Open thead

Finally a gorgeous evening in DC. Mid-70s, breezy. Hallelujah! Read More......

Taliban reportedly using children as soldiers. Of course, we simply rape them...

If the US commander really cares about children, and is telling the truth (of which I'm highly skeptical), then somebody ask him what he thinks about releasing the photos from Abu Ghraib to prove that we're not complicit in raping children.

Fierce fighting in recent months has devastated the ranks of the Taliban, prompting the rebels to recruit children and force some families to provide one son to fight with them, a U.S. commander said Saturday.

I can't even believe our military has the nerve to pull this card. Read More......

Abu Ghraib photos and videos Bush is hiding may contain the rape of little boys

So, as you may know, the Bush administration is now violating a court order to release the rest of its Abu Ghraib photos to the ACLU. Editor & Publisher has done a great job of helping suss out what those remaining photos are:

So what is shown on the 87 photographs and four videos from Abu Ghraib prison that the Pentagon, in an eleventh hour move, blocked from release this weekend? One clue: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress last year, when the scandal was still front page news: "I mean, I looked at them last night, and they're hard to believe.” They show acts "that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhumane," he added.

A Republican Senator suggested the same day they contained scenes of “rape and murder.” No wonder Rumsfeld commented then, "If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse."

Now, this is probably my favorite part of the article. Regarding the government's excuse for NOT releasing the photos as the court has ordered:

One Pentagon lawyer has argued that they should not be released because they would only add to the humiliation of the prisoners.

Yeah. Please don't expose me as a torturer because that might add to the humiliation my victim has to face. Sure, exposing me as a torturer also means I'll probably have to stop torturing my victim, the victim I care so much about that I don't want to humiliate him by informing the world that I'm torturing him. Yeah, right.

So, here's what E&P; was able to deduce might be in the photos and video - the photos and video that would pretty much expose our government to, what, war crimes tribunals?

A military report about that abuse describes detainees being threatened, sodomized with a chemical light and forced into sexually humiliating poses.

"’The American public needs to understand we're talking about rape and murder here. We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience,’ Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told reporters after Rumsfeld testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. ’We're talking about rape and murder -- and some very serious charges.’

“A report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba on the abuse at the prison outside Baghdad says videotapes and photographs show naked detainees, and that groups of men were forced to masturbate while being photographed and videotaped. Taguba also found evidence of a ‘male MP guard having sex with a female detainee.’

“Rumsfeld told Congress the unrevealed photos and videos contain acts 'that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhuman.’”

In the same period, reporter Seymour Hersh, who helped uncover the scandal, said in a speech before an ACLU convention: “Some of the worse that happened that you don't know about, ok? Videos, there are women there. Some of you may have read they were passing letters, communications out to their men….The women were passing messages saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what's happened.’

“Basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys/children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. The worst about all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror it's going to come out.”

The rape of little boys. Well God bless America. I'm so damned proud of my country right now, I could just, well, rape a little boy.

Yeah, I sure wouldn't want to know that my government was sanctioning, and then engaging in a cover-up, of those kind of actions. After all, the little boys who are being raped might be humiliated if we intervened and stopped them from being raped. Read More......

Open thread

About to post a really nasty story about Abu Ghraib... Read More......

A brutal week for jobs

This past week seemed to be flooded with new reports of job cuts. Let's hope someone out there besides mortgage companies are hiring, because that market won't hold on forever.

• HP - 15,000 jobs
• Kodak - another 10,000 jobs
  
• Kimberly-Clark - 6,000 jobs
• Ford - "considering" 10,500 jobs (30% of it's white collar workforce)

Read More......

Poppies! Poppies!

No, I'm not quoting "The Wizard of Oz," I'm referring to an intriguing op-ed in the NYT. It suggests that one way to deal with the heroin trade dominating Afghanistan is to encourage it. The writer points out the worldwide shortage of pain killers, posits the legal and regulated growth of poppies in Afghanistan to meet that need. Since it's virtually the only source of income for the entire nation, this plan would be one way to give farmers a far more compelling choice: the drug lords with their evil ways or dealing with the government buying poppies at a competitive price for use as medicine.

"...even if we paid exactly what the drug lords do, the entire crop would cost only about $600 million - less than the $780 million the United States planned to spend on eradication in Afghanistan this year.

"Besides, eradication efforts have never eliminated a drug crop. Cocaine continues to be widely available, despite the roughly $3 billion that the United States has spent on coca eradication in Colombia over the last five years. And that is only the most recent example.

"India's thriving generic drug industry suggests that there is plenty of money to be made in the marketing of generic pain relievers. But even if returns are modest, generating any profit at all is better than stamping out the major driver of an unstable country's economy. Legal products are also safer and easier to regulate than illegal drugs....

"But think of it this way: what's an easier sell with farmers, hard cash now or pesticide spraying and potentially empty promises of economic assistance? Few Afghans begrudge farmers' efforts to feed their families - but many would turn against greedy planters who continued supplying drug lords despite adequate alternatives."

Read More......

Open thread

Hotter than hell today in today, gee, what a surprise. Read More......

CIA Agent Blasts Rove For Endangering National Security

Raw Story has the statement of Larry Johnson, a one-time CIA agent who testified before Congress about the damage Karl Rove did to national security, the fecklessness of Bush and his anger over Republicans making light of these breaches. It's a corker. One small sample:

I would note that not a single member of our training class has come forward to denounce Valerie or question her bona fides. To the contrary, those we have talked to have endorsed what those of us who have left the CIA are doing to defend her reputation and honor.

As noted in the joint letter submitted to Congressional leaders earlier this week, the RNC is repeating the lie that Valerie was nothing more than a glorified desk jockey and could not possibly have any cover worth protecting. To those such as Victoria Toensing, Representative Peter King, P. J. O'Rourke, and Representative Roy Blunt I can only say one thing—you are wrong. I am stunned that some political leaders have such ignorance about a matter so basic to the national security structure of this nation.

The RNC is LYING. Anyone who allows Mehlman on their TV show must grill him repeatedly for lying about an issue as important as national security. He pretends to have the facts about Valerie Plame's cover status? How does he know that? What are his sources? Did he clear revealing her status with the CIA before going on national TV? If not, why not? Thanks to threader Jeff Brock for pointing us to this.

ADD: And here's crooks and liars w the video of that testimony and the audio of Johnson's radio address for the Dems. Read More......

Bush Energy Dept Stonewalling Congress

Here's yet another example via the NYT of Bush's dangerous propensity for perverting science for political purposes -- in this case via plans for a nuclear waste facility that could have disastrous implications for millions of Americans.

Naturally, a House subcommittee investigating these lies had to file a subpoena to get the Energy Dept. to play ball. Lie and if you're caught in the lie -- stonewall. The whopper at the heart of this: the Energy Dept just wants to protect whistleblowers. Yeah, cause Bush loves whistleblowers.

In a dispute that has lasted more than three months, the Energy Department has resisted, and department officials have complained about the committee's earlier release of e-mail messages detailing the falsifications.

In those e-mail messages government workers talked about manipulating their work to meet quality-assurance standards....

The heart of the issue is government calculations about how fast radioactive material would dissolve into rainwater, percolate through the rock and then travel outside the boundaries of the repository, which is about 100 miles from Las Vegas.

Wow, that's just the sort of study I'd feel comfortable with Bush's people fudging the data on, wouldn't you? Maybe what happens in Vegas will stay in Vegas because it's too sick to leave. Read More......

Chickenhawk Cheney wants abusive treatment of detainees

Funny how Mr. "I had other priorities" than Vietnam is taking such a hard line against McCain's push for humane treatment of detainees being held by the US. McCain and others in the GOP are right that something has to change and that abusing prisoners is wrong and counter productive. Cheney and the other chickenhawks prefer looking the other way and ignoring the military CYA program for senior officers involved in the previous abuses and would rather maintain what he considers a right to "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment."

And the reasoning for maintaining this program? It would interfere with his ability "to protect Americans effectively from terrorist attack." So what kind of protection is being offered now that we are wrapped up in a quagmire in Iraq that is pissing away billions of dollars which could be used for more pressing security programs such as serious security at the nations ports and protecting US citizens who use public transportation systems?

How about showing some concrete evidence that kicking the shit out of a detainee actually delivers results? Evidence on this suggests the contrary and even the Israelis stopped using such treatment as it was counter productive.

What is missing in this story is the position of the senior US military who have so far been doing a fine job of dodging responsibility for just about any and everything. Are they really in favor of such terrible policy? Read More......

Bush is refusing to release the next round of horrendous Abu Ghraib photos

Gee, I thought those photos we saw before were an isolated incident? Well, guess not. And now it seems that President Treason doesn't think he needs to obey the law and release the rest of the photos. Gosh, that's new. This White House thinking it knows what's best for America, to hell with the law?

From, the NYT.

Lawyers for the Defense Department are refusing to cooperate with a federal judge's order to release secret photographs and videotapes related to the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal....

In early June, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of Federal District Court in Manhattan ordered the release of the additional photographs, part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union to determine the extent of abuse at American military prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba....

He rejected arguments from the government that releasing the photographs would violate the Geneva Conventions because prisoners might be identified and "further humiliated," but he ordered any identifying features to be removed from the images.

Oh that's choice. Now the "quaint" Geneva Conventions are suddenly important laws to uphold?

Hey, maybe Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn could express sympathy for someone wanting to kill that judge?! Read More......

Open thread

Joe is off in Alaska for the week, so none of those 7am open threads :-) Read More......

Donations for Niger food crisis increase in the past week

Now that the story is finally starting to make headlines, efforts to help the starving nation have been coming in, according to the UN. Currently about a quarter of the population of Niger is starving and recent estimates are saying that relief for the entire 3.5 million people could take up to 2 months to fully mobilize.

Besides Niger, much of the region has suffered from drought and research is suggesting that crop failures due to drought will also have a strong impact on Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Mali. It seems that all too often rich countries wait until well after the fact to take action which too often means too many lives are lost, not to mention the cost of taking action then becomes considerably higher.

With US troops operating across this region of Africa as part of the war on terror, could someone in the Pentagon not have seen the benefits in taking early action? Like I said before, I also wonder where the "culture of life" is with the US administration who overlooked this looming problem. Read More......

Egypt hit by bombings: 49 dead, 200 wounded

Terrorists hit the resort town of Sharm-El Sheik with three car bombs killing Egyptians and foreigners.

So who is feeling safer out there with this war on terror? Read More......

LA Times: CIA Probe Moves from Leak Source to Perjury, Obstruction

And President Treason still has this piece of shit working out of the Oval Office. Disgusting. These people don't give a damn about what our country stands for, or who lays down their lives to fight for it. I hope all of our soldiers are watching the way Bush and his colleagues are treating an undercover CIA agent, someone willing to risk her life for our country. The contempt they're showing her. And then ask yourselves why you and your buddies are dying in Iraq with no plan to win the war, and why you still don't have the armor the president promised you - what? - a year ago? They don't give a damn about you, they don't give a damn about undercover agents. Karl Rove matters more to these people than putting a nation of 300m Americans at risk, than putting you at risk. Their contempt for what this country used to stand for is palpable.

Senator Durbin was right, this is not America. Read More......