Peter Jennings died last night of lung cancer at the age of 67. I seldom watch(ed) ABC News, so I never developed the necessary parasocial relationship with Jennings to really have anything to say about him, so I will instead turn you over to Joe Gandelman, who has a nice obit, as does the Belgravia Dispatch.
Bayh/Richardson
Interesting piece on Bill Richardson in Salon.
An Evan Bayh/Bill Richardson ticket in 2008 would be a tough ticket for the GOP to beat. Fortunately, Evan Bayh will never make it out of the primaries.
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Hanging The Troops Out to Dry?
The NY Times has a big story (and, I might add, a careful one) on the abuse/torture cases and the move to deal swiftly with those charged. Finally, though, they are getting to the question that I am interested in:
Along with other information that has emerged, trial testimony has underscored a question long at the core of this case: what is the responsibility of more senior military personnel for the abuses that took place?
Many former Bagram officers have denied knowing about any serious mistreatment of detainees before the two deaths. But others said some of the methods that prosecutors have cited as a basis for criminal charges, including chaining prisoners to the ceilings of isolation cells for long periods, were either standard practice at the prison or well-known to those who oversaw it.
None of the nine soldiers prosecuted thus far are officers. The 18 others against whom Army investigators have recommended criminal charges include two captains, the military intelligence officer in charge of the interrogation group and the reservist commander of the military police guards.
In the first interview granted by any of the accused soldiers, a former guard charged with maiming and assault said that he and other reservist military policemen were specifically instructed at Bagram how to deliver the type of blows that killed the two detainees, and that the strikes were commonly used when prisoners resisted being hooded or shackled.
“I just don’t understand how, if we were given training to do this, you can say that we were wrong and should have known better,” said the soldier, Pvt. Willie V. Brand, 26, of Cincinnati, a father of four who volunteered for tours in Afghanistan and Kosovo.
In interviews and statements to investigators, soldiers who served at Bagram have at times echoed the defenses offered unsuccessfully by the soldiers charged with abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, saying they were acting on instructions from military intelligence personnel or on the authority of superior officers.
But documents from the Bagram investigation and interviews with military officials suggest that at least some soldiers implicated in the two deaths may be able to make such arguments more forcefully than their counterparts from Abu Ghraib, who were unable to prove any authorization for their actions.
Many of you have stated that you think this is nothing more than the Nuremberg defense, and that the lower level soldiers are the only problem. I am not buying it.
Misplaced Priorities and Power Grabs
More Republican perfidy, as Henry Hyde inserts vague measures into the House version of the Patriot Act that would create massive mandatory minimums for ‘narco-terrorism.’ TalkLeft has the details.
And the War on Drugs War on Your Neighbor® continues in earnest.
Bill Quick Is Shrill
Bill Quick reacts to the following story:
Conservatives reacted cautiously to the news this week that federal Judge John G. Roberts Jr. helped a group of homosexual rights activists win a seminal victory 10 years ago before the Supreme Court.
“Judge Roberts was an attorney with a large firm where helping colleagues when called upon was expected,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said yesterday after researching the matter. “I have verified that his involvement was limited to about five hours of participation in a moot court as he played the role of one of the high court’s conservative members asking tough hypothetical questions of the attorneys who actually prepared and argued the case.”
Mr. Perkins said his initial reaction to the news was concern that Judge Roberts had been “aiding and abetting” the groups. But after discussions with the White House and surrogates, Mr. Perkins urged caution in reaching that conclusion.
Click here to read Bill being shrill, and, in my estimation, spot on. At some point, the knee-jerk homophobia and other antics of these folks is going to turn off everyone.
Aiding and abetting? Cripes.
Daily Plame Flame Thread
I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, has told federal investigators that he met with New York Times reporter Judith Miller on July 8, 2003, and discussed CIA operative Valerie Plame, according to legal sources familiar with Libby’s account.
The meeting between Libby and Miller has been a central focus of the investigation by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald as to whether any Bush administration official broke the law by unmasking Plame’s identity or relied on classified information to discredit former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, according to sources close to the case as well as documents filed in federal court by Fitzgerald.
The meeting took place in Washington, D.C., six days before columnist Robert Novak wrote his now-infamous column unmasking Plame as a “CIA operative.” Although little noticed at the time, Novak’s column would cause the appointment of a special prosecutor, ultimately place in potential legal jeopardy senior advisers to the president of the United States, and lead to the jailing of a New York Times reporter.
The meeting between Libby and Miller also occurred during a week of intense activity by Libby and White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove aimed at discrediting Plame’s husband, Wilson, who on July 6, 2003, had gone public in a New York Times opinion piece with allegations that the Bush administration was misrepresenting intelligence information to make the case to go to war with Iraq.
Have at it.
E-Qaeda
Big piece in the WaPo on the war on cyber-terrorism:
…al Qaeda has become the first guerrilla movement in history to migrate from physical space to cyberspace. With laptops and DVDs, in secret hideouts and at neighborhood Internet cafes, young code-writing jihadists have sought to replicate the training, communication, planning and preaching facilities they lost in Afghanistan with countless new locations on the Internet.
Al Qaeda suicide bombers and ambush units in Iraq routinely depend on the Web for training and tactical support, relying on the Internet’s anonymity and flexibility to operate with near impunity in cyberspace. In Qatar, Egypt and Europe, cells affiliated with al Qaeda that have recently carried out or seriously planned bombings have relied heavily on the Internet.
Such cases have led Western intelligence agencies and outside terrorism specialists to conclude that the “global jihad movement,” sometimes led by al Qaeda fugitives but increasingly made up of diverse “groups and ad hoc cells,” has become a “Web-directed” phenomenon, as a presentation for U.S. government terrorism analysts by longtime State Department expert Dennis Pluchinsky put it. Hampered by the nature of the Internet itself, the government has proven ineffective at blocking or even hindering significantly this vast online presence.
Read the whole thing. Oddly enough, unless I missed it, there was no mention of the Patriot Act and how it might play a role in this new battlefront.