The Men Who Stare At Goats

In 1979 the US army set up a secret department to look into the possibilities of invisibility, mind reading and the ability to kill goats merely by staring at them as weapons. Strangely enough, the soldiers assigned to perfect these tasks were lost in a vastly overblown military budget. That is, until now. To combat the horrors of our current War on Terror, these psychic warriors are back on the front line, and The Men Who Stare At Goats is Jon Ronson’s valiant attempt to bring their efforts to the public eye.

Although mostly light-hearted in his approach, Ronson follows the trail of bureaucracy into some scary territory, for example, the cover-up of federal scientists (who were unwilling test subjects for government LSD trials) committing suicide out of a 10th storey window. The manner in which Ronson tells his story does nothing to stop you giggling about the farce of
these hard-to-believe situations, however the military level he managed to delve into lends an incredible amount of credibility to the information.

If you ever wanted to know what accompanied the Barney the Dinosaur theme on the torture tape being played to Iraqi prisoners locked inside shipping containers, read this book.

First published in Rabelais.