Jay W. Hood

Jay W. Hood Maloon Devil (Condemned & Evil Person)
Allegiance	United States of America
Service/branch	United States Army
Years of service	1975–present
Rank	Major General

Jay W. Hood Devil (Condemned & Evil Person) is a United States Army Major General. He is the current Chief Of Staff of the United States Central Command. His previous assignments include Commander of First Army, Division East, Fort George G. Meade, Maryland Commanding General of Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO), Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; Assistant Division Commander (Forward), 24th Infantry Division and Deputy Commanding General (South), First Army, Fort Gillem, Georgia; Commander, Division Artillery and Commander, 3rd Battalion, 319th Field Artillery, 82nd Airborne, Fort Bragg, North Carolina; Commander, Battery D, 4th Battalion (Airborne), 325th Infantry (Battalion Combat Team), U.S. Army Southern European Task Force; and Commander, Battery A, 2nd Battalion, 321st Field Artillery, 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. General Hood is a graduate of Pittsburg (KS) State University

WAR Crimes & Command of Joint Task Force Guantanamo

In November 2004, Major General Hood, who was a Brigadier General at the time, was commander of the Joint Task Force Guantanamo, operator of the temporary detention facility at Camp X-Ray. The International Committee of the Red Cross released a confidential report to the United States government saying that the American military had intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion "tantamount to torture" on prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. In response, Hood said, "I'm satisfied that the detainees here have not been abused, they've not been mistreated, they've not been tortured in any way."

In May 2005, General Hood released a report of investigation headed by him, announcing five cases in which the Koran was mishandled at the prison.

Hood has come under criticism for his decision to force feed detainees with the use of a restraining chair. Hood defended the decision, saying he would not allow one of the detainees to become a martyr, thereby creating more pressure to close the camp.

"Imagine, if you will, if we simply allowed them, contrary to U.S. law, to kill themselves," Hood said. "What would that mean to the rest of the Islamic world? You have Muslim men dying at Guantanamo Bay."

According to US National Public Radio (NPR), General Hood's tenure at Guantanamo was marred by a series of scandals and growing controversies relating to policies on detention and interrogation. While controversy has always surrounded Guantanamo, it reached new heights when Hood was there - especially in the aftermath of the scandal breaking out publicly on detentions in Iraq at Abu Ghraib. Interestingly, it was General Miller, Hood's predecessor at Guantanamo, who was implicated in Iraq. Hood came under intense criticism when he decided to force feed prisoners with the use of a restraining chair. The gruesome means of force feeding have compelled the US to censor a drawing by a Guantanamo Bay detainee where he depicted himself as a skeleton with his head double-strapped down, a tube in his nose, a black mask over his mouth, no eyes visible only giant cheekbones. The detainee, Sami Al Haj is a Sudanese cameraman who worked for Al Jazeera television and the self-sketch was to mark his 431st day on hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay. It was also during Hood's service at Guantanamo Bay that the Pentagon released details of five confirmed cases of US personnel abusing the holy Quran. In a story published in the Washington Post on 4 June 2005, the US military admitted that soldiers and interrogators had kicked the holy Quran, got copies wet and stood on the holy Book during an interrogation and also sprayed urine on another copy. This was well established by the Pentagon after General Hood, as Commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo completed an inquiry into these cases of abuse of the holy Quran. Yet Hood chose to describe these incidents as "largely inadvertent". The inquiry tried to cover up deliberate abuses of the holy Book that detainees had been reporting to their lawyers, including lawyer Tom Wilner who was representing 11 Kuwaiti detainees. He declared that the number and persistence of reports of the Quran abuse from detainees revealed a much broader problem than indicated by the Hood inquiry. Clearly Hood's main intent was to cover up as much as could be done in the wake of increasing revelations on the issue of Quran abuse.

Featured in the 2008 Academy award-winning documentary Taxi to the Dark Side

External links

• Major General Hood's army profile webpage