Female soldier committed suicide over interrogation techniques in Iraq

The third woman to die in Iraq, Army Specialist Alyssa Peterson, 27, from Flagstaff, Arizona, was reported as having died from a "non-hostile weapons discharge." A reporter who dug further, Kevin Elston, found that she committed suicide on September 15, 2003, after becoming distraught from working in an interrogation unit known as "the cage." Peterson, a devout Mormon who was working as an Arabic translator, was upset by the methods of interrogation being used on Iraqi prisoners. After two days in the unit, she refused to participate further, was reassigned, and was sent to suicide prevention training.

Army spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques that Peterson objected to, and say that all records of them have been destroyed.

Electronic voting machines in Florida having problems in early voting

Voting machines in Florida being used for early voting have unaccountably been registering votes for Democratic candidates as votes for Republicans at the review screen. The cases that have been noticed have been corrected with the assistance of poll workers. But how many haven't been noticed?

(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)

TSA Fails Screening Tests, Looks for Who Leaked the Results

The TSA badly failed a recent set of tests at Newark's Liberty Airport. TSA screeners missed 90% of the guns and explosives that testers put through the system. TSA's response? Immediate action to try to find out who leaked the results.

(Via Bruce Schneier's blog.)

Olbermann on Limbaugh's attack on Michael J. Fox

Keith Olbermann shows the video of Limbaugh's attack on Michael J. Fox, which more vividly illustrates Limbaugh's depravity. (Also see Media Matters on Limbaugh's fake apology.)

Point out the obvious, get raided by the FBI

Security researcher Chris Soghoian, a graduate student at Indiana University's School for Informatics and an intern at Google, set up a website that functions as a boarding pass generator for Northwest Airlines. The site contained a form that allowed you to fill in name, flight number, destination, and all of the other information on a boarding pass, and would display a boarding pass that would be indistinguishable from the real thing at the TSA security checkpoints.

He pointed out that the identity check at the TSA checkpoint amounts to nothing more than a comparison between the name on a picture ID and the name on a boarding pass, and that this provides no security whatsoever. I'm not sure what threat this check is even supposed to be trying to mitigate. At best, it is an attempt to piggy-back on the check against the no-fly list (which is itself a complete joke) that is performed by the airlines when you purchase a ticket, but clearly that fails as his boarding pass generator is one of several ways to create a boarding pass in a name other than your own--including modifying the displayed text generated by any airline's online site or even purchasing a ticket in any name you choose. The latter was displayed vividly by a couple of guys who purchased tickets in the names of "Al Kyder" and "Terry Wrist" (link includes video).

In my opinion, the only actual purpose served by checking for a valid boarding pass at the TSA checkpoint is to reduce the number of people passing through the checkpoint in order to most efficiently make use of security resources. It does not otherwise have any effect on security; it provides no deterrent to an attacker. It is not effective in screening out those with malicious intent, and it is not even effective in verifying identity.

Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) has called for Chris Soghoian to be arrested. He was visited and interrogated by the FBI, then went to stay at his parents' house. Friday night, the FBI broke their way into his apartment, seized his computers, and generally trashed his place.

Lesson: Point out U.S. security weaknesses, and you will be punished. Those responsible for the weaknesses and idiocy of U.S. "security theater," however, will not be held accountable.

This is one of the rare times when Michelle Malkin actually says something correct.

Other coverage: Jim Harper, author of the excellent book Identity Crisis, at the Technology Liberation Front and at Cato@Liberty (this post does a good job of pointing out the problems with the TSA identity check). Bruce Schneier, at his blog. And there's some rather good coverage in multiple posts at BoingBoing.

The problem that Soghoian pointed out was previously described in February 2005 on Slate.com by Andy Bowers, and in 2003 by Bruce Schneier in his Crypt-o-Gram newsletter.

So yes, Kip Hawley is still an idiot.

UPDATE (November 2, 2006): Bruce Schneier has written a detailed description of the flaw in the security design of the TSA identity check, and makes the same point that even if the flaw is corrected it doesn't add any real security because it's just a check of the no-fly list.

Dirty Politician: Rick Renzi

Rep. Rick Renzi (Republican, AZ-District 1) is now under investigation by the feds, for some deals involving San Pedro River water and land nearby which a friend of his made millions from.

Renzi is on CREW's list of the top 20 most corrupt Congressmen.

Bush administration incompetence in Iraq

I guess it shouldn't have been surprising to find that the Bush administration appointed people to key positions in post-invasion Iraq on the basis of their loyalty to George W. Bush rather than their possession of any relevant skills or experience, as we saw with Michael Brown's appointment to head FEMA and George Deutsch's appointment as a press officer at NASA. But I didn't imagine that things were actually as bad as they were. An article in the Washington Post derived from Rajiv Chandrasekaran's new book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, describes the application process for jobs with the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq:

One former CPA employee who had an office near O'Beirne's wrote an e-mail to a friend describing the recruitment process: "I watched résumés of immensely talented individuals who had sought out CPA to help the country thrown in the trash because their adherence to 'the President's vision for Iraq' (a frequently heard phrase at CPA) was 'uncertain.' I saw senior civil servants from agencies like Treasury, Energy . . . and Commerce denied advisory positions in Baghdad that were instead handed to prominent RNC (Republican National Committee) contributors."

Loyalists with dubious experience also replaced highly competent and experienced people who were already in place:

Haveman, a 60-year-old social worker, was largely unknown among international health experts, but he had connections. He had been the community health director for the former Republican governor of Michigan, John Engler, who recommended him to Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense.

Haveman was well-traveled, but most of his overseas trips were in his capacity as a director of International Aid, a faith-based relief organization that provided health care while promoting Christianity in the developing world. Before his stint in government, Haveman ran a large Christian adoption agency in Michigan that urged pregnant women not to have abortions.

Haveman replaced Frederick M. Burkle Jr., a physician with a master's degree in public health and postgraduate degrees from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and the University of California at Berkeley. Burkle taught at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, where he specialized in disaster-response issues, and he was a deputy assistant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which sent him to Baghdad immediately after the war.

He had worked in Kosovo and Somalia and in northern Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. A USAID colleague called him the "single most talented and experienced post-conflict health specialist working for the United States government."

But a week after Baghdad's liberation, Burkle was informed he was being replaced. A senior official at USAID sent Burkle an e-mail saying the White House wanted a "loyalist" in the job. Burkle had a wall of degrees, but he didn't have a picture with the president.

Further quotes and commentary can be found at Dispatches from the Culture Wars and The Agitator.

Vernon Robinson/Paul Nelson recycled sleazy attack ads

Republican Vernon Robinson is running for the House of Representatives against Democrat Brad Miller with unbelievably sleazy tactics, such as accusing Miller of being gay because he is middle-aged and has no children. Miller responded by pointing out that he is married, but his wife is unable to have children due to a hysterectomy and she suffers from endometreiosis.

The topper is Robinson's attack ad (which has been recycled by Republican Paul Nelson against Democrat Ron Kind in Wisconsin's third district). This ad accuses the Democrat (Miller or Kind) of spending "your tax dollars to pay teenage girls to watch pornographic movies with probes connected to their genitalia," "to study the masturbation habits of old men," and "to study the sex lives of Vietnamese prostitutes."

Of course, there was no vote by either of these Democrats for any such thing. Rather, they voted against taking action to cancel five specific research studies by the National Institutes of Health, on the grounds that it is not Congress' place to make specific decisions about what research the NIH funds. The first study referenced in the advertisement, regarding teenage girls and pornographic movies, is apparently designated by an incorrect grant number in the ad. The second study, NIH grant R03HD039206, was titled "Longitudinal Trends in the Sexual Behavior of Older Men," which examined quality of life effects in older men--it was not specifically a study of the "masturbation habits of old men." This grant was perhaps $50,000 per year over two years, out of the NIH's $30 billion annual budget. The third study, NIH grant R01MH065871, was a proposed study of mental health risks in response to an announced program to do research on particular risk groups that have thus far not received attention from investigators.

You can see both ads and read comments on them (some of the above is derived from comments by Phil T. Bastid) here. A response by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania which recounts the specifics of each of the studies in question may be found here.

UPDATE (November 8, 2006): Both of these sleazy politicians, Vernon Robinson and Paul Nelson, got defeated by about a 2-to-1 margin.

Another sleazy Republican ad during National Character Counts week

The Republican National Committee paid for this attack ad on Harold Ford (D-TN), which has prompted Ford's opponent, Bob Corker, to call on the RNC to pull the ad.

UPDATE (November 8, 2006): Corker defeated Ford, which isn't terribly disappointing given Ford's positions on the issues (he supported the invasion of Iraq, voted for the Military Commissions Act, and supported federal and state bans of same-sex marriage, while posing as a religious man but attending parties at the Playboy mansion). It was really a lose-lose race.

Sleazy Republican attack ad may be backfiring

The National Republican Congressional Committee is standing behind its ad attacking Democrat Michael Arcuri, who is running against Republican Ray Meier to replace retiring Republican Rep. Sherwood Boehlert in upstate New York.

Here's the content of the ad:

Woman's sultry voice: "Hi sexy. You've reached the live one-on-one fantasy line." (Soft music plays in the background.)

Announcer: "A phone number to an adult fantasy hot line appeared on Michael Arcuri's New York City hotel room bill while he was there on official business. And the call was charged to Oneida County taxpayers. Arcuri has denied it, but the facts are there. Who calls a fantasy hot line and then bills taxpayers? Michael Arcuri."

Woman's sultry voice: "Bad call."

The facts of the matter are that an Arcuri aide made a call to the number in question for less than a minute, which was in error. He then called a number with a different area code (instead of a toll-free number) but the rest of the digits the same, which is the number of the state Department of Criminal Justice Services. Arcuri is the district attorney in Oneida County.

At least seven television stations have refused to run the GOP's ad, for good reason--it's unbelievably misleading.

The NRCC, fully aware of the dishonesty of this advertisement, insists that their account is "totally true" (yes, but it uses true but incomplete information in a way specifically intended to mislead, which is a form of lying) and they say that they stand behind the message.

Upstate New York newspapers have been doing a good job of exposing the facts.

UPDATE (November 8, 2006): Arcuri defeated Meier in the election and will be the next Rep. from NY's 24th District.