt so I know which dove body wash to buy"


News article:

See more of Giovanni's Fish Market on Facebook ||||| California fish market owner buys 70-pound octopus just to set it free

 An octopus accidentally caught by a crab fisherman in San Luis Obispo County had an unexpected savior: the owner of a fish market.

 Giovanni DeGarimore, owner of Giovanni's Fish Market, is usually in the business of selling fresh seafood to customers in Morro Bay. But this 70-pound, eight-legged creature (who he later named Fred) had a different fate.

 "Gio bought [Fred] from a fisherman yesterday with the sole intention of releasing him back into the wild," reads a post on the business's Facebook page from earlier this month.

 The purchase cost DeGarimore "a couple hundred dollars," according to the Tribune. He says he released the octopus back into the water the following day.

 ALSO: Watch killer whales take body surfing to the next level in Monterey Bay

 A spokesperson for Giovanni's Fish Market explained that octopus hold a special place in DeGarimore's heart.

 "Really it just came down to a personal decision for Gio. He's an avid diver and lover of the ocean, and though Gio makes his livelihood on selling seafood, he felt conflicted when it came to these magnificent and arguably sentient beings."

 Now Playing:

 DeGarimore told the Tribune he used to sell octopus, but couldn't bring himself do it any longer after a close encounter with one of the cephalopods while diving in Fiji.

 AMAZING PHOTO: Wildlife photographer catches bald eagle swiping rabbit from baby fox

 Since sharing Fred's story on Facebook, the post has been shared hundreds of times.

 "At the end of the day Gio said, 'It might not change the world, but I'm going to do one thing and if it only makes me and Fred happy, that's okay too.'"

 Read Alix Martichoux's latest stories and send her news tips at amartichoux@sfchronicle.com. ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| On Thursday morning, workers filing into the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium in California were surprised to find 200 gallons (750 liters) of seawater soaking into their spanking new, ecologically sensitive flooring. It turns out that a curious two-spotted octopus had disassembled a water recycling valve and directed a tube to spew out of the tank for about 10 hours, according to the Los Angeles Times.

 "It found something loose and just pulled on it," the aquarium's education manager Tara Treiber told the Times. "They are very smart creatures."

 Octopuses, some 300 species of which inhabit tropical waters around the world, can change colors, squirt out poison, and exert a force greater than their own body weight. But calling the eight-armed cousin of your garden snail "smart" seems a bit of a stretch. In fact, the animals are part of an elite group of slimy mollusks known as cephalopods that range from giant squid to the shelled nautilus and all have remarkably large "brains"—at least for creatures sans backbones.

 Scientists have found that octopuses can navigate their way through mazes, solve problems quickly and remember those solutions, at least for the short term.

 To find out more about octopus intelligence, we spoke to Jennifer Mather, a comparative psychologist at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. Mather has been studying octopuses for 35 years in an effort to gain insight into the evolution of intelligence. While most scientists hold octopuses in high regard, it's worth noting that not everyone shares Mather's lofty assessment of their intellectual abilities and personalities.

 [An edited transcript of the interview follows.]

 Are octopuses smart?

 Yes, but of course one has to ask what that means. I would say intelligence means learning information and using the information that you've learned.

 So, how do you know they are smart?

 We observed how octopuses figure out how to open clams and what sort of flexibility and variety they have. We give them clams and mussels in order to figure out which they like best. They are very strong, but we found they prefer mussels because mussels are easier to open. They switched to clams when we put the clams on a half shell. They clearly made a decision to go with what was easiest. We noticed along the way that yanking them open wasn't the only thing the octopuses could do to open them. They have a cartilaginous beak, which looks a lot like a parrot's beak, and they could chip at the edge of the clamshell and then they could inject poison and weaken the clam. Or they actually have a salivary papilla, and they can drill a hole to inject the toxin that way in the stronger clams. They were selective about what technique they would use with what species. We decided we would cheat on them: We took one of the easier ones and wired them shut. They switched techniques according to what would work best. Of course, this doesn't sound hard to you because you're a human, but most simple animals keep trying the same technique.

 What other indications are there that octopuses are intelligent?

 Octopuses play, and play is something that intelligent animals do. At the Seattle Aquarium, my colleague Roland Anderson and I figured out a situation in which they might play: a boring situation. We gave them an empty tank and a floating pill bottle and waited to see what would happen. Nothing happened the first time, but, after the fourth time, a couple animals did something we call "play." The octopus blew a jet of water at the pill bottle and that caused it to go over a water jet in the tank and come back to the octopus. These two individual animals did it in a sequence over 20 times. That's just exactly the kind of thing we do when we bounce a ball. When you bounce a ball, you are not trying to get rid of the ball, you are trying to figure out what you can do with the ball.

 Octopuses also have personalities. We used the same kind of setup people use when they want to study human personalities. You just ask what do the animals commonly encounter during the day in different situations and look at the variability. We put them in three common situations: alerting (opening the top of the tank), threatening (touching the octopus with a test tube brush) and feeding (the octopus was given a crab to munch). This takes awhile because we tested 33 animals, each for two weeks. We found there are three dimensions and we settled for names: activity, reactivity and avoidance. Avoidance is how shy you are. Activity is if you are very active or passive. And reactivity indicates whether you are very emotional or more blasé. Octopuses can have any mix of those traits. We didn't take it any further, but there's a former graduate student in Australia looking at the extent to which personality affects ecology.

 Do octopuses have brains?

 The molluscan nervous system has a bunch of paired ganglia (a cluster of nerve cells), which in an animal like a clam or a snail are not very big and are widely distributed through the body. They control different functions and are located in different areas. Well, the cephalopods—that's the octopuses, squids and cuttlefish—they are unique in that all these ganglias have condensed so they form a centralized brain. The other thing that is unique amongst the mollusks is there are two areas of this brain that have developed that are specialized for memory storage. It's not just that the brain is larger and condensed, but they have areas of the brain dedicated to learning. That's the kind of thing we humans have, but it’s a completely different brain.

 By invertebrate standards it’s a huge brain, but by vertebrate standards, it’s a small brain. What's interesting about the octopus is about one third of the neurons (nerve cells) are in the brain. They have a huge neural representation in the arms, and there's a ganglion controlling every sucker, so there's quite a bit of local control. As humans, we're very proud of having a pincer grasp—the thumb and forefinger—and we say that's responsible for our ability to manipulate the environment so well. The octopus can fold the two sides of its sucker together to form a pincer grasp and it can do that with every single one. It has a hundred pincer grasps.

 Why do you think octopuses evolved such big brains?

 Probably because the tropical coral reef is the most complex environment in the world. There's such a huge variety of situations, lots of kinds of prey, lots of predators, and if you are not armored, you'd better be smart. The octopus has gone the smart route. Also, we talk about mammalian intelligence evolving in social situations, but clearly the octopus, a solitary organism, has evolved intelligence to solve ecological problems.

 Do octopuses often cause trouble in aquariums?

 They are very strong, and it is practically impossible to keep an octopus in a tank unless you are very lucky. One of the early researchers said if you leave a floating thermometer in a tank, it will last about five minutes. Octopuses simply take things apart. I recall reading about someone who had built a robot submarine to putter around in a large aquarium tank. The octopus got a hold of it and took it apart piece by piece. There's a famous story from the Brighton Aquarium in England 100 years ago that an octopus there got out of its tank at night when no one was watching, went to the tank next door and ate one of the lumpfish and went back to his own tank and was sitting there the next morning. The aquarium lost several lumpfish before they figured out who was responsible. |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– A California fish-market owner bought an octopus and set it free because he feels a certain affinity with cephalopods, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Giovanni DeGarimore, owner of Giovanni's Fish Market in Morro Bay, bought the 70-pounder earlier this month for a couple hundred dollars from a local crab fisherman who'd caught it by mistake. DeGarimore then named it Fred and released the creature in a secure area without sea lions or other potential risks, the San Luis Obispo Tribune reports. So why this octopus love when DeGarimore makes a living selling fish? "It's just been a culmination of events through the last 10 years," says DeGarimore, who recalls how a cousin once bought a live octopus from a sushi restaurant and set it free. "She was kind of my inspiration." DeGarimore also encountered an octopus while scuba diving in Fiji and marveled at its intelligence. "Essentially, we played a game of hide and seek for 15 minutes under the ocean," he says. (Scientific American has reported on octopuses' smarts and the Tribune on their ability to wiggle away.) DeGarimore says he didn't intend to attract all this attention, but will be pleased "if my little contribution can make a bigger difference in the world." (See Fred on Facebook or watch a video of an octopus being born.)


News article:

Seems that most of us take to heart the common admonition to clean our plates, at least when we fill them ourselves.

 Adults eat nearly 92% of the food they put on their plates, according to research published in the International Journal of Obesity.

 ------------

 FOR THE RECORD

 An earlier version of this post misspelled the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health as the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

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 There were some variations: If people were distracted, they ate less, almost 89% of what they took; they ate 92.8% of meals but only 76.1% of snacks. At home or in a lab, the amount eaten was about the same, and men and women ate the same percentages.

 “If you put it on your plate, it’s going into your stomach,” said Brian Wansink, director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab and the study’s lead researcher. Wansink, who frequently studies eating habits, conducted the research with Katherine Abowd Johnson, a doctoral student at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

 The studies that looked at children showed they ate about 60% of what they took.

 Nor is the urge to clean our plates strictly an American trait: The results were nearly identical in the United States, Canada, France, Taiwan, South Korea, Finland and the Netherlands.

 A bit of good news: People who were eating fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lean meat or dairy ate more – 91.2% -- than those eating less healthful foods – 80.6%.

 The researchers wanted to try to fill in a gap in studies about how much we eat, noting that portion size – particularly its increase – seems connected to the epidemic of overweight and obesity. Some studies measure what people take when they serve themselves, such as at buffets. Others measure how much of a plate of food that’s served people ate. Wansink and Johnson wanted to look at how much people ate when they served themselves.

 They analyzed 14 studies. Their study, the researchers said, offers preliminary evidence on the topic but can give people some direction in the search for a path to a healthier population.

 As researchers from several disciplines work to find ways to address overeating and obesity, figuring out what makes people consume more or less is an important goal. The researchers in the current study noted that when a study shows, for example, that skipping a meal led people to take 200 extra calories at the following meal, what really matters is how much of the food they ate.

 This study could help suggest the answer. And the answer generally is "most of it."

 “Just knowing that you’re likely to consume almost all of what you serve yourself can help you be more mindful of appropriate portion size,” Wansink said in a statement.

 Care about your food? Follow me on Twitter: @mmacvean ||||| If you're a member of the Clean Plate Club - you eat pretty much everything you put on your plate - you're not alone! A new Cornell University study shows that the average adult eats 92% of whatever he or she puts on his or her plate. "If you put it on your plate, it's going into your stomach," says Brian Wansink Ph.D., author of the forthcoming book, Slim by Design, Professor of Marketing and Director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab.

 Wansink and co-author Katherine Abowd Johnson analyzed 1179 diners and concluded that we're a Clean Plate Planet. Although diners were analyzed in 8 developed countries, the US, Canada, France, Taiwan, Korea, Finland, and the Netherlands, the results were nearly identical. If we serve it, we'll eat it regardless of gender or nationality. "Part of why we finish most of what we serve is because we are aware enough to know how much we'll want in the first place," says Johnson.

 The finding did not hold true with children. Analysis of 326 participants under 18 years old, showed that the average child eats only 59% of what he or she serves. "This might be because kids are less certain about whether they will like a particular food," says Wansink. "Regardless, this is good news for parents who are frustrated that their kids don't clean their plate. It appears few of them do."

 Wansink says that these findings, published in the International Journal of Obesity, can positively impact an individual's eating behavior, "Just knowing that you're likely to consume almost all of what you serve yourself can help you be more mindful of appropriate portion size." Next time you grab that serving spoon, think to yourself, "How much do I want to eat?" and serve accordingly.

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What is a shorter version of the above article?

– Feeling guilty about that huge serving you heaped onto your plate at dinner last night and promptly finished? You're not the only one who does it. New research published in the International Journal of Obesity finds that the average adult eats 92% of the food on his or her plate. The reasons have yet to be hashed out, but the reality is clear: "If you put it on your plate, it's going into your stomach," says Brian Wansink, director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab, in a Eureka Alert press release. The findings hold across several developed countries. Researchers observed 1,179 diners in the US, Canada, France, Taiwan, Korea, Finland, and the Netherlands, and regardless of location or gender the results were almost identical. There is, however, one exception: kids. Observing 326 participants under 18, researchers found that the typical child eats 59% of the food he or she puts on the plate. Whatever the reason, we grow up to belong to the Clean Plate Club, as researchers call it, they say this can be a wake-up call to be more mindful of what we serve ourselves in the first place. The LA Times susses out one piece of good news along those lines: Those who pile on fruits, veggies, whole grains, and other healthful stuff tend to clean their plates more thoroughly than those who eat less healthful foods. (Other research suggests it's all the sitting, not eating, that's putting on the pounds.)


A court hearing for the sexual-assault case against former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been delayed two weeks, until Aug. 1.

 The Manhattan District Attorney's office and attorneys for Mr. Strauss-Kahn filed a letter with the Office of Court Administration on Monday saying both sides had agreed to the delay "to facilitate both parties continued investigation in this matter," the letter said. A court hearing had been scheduled for July 18.

 Mr. Strauss-Kahn has pleaded not guilty to charges that he sexually assaulted a maid at the Sofitel hotel in Manhattan in May. Prosecutors have raised questions about the credibility of the maid who has admitted lying to authorities about a range of matters, according to a court filing.

 "We hope that during this time the district attorney will make the necessary decision to dismiss the case against Mr. Strauss-Kahn," said William W. Taylor, a lawyer for Mr. Strauss-Kahn.

 Erin Duggan, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office, said the investigation is continuing and no decisions have been made about how to proceed in the case.

 "At the end of its investigation, we expect the district attorney's office to stand by the victim and take her case to trial," said Kenneth Thompson, an attorney for the accuser. "Justice requires no less."

 Meanwhile, a French lawyer for Mr. Strauss-Kahn said he had filed a complaint for slander against the French novelist who has accused Mr. Strauss-Kahn of attempted rape. The complaint was filed with Paris prosecutors on Friday, Henri Leclerc, the lawyer, said.

 A lawyer for Tristane Banon, the novelist couldn't be reached to comment on the slander complaint.

 Ms. Banon was interviewed by police on Monday as part of a preliminary probe Paris prosecutors launched into the attempted rape complaint the 32-year old woman has filed against Mr. Strauss-Kahn.

 —David Gauthier-Villars contributed to this article.

 Write to Dionne Searcey at dionne.searcey@wsj.com ||||| In France, the woman who says Dominique Strauss-Kahn tried to rape her in 2003 has been interviewed by police for the first time.

 It is the first step in the preliminary inquiry sparked after Tristane Banon made the allegation last week.

 Investigators will decide if there is enough evidence to proceed with a full trial.

 The former head of the IMF is already fighting legal action in New York, where it is alleged he tried to rape a hotel chambermaid in May.

 His lawyers in Paris say he will file a counter-claim against Banon for defamation.

 Copyright © 2011 euronews |||||

Write a summary.

– Legal troubles for accused sex attacker Dominique Strauss-Kahn may be just beginning. French police are questioning the writer in France who is suing Strauss-Kahn for attempted rape. The interview will help investigators determine if there's enough evidence to go ahead with a full-scale French criminal case against the former head of the IMF for the alleged attack on Tristane Banon, reports EuroNews. Stateside, a hearing for his sexual-assault case has been delayed two weeks, from July 18 to Aug. 1, reports the Wall Street Journal. In a letter filed yesterday, Strauss-Kahn's lawyers and the DA's office explained that they had agreed to the delay "to facilitate both parties' continued investigation in this matter."


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 — The state House and Senate have approved a sweeping package of gun laws that tighten penalties for those who violate firearm laws and expand where those with concealed handgun permits can carry their weapons.

 The bill now goes to Gov. Pat McCrory for his signature or veto.

 An earlier version of the bill passed by the system would have done away with North Carolina's system of requiring a handgun purchase permit for those who want to buy a pistol but don't hold a concealed handgun permit. The House rejected the bill largely based on this measure.

 The compromise passed by by both chambers Tuesday keeps the current handgun permit system in place but gives local sheriffs less latitude in issuing the permits. Sheriffs will no longer be able restrict the number of handgun permits an individual can obtain in a year, something that some sheriffs do now. Also, sheriffs will have to keep a record and show cause when they reject a handgun permit application.

 "There's really no uniformity of practices now," said Rep. Jacqueline Schaffer, R-Mecklenburg. "You can have difference in outcomes in Wake County versus Mecklenburg."

 Other parts of the bill will allow concealed handgun permit holders to bring their weapons to bars and restaurants that serve alcohol – although they are not supposed to consume alcohol – carry them in funeral processions and allow them to keep firearms locked in their car when parked on college or public school campuses.

 The bill also removes information regarding those who hold concealed handgun permits from public view.

 The bill also strengthens penalties for those who violate firearms laws and will increase the amount of information, such as mental health problems, in the state's background check system.

 The House passed the measure on a 73-41 vote. The Senate passed the measure on a 32-14 vote.

 Rep. Grier Martin, D-Wake, said he represents a number of colleges and universities in his midtown Raleigh district.

 "I haven't heard from a single one of them this bill is a good idea," Martin said.

 But Rep. John Faircloth, R-Guilford, a former police chief, said that the college provision merely makes legal something that already happens as parents pick up students or businessmen meet with university executives.

 "Let's don't fool ourselves, there are guns on our campuses," Faircloth said.

 In the Senate, backers of the bill said that the expansion of rights for concealed handgun permit holders was appropriate.

 Sen. Thom Goolsby, R-New Hanover, noted that those who obtain such permits go through extra training and background checks.

 "They're the people we don't have to worry about," he said. ||||| North Carolina lawmakers have approved a bill greatly expanding where concealed handguns are legally allowed.

 The Republican-backed bill approved by both the House and Senate on Tuesday allows concealed-carry permit holders to take firearms into bars and restaurants and other places where alcohol is served as long as the owner doesn't expressly forbid it.

 The measure will also allow concealed-carry permit holders to store weapons in locked cars on the campus of any public school or university. Guns will also now be allowed on greenways, playgrounds and other public recreation areas.

 The final bill dropped a controversial provision that would have repealed the long-standing law requiring a background check and permit issued by county sheriffs for handgun purchases.

 The measure now heads to Republican Gov. Pat McCrory's desk. |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– So long as Gov. Pat McCrory puts his pen to it, a bill allowing North Carolina residents to carry concealed handguns into bars and on playgrounds will soon be law, reports the AP. The Republican-backed bill was approved by both the House and Senate yesterday, and would give concealed-carry permit holders the right to take their gun into any place where alcohol is served—this includes restaurants—as long as the owner doesn't expressly forbid it. WRAL reports on two other expansions: Such weapons could also be kept in a locked car that's parked at a public school or university, and can be carried in funeral processions. Republican Sen. Thom Goolsby pointed out that concealed handgun permit holders undergo additional training and background checks. "They're the people we don't have to worry about," he tells WRAL. On the flip side, the bill also beefs up the penalties levied on those who violate gun laws, and didn't include a contentious provision that would have repealed the need for gun purchasers to submit to a background check, notes ABC 11.