Guards at Guantanamo Bay brag of inflicting beatings on detainees

From the Associated Press:

Guards at Guantanamo Bay bragged about beating detainees and described it as common practice, a Marine sergeant said in a sworn statement obtained by The Associated Press.

The two-page statement was sent Wednesday to the Inspector General at the Department of Defense by a high-ranking Marine Corps defense lawyer.

(Via stranger fruit.)

The U.S. no-fly list is a joke

Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes has obtained a copy of the no-fly list being used for airline passenger screening.

The list includes people who are not a threat (like Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, Saddam Hussein, and 14 of the 19 dead 9/11 hijackers). It includes numerous common names that are useless for screening purposes--Gary Smith, John Williams, and Robert Johnson are on the list. Kroft spoke with 12 Robert Johnsons, and all of them said they are detained almost every time they try to fly.

Worse yet, it doesn't include the names of some of the most dangerous living terrorists:

The 11 British suspects recently charged with plotting to blow up airliners with liquid explosives were not on it, despite the fact they were under surveillance for more than a year.

The name of David Belfor who now goes by Dahud Sala Hudine, is not on the list, even though he assassinated someone in Washington, D.C., for former Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini. This is because the accuracy of the list meant to uphold security takes a back seat to overarching security needs: it could get into the wrong hands. "The government doesn't want that information outside the government," says Cathy Berrick, director of Homeland Security investigations for the General Accounting Office.

I'd say that particular name is well known outside of the government now, Ms. Berrick.

The TSA has allegedly been trying to fix the list for three years, spending $144 million to do so, but there is "nothing tangible yet."

This is staggering incompetence. Kip Hawley is still an idiot.

UPDATE (October 5, 2006): I second Tim Lee's recommendation of Jim Harper's commentary on what's wrong with watch lists.

CIA warned Rice, Ashcroft, and Rumsfeld of probable al-Qaeda attacks on U.S. before 9/11

On July 10, 2001, CIA Director George Tenet and CIA counterterrorism chief J. Cofer Black gave a briefing to Condoleezza Rice warning that al Qaeda was preparing for an imminent attack on the U.S. In Bob Woodward's new book, State of Fear, he writes that they felt like they got "the brush-off" from Rice.

But she asked that the same briefing be given to John Ashcroft and Donald Rumsfeld, and they received it on July 17, 2001, as confirmed by Rice's spokesman Sean McCormack.

These briefings were not reported in the 9/11 Commission Report, and 9/11 Commission counsel Peter Rundlet has accused the White House of hiding the July 10th briefing from the Commission. But George Tenet specifically told the 9/11 Commission about these briefings, yet they didn't include it in the Report:

Former CIA Director George Tenet gave the independent Sept. 11, 2001, commission the same briefing on Jan. 28, 2004, but the commission made no mention of the warning in its 428-page final report. According to three former senior intelligence officials, Tenet testified to commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste and to Philip Zelikow, the panel's executive director and the principal author of its report, who's now Rice's top adviser.

Ashcroft has claimed that he didn't receive a briefing from Tenet, saying through a spokesman that he does not recall a July 17, 2001 briefing. A Pentagon spokesman had "no information" about whether Rumsfeld received such a briefing.

On August 6, 2001, the CIA's Presidential Daily Briefing was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US."

Rice said this to the 9/11 Commission:

"Well, Mr. Chairman, I took an oath of office on the day that I took this job to protect and defend. And like most government officials, I take it very seriously. And so, as you might imagine, I've asked myself a thousand times what more we could have done. I know that, had we thought that there was an attack coming in Washington or New York, we would have moved heaven and earth to try and stop it. And I know that there was no single thing that might have prevented that attack."

Some of the above is covered in this truthout.org piece by William Rivers Pitt, but it mistakenly says that the 9/11 Commission was not informed of the Tenet/Rice briefing. The question is not only why Rice, Ashcroft, and Rumsfeld didn't take action in response to these briefings from the CIA, and not only why Rice didn't report it to the 9/11 Commission, but why the 9/11 Commission didn't put it in their report.

UPDATE (October 7, 2006): Ashcroft stopped flying on commercial airlines and started flying only on private planes shortly after July 17, 2001, as reported by CBS News on July 26, 2001. This was allegedly due to an FBI "threat assessment" which had advised him to only fly by private plane for the rest of his term of office.

Foley, Fordham, and Franks (and Hastert)

Rep. Tom Reynolds' chief of staff (and Mark Foley's former chief of staff) Kirk Fordham has resigned (or been fired). There are at least two stories--one says Fordham successfully kept the information about Foley from being provided to the full House Page Board (which has a Democratic Party member on it and has now resigned; another says that Fordham raised the issue repeatedly with Dennis Hastert to no avail and has now been fired and made into a scapegoat to protect Hastert. TPM Muckraker has more.

Arizona Representative Trent Franks says he thinks it was the Democratic leadership that knew about the issue but has kept it quiet, and he supports Hastert.

UPDATE: Fordham now says he told Hastert's office about Foley's problem in 2004, and is now ready to tell the FBI all about it.

UPDATE: Make that 2003. Hastert chief of staff Scott Palmer denies Fordham's statement.

David Corn suggests that the Republicans will now place the blame for concealment of Foley's issues on a conspiracy of gay Republican staff, including Fordham (who is openly gay).

UPDATE (October 7, 2006): The Washington Post reports that another staffer has come forward to support Fordham's account over Palmer's--that Hastert's office was informed of the Foley issue in 2003.

UPDATE (October 8, 2006): In 2002 or 2003, House clerk Jeff Trandahl informed then-Foley chief of staff Fordham that Foley had showed up drunk at the page's dorm and was refused admittance. This prompted Fordham to meet with Scott Palmer to discuss Foley's issues, though Fordham did not mention that particular event.

Man arrested for criticizing Cheney sues Secret Service

Steven Howards of Golden, CO was taking his 8-year-old son to a piano lesson at Beaver Creek Resort when he saw Vice President Dick Cheney. He walked up to him and said "I think your policies in Iraq are reprehensible" (or "words to that effect") and walked off to drop off his son. When he returned through the area about ten minutes later, he was arrested by U.S. Secret Service Agent Virgil D. Reichle, Jr. He was told that he would be charged with assault on the vice president, and held in jail for about three hours before being released on $500 bond. He was, instead, charged with misdemeanor harassment, but the charges were dropped at the request of the District Attorney about three weeks later.

Howards is now suing the U.S. Secret Service, making this the third lawsuit accusing the Secret Service or White House staff of breaking the law to keep people with opposing political views away from the President and Vice President.

Fox labels Foley a Democrat on O'Reilly Factor

Fox labeled former Rep. Mark Foley as a Democrat three times during the O'Reilly Factor last night. When they re-ran the clips later last night, they removed the incorrect party affiliation, but didn't mention that he was a Republican.

Fair and balanced.

UPDATE: Associated Press has done the same thing.

Meet Ollie

Ollie is our foster dog. Check him out on the RESCUE site. He's great fun and very loving. And available for adoption in the Phoenix area.

UPDATE (December 10, 2006): Ollie was adopted last night by a family with another bassett hound and a shar pei.

Foley's attraction to young males was well known on Capitol Hill

Foley's attraction to young male pages was well known, with at least one page being warned over a decade ago.

TPM Muckraker:

"Almost the first day I got there I was warned," said Mark Beck-Heyman, a San Diego native who served as a page in the House of Representatives in the summer of 1995. "It was no secret that Foley had a special interest in male pages," said Beck-Heyman, adding that Foley, who is now 52, on several occasions asked him out for ice cream.

Halfway There:

“My daughter was in the capital page program.”

I had forgotten. JM went on.

“She had dinner with the congressman.”

This did not compute.

“With Foley? Really?”

“Yeah. He invited two pages to have dinner with him and they invited my daughter and another girl to go with them.”

“These pages were boys?”

“Yeah, but they were too smart to go by themselves, so they took the girls to their dinner with Foley.”

It's not plausible that the Republican Leadership was unaware.

Cato Institute provides forum to ID crackpot cult member Jonathan Wells

Skeptic Michael Shermer is speaking about his new book, Why Darwin Matters, at noon on October 12 at the Cato Institute in Washington D.C. The Cato Institute is then showcasing a commentary on Shermer by "Intelligent Design proponent Jonathan Wells," whose dishonest books Icons of Evolution and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism, have been shredded at The Panda's Thumb.

Wells, a follower of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, entered a Ph.D. program at the behest of Moon. Wells wrote: "Father's [Moon's] words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism. When Father chose me to enter a PhD program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle."

Rev. Moon, who was crowned in a bizarre ceremony on Capitol Hill thanks to the support of a number of Congressmen, has also been supported by a variety of evangelical Christians who would ordinarily oppose cult groups whose leaders claim to be the second coming of Christ, such as Left Behind co-author Timothy LaHaye, his wife and head of Concerned Women for America Beverly LaHaye, Jerry Falwell, Family Research Council head Gary Bauer, Pat Boone, and Christian Coalition leader and Jack Abramoff pal Ralph Reed. Also involved with Moon have been former president George H.W. Bush and his son and President George W. Bush. (More on Moon and his connections to Christian and Republican leaders here and here.)

Why is the Cato Institute giving a forum to a purveyor of pseudoscience and an advocate of Moon's cult?

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Richard W. Rahn, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, is also a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and writes for Moon's Washington Times?

Some nice t-shirts

A shirt with a picture of Thomas Jefferson and the words "enemy combatant," a shirt that says "I am not a terrorist" in Arabic, and a shirt that just says "enemy combatant" (same link as the Arabic shirt). I like the first two better than the third.