I know, they’re only rock ‘n’ roll…

…but I like them, like them, yes I do…

This just landed in my inbox from the National Security Archive listserv:

Washington, DC, October 22, 2009 – On behalf of a coalition of U.S. and international musicians, including R.E.M., Pearl Jam, Tom Morello and Jackson Browne, the National Security Archive today filed a series of FOIA petitions requesting the full declassification of secret U.S. documentation on the strategy of using music as an interrogation device at Guantanamo and other detention centers.

The Archive also posted several declassified documents and published reports that refer to the use of “loud” music to “create futility” in uncooperative detainees at Guantanamo. A 2004 Defense Department report on abuses at the military base in Cuba, for example, stated that the “futility technique included the playing of Metallica, Britney Spears and Rap music.”

Archive analysts filed the FOIA requests with the CIA, U.S. Special Operations Command, and the FBI, among other agencies, requesting all documentation pertaining to how the music was chosen and the specific role it played in interrogations of detainees at the Guantanamo base.

“At Guantanamo, the U.S. government turned a jukebox into an instrument of torture,” said Thomas Blanton, the Archive’s executive director. “The musicians and the public have the right to know how an expression of popular culture was transformed into an enhanced interrogation technique.”

No word from Brit-Brit on whether she authorized the use of her music as torture (or if she approves of that kind of airplay.) But I can well believe that it IS a torture, because I always cringe when I hear it, at any volume.

The others, on the other hand, who object to their use of their work for such purposes, are real musicians and deserve a lot more respect.

You can find the press release here, and join the National Security Archive’s listserv here, if you’re so minded.

PS: They’ve also got a blog! ‘Rolled!