Extraordinary Rendition

For years, unnamed government officials have acknowledged that they use “extraordinary renditions” to send suspects to other countries to be tortured. Our ally Egypt is a favorite destination of such flights. Now, videos of Egyptian torture have forced Americans to see what such “special treatment” is like for suspects. In one video, a woman is forced to strip and is abused by a police officer and in another Egyptian mini-bus driver, Emad el-Kabir, 21,l is shown screaming on the floor as officers sodomize him with a wooden pole. The police then sent the video to el-Kabir’s friends to humiliate him. These videos remove the abstract quality of the debate over U.S. torture policies, both in terms of waterboarding and extraordinary renditions.

[...]

These are the same individuals who handle our own torture needs through extraordinary renditions.

  Jonathan Turley

No Exodus?

No, I'm not talking about Iraq.

“Really, it’s a myth,” Dr. Hawass said of the story of the Exodus, as he stood at the foot of a wall built during what is called the New Kingdom.

[...]

Egypt is also a spiritual center, where for centuries men have searched for the meaning of life. Sometimes the two converge, and sometimes the archaeological record confirms the history of the faithful. Often it does not, however, as Dr. Hawass said with detached certainty.

“If they get upset, I don’t care,” Dr. Hawass said. “This is my career as an archaeologist. I should tell them the truth. If the people are upset, that is not my problem.”

  NY Times article

Weeeeeeell, you may be in Egypt, but King George, God's representative on Earth, could make it your problem, Bub.

So just watch it.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Iraq 'sovereignty' crumbling

Four Sunni Arab politicians withdrew yesterday from the group writing Iraq's new constitution after two colleagues were assassinated, threatening to derail the country's path toward full sovereignty.

[...]

''We want a full international investigation" into the killings, [Saleh] Mutlak said, reflecting the Sunnis' belief that the Shi'ite-dominated government would not look closely into the assassination because it tacitly condones violence against hard-line, proresistance Sunni Arabs.

  Boston.com article

Algeria's envoy to Baghdad was kidnapped on Thursday, police sources said.

[...]

Egypt's envoy was kidnapped and killed earlier this month by al Qaeda's Iraq wing, which vowed to carry out more attacks on diplomats in the Iraqi capital.

  Reuters article

YWA Catching up:

Eleven former intelligence officers say the leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity may have damaged national security and the government's ability to gather intelligence.

The former officers made their views known in a three-page statement to congressional leaders.

   article

Thousands of Pakistani tribesmen shouted anti-U.S. slogans on Saturday as they buried three of 24 suspected Islamist militants killed inside Pakistan by U.S. forces operating out of Afghanistan.

[...]

Pakistani officials said they were checking whether any territorial violation was committed by the U.S. forces while hitting the suspected militants.

Despite its status as a key U.S. ally, Pakistan has bridled in the past at U.S. sorties across the border.

   article

An Army general who has been criticized for his role in the treatment of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention center and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq has contradicted his sworn congressional testimony about contacts with senior Pentagon officials.

Gen. Geoffrey Miller told the Senate Armed Services Committee in May 2004 that he had only filed a report on a recent visit to Abu Ghraib, and did not talk to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or his top aides about the fact-finding trip.

But in a recorded statement to attorneys three months later, Miller said he gave two of Rumsfeld's most senior aides - then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary for Intelligence Steve Cambone - a briefing on his visit and his subsequent recommendations.

[...]

Miller's statement about the meeting, if true, suggests that officials at the very top of the Pentagon may have been more involved in monitoring activities at the prison than previously disclosed.

[...]

Miller, Cambone and Wolfowitz, who is now acting director of the World Bank, each declined to respond to written questions about Miller's contradictory statements. Rumsfeld, Cambone, Wolfowitz and Miller have denied knowledge of prisoner abuse.

   article

The federal government's chief investigator yesterday blasted the Pentagon for its ''atrocious financial management," saying the Defense Department was not able to give federal oversight officials a full accounting of the $1 billion being spent each week on the war in Iraq.

''If the Department of Defense were a business, they'd be out of business," David Walker, comptroller general of the Government Accountability Office, said at a breakfast with reporters yesterday. ''They have absolutely atrocious financial management."

The GAO has been examining the Pentagon's Iraq expenses, and ''we're having extreme difficulty in getting the Department of Defense to provide a full accounting of what they're spending" there, Walker said. ''I can't understand how we're spending $1 billion a week."

   article

The U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, warned Wednesday that more terrorist attacks could be in the works in the kingdom.

The embassy issued a warden's message, or advisory, to the American community in Saudi Arabia saying that it "has received indications of operational planning for a terrorist attack or attacks in the kingdom."

   article

In a ruling seen as a sharp blow to coordinated counterterrorism efforts in Europe, Germany's highest court refused Monday to turn over an Al Qaeda suspect to Spain, arguing that a recent Europe-wide agreement to streamline extradition procedures across Europe violated the rights of German citizens.

   article

Egypt's newspapers on Saturday convey widespread shock at the arrest in Cairo of an Egyptian biochemist, Magdi Mahmoud al-Nashar, for questioning over the London bombings.

[...]

Interior Minister Habib al-Adli has said that 33-year old Egyptian Chemist Dr Magdi al-Nashar who has been arrested recently by the security forces has no connection with the terrorist al-Qaeda organisation.

In an exclusive statement to Al-Jumhuriyah, he said that what has been reported by US and British TV channels and published in Arab and western press on his connection with al-Qaeda organisation was groundless, and was based on hasty conclusion.

   article

A federal appeals court has said Osama bin Laden's driver can face a war crimes tribunal at Guantánamo after all, reversing a lower court ruling and setting the stage for a Supreme Court challenge.

[...]

A three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously upheld President Bush's war powers to create a military commission to try Salim Ahmed Hamdan, 35, of Yemen.

   article

Forty-four government scientists have violated ethics rules on collaborating with pharmaceutical companies, a preliminary review by the National Institutes of Health shows.

Nine of the scientists may have violated criminal laws, the report said.

   article

It's a war that soldiers in Iraq weren't trained for: a long-distance fight to keep marriages and finances intact [...]

[...]

After surviving the chaos of Iraq, thousands of soldiers have become casualties of a fight they were poorly trained for: keeping control of their family lives during the separation of war. Men and women who feel lucky their units suffered few fatalities say they can name dozens who returned to empty houses, squandered bank accounts, divorce papers and restraining orders.

The Army divorce rate has jumped more than 80% since the fighting began overseas in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The courts around Ft. Hood, the Army's largest post, may have to add another judge to handle the caseload.

   article

President Bush said Monday that he will fire anyone in the administration found to have committed a crime in the leaking of a CIA operative's name, creating a higher threshold than he did one year ago for holding aides accountable in the unmasking of Valerie Plame.

After originally saying anyone involved in leaking the name of covert CIA operative would be fired, Bush said: "If somebody committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration."

   article

And if that were actually what would happen, there'd be a very empty White House indeed.

Inside the Beltway, where everyone spends far too much time sniffing each other's fumes, speculative frenzy has the Rove crisis reaching a point where the president has no choice but to separate himself from Rove. Nonsense. In Texas, we dance with the ones that brung us.

[...]

People who think the president might cast his deputy chief of staff to the wolves need to get another fantasy. Short of a Nixonian resignation by George W. Bush, or an indictment and conviction, the Architect, Bush's Brain, Turd Blossom, or by whatever name he is called, Karl Rove is on for the long ride. There would be no Bush presidency without Rove.

   article

Touché.

The FBI works in Iraq!

Is our national security threatened because our domestic law enforcement agency (like our National Guard) is sending people out of the country?

Iraq is ready to accept U.S. help in investigating the killing and kidnapping of government officials, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Sunday after a surprise visit amid tight security.

The informal agreement covering the criminal investigations came after Gonzales met with Iraq's prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, as well as police and judicial officials during a six-hour visit to the Iraqi capital. Word of the arrangement followed the abduction on Saturday night of Egypt's top envoy to Iraq — an apparent bid to discourage the country's Arab neighbors from bolstering ties to the embattled U.S.-backed government.

Ihab al-Sherif, 51, chief of the Egyptian diplomatic mission in Baghdad, was kidnapped by about eight gunmen after he stopped to buy a newspaper in western Baghdad, witnesses said.

Al-Sherif, who had been in the country since June 1, was pistol-whipped and forced into the trunk of a car as the assailants shouted that he was an "American spy," the witnesses said on condition of anonymity.

[...]

While details still need to be worked out, investigators from the FBI and other U.S. law enforcement agencies would join their Iraqi counterparts at crime scenes and in other aspects of the probes, Gonzales' aides said.

[...]

Some five dozen FBI agents and analysts are also on assignment in Iraq investigating roadside bombings and other attacks against U.S.-led coalition forces.

[...]

Gonzales' visit took place under extraordinary security precautions, including a news blackout until Gonzales was safely inside the heavily fortified green zone where Iraqi and U.S. officials work.

[...]

The attorney general condemned abuses by American soldiers at the
Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, blaming them on a few individuals, not official U.S. policy.

  Yahoo News article

Oh, that's rich, coming from the guy who found the legal excuse for granting the POTUS torture rights.

And speaking of rich, catch this July 4 speech from the Asshat in Chief...

The challenges that America faces in Iraq, President Bush said at an outdoor rally here on Monday, are like those that confronted the country on its first Independence Day, the (registration-restricted) New York Times' Anne Kornblut reports.

   Raw Story article

Yeah. Funny he should mention that. I'm pretty sure he's not equating the "insurgents" with the American patriots who were fighting against the occupying English.

"On July 4, 1776, more than five years of the Revolutionary War still lay ahead," Mr. Bush said.

So don't get in a hurry to leave Iraq, eh?

By the way, he was in W. Virginia when he said that. Apparently, he keeps going back to that state on Independence Day.

It was the third time in recent years that Mr. Bush had visited West Virginia on the July 4 holiday, drawn to its nearness and increasingly Republican electorate at a time when many in the state are also active in the military. Republicans, having won the state's five electoral votes in the last two presidential elections, are now eyeing the possibility that Representative Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican often targeted by Democrats, will challenge the revered Democratic senator from the state, Robert C. Byrd, who is up for re-election in 2006. Ms. Capito and her father, Archie A. Moore, Jr., the former governor, joined Mr. Bush onstage.

Never pass up an opportunity to do a little politicking for the party, Buttie.

Taxpayers pick up the tab?

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.