photo: kino-eye via Flickr

Remember how Judy Miller stored the notes showing that the Vice President’s lackey had leaked Valerie Plame’s identity to her under her desk in a shopping bag? Remember how we mocked that kind of record keeping? Well, the AP reports that the CIA uses the same archival system as Judy:

The two videotapes and one audiotape are believed to be the only remaining recordings made within the clandestine prison system.

The tapes depict Binalshibh’s interrogation sessions at a Moroccan-run facility the CIA used near Rabat in 2002, several current and former U.S. officials told The Associated Press. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the recordings remain a closely guarded secret.

When the CIA destroyed its cache of 92 videos of two other al-Qaida operatives, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Nashiri, being waterboarded in 2005, officials believed they had wiped away all of the agency’s interrogation footage. But in 2007, a staffer discovered a box tucked under a desk in the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and pulled out the Binalshibh tapes.

I look forward to learning whether this particular box of torture tapes once belonged to Jose Rodriguez, who when the tapes were discovered had just retired as head of Clandestine Services but who was head of CTC when the tapes were made, or whether someone else is a Judy Miller-style packrat.

Now, elsewhere in the AP story they make it clear that–as I have suspected–the tapes first revealed to Leonie Brinkema in 2007 were of Ramzi bin al-Shibh. That’s particularly significant because Brinkema had specifically given Zacarias Moussaoui permission to question al-Shibh in January 2003. So when the government told Brinkema they had no tapes (the AP says that since Morocco maintained control of the prison at which al-Shibh was held, CIA claimed it wasn’t “part” of the CIA program), they were denying evidence she had permitted to Moussaoui by name.

And this discovery has implications not just for Moussaoui, and for al-Shibh himself (the AP suggests the tapes may show that al-Shibh’s mental state declined very quickly after he was taken into custody; he had a pending competence assessment order in military commissions that–when al-Shibh was slotted for civilian trial–was thus negated), but also for Binyam Mohamed.  . . .

MSNBC host Cenk Uygur gave Chris Van Hollen, the Chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), multiple opportunities to state clearly that Democrats would oppose any cuts in Social Security, including in the form of delaying the retirement age. Van Hollen dodged and weaved, then cynically failed every test.

Cenk correctly asked whether van Hollen would commit to oppose such cuts, even if the President’s so called deficit reduction (“let them eat cat food”) commission recommended them. Van Hollen refused to commit, implying instead that if cutting Social Security were part of a larger package of reducing deficits, he and other Democrats might support the commission’s recommendations.

Thanks for the warning, Chris. So if it wasn’t clear before, we can now place the Chairman of the DCCC, the body that allocates your campaign contributions to House Democrats, in the same column as John Boehner and Alan Simpson when it comes to [not] protecting Social Security. That’s the list of clowns who wrongly insist we have a deficit/debt crisis (we don’t), that Social Security’s finances are a contributing factor to that crisis (they aren’t), and that cutting Social Security benefits can and should be part of the debt crisis solution (wrong again). Wrong on all counts, Chris, and thanks for making the DCCC’s principles clear.

I can’t think of a single reason why any caring American should contribute a dime to the DCCC. But if you think dissemblers like Van Hollen and the Blue Dogs to whose campaigns he distributes your dollars are good for America, let alone America’s seniors, what can I say?

As Dean Baker, the EPI, Paul Krugman and others have noted, extending the retirement age to 70 would constitute an effective 19 to 20 percent cut in benefits to future seniors. But far too many Democrats are trying to obscure that point by not calling an age eligibility extension a “cut” in benefits, or, like Van Hollen here, they deflect attention to Republican efforts to “privatize” Social Security.

From Krugman’s Monday column, Attacking Social Security:

But the program is under attack, with some Democrats as well as nearly all Republicans joining the assault. Rumor has it that President Obama’s deficit commission may call for deep benefit cuts, in particular a sharp rise in the retirement age.

Social Security’s attackers claim that they’re concerned about the program’s financial future. But their math doesn’t add up, and their hostility isn’t really about dollars and cents. Instead, it’s about ideology and posturing. And underneath it all is ignorance of or indifference to the realities of life for many Americans.

About that math: Legally, Social Security has its own, dedicated funding, via the payroll tax (“FICA” on your pay statement). But it’s also part of the broader federal budget. This dual accounting means that there are two ways Social Security could face financial problems. First, that dedicated funding could prove inadequate, forcing the program either to cut benefits or to turn to Congress for aid. Second, Social Security costs could prove unsupportable for the federal budget as a whole.

But neither of these potential problems is a clear and present danger. Social Security has been running surpluses for the last quarter-century, banking those surpluses in a special account, the so-called trust fund. The program won’t have to turn to Congress for help or cut benefits until or unless the trust fund is exhausted, which the program’s actuaries don’t expect to happen until 2037 — and there’s a significant chance, according to their estimates, that that day will never come.

. . .

It would be easy to dismiss this bait-and-switch as obvious nonsense, except for one thing: many influential people — including Alan Simpson, co-chairman of the president’s deficit commission — are peddling this nonsense.

And having invented a crisis, what do Social Security’s attackers want to do? They don’t propose cutting benefits to current retirees; invariably the plan is, instead, to cut benefits many years in the future. So think about it this way: In order to avoid the possibility of future benefit cuts, we must cut future benefits. O.K.

. . .

The currently fashionable idea of raising the retirement age even more than it will rise under existing law — it has already gone from 65 to 66, it’s scheduled to rise to 67, but now some are proposing that it go to 70 — is usually justified with assertions that life expectancy has risen, so people can easily work later into life. But that’s only true for affluent, white-collar workers — the people who need Social Security least.

Iraq's President Ayad Allawi (photo: Al Jazeera via Flickr)

Welcome to the war that’s going well. Or at least, that’s what they say:

A major U.S. diplomatic push aimed at promoting a coalition government between the two top vote winners in Iraq’s long-stalemated national elections suffered a setback Monday when former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi broke off negotiations with his nearest rival, current Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki.

Allawi’s Iraqiya bloc, which narrowly came in first in the March voting, announced it was suspending talks with al-Maliki’s State of Law bloc until Maliki apologized for a comment in a TV interview aired Monday in which he described Iraqiya as a “Sunni” bloc.

Allawi is a secular Shiite whose bloc attracted the support of most members of Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority, but also a fair number of Shiites, and it is the only parliamentary bloc that can claim a mixture of Sunnis and Shiites among its ranks.

Iraqiya spokeswoman Maysoon Damluji said Maliki’s comment mischaracterized Iraqiya. “We are a nationalist, non-sectarian bloc. We don’t think in terms of Iraq as being Sunni, Shiite and Kurd,” she said. “We refuse to negotiate with anyone who sees us as other than we are.”

I see the adults have taken over in Iraq. Remember, of course, that the Shiites and Sunnis have no history of sectarian strife because “Iraq’s always been very secular,” according to Bill Kristol.

Let me posit that this probably gets us closer to an actual government. The Shiites were simply not interested in a national unity coalition with Allawi’s bloc, even if he won the most seats in Parliament. With Allawi out of the way, a Shiite coalition can emerge if they decide on a Prime Minister candidate. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise if Allawi was just looking for an excuse to pull out of the stalemated talks. While the Iraqi National Alliance, the more hard-liner, religious Shiite bloc, has refused to negotiate with Maliki as well, you can see them reaching some accommodation now that Iraqiya is out of the way. That probably doesn’t end with Maliki as the Prime Minister, since the INA demanded he step down as a condition of their joining the coalition.

I don’t know if this outcome is positive for the people of Iraq at all. But Allawi was no picnic, either. At least some faction of the US wanted Maliki and Allawi to basically govern together, but it seems that both of them have been rejected. This creates uncertainty about who will emerge, and the resulting power vacuum of five months-plus without a government has already taken its toll on Iraq. Just this morning, a suicide bomber killed 41 people outside a Army recruitment center as they queued up to join the security forces.

Compared to Afghanistan, this looks like a glorious victory, which is more a commentary on Afghanistan than Iraq.