Martini Republic » Trail of prisoner abuse goes “directly back to Cheney’s office”: "Froomkin, in today’s White House briefing, relates details of another recent Wilkerson interview. I can’t say it is surprising, in light of Cheney’s continued initiatives to exempt US personnel from anti-torture legislation and the moral bankruptcy displayed by this administration, but it certainly is disturbing:

Another shocking accusation by former administration insider Lawrence Wilkerson appears to be going under the media radar today.

On NPR yesterday, the former chief of staff to the secretary of state said that he had uncovered a ‘visible audit trail’ tracing the practice of prisoner abuse by U.S. soldiers directly back to Vice President Cheney’s office."

(Via Martini Republic.)

Martini Republic » Ending the war involves ending indifference: "For most Americans, day to day, there are no daily updates from the front. For most, there are no casualty reports in a day, no frets about where a loved one might be stationed, no reminders that so many are at such risk. For most, the war is something, if discussed, to politicize.

A few on the Internet obsess about the war, looking for daily doses of it, easily finding it, and they express their outrage or compassion accordingly. Many more who watch TV see the war as compartmentalized as the nation experiences it, chopped down to a minute and a half each night.

Whether or not even to call it a ‘war’ at all at this point is a difficult proposition—the country has already been taken, occupied, its former usurious political infrastructure has been destroyed.

Amidst all the uncertainty, one thing is certain: the military effort in Iraq is unlike anything that is in any of our memories. The volunteer draft has made it so. This is a war in towards which indifference can easily exist. "

(Via Martini Republic.)

BBC NEWS | US hurricane damage 'preventable':Failures in the flood defence system protecting the US city of New Orleans could have been prevented by relatively cheap modifications, a new report says.

The American Society of Civil Engineers found that rather than a few breaches in the levees caused by Hurricane Katrina, there were dozens of failings.

(Via BBC News.)

Salon.com - War Room: "When Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin said in June that the abuse handed out to some detainees at Guantánamo Bay might sound like the sort of things done by 'Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings,' Republicans all but ran him out of town on charges of being un-American.

We were reminded of the flap as we read this morning's Washington Post. According to the Post, the United States is currently hiding and interrogating some of its most important al-Qaida captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe. The compound -- the location of which the Post is withholding at the request of U.S. government officials -- is part of a 'covert prison system set up by the CIA' in the wake of 9/11, current and former intelligence officials and diplomats tell the Post. The paper says that specific information about these so-called 'black sites' is known by only a 'handful' of officials in the United States and in the host countries. The CIA has dissuaded Congress from asking questions, the Post says. As a result, the Post says, 'Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long.'"

(Via Salon.)

Detainee Policy Sharply Divides Bush Officials - New York Times: "The Bush administration is embroiled in a sharp internal debate over whether a new set of Defense Department standards for handling terror suspects should adopt language from the Geneva Conventions prohibiting 'cruel,' 'humiliating' and 'degrading' treatment, administration officials say.

Advocates of that approach, who include some Defense and State Department officials and senior military lawyers, contend that moving the military's detention policies closer to international law would prevent further abuses and build support overseas for the fight against Islamic extremists, officials said.

Their opponents, who include aides to Vice President Dick Cheney and some senior Pentagon officials, have argued strongly that the proposed language is vague, would tie the government's hands in combating terrorists and still would not satisfy America's critics, officials said."

(Via NY Times.)

Drought Deepens Poverty, Starving More Africans - New York Times: " It has barely rained for a year, the scant corn harvest of six months ago is long exhausted and the regional hospital here is again filling with near-starving children - 18 admissions in August, 30 in September, 23 by mid-October.

Dola Sandram has come to a feeding center in Chikwawa, Malawi, to register her 2-year-old, Fredson, left. Such centers report a sharp increase in the number of children being brought in on the edge of malnutrition.

And what people here routinely call the hunger season - the season with no corn - has barely begun.

'We used to have six, seven children in the unit,' said Emily Sarina, the district nursing officer. 'We expect the number to increase by December, because that's when the hunger is critical.'

Malawi is the epicenter of Africa's second hunger crisis in five months, and the second in which the developed world has responded with painful slowness."

From the article: How to Help: Groups Aiding Hunger in Africa

(Via NY Times.)

Iraq: "CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll. Oct. 28-30, 2005. N=800 adults nationwide. MoE ± 4.

'In view of the developments since we first sent our troops to Iraq, do you think the United States made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq, or not?'

	Made a Mistake	Did Not Make a Mistake	Unsure
	%	%	%
10/28-30/05	54	45	1

(Via PollingReport: Iraq.)

Iraq: "CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll. Oct. 21-23, 2005. N=1,008 adults nationwide. MoE ± 4. 'In view of the developments since we first sent our troops to Iraq, do you think the United States made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq, or not?'

	Made a Mistake	Did Not Make a Mistake	Unsure
	%	%	%
10/21-23/05	49	49	2

(Via PollingReport: Iraq.)

t r u t h o u t - Frank Rich: One Step Closer to the Big Enchilada: "    To believe that the Bush-Cheney scandals will be behind us anytime soon you'd have to believe that the Nixon-Agnew scandals peaked when G. Gordon Liddy and his bumbling band were nailed for the Watergate break-in. But Watergate played out for nearly two years after the gang that burglarized Democratic headquarters was indicted by a federal grand jury; it even dragged on for more than a year after Nixon took 'responsibility' for the scandal, sacrificed his two top aides and weathered the indictments of two first-term cabinet members. In those ensuing months, America would come to see that the original petty crime was merely the leading edge of thematically related but wildly disparate abuses of power that Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, would name 'the White House horrors.'"

(Via t r u t h o u t.)

AlterNet: Blogs: The Mix: Endless sunset: "Most of the provisions of the USA Patriot Act, including access to library records, were supposed to 'sunset' this month, five years after the law's passing. Instead, both the House and the Senate have already voted to renew the entire act, with only minor revisions. While they're at it, they'd like to add some decidedly unpatriotic amendments to expand the death penalty.

These new amendments would let prosecutors shop around for another jury if the one they have is deadlocked on the death penalty; triple the number of terrorism-related crimes eligible for the death penalty; and authorize the death penalty for a person who gives money to an organization whose members kill someone, even if the contributor did not know that the organization or its members were planning to kill.

The Patriot Act was enacted during what President Bush called 'a state of emergency.' It wasn't even read by most of the members who voted for it. But the whole point of the sunset clause was to allow Congresspeople to actually read the bill and debate it in calmer times. Now, the Act is effectively being made permanent with little or no debate or discussion."

(Via AlterNet.)

Slashdot | Using Copyrights To Fight Intelligent Design: "An anonymous reader writes 'The National Academies' National Research Council and the National Science Teachers Association are using the power of copyright to ensure that students in Kansas receive a robust education. They're backed by the AAS: The American Association for the Advancement of Science.' From the release: '[they] have decided they cannot grant the Kansas State School Board permission to use substantial sections of text from two standards-related documents: the research council's 'National Science Education Standards' and 'Pathways to Science Standards', published by NSTA. The organizations sent letters to Kansas school authorities on Wednesday, Oct. 26 requesting that their copyrighted material not be used ... Leshner said AAAS backs the decision on copyright permission. 'We need to protect the integrity of science education if we expect the young people of Kansas to be fully productive members of an increasingly competitive world economy that is driven by science and technology ... We cannot allow young people to be denied an appropriate science education simply on ideological grounds.''"

(Via /.)

Scott Ritter and Seymour Hersh: Iraq Confidential: "MR. HERSH: Do you have any optimism at this point?

MR. RITTER: No. I wish I did.

I mean, the sad fact is, one of the reasons why I was arguing against this war was not just that it was based on a lie, but it's a reflection of the reality that was recognized in 1991: If you remove Saddam and you don't have a clue what's going to replace Saddam, you're going to get chaos and anarchy. People continue to say they want the elegant solution in Iraq. I mean, that's the problem, everybody's like, well, we can't withdraw because we got to solve all the problems.

Ladies and gentlemen, there's not going to be an elegant solution in Iraq. There's no magic wand that can be waved to solve this problem. If we get out and we have a plan, you know, it's still going to cost 30,000 Iraqi lives. Let's understand that, there's going to be blood shed in Iraq. They're going to kill each other, and we're not going to stop it.

If we continue to stay the course, however, that 30,000 number may become 60,000 or 90,000. At the end of the day, we've created a nightmare scenario in Iraq, and the best we can do is mitigate failure. And that's what I'm talking, and, unfortunately, that's a politically unacceptable answer. People say, no, we have to win, we have to persevere, there has to be victory. There's not going to be victory."

(Via NervousFishBlog.)