Killing The UN

By Cernig

I wrote yesterday that McCain's proposed League of Democracies was a way of doing an end run around the UN by creating a new US-led body to provide a facade of international approval to new interventions and "preventative" wars.

Today, Krauthammer confirmed that this part of McCain's foreign policy plan is right out of the neocon playbook.

Well, I like the idea of the league of democracies, and only in part because I and others had proposed it about six years ago. What I like about it, it’s got a hidden agenda. It looks as if it’s all about listening and joining with allies, all the kind of stuff you’d hear a John Kerry say, except that the idea here, which McCain can’t say, but I can, is to essentially kill the U.N.

Think Progress has the video - and also notes that Krauthammer first proposed this League six years ago, so he would know its true purpose.

The UN comes in for a lot of criticism from Americans, but other than the lost 20-something percenters I think they'd mostly agree that it perhaps needs some reform but should still be kept around as the primary international forum. If voting for McCain was clearly labelled as a vote for disbanding the UN, a lot of people would balk. That's why McCain has to pretend that he'd just be adding another body to international diplomacy.

And if McCain dares to invoke Churchill, the greatest defender of a strong UN, anytime in the future I may just puke.

Update Kevin Sullivan, the most right-leaning "liberal" in the blogosphere, wouldn't attend the UN's funeral and James Joyner seems to think a different, democratic, alternative would be better for U.S. interests than the UN is, writing that "Attempting to get that business done through a smaller coalition of more like-minded states only makes sense, and it’s a far sight better than either going it alone or waiting on the UN to achieve consensus."

But here's the rub - what happens when the League of Democracies tries to impose its authority on a non-democracy and the latter says it doesn’t recognise the authority of a body it hasn’t been invited to send representatives to and has no voice at?

We bomb them?

Iran's Shrinking Chemical Weapons Stockpile

By Cernig

Or rather, the shrinking assessments of the size of Iran's chemical weapons stockpile.

It appears the last NIE on Iran's nuclear program isn't the only intelligence community assessment to have dialed down the hype and rhetoric over Iran's Weapons of Mass Destruction ability. Successive assessments on Iran's chemical weapons have done the same.

Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, the Arms Control Wonk explains.

What next - the possibility that the U.S. intelligence community will admit that the "EFP's from Iran" narrative is flimsier than a Colin Powell presentation to the UN?

And if so would the Bush administration's Weapons of Mass Distraction - the mainstream media - even notice?

Update Meanwhile...

Last Friday, Dick Cheney was in Saudi Arabia for high-level meetings with the Saudi king and his ministers. On Saturday, it was revealed that the Saudi Shura Council -- the elite group that implements the decisions of the autocratic inner circle -- is preparing "national plans to deal with any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards that may affect the kingdom following experts' warnings of possible attacks on Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactors," one of the kingdom's leading newspapers, Okaz, reports. The German-based dpa news service relayed the paper's story.

Simple prudence -- or ominous timing?

"So?" - So This

By Cernig

Mickey Edwards, 16-year Republican Congressman from Oklahoma, founding trustee of the Heritage Foundation and Princeton scholar, has found his contrary voice to the Bush?Cheney GOP late in life - but, oh boy, is it a clear one.

The decision to go to war...to send young Americans off to battle, knowing that some will die -- is the single most difficult choice any public official can be called upon to make. That is precisely why the nation's Founders, aware of the deadly wars of Europe, deliberately withheld from the executive branch the power to engage in war unless such action was expressly approved by the people themselves, through their representatives in Congress.

Cheney told Raddatz that American war policy should not be affected by the views of the people. But that is precisely whose views should matter: It is the people who should decide whether the nation shall go to war. That is not a radical, or liberal, or unpatriotic idea. It is the very heart of America's constitutional system.

In Europe, before America's founding, there were rulers and their subjects. The Founders decided that in the United States there would be not subjects but citizens. Rulers tell their subjects what to do, but citizens tell their government what to do.

If Dick Cheney believes, as he obviously does, that the war in Iraq is vital to American interests, it is his job, and that of President Bush, to make the case with sufficient proof to win the necessary public support.

That is the difference between a strong president (one who leads) and a strong presidency (one in which ultimate power resides in the hands of a single person). Bush is officially America's "head of state," but he is not the head of government; he is the head of one branch of our government, and it's not the branch that decides on war and peace.

When the vice president dismisses public opposition to war with a simple "So?" he violates the single most important element in the American system of government: Here, the people rule.

It's been obvious to many of us for a very long time that the GOP had been taken over by people who would prefer that the people not rule. I'm glad to see more and more conservatives figuring that out for themselves in the last year of the Bush presidency. It might just help prevent a McSame presidency continuing Bush and Cheney's work.

Certainly McCain should be seen as going into the elections with all of his policies, along with his candidacy, already the lamest kind of ducks.

More Interrogation Tapes Still To Be Found

By Cernig

Senator Ted Kennedy wrote to SecDef Bob Gates on the 14th asking him for details of all interrogation tapes in their possession - and details of any and all tapes destroyed. His letter says, in part:

recently learned that the Department of Defense has been conducting a review of the videotaping of interrogations at military facilities from Iraq to Guantánamo Bay, and the Department reportedly has identified some 50 tapes. I’m disappointed, however, to learn that the Defense Intelligence Agency claims to have routinely destroyed tapes of interrogations conducted in the past seven years.

A recent study, "Captured on Tape: Interrogation and Videotaping of Detainees in Guantánamo," by Professor Mark Denbeaux and his colleagues, used publicly available documents to show that more than 24,000 interrogations have been conducted at Guantánamo since 2002 and that every one of these interrogations was videotaped by the government. Meticulous logs were kept of information related to interrogations at Guantánamo, so it should be possible to identify how many videotapes still exist and how many have been destroyed.

I hope you agree that no further tapes should be destroyed, and I request that you take appropriate steps to guarantee the preservation of all interrogation tapes in the Department’s effective control, as well as any transcripts or documents related to the interrogations that may exist. These tapes and documents will likely be relevant both to the adjudication of the status of detainees and to congressional oversight of the treatment of detainees.

I ask that you inform me of the number of tapes in the possession of the Department of Defense and your plans for preserving them. I also ask that you preserve any transcripts of interrogations and any records relevant to tapes that may have been destroyed. Please inform me of the existence of such transcripts and records and of the specific steps you will take to preserve them. I also ask that you provide a report on all interrogation tapes the Department is aware of that have been destroyed or are no longer accessible.

I’m sure you recognize the special importance of the questions raised by the interrogation videotapes and the need for Congress to obtain complete information, so that it can perform its constitutional oversight and legislative responsibilities.

It's nice to see someone on the Hill is keeping an eye on this issue, especially when there's been a great deal of official evasion on the issue and a massive disconnect between public statements by DoD officials and military officers on how many tapes were made. The Surgeon General has stated in an official report that "all interrogations are videotaped" while the Pentagon press secretary has told journalists that "this is not a widespread practice” and that it was up to individual commanders whether to tape interrogations. Recently, the DoD "found" fifty interrogation tapes it seemingly didn't know it had but Seton Hall Law experts estimate that at least 24,000 tapes were made in total.

But one of the authors of the Seton Hall report tells me that another official source points positively to far more widespread taping than evasive stetements recently have suggested. Asked for comment, Michael Ricciardelli writes that "As I understand it, all fifty tapes the Pentagon has admitted to having found come from the brig in Charleston. The data indicates that an inventory of other military installations would prove fruitful."

there is another high level Governmental report which confirms the use of video recording of interrogations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Because our report focuses rather exclusively upon video recordings in Guantanamo, and we found this other report very late in the process, the information appears only as a footnote therein used to support the use of video recording of interrogations as an overall Govermental Policy.

On July 21, 2004 the Inspector General of The Army issued a wide ranging report on Detainee Operations titled "Detainee Operations Inspection."

Regarding interrogation in Afghanistan and Iraq the Inspector General of the Army stated the following in Chapter 4, "Interrogation Operations," Finding 6, (P.35-36 of Report; Adobe pagination of the document as found on the Pentagon web site, P.48-49.)

"The DAIG Team [Department of the Army Inspector General] observed 2 detainee facilities using digital recording devices, 1 in Afghanistan and 1 in Iraq. Because interrogations are confrontational, a monitored video recording of the process can be an effective check against breaches of the laws of land warfare and Army policy. It further protects the interrogator against allegations of mistreatment by detainees and provides a permanent record of the encounter that can be reviewed to improve the accuracy of intelligence collection. All facilities conducting interrogations would benefit from routine use of video recording equipment."

I would submit that the above Finding of the Department of the Army Inspector General substantiates two important points: 1) It expressly states that in Iraq and Afghanistan, as of July 21, 2004, video recording of interrogations occurred in at least "2 detainee facilities," "1 in Afghanistan and 1 in Iraq;" and 2) After July 21, 2004, interrogations which were not videotaped, were not videotaped contrary to the express and offical recommendation of the Inspector General of the Army and the Secretary of the Army who expressly approved such findings.

Importantly, as the Inspector General found, video recording of Interrogations "provides a permanent record of the encounter that can be reviewed to improve the accuracy of intelligence collection." [Emphasis mine - C]

Perhaps Senator Kennedy could call Gates, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morell and senior officers before an investigative hearing and ask them why exactly their statements show that the Inspector General of the Army and the Secretary of the Army's advice was ignored, if indeed it was, and more importantly....who had the authority to order that their advice be ignored?

"Doing A Schultz" On Torture

By Cernig

Andrew Alexander, political editor of the UK's very conservative Daily Mail newspaper, today has a leader regarding Bush's veto of the bill banning torture and accuses Britain of looking the other way.

We were told that Saddam Hussein was an enemy of mankind because he used torture.

Now we witness the gruesome spectacle of President Bush endorsing torture by vetoing the Bill from Congress outlawing "waterboarding" and other equivalently barbaric forms of interrogation.

This must be the first time in modern history that a head of state has openly and officially endorsed torture.

Alongside that, there is reason to believe that the U.S. continues with its secret "extraordinary rendition" flights to take suspects - remember that is all they are - to countries where they apply even more savage torture.

This is an American President who prides himself on his moral sense, a born again Christian who starts the day with prayers and has forsworn alcohol following a very boozy youth. The humbug makes one gasp.

What does he say in his prayers? "Oh Lord, make me a decent human being, but not yet"?

So we have the free world, as we call it, the Western Alliance, the proclaimed centre of civilised values, led by a man endorsing methods applied by Hitler and Stalin. What do we do about it?

The British Government insists it is opposed to all torture and refuses the use of our air space for planes on rendition flights - a rule the CIA has not always obeyed. But our indignation stops there.

We continue to heap fulsome praise on the value of the Anglo-American special relationship which must never be upset.

The Foreign Office will say only that Washington knows our attitude to torture. There has been no protest about Bush's latest move.

Just imagine what our Government would say if Russia, China or India were officially and openly to say they sanctioned torture. Our noisy indignation about human rights would know no bounds.

But in the American case, we do nothing.

Alexander is an old friend of Enoch Powell, an old-style demagogue of the "fear of a brown planet" anti-immigration polemic so beloved of Steyn and others. When even such a fellow extremist won't stand beside the American Right, they should take the hint. But Alexander is correct on this much - if Bush were the president of some tiny African or Asian nation - or some Eastern European balkanised remnant - the talk would be of UN resolutions, of sanctions and perhaps even of humanitarian military intervention. That it isn't is more a testament to American economic and military power than to Bush's moral high ground - and the U.S. Right shouldn't mistake the former for the latter.

Report On Saddam - Al Qaeda Non-Connection Buried

By Cernig

Remember Fester mentioned just yesterday a new Pentagon report that, after a review of 600,000 pages of documents, concluded there was no meaningful connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda - contradicting the statements of Bush, Cheney, Rummie, Colin Powell and others?

Well, it's been buried.

This morning, the Pentagon cancelled plans to send out a press release announcing the report's release and will no longer make the report available online.

The report was to be posted on the Joint Forces Command website this afternoon, followed by a background briefing with the authors. No more. The report will be made available only to those who ask for it, and it will be sent via U.S. mail from Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia.

It won't be emailed to reporters and it won't be posted online.

Asked why the report would not be posted online and could not be emailed, the spokesman for Joint Forces Command said: "We're making the report available to anyone who wishes to have it, and we'll send it out via CD in the mail."

Another Pentagon official said initial press reports on the study made it "too politically sensitive."

As long as this report isn't widely available, wingnuts can console themselves with their fevered dreams of Al Qaeda conspiring with Saddam, just as they keep recycling delusional fantasies about Saddam's WMDs being spirited away to Syria.

Steve Benen adds:

And if asked, I’m certain Dana Perino would insist, with a mostly straight face, that the White House never contacted the Pentagon about this, and it was solely the decision of military officials, who, for whatever reason, preferred to hide its own report.

And no one will believe her.

Except Bush and the loyal base, who have so much psychologically invested in believing all this claptrap that their world view might collapse like a house of cards if they ever looked outside their echo chamber.

Throwing Bush Under The Bus

By Cernig

Today in the Weekly Standard, Jeffrey Bell from the Ethics and Public Policy Center (an outfit set up to promote "the Judeo-Christian moral tradition" over secular humanism in public policy) puts forward the Republican game plan for throwing Dubya under the bus while still managing to claim that Bush's policies could be effective if someone with the backbone to see them through (like McCain!) is elected. Scott Johnson of Powerline has already endorsed it and no doubt other extreme Right apparatchiks will follow.

It begins (emphasis mine):

The failure of the Bush presidency is the dominant fact of American politics today. It has driven every facet of Democratic political strategy since early 2006, when Democrats settled on the campaign themes that brought them their takeover of the House and Senate in November 2006. Nothing--not even the success of the American troop surge in Iraq--has altered or will alter the centrality of George W. Bush and his failed presidency to Democratic planning in the remainder of 2008.

Until very recently, it was in the Republicans' interest to find ways of sidestepping or finessing this central political fact. Congressional Republicans sensed that open acknowledgment of the failure of the Bush presidency could cause a collapse in floor discipline, perhaps leading to a series of veto overrides and even forced surrender in Iraq. Candidates for the Republican presidential nomination had to deal with the fact that in our polarized politics, Republican primary voters are still predominantly pro-Bush. From the beginning of this cycle, GOP campaign strategists were aware that presidential candidates openly contemptuous of the Bush administration would go nowhere in the primaries (Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo) or prove to be nonstarters (Chuck Hagel).

John McCain's clinching of the Republican nomination changes many if not most of these GOP calculations. If Republicans are to accomplish the unusual feat of winning a third consecutive presidential election in the context of an unpopular administration of their own party, they will have to develop a narrative that takes into account the failed presidency in their midst while at the same time making a plausible case for a new Republican presidency and continued Republican strength in -Congress. This in turn requires an understanding of Bush's failure that is not self-discrediting for Republicans.

If you think that's going to take mental twisting amounting to deliberately induced schizophrenia, you're right. The GOP, like a crude oil supertanker, has a wide turning circle and getting everything travelling in a new direction is always a messy business.

But, in short, Bell wants Republicans to believe - both at the same time - that while Bush has been a wonderful President and Commander in Chief he has also been a failure for: not hating Teh Gay enough; not giving enough away to the richest 5% and corporations; making of Iraq both a quagmire and a surging success and for allowing Patrick Fitzgerald to use his investigation of the Plame outing to pursue "only people who were hawkish on Iraq and never people who were dovish on Iraq" thus "criminalizing or semi-criminalizing effective defenders of the Iraq invasion" and driving them from the administration.Nary a mention of the possibility that it's the hard-Right's policies and operators who are flawed, rather than Bush's enabling of them.

Go read the whole thing for the entire muddled split-personality effect of seeing the folks in jackboots try to lockstep in two opposite directions at once. Delicious.

How's Iraq Doing? Shhhh, It's A Secret

By Cernig

While General Petraeus' next report to Congress will no doubt be subject to the same PR blitz and general folderol as last time - and deal almost entirely with military matters - the intelligence community's National Intelligence Estimate, which will deal far more with such matters as reconstruction and reconciliation, is to be kept under wraps.

A new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq is scheduled to be completed this month, according to U.S. intelligence officials. But leaders of the intelligence community have not decided whether to make its key judgments public, a step that caused an uproar when key judgments in an NIE about Iran were released in November.

The classified estimate on Iraq is intended as an update of last summer's assessment, which predicted modest security improvements but an increasingly precarious political situation there, the U.S. officials said.

It is meant to be delivered to Congress before testimony in early April by Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, according to a letter sent last week by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell to Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.).

...Intelligence officials said that the National Intelligence Board -- made up of the heads of the 16 intelligence agencies plus McConnell -- will decide whether to release the Iraq judgments once the estimate is completed. But they made clear that they lean toward a return to the traditional practice of keeping such documents secret.

In internal guidance he issued in October, McConnell said that his policy was that they "should not be declassified."

Because, y'know, transparency and oversight on actual progress that counts in America's most expensive military adventure since WW2 is what the Bush administration are all about in the run-up to a general election...

(Just like they're all about oversight of the intel community in the first place)

Not.

Mukasey Jaunts To Gitmo

By Cernig

Attorney General Michael Mukasey had an afternoon jaunt to Gitmo on Wednesday, presumably to make sure prosecutors there would toe the administration line in the wake of several embarassing resignations. There are no reports that he tried waterboarding himself to see if he thought it was torture.

Amazingly, military tribunals are only expected to hear charges against some 80 detainees - out of the 275 still held at Gitmo and over 800 who have passed through Gitmo's gates in total. Even a ten per cent charge rate seems...inadequate recompense...for such a loss of American prestige and such a trampling on the rule of law.

Thirty four international law organisations, including Britain's Law Society, have signed a joint letter to Bush to express their condemnation of the situation in Guantanamo Bay. "We feel that it is inherently unfair to have one justice system for American citizens and another for so-called 'enemy combatants', particularly when such a system has no basis in international law.", UK Law Society president Andrew Holroyd said.

Quick, Hide The Data!

By Cernig

If your economy is tanking and it's your policies that are to blame, what do you do?

Well, if you're the Bush administration, you drop all that bad news down the memory hole.

Forbes has awarded EconomicIndicators.gov one of its “Best of the Web” awards. As Forbes explains, the government site provides an invaluable service to the public for accessing U.S. economic data:

This site is maintained by the Economics and Statistics Administration and combines data collected by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, like GDP and net imports and exports, and the Census Bureau, like retail sales and durable goods shipments. The site simply links to the relevant department’s Web site. This might not seem like a big deal, but doing it yourself–say, trying to find retail sales data on the Census Bureau’s site–is such an exercise in futility that it will convince you why this portal is necessary.

Yet the Bush administration has decided to shut down this site because of “budgetary constraints,” effective March 1.

This was the only government website that centralised all the data on economic indicators, so now if you want to find out how the economy is doing you're going to have to work harder at finding out. Or you could subscribe to the email list and the government will charge you money to find out how they're handling your economy.

Tainted Trials

By Cernig

I personally believe that the six terror suspects to be tried before a military commision are guilty of their alleged crimes. But that they are guilty and will be found guilty doesn't matter any more.

I also personally believe, for instance, that Bush, Cheney and others are guilty of war crimes. Do you think if George or Dick or Donnie was waterboarded, subjected to sleep deprivation or hypothermia that they would confess? You betcha. And I'm also sure they'd confirm their confessions to some nice folks who came along later and asked them to do so - because they'd already know what would happen if they didn't play ball.

In all conscience, I wouldn't support their conviction under such circumstances. That they'd be guilty and found guilty wouldn't matter anymore because torture taints everything it touches.

So does illegal rendition and secret detention. So does a lack of proper due process. So does a system of unequal justice without the consent of the accused. These trials are in violation of international law to which America is party, and thus U.S. law.

Instead of putting some very nasty people cleanly behind bars or in their graves, the Bush administration opted for the worst possible path of tainted trials. It is now impossible to cleanly convict and sentence these men.

The trial will not begin for at least four months, possible far longer, which means the trial itself will be a major news item as the U.S. goes to polls in November. It will be far from over, inviting candidates to take stances on the trial's legality and applicability. If Dems do as they should and condemn it's method while also condemning the evil of those on trial, they are suddenly open to a new round of rightwing sloganeering and hounding for being 'soft on terror". In such circumstances, the White House's claim that it had no influence over who would be tried or when begins to sound thin to the breaking point.

Nor will this trial likely be over by the time the next president is inaugurated. Bush has left his legacy for the next incumbent - become complicit in perpetuating Bush's mistakes and crimes or restore America's honor and justice at the price of allowing these evil people to walk free. The latter is political suicide at home, the former is diplomatic suicide abroad. What a fine mess the George W. Laurel and Dick Hardy years have gotten America into.

Giuliani Overrode NYPD Objections To WTC Command Center

By Cernig

This one, if it gets the play it should, will seriously dent Rudy's already faded credibility as a competent, hard-nosed war-on-terror Decider, which is the only platform he's ever had.

A detailed 1998 New York Police Department analysis opposed the city's plans to locate its emergency command center at the World Trade Center but then-mayor Rudolph Giuliani's administration overrode the objections, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

"Seven World Trade Center is a poor choice for the site of a crucial command center for the top leadership of the City of New York," the Times quoted a panel of police experts aided by the Secret Service as having concluded in a confidential Police Department memorandum which has not been previously disclosed.

The longest of the analysis' nine sections, headed "Explosives," describes a blast analysis of the likely impact of various types of bombs, and concluded that the largest of truck bombs would have led to the building's collapse, the Times report said.

The command center was destroyed during the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center that also destroyed the twin towers in the seven-building complex.

Among the location's vulnerabilities was its history as a target, the report said. One of the World Trade Center's twin towers was attacked by truck bomb in 1993 that killed 6 people and injured more than 1,000.

"This group's finding is that the security of the proposed O.E.M. Command Center cannot be reasonably guaranteed," the July 1998 memo to the city's police commissioner concluded.

The Times said it obtained the document from a law enforcement official who it noted was not affiliated with any rival political campaign.

My guess on why Rudy overrode the report? Follow the money.

Who's Afraid Of Congress? No-one

By Cernig

Glenn Greenwald posts to his usual high standards today as he notes the lack of consequences for ignoring Congressional subpoenas - a lack entirely engineered by Congressional Democrats themsleves.

Since the White House announced to the world that it considered Congress' subpoenas to be laughable and worthless, what has happened? Exactly what Miers and Bolton knew would happen if they ignored the subpoenas: absolutely nothing of any consequence. Both Committees voted to issue contempt citations to the two officials, but Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi -- for months and months -- have refused to bring the matter to the floor for a full vote, a requirement for a witness to be held in contempt.

And there's more of the same on the way because Pelosi and Reid think that contempt citations would "would 'step on their message' of bipartisan unity in the midst of the stimulus package talks". Despite Congress' investigative role being at least as important as its legislative one in the eyes of the Framers and other likeminded political theorists, the Dem leadership are unwilling to live up to their duty - unless it happens to involve baseball.

The Bush administration aren't the only ones who have nothing but contempt for this spinelessness. Count me in too.

Canada Puts US, Israel On Torture Watchlist

By Cernig

This is what happens when the shining city on the hill elects a downmarket asset-stripper as Decider:

Canada's foreign ministry has put the United States and Israel on a watch list of countries where prisoners risk being tortured and also classifies some U.S. interrogation techniques as torture, according to a document obtained by Reuters on Thursday.

The revelation is likely to embarrass the minority Conservative government, which is a staunch ally of both the United States and Israel. Both nations denied they allowed torture in their jails.

The document -- part of a training course on torture awareness given to diplomats -- mentions the U.S. jail at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba where a Canadian man is being held.

The man, Omar Khadr, is the only Canadian in Guantanamo. His defenders said the document made a mockery of Ottawa's claims that Khadr was not being mistreated.

Under "definition of torture" the document lists U.S. interrogation techniques such as forced nudity, isolation, sleep deprivation and blindfolding prisoners.

"The United States does not permit, tolerate, or condone torture under any circumstances," said a spokeswoman for the U.S. embassy in Ottawa.

A spokesman for Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier tried to distance Ottawa from the document.

"The training manual is not a policy document and does not reflect the views or policies of this government," he said.

The government mistakenly provided the document to Amnesty International Canada as part of a court case the rights organization has launched against Ottawa over the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan.

Amnesty Secretary-General Alex Neve told Reuters his group had very clear evidence of abuse in U.S. and Israeli jails.

"It's therefore reassuring and refreshing to see that ... both of those countries have been listed and that foreign policy considerations didn't trump the human rights concern and keep them off the list," he said.

There's diplo-speak and then there's the truth. The Canadian government obviously believes in telling it's own employees the latter while sticking to the formewr for public consumption. In this, alas, it is not alone among Western nations that must deal with the US as ostensible ally, economic and military superpower as well as with the Israeli tail that so often seems to the US dog.

No Evidence Marines Attacked During Afghan 10-Mile Massacre

By Cernig

Does anyone recall the most under-reported alleged atrocity of the War on Terror to date, the case of a Marine unit in Afghanistan which the Afghani government and human right's groups in the country accuse of going on a ten mile rampage, massacring civilians? It happened in March last year but there's only now a Court of Inquiry to see if courts martial should be in the offing.

Authorities found no evidence that a Marine unit was responding to an ambush last year when troops allegedly opened fire indiscriminately on Afghan civilians, killing as many as 19, a Navy investigator testified Monday.

But, Navy authorities did not arrive on the scene until two months later and had only an hour to look at the site of the shooting, Marine Chief Warrant Officer Robert O'Dwyer cautioned.

"From a law enforcement standpoint, that's ludicrous," O'Dwyer said. He said that while one investigation later determined two civilians died and 23 were wounded, another concluded 19 died and 50 were wounded.

O'Dwyer's testimony opened the second week of a Court of Inquiry, a rarely used administrative fact-finding proceeding investigating the actions of two officers involved in the shootings: Company commander Maj. Fred C. Galvin, 38, of the Kansas City area, and Capt. Vincent J. Noble, 29, of Philadelphia, a platoon leader.

The court will recommend whether any charges should filed against the officers, and whether any training should be changed.

O'Dwyer said Navy Criminal Investigative Service agents interviewed Afghan police and civilians, and members of an Army military police unit that arrived on the scene less than an hour after the shooting. He said none confirmed the Marine unit's story that there was a coordinated ambush.

...Citing witness accounts, Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission concluded last year that the Marines fired indiscriminately at pedestrians and people in cars, buses and taxis in six different locations along a 10-mile (16-kilometer) stretch of roadway.

A Marine riding in the convoy testified last week that the convoy was shot at twice and Marines fired back over a span of roadway about 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) long. Navy investigators said the firing occurred over about six miles (10 kilometers), O'Dwyer said.

Six miles is still a heck of a long way, and 19 to 23 dead easily puts this incident in the realms of the Blackwater incident in Iraq which has garnered so much press coverage.

Of course, it might be easier to tell what exactly happened if the on-scene Marine commander hadn't confiscated and destroyed photos and video taken by freelance journalists working for AP at the time, who captured much of what occured.

The justification used back then?

..."Investigative integrity is one circumstance when civil and military authorities will reluctantly exercise the right to control what a journalist is permitted to document," Col. Victor Petrenko, chief of staff to the top U.S. commander in eastern Afghanistan, said in a letter Friday.

He added that photographs or video taken by "untrained people" might "capture visual details that are not as they originally were."

Or, indeed, capture visual details at all.

The current article notes that the Marine unit in question was sent out of Afghanistan after the incident. What it doesn't say is that it was sent to Iraq. Although the Army has apologised for civilain deaths during the incident on the Marine Corp's behalf, the Corps insists that the apology was "premature".

Syria Rebuilds Attacked Site

By Cernig

According to the NY Times, which has satellite pics, the Syrian government has begun rebuilding on the site which has been tentatively identified as that bombed by the Israelis back in September. Of course, since neither Syria nor Israel have ever confirmed what was attacked, that this is the correct site is conjecture, although reasonable conjecture.

air attack was directed against what Israeli and American intelligence analysts had judged to be a partly constructed nuclear reactor. The Syrians vigorously denied the atomic claim.

Before the attack, satellite imagery showed a tall, square building there measuring about 150 feet long per side.

After the attack, the Syrians wiped the area clean, with some analysis calling the speed of the cleanup a tacit admission of guilt. The barren site is on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, 90 miles north of the Iraqi border.

The image released Friday came from a private company, DigitalGlobe, in Longmont, Colo. It shows a tall, square building under construction that appears to closely resemble the original structure, with the exception that the roof is vaulted instead of flat. The photo was taken from space on Wednesday.

Given the international uproar that unfolded after the bombing, “we can assume it’s not a reactor,” said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that has analyzed the Syrian site.

And if this one isn't a reactor, it seems more likely now than ever that the last building wasn't either.

Still, the way the site was cleared would make telling what the original plant was almost impossible, with one exception: we can be utterly sure that the last plant wasn't a working reactor unless Syria is OK with it's top nuclear scientists glowing in the dark. If the plant had had sizeable amounts of nuclear material on site, as some of the most lurid and Cheney-ised reports at the time had suggested, then no amount of bulldozing would make it safe to build on now.

The Syrians, however, refused the IAEA permission to inspect the site, which is highly indicative of something they really don't want the international community looking at.

I'm back to my original suspicion - a missile fabrication plant designed to mate North Korean designed improved Scuds to chemical warheads.

Update Dr Jeffrey Lewis dubs the new building the Monopoly House on the Euphrates (MHE) and writes:

I think Andy — aka the Nonpartisan Pundit — hit the nail on the head in the comment section when he cautioned those concluding the bulldozing of the site was suspicious about jumping to conclusions:

To be fair, let’s consider the possibility that Syria intended to rebuild this building, whatever it was. Would they not “scrape” and flatten the area to place a new foundation on?

Additionally, the two other structures in the facility, including the alleged pump-house, remain. It seems to me if Syria wanted to hide all evidence of a reactor, it would dismantle these as well. Of course that may be the intent, but something the Syrians have not yet accomplished.

Hopefully ISIS will buy future imagery of this site to monitor progress to see what happens.

There has been a certain tendency on the part of the “nuclear reactor” crowd to interpret all actions in light of that assumption (Syria must be destroying the evidence!) rather than consider alternative possibilities of the sort that Andy raised.

I still prefer the hypothesis that it is Bashar al-Assad’s naked swimming pool.

Heh.

US recession is already here, warns Merrill

By Cernig

It's getting scant play over on this side of the pond that I've seen - but it's worth noting that Merrill Lynch says the US recession has already started.

David Rosenberg, the bank's chief North American economist, argues that a weakening employment picture and declining retail sales signal the economy has tipped into its first month of recession.

Mr Rosenberg, who is well-respected on Wall Street, argues: "According to our analysis, this [recession] isn't even a forecast any more but is a present day reality."

His comments are the strongest sign yet that the gloom on Wall Street over the US economy is deepening as the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the credit rout show little sign of easing.

Mr Rosenberg points to a whole batch of negative data to support his analysis, including the four key barometers used by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NEBR) - employment, real personal income, industrial production, and real sales activity in retail and manufacturing.

Sean-Paul at the Agonist notes that Morgan Stanley are leaning towards the same conclusion. Yet this realisation doesn't seem to have broken through into the mainstream yet, especially not in political reporting.

Maybe it's time for the GOP frontrunners to begin explaining how their economic policymaking would differ from Bush's, instead of simply promising to keep his tax cuts?

Schools Out!

By Cernig

Here's one that's off my usual track, but I just found fascinatingly scandalous. Schools out for one set of Florida kids - because their school was built on an old bombing range!

This weekend the Army detonated more than 400 pounds of World War II-era bombs and munitions found on the grounds of a Central Florida middle school.

Forty-nine bombs, each about 23 pounds, as well as several rockets, a rocket booster and a cannon had been found buried near Odyssey Middle School since recovery efforts began Dec. 27.

Also found in one underground pit: an entire U.S. Army tank.

Army workers detonated the explosives in pits over the weekend in controlled explosions.

"This shows how urgent this is," said Orlando City Commissioner Phil Diamond. "I don't know if everyone has grasped the magnitude of this."

The Orlando Sentinel has a whole page of detail, including a short vid clip and graphics. It appears the Army Corps of Engineers have known about the possibility of problems for years - perhaps since '48 but certainly since 1994 - and that tons of earth from the site, containing who knows what, were also used as landfill on local roads and housing developments. In 2002, after a tractor exploded a bomb, private engineers categorised the area as of "critical hazard". the School and surrounding district had been built more than a year before after the Corps said there was no risk despite it's own 1994 report that munitions still existed on the site.

Sens. Bill Nelson and Mel Martinez and U.S. Rep. Ric Keller have written to the Corps demanding that they should immediately put up more fences around the property, post more warning signs and start cleaning up all of the neighborhoods in and around the 12,483-acre former Pinecastle Jeep Range.

You have to think the Corps slipped up badly here. Especially since plans for the old range currently include a medical research center, a Veterans Affairs hospital and a medical school.


(Hat Tip - Comments From Left field.)

Bhutto Bomb Aimed At Gunman's Silence?

By Cernig

Larisa Alexandrovna has been talking to former U.S. spooks, who say that the real target of the suicide bomb at Bhutto's assassination may well have been the gunman.

Three former US intelligence officials have told Raw Story that not only is the gunman dead, he was likely the actual target of the suicide bomber.

According to a former high ranking US intelligence official, who wishes to remain anonymous due to the delicate nature of the information, the US intelligence community understands the gunman to have been killed in the blast following Mrs. Bhutto's assassination.

"He was killed, probably not knowing that the suicide bomber was there," said this source. "We don't know for sure if the two men arrived together. We do know that the assassin died in the explosion, and was probably meant to."

Several other US intelligence officials concur that the bomber was likely "inserted" to "clean up" evidence of the shooting, including eliminating the gunman.

When asked why it was important to determine the relationship between the gunman and the suicide bomber, one former CIA officer explained that such details are the key to understanding what happened, how it happened, and who was ultimately responsible. Such details also enable investigators to document patterns and methods used, in order to determine if a terrorist attack has indeed taken place or something else has occurred.

The official narrative that Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud was responsible for Bhutto's death is fraught with difficulties - not least that he has denied it while calling for an independent international investigation or that no-one can independently verify the alleged transcript of his congratulating a minion by telephone for the assassination. Even if Mehsud was responsible, he's been pardoned by Musharraf three times already and Pakistani intelligence's links to the Taliban and other Islamist groups are fairly well documented. It takes a lot of determined looking the other way - as the Bush administration has done these past years - to ignore those ties. Musharraf isn't even looking for Bin Laden and his military is adamant that no foreign troops or intelligence agents will be allowed on Pakistani soil to conduct anti-terror operations or to help secure Pakistan's nukes.

The very muddled - perhaps deliberately so - narrative from the Pakistani authorities about how Bhutto died has also added to suspicions of a cover-up. That wasn't helped when Musharraf admitted that Bhutto may have been shot but said that it was her own fault for sticking her head up, not a failure to provide adequate security. British investigators are now looking for Bhutto's headscarf, in the hope that it may settle the question of how she died. There's a dearth of evidence because the crime scene was hosed down within hours and no autopsy was performed.

The Washington Post reports today that all of this is fuelling ethnic tension in Pakistan - where the Sindhi minority, from which Bhutto's family comes, are increasingly anoyed at the Punjabi majority who also make up most of the Army. It's a recipe for civil war in the maiking, but the West is in a very weak position right now with respect to Pakistan. Back to Larisa:

at this point, the US has “no workable solution” and cannot discontinue support for Musharraf, given the options.

“We are being held hostage to Musharraf's whim,” said one former intelligence official.

“What options do we have now? None. Under Musharraf, al Qaeda has grown. The tribal sheiks have also grown. It is a mess and there is not a damn thing we can do about it.”

Can Bush at least stop selling the General-in-plainclothes advanced weaponry (e.g. nuke-capable fighters, anti-tank missiles, airborne early warning platforms) more useful against his neighbours than extremists, even if it does help line US arms manufacturers pockets with US taxpayers' money?

EU Accuses US Of Blocking Climate Talks

By Cernig

The member nations of the European Union seem surprised that a Bush administration which has for years denied scientific consensus so they could better serve corporate interests is still dragging its feet.

The European Union accused the United States on Thursday of blocking goals for fighting climate change at U.N. talks in Bali and threatened to boycott U.S. talks among top greenhouse gas emitting nations.

The December 3-14 Bali talks are split over the guidelines for starting two years of formal negotiations on a deal to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, a U.N. pact capping greenhouse gas emissions of all industrial nations except the United States until 2012.

"If we would have a failure in Bali it would be meaningless to have a major economies' meeting" in the United States, Humberto Rosa, Portugal's Secretary of State for Environment, said on the penultimate day of the talks.

...The EU wants Bali's final text to agree a non-binding goal of cuts in emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, of 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 for industrial economies. The United States, Japan and Canada are opposed, saying any figures would prejudge the outcome.

...Washington submitted a new text to the talks around midnight on Thursday that stressed voluntary goals for greenhouse gases rather than binding Kyoto-style caps for developed countries.

The Bushies moved the goalposts at the last minute to throw a spanner in the works? Yah don't say!

For those who have been following the diplomatic obstructionism practised by the White House over Iran's nuclear program - where the Bush administration demands that Iran stop enrichment before negotiations can begin on whether Iran should stop enrichment - will love this bit of hypocrisy:

"Those who are suggesting that you can magically find agreement on a metric when you are just starting negotiations, that in itself is a blocking element," said James Connaughton, Chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

This from the same James Connaughton who pressured the EPA to dramatically weaken the wording of its public statements about the air quality in New York City in the days after the September 11, 2001 attacks and who is a former lobbyist for the power industry and various large electricity users. Has there ever been a Bush administration apparatchik who opened his or her mouth in good faith?

The Euros are asking for a non-binding agreement on a goal, to show willing. If only the Bush administration would take lessons on understanding the diplomatic process when it comes to Iran. But what the EU needs to realise is that a European boycott of any further talks would be regarded as a success by the White House.