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In a perfect "Consilience Storm," this story of our government using music to torture inmates in Guantanamo completely and utterly turns upside down the meaning and message of music in our culture, or all human culture, for that matter:

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.

Jackson Browne's music is that bad to some ears? This is a "futility technique?"

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."

Maybe Britney Spears' life is a bit futile, but her music? Really? In actuality, it's no joking matter:

"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."

And R.E.M. is pissed, too:

"We have spent the past 30 years supporting causes related to peace and justice -- to now learn that some of our friends' music may have been used as part of the torture tactics without their consent or knowledge, is horrific," R.E.M. said in a statement. "It's anti-American, period."

Amen to that!

One band not mentioned, though, is The Beatles. It seems that their music has the opposite effect on similar ears. Even the Taliban seem to love their music:

The Beatles song "She Loves You," which popped into my head soon after I received my wife's letter from the Red Cross, was the most popular.

For reasons that baffled me, the guards relished singing it with me. I began by singing its first verse. My three Taliban guards, along with Tahir and Asad, then joined me in the chorus.

"She loves you -- yeah, yeah, yeah," we sang, with Kalashnikovs lying on the floor around us.

What a strange confluence - or Consilience - of music and terrorism these past few days. It's surreal, to say the least.

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