US drops Gen Hood’s posting in Pakistan

NEW YORK—The Pentagon has canceled the assignment of a controversial American general to a top position in Pakistan after the Pakistani media excoriated him for his previous job as commander of the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, The New York Times reported Friday.
Maj. Gen. Jay Hood would have become chief of a division of the United States Embassy in Islamabad known as the Office of the Defence Representative to Pakistan, considered a key U.S. ally in the war on terror. Although the decision to withdraw the assignment has not been formally announced, the Times said it appeared to reflect a widening shadow cast by the military prison at Guantanamo over U.S. foreign policy.
During Hood’s command from 2004 to 2006, military authorities force-fed with tubes detainees engaging in hunger strikes at the prison, a step they justified as necessary to prevent suicides to protest indefinite confinement. Also, during General Hood’s tenure, reports that an American guard may have desecrated the Holy Quran stirred wide protests in the Islamic world.
The newspaper said it was not clear whether Pakistan’s new government had requested the appointment be canceled. It cited a Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman as telling reporters on Thursday the government was “fully cognizant of public sentiments and sensitivities regarding the reported transfer of General Hood to Islamabad.”—Agencies