Final Thoughts from Newsweek's Departing Baghdad Bureau Chief

Two years ago I went to Iraq as an unabashed believer in toppling Saddam Hussein. I knew his regime well from previous visits; WMDs or no, ridding the world of Saddam would surely be for the best, and America's good intentions would carry the day. What went wrong? A lot, but the biggest turning point was the Abu Ghraib scandal. Since April 2004 the liberation of Iraq has become a desperate exercise in damage control. The abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib alienated a broad swath of the Iraqi public. On top of that, it didn't work. There is no evidence that all the mistreatment and humiliation saved a single American life or led to the capture of any major terrorist, despite claims by the military that the prison produced "actionable intelligence."

Global Military Spending Tops $1T in 2004

Donald Rumsfeld recently aimed critisicm at China's military spending. “Since no nation threatens China, one must wonder: Why this growing investment? Why these continuing large and expanding arms purchases?” A question he may well ask of himself. According to a report recently released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (in our fair city) Global Military Spending topped $1Trillion in 2004. The United States accounted for 47 percent of all military expenditures, while Britain and France each made up 5 percent of the total. In all, 15 countries accounted for 82 percent of the world's total military spending. The BBC reported last month that Chinese military spending increased by 12% in 2004 to $25Bn - or one twentieth of what the US spends. [from MetaFilter.com]

Pakistan Turns Over Terror Suspect to U.S.

Pakistan said Monday it handed over a senior al-Qaida suspect to the United States even though he had been the country's most wanted man for allegedly masterminding two bloody attempts to blow up President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

Bill Would Give CIA More Power Overseas

In the past, the CIA has exercised similar authority in most cases, but the House panel decided to try to put that into law as a result of increased overseas operations by many government agencies, and reports that several Pentagon teams had been found operating overseas without the knowledge of CIA officials.
Under the House committee proposal, CIA Director Porter J. Goss would develop a process for coordinating clandestine human intelligence activities overseas, but it would be "subject to the approval of the DNI," John D. Negroponte, according to the panel's report, made available yesterday.

Michigan School in the Intelligent Design Debate

The national debate over how life began is landing in the quiet southwest Michigan village of Richland, where the school district is threatened with a lawsuit over teaching the theory of intelligent design in science classes.
...The issue worked its way into Gull Lake Community Schools, which includes Richland, when two middle school science teachers, Julie Olson and Dawn Wenzel, put a book on intelligent design called "Of Pandas and People" on the district's annual textbook list. Wenzel and Olson also added a lesson including "Of Pandas and People" into the district's binder-thick science curriculum. The school board subsequently approved both.
"I am fully confident that our school board never studied this page, never had it brought to their attention and never knew what it meant even if they did see it," Superintendent Rich Ramsey said in a statement made through the district's attorney.

Former Diplomat Calls for Accountability over Religious Humiliations

There is nothing so liberating as a resignation.
Ann Wright is now free to say what few dare: That no young military reservist could possibly have concocted the strategy of interrogating Muslim men by using religious humiliation and tactics of sexual degradation worthy of the Marquis de Sade.
"It came from the minds of some of the senior interrogators who are very well-versed in Arab cultures," Wright told me. "Those types of things would be very well discussed."
She has no proof, nor does anyone. We are officially told that the abuse of detainees in American custody - who were stripped naked and beaten, forced to simulate sexual acts, their beards shaved, leered at by women interrogators who rubbed their breasts against them, or smeared them with fake menstrual blood, or grabbed and sometimes kicked their genitals - is the handiwork of a few rogues who are duly punished when caught. To accept this as true we must also believe that these average kids from average American towns are experts on Islam, so well-versed in its strictures about sex that they dreamed up these methods all by themselves.
This makes no sense to Ann Wright.

Iraq Mission at Risk of Failure without Major Changes

Without significant policy changes made by the Iraqi and U.S. governments, the transition of Iraq to a stable democracy faces increased risk of failure, according to a new report issued by Veterans for Common Sense, a nonpartisan veterans' organization with over 12,000 members who have served in every U.S. conflict since 1941.
“Progress has been made, but we are deeply concerned about the risk of escalation and civil war in Iraq,” said Charles Sheehan-Miles, executive director of the group and primary author of the report.
The report, which examines known information about key insurgent groups in Iraq, criticizes U.S. strategy for placing too little emphasis on protection of the Iraqi public, saying, “In particular, the Iraqi public justifiably believes that the emphasis of U.S. forces is more on capturing and killing insurgents than on protecting the public. Consequently, despite having captured or killed some 15,000 insurgents in the last year, the number of insurgents has grown rather than diminished.”

Los Alamos Whistleblower Beating - Details Emerge

The phone reception was awful on the conference call describing the assault on Los Alamos investigator Tommy Hook. But here's the information I pieced together, based on what I could hear his wife, his lawyer, and his partner say:
Last Friday, Los Alamos auditor-turned-whistleblower Tommy Hook got a phone call at his Albuquerque home. It was late -- past ten-thirty at night, and Tommy was getting ready to go to bed. He had had shoulder surgery recently, and a stroke about a year-and-a-half before that. So he needed his rest.
But Tommy got up, anyway. The man on the other end of the call said he was an auditor, too, at Los Alamos. And he had information that could corroborate Tommy's upcoming testimony before the House Energy Committee on financial shenanigans at Los Alamos. The two were supposed to meet earlier that day, but the auditor couldn't make the appointment. Could Tommy meet him now, he asked?
Tommy made the fifty-minute drive to Santa Fe, to a nudie bar called Cheeks. And there he waited, for over an hour. The auditor never showed. So finally, frustrated, Tommy walked out, got into his car, and started it up.
Suddenly, he was yanked out of the car by four to six men. And "they began to beat him with their feet," Tommy's wife, Susan, said. Afterwards, "there were shoe marks on his face." His jaw was fractured. At the hospital, doctors wired it shut -- and diagnosed him with a herniated disk, too.
The men "didn't take his wallet or our car," Susan added. But they "kept telling him," according to Tommy's lawyer, Bob Rothstein, "'If you know what's good for you, you'll keep your mouth shut."
See also: Los Alamos Whistleblower Assaulted
Whistleblower's Long Battle with Nuke Lab

The high intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews may be a result of their persecuted past

The idea that some ethnic groups may, on average, be more intelligent than others is one of those hypotheses that dare not speak its name. But Gregory Cochran, a noted scientific iconoclast, is prepared to say it anyway. He is that rare bird, a scientist who works independently of any institution. He helped popularise the idea that some diseases not previously thought to have a bacterial cause were actually infections, which ruffled many scientific feathers when it was first suggested. And more controversially still, he has suggested that homosexuality is caused by an infection.
Even he, however, might tremble at the thought of what he is about to do. Together with Jason Hardy and Henry Harpending, of the University of Utah, he is publishing, in a forthcoming edition of the Journal of Biosocial Science, a paper which not only suggests that one group of humanity is more intelligent than the others, but explains the process that has brought this about. The group in question are Ashkenazi Jews. The process is natural selection.

Judge Throws Out DUI Because Device Source Code Secret

Hundreds of cases involving breath-alcohol tests have been thrown out by Seminole County judges in the past five months because the test's manufacturer will not disclose how the machines work.
All four of Seminole County's criminal judges have been using a standard that if a DUI defendant asks for a key piece of information about how the machine works - its software source code, for instance - and the state cannot provide it, the breath test is rejected, the Orlando Sentinel reported Wednesda

American Theocrats in Their Own Words

This American Life: Godless America - MUST LISTEN!

[RealAudio] Act One. The Substance of Things Hoped For ... in Government. We hear a quick rundown of all the ways that Christian conservatives are making headway in advancing their values as public policy, why they think total separation of church and state is not what the founding fathers intended. And why they're wrong. On the Christian side of this argument is Pastor Russell Johnson of the Ohio Restoration Project, which is trying to recruit "patriot pastors" to get involved in state politics, and Bill Carrico, a Virgina legislator who's trying to make sure people can express their Christianity in schools and other public places. And then there are the videos and speeches of David Barton, whose group, Wallbuilders, is trying to teach people that the founding fathers meant for America to be a Christian country. On the other side are Rob Boston, spokesman for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and Cornell government professor Isaac Kramnick, co-author of The Godless Constitution. (18 minutes)
Act Two. God Said, Huh? Julia Sweeney, a Catholic, tells the story of how her faith began to crack after reading a most alarming book ... called the Bible. Her story is excerpted from her play, "Letting Go of God," which ran in Los Angeles. Her other one-woman monologues are "God Said, "Ha!" and "In the Family Way." (29 minutes)

'Secret' Senate meeting on Patriot Act

In a move that could expand the police powers in the Patriot Act, the Senate Intelligence Committee will meet behind close doors to discuss, among other things, "a little-discussed provision to enlarge the FBI's ability to wiretap people who it suspects are national security threats." The bill they will discuss is called the Patriot Reauthorization Act (PAREA)
The Boston Globe reported Sunday that the provision in the bill, sponsored by committee chair Republican Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, "would lift one of the last restrictions on special warrants the FBI can obtain through a secret court originally set up to monitor foreign spies: that the information the bureau wants must be related to international terrorism or foreign intelligence."
Instead, the FBI could use the warrants, which bypass normal constitutional safeguards, to look for evidence of unrelated crimes that it could use to get suspects off the street. The wiretap provision is one of three major additions in the draft bill, which would reauthorize the Patriot Act, the package of enhanced law enforcement powers enacted after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
If the bill became law, it also would give FBI agents the power to write their own subpoenas without permission from a judge, allowing them to seize records from hotels, banks, and Internet service providers. This provision would require the FBI to make periodic reports to Congress about how often it uses that power to obtain library records, bookstore and firearms sales receipts, and medical or tax records.

Iraqi reality-TV hit takes fear factor to another level

In one recent opening scene of "Terrorism in the Grip of Justice," viewers see a group of tired, scruffy men sitting on bare ground, squinting in the glare of floodlights and waiting to confess.

The camera then pans to Abul Waleed, the mustachioed, red-bereted commander of the elite Wolf Brigade police squad. Waleed is addressing about 30 terrorism suspects hauled in during Operation Lightning, a massive Iraqi-led sweep (now in its second week) aimed at rooting out car bombers and other insurgents in Baghdad.
"Grip of Justice" dominates the 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. time slot in Iraq - at least anecdotally. There are no Nielsen ratings here.
It's broadly popular and considered a key tool in fighting the insurgency. But critics say the show violates prisoner rights by publicly humiliating suspects before they are proven guilty. As domestic detainees, these men are not covered by Geneva Convention rules for prisoners of war. But even so, "the Iraqi government is still bound to treat prisoners in a dignified way under international human rights law," explains Naz Modirzadeh, assistant professor of international human rights law at the American University in Cairo (AUC) "Public humiliation is a no-no."

Financial Aid Rules for College Change, and Families Pay More

No matter how she parses it, Roberta Proctor cannot make sense of her son's college bill. Her income and her assets have not changed. If anything, she says, her family's finances have deteriorated somewhat.
So, she wonders, how could she possibly owe an extra $6,000 for the coming school year, when tuition has not increased anywhere near that amount?
But she does. Like the Proctors, Californians whose son just finished his freshman year at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, thousands of American families might find it harder to qualify for financial aid this year and might be asked to contribute more money toward the cost of college because of changes to a complicated federal formula they barely know about, much less understand.

Latin Nations Resist Plan for Monitor of Democracy

The major nations of Latin America have told the United States that they cannot support an American plan to establish a permanent committee of the Organization of American States that would monitor the exercise of democracy in the hemisphere, Latin American diplomats said Sunday.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who arrived here on Sunday afternoon to serve as chairwoman of an O.A.S. meeting where the American plan is on the agenda, expressed frustration with their view, saying, "We have to have a discussion of how the organization can be effective if it does not have a mechanism that can help at times of crisis."
If the organization fails to approve the American proposal, it would be a significant diplomatic defeat for the United States - from a region that for decades has generally gone along with Washington's requests. The United States is negotiating with the other countries, though diplomats and officials said they made little progress on Sunday.

Mayors Sign Urban Environmental Accords

Mayors from around the world on Sunday signed an international treaty calling for increased use of public transportation and drastic cuts to the amount of trash sent to landfills.
The signing of the "Urban Environmental Accords" capped the United Nations World Environment Day Conference in San Francisco. The nonbinding accords list 21 specific actions that can make cities greener.
San Francisco was the first U.S. city to host the annual conference. Much of the conference focused on global warming and what mayors can do to curb emissions of "greenhouse gases" such as carbon dioxide that trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere.

Harvard Business School Professor on Student GW Bush

George W. Bush was a Harvard Business School student who thought poor people were just lazy, corporations shouldn't be regulated and Social Security should be trashed. Unfortunately, his economic philosophy has now become our reality. Bobby and Mike talk with Bush's former professor, Yoshi Tsurumi, now a professor of international business at Baruch College, City University of New York.
Yoshi Tsurumi Pt 1
Yoshi Tsurumi Pt 2

Watchdog Culture in the Newsroom

"Watchdog journalism is a state of mind for the whole newspaper: Journalism that gives power to people."
Watchdog journalism is at the heart of a newspaper's commitment to public service. More than 30 publishers and editors, together with members of the Poynter faculty and representatives from top public service journalism organizations, gathered at Poynter last week to discuss how newspapers can create newsroom cultures that allow great watchdog journalism to flourish.

Geneva Conventions Broader than Reported

In an article purporting to "make sense of the latest Gitmo controversies," Time magazine reporters Daniel Eisenberg and Timothy J. Burger falsely asserted that because "[t]he U.S. considers none of the detainees [held at Guantànamo Bay, Cuba] prisoners of war," this "means they do not enjoy rights under the Geneva Convention". But while the United States has not classified the Guantànamo detainees as POWs, non-POWs are also entitled to protection under the Geneva Conventions. In fact, legal experts have concluded that the conventions provide varying levels of protection to all persons in enemy hands.
From the article "What's going on at Gitmo?" in the May 29 edition of Time:

The U.S. considers none of the detainees prisoners of war, which means they do not enjoy rights under the Geneva Convention, which protects POWs from indefinite imprisonment and aggressive interrogation. Because the detainees allegedly targeted civilians and did not belong to a conventional army --or, in the case of the Taliban, did not serve under a legitimate government, in the U.S.'s view --Washington classifies them as unlawful or enemy combatants, a decision that numerous critics vehemently disagree with.

While the Third Geneva Convention details the protections to which POWs are entitled, the Fourth Geneva Convention (GCIV) stipulates different protections for "civilian persons in a time of war," as Media Matters for America has repeatedly noted. The International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) -- the organization that pioneered the concept of international humanitarian law and has monitored compliance with the Geneva Conventions for more than 140 years -- has argued that the so-called "unlawful enemy combatants" currently detained at Guantànamo Bay are entitled to protections under GCIV. Its 2003 legal analysis titled "The legal situation of 'unlawful/unprivileged combatants" concluded that "unlawful combatants" are entitled to "the right to 'humane treatment' as defined in Articles 27 and 37 [of GCIV], and thus the prohibition of torture and ill-treatment; as well as the fair trial rights contained in Articles 71-76 [of GCIV]."