A few weeks ago I blogged about the seem­ingly insane US Naval plan to genet­ic­ally engin­eer goats and spiders together to cre­ate a goat that gives spider silk in their milk. 

Amaz­ingly it was true.

Such rev­el­a­tions mean that this book, which I would nor­mally regard with scep­ti­cism, could also be true. I sure hope not.

The Men Who Stare at Goats is a book about the US secret para­psy­cho­logy war­fare divi­sion devised in the 1970’s by New Age solider Jim Chan­non.  Chan­non envis­aged sol­diers with extraordin­ary powers that would enable a new era of war­fare without the death and destruc­tion the cur­rent era has come to rep­res­ent.  Author Jon Ron­son takes us through those early days and how they have pos­sibly dir­ectly led to the hor­rors of Abu Ghraib in Iraq, the ter­ror pur­posely meated out in Guantanamo Bay deten­tion camp and the FBI led screw up at the Waco Siege.

The name of the book comes from the early days.  Jim Chan­non wrote a short 51 page manual called, “The 1st Earth Bat­talion” (now avail­able online!), that he presen­ted to the US Spe­cial Forces at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. 

Wel­come to those who will dare to think the unthink­able, the awakened war­ri­ors, and you evol­u­tion­ary scouts. You are in good com­pany. I want to thank all the “play­ers” in our net­work of scouts for their work then and now as we con­tinue into a new cen­tury striv­ing to bring this world of ours into the vibrance it deserves. I encour­age you oth­ers of sim­ilar mind to read the manual and accept the far-reaching chal­lenges that fit for you. WE are all at the shift point …make your move! –Jim Chan­non

The SF took much of what Jim said to heart and formed a spe­cial group called the “Jedi War­ri­ors”.  These spe­cial psychic sol­diers were trained by an occult mar­tial arts mas­ter in all man­ner of tech­niques, the most fam­ous of which was the abil­ity to stop an opponent’s heart simply by star­ing at them.  The Jedi War­ri­ors trained in this tech­nique by star­ing at goats. 

Ser­i­ously.

The goats in ques­tion were spe­cially de-bleated and kept at Bragg for SF med­ics to test their own skills upon.  They did this by shoot­ing them in the leg, treat­ing the wound and set­ting the leg in plaster.  After this the Jedi’s would come in and try to stare them to death.  One suc­ceeded.  Ronson’s story starts with his quest to find this mans iden­tity and get him to demon­strate his powers. 

It leads into hell and back.

Such Scooby-Doo style fun and games, the seem­ingly harm­less and sur­real images of plaster wear­ing silent goats look­ing wor­ried about a sol­dier star­ing at them, are the nice part of the book.  How­ever, these New Age harm­less times have led to some­where not so funny.  Ron­son out­lines through a series of inter­views with those who are will­ing to talk that the 1st Earth Bat­talion think­ing has led to new ways to tor­ture people in the so-called “War on Ter­ror”.  His gonzo inter­view style obvi­ously had a great effect on the Amer­ic­ans and he gets  people to say all sorts of things.  Some­time, he dis­cov­ers, the para­psy­cho­logy war­fare group split into two: The White Ninjas, who inven­ted such things as sticky fast dry­ing foam and the Black Ninjas who hide sub­lim­inal mes­sages in excru­ci­at­ingly loud music played 24 hours a day in Guantanamo. 

Appar­ently, this song was played con­stantly at inmates.  I would crack in minutes.

That’s not the worst.  Amongst many examples comes the story that the Abu Ghraib pho­tos, show­ing Lyn­ddie Eng­land and oth­ers abus­ing Iraqis, was actu­ally a Black Ninja pro­ject to cre­ate some­thing to scare future inmates with; to make them crack.  They did this by sys­tem­at­ic­ally design­ing the most abhor­rent thing pos­sible to an Iraqi, and then set­ting it up.  Then, when it came out in pub­lic, they simply dumped all the respons­ib­il­ity on Miss Eng­land and claimed it was all her idea. 

A double tragedy?

The book goes on inter­view people accus­ing the CIA of col­lud­ing in murders, cover ups and the Black Ninjas of hav­ing been re launched in Iraq 2008.  It ends with the idea that the inform­a­tion out in the pub­lic domain, the fun­nier Goat Stuff, is actu­ally a cover up of a dif­fer­ent type.

I listened to, rather than read, this book by down­load­ing the unabridged ver­sion from the excel­lent Audible.co.uk.  Much of the satir­ical writ­ing is very funny, and the dead pan deliv­ery of the nar­rator means all the jokes and silly images make you laugh, whereas the more hor­rible aspects are not glossed over.

People have been respond­ing to this book.  Like many it has been optioned by Hol­ly­wood, but the latest news is that is has been taken up by George Clooney and will be star­ing Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey and Robert Patrick.  I can’t wait for that!

I recom­mend this book to any­one who likes wild and strange stuff, any­one who likes the mil­it­ary or mil­it­ary his­tory and any­one pissed off about the “War on Terror”.

Ron­son talks about his story here:

You can buy the book here:

AMAZON — THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS

Down­load the aud­ible audio ver­sion of the book here:

If you want to help those less for­tu­nate, then per­haps you should donate a goat? Oxfam Goat Gift.  Only £25!

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