April 2009 archive

Roberta Flack

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

Killing Me Softly

Torture Has Achieved

Nothing But Disgrace For

The Bush Administration

Effectiveness Of Harsh Questioning Is Unclear

Detainee May Have Faced Few Traditional Tactics

By Joby Warrick and Peter Finn

Washington Post Staff Writers

Sunday, April 26, 2009

During his first days in detention, senior al-Qaeda operative Khalid Sheik Mohammed was stripped of his clothes, beaten, given a forced enema and shackled with his arms chained above his head, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. It was then, a Red Cross report says, that his American captors told him to prepare for “a hard time.”

Over the next 25 days, beginning on March 6, 2003, Mohammed was put through a routine in which he was deprived of sleep, doused with cold water and had his head repeatedly slammed into a plywood wall, according to the report. The interrogation also included days of extensive waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning.

Global flu fears as 68 die and virus spreads

• BA cabin steward in isolation ward

• Mexico invokes special measures

Tracy McVeigh and Jo Tuckman in Mexico City

The Observer, Sunday 26 April 2009

A British Airways cabin steward is being treated in an isolation unit at a London hospital after falling ill on a flight from Mexico, where a killer virus is believed to have caused at least 68 deaths and sparked widespread panic. Health experts say it has the potential to become a global pandemic.

The BA steward was undergoing tests in a London hospital for the swine flu virus after arriving on a flight from Mexico City. It is the first suspected case of the new flu strain to be reported in Europe, prompting fears it may have spread across the Atlantic from Mexico.

The World Health Organisation says the swine flu strain – a unique mix of human, pig and bird viruses – constituted a public health emergency of international concern.

Torture? It probably killed more Americans than 9/11

A US major reveals the inside story of military interrogation in Iraq. By Patrick Cockburn, winner of the 2009 Orwell Prize for journalism

Sunday, 26 April 2009

The use of torture by the US has proved so counter-productive that it may have led to the death of as many US soldiers as civilians killed in 9/11, says the leader of a crack US interrogation team in Iraq.

“The reason why foreign fighters joined al-Qa’ida in Iraq was overwhelmingly because of abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and not Islamic ideology,” says Major Matthew Alexander, who personally conducted 300 interrogations of prisoners in Iraq. It was the team led by Major Alexander [a named assumed for security reasons] that obtained the information that led to the US military being able to locate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al-Qa’ida in Iraq. Zarqawi was then killed by bombs dropped by two US aircraft on the farm where he was hiding outside Baghdad on 7 June 2006. Major Alexander said that he learnt where Zarqawi was during a six-hour interrogation of a prisoner with whom he established relations of trust.

Major Alexander’s attitude to torture by the US is a combination of moral outrage and professional contempt. “It plays into the hands of al-Qa’ida in Iraq because it shows us up as hypocrites when we talk about human rights,” he says. An eloquent and highly intelligent man with experience as a criminal investigator within the US military, he says that torture is ineffective, as well as counter-productive. “People will only tell you the minimum to make the pain stop,” he says. “They might tell you the location of a house used by insurgents but not that it is booby-trapped.”

Watching Those Who Watch You  

Crossposted from Hilbilly Report

This last weekend I wrote up a small diary, cross-posted to various places … which even stumbled into being wrecklisted at Agent Orange … about the High Speed Rail plan released by the Obama administration.

That diary focused on laying out the three “tiers” of HSR in the announced plan. “Express HSR” is one of the bullet train systems, like they are planning for California. But between that tier and conventional rail, are two more tiers:

• “Regional HSR”, with a top speed of around 125mph, able to provide trips at average speeds in the range of 100mph, operating in existing rail rights of way, but mostly on its own track, with upgraded signaling and substantial investment in grade separation and/or the top level of “hardened” level crossings, normally with electrified lines; and
  
• “Emerging HSR”, with a top speed of 110mph, able provide trips at average speed in excess of 80mph, operating on existing rail right of way with improved capacity, but sometimes sharing track with freight rail, the 110mph standard of quad gate, speed sensitive level crossings, and provided by either electric or diesel 110mph tilt-trains
  

The bullet trains are the show ponies … but for small town and rural America, the genuine seat at the table for Emerging and Regional HSR is the real good news from the announcement.

How is this for motivation?

Bybee’s friends said he never sought the job at the Office of Legal Counsel. The reason he went back to Washington, Guynn said, was to interview with then-White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales for a slot that would be opening on the 9th Circuit when a judge retired. The opening was not yet there, however, so Gonzales asked, “Would you be willing to take a position at the OLC first?” Guynn said.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/…

After Bybee approved the torture memo, he was made a Federal Judge by Bush. Is there now any longer a mystery about how an ambitious lawyer would authorize a memo legalizing torture of captives? This is how legal corruption works: all you have to do is make the quid pro quo tacit, and the devil’s work gets done.