Q's for Candidates, and CIA Torture

Nieman Watchdog lists a series of questions every candidate should get asked. It's not about Bush-bashing, it's about defining how you, Candidate, will operate as president.

Inside the CIA's notorious "black sites".

The nightmare started for him back in fall 2003. Bashmilah had traveled to Jordan from Indonesia, where he was living with his wife and working in the clothing business. He and his wife went to Jordan to meet Bashmilah's mother, who had also traveled there. The family hoped to arrange for heart surgery for Bashmilah's mother at a hospital in Amman. But before leaving Indonesia, Bashmilah had lost his passport and had received a replacement. Upon arrival in Jordan, Jordanian officials questioned his lack of stamps in the new one, and they grew suspicious when Bashmilah admitted he had visited Afghanistan in 2000. Bashmilah was taken into custody by Jordanian authorities on Oct. 21, 2003. He would not reappear again until he stepped out of a CIA plane in Yemen on May 5, 2005.

Bashmilah's apparent innocence was clearly lost on officials with Jordan's General Intelligence Department. After his arrest, the Jordanians brutally beat him, peppering him with questions about al-Qaida. He was forced to jog around in a yard until he collapsed. Officers hung him upside down with a leather strap and his hands tied. They beat the soles of his feet and his sides. They threatened to electrocute him with wires. The told him they would rape his wife and mother.

It was too much. Bashmilah signed a confession multiple pages long, but he was disoriented and afraid even to read it. "I felt sure it included things I did not say," he wrote in his declaration to the court delivered Friday. "I was willing to sign a hundred sheets so long as they would end the interrogation."

The CIA's torture teachers

According to congressional sources and mental healthcare professionals knowledgeable about the secret program who spoke with Salon, two CIA-employed psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, were at the center of the program, which likely violated the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners.

Finally, a Horoscope that's "Me"

From The Onion, of course:

Dec 11, 2007

Libra SEPTEMBER 23 - OCTOBER 23
An engrossing read will soon transport you to a strange and faraway land, leaving you stranded in Harlem after 30 missed stops.

Feminism the Movement and Feminism the Ideology

One may wax and wane, but every woman who says "I'm not a feminist, but" actually is one.

Why Young Women Fear the Feminist Label. Or: The Rise and Fall and Rise and Fall and Rise of Feminism.

The Fundamentalism Project

Book series. Excellent discussion in context over at Group News Blog: Teen Killed by Fundamentalist Father

Canada Holds US Violating Convention Against Torture, Will Accept Refugees, Asylees

Federal court strikes down refugee agreement

"... The United States' policies and practices do not meet the conditions set down for authorizing Canada to enter into a STCA," Phelan wrote in his 126-page decision.

"The U.S. does not meet the Refugee Convention requirements nor the [UN] Convention Against Torture prohibition (the Maher Arar case being one example). Further, the STCA does not comply with the relevant provisions of the Charter."

Reduce Oil Spills?

You know, if we used less oil, there'd probably be fewer oil spills of ships transporting the stuff or other facilities.

Beaches blackened in South Korea's worst oil spill.

San Francisco California Oil Spill Pilot To Surrender License

Philippines Oil Spill Spread to Lake Feared

Santa Barbara California: Crude Oil Spills into Sisquoc River Tributary

Russian Spills in Kerch Strait

And in other news,

BP Pleads Guilty in 2006 Alaska Spill. BP Exploration Alaska entered its guilty plea on Thursday, Nov. 29, to one violation of the Clean Water Act for a 200,000-gallon spill at the Prudhoe Bay field in March 2006.

Give Back.

Rolling Dog Ranch Animal Sanctuary.

Awesome Calendar

The Lovely Mistresses of George W. Bush -- a pinup calendar of various special interests.

The Lovely Mistresses of George W. Bush is a classically styled, 13 month pin-up calendar ending on January 20th, 2009, the final day of George W. Bush's presidency. Packed with jaw dropping all-original images by Burke Heffner, The Lovely Mistresses features some of America's hottest burlesque stars and pin-up girls.

Every stunning girl is a hilarious reveal of the corporations, special interest groups and billionaires who have influenced George the most. Each pin-up includes her vital statistics, important dates and a farewell love letter to the president.

Oh, that's clever.

Deaths in Papua New Guinea due Cyclone Guba

Death toll rises in Papua floods

'At least 150 dead' in PNG floods

McClellan says Bush involved in Outing Covert CIA Operative

You remember that, don't you? Covert CIA gets outed, people die? Yeah.

Olbermann On McClellan Revelations: Bush Was A Passively Involved “Liar In Chief”

Historical Maps of US Cities

Maps maps maps! U.S. Historical City Maps Ooooooooo!

Thanks to J, for the tip.

Nifty Yet Confusing Idea: Donating Laptops to Poor Kids in Africa

Here's the confusing part -- do these kids have electricity? How will they charge the battery after it dies?

One Laptop Per Child Program

ETA: Medley points me to OLPC laptop features - hand cranks! *That* makes sense!

Another Link Salad: Impeachment, Cover-ups, and the Environment

Suddenly, Impeachment Hearings Are Looking Like a Strong Possibility

One indication of the change in the political climate in the House is the announcement by Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL), a six-term congressman and a member of the House Judiciary Committee, that he will call for the Judiciary Committee to take up Kucinich’s impeachment [of VP Cheney] bill. This is significant because Wexler, no left-wing hothead, is not a co-signer of the Kucinich bill.

In an email message to constituents, Wexler said:

"I share your belief that Vice President Cheney must answer for his deceptive actions in office, particularly with regard to the preparations for the Iraq war and the revelation of the identity of covert agent Valerie Plame Wilson as part of political retribution against her husband."

Boxer: Bush Administration Hiding Global Warming Data From Americans

On Wednesday’s Hardball Senator Barbara Boxer talked with Chris Matthews about testimony given to the Senate Environment Committee by CDC Director Julie Gerberding about global warming and related health issues. Boxer says that Gerberding admitted that her original testimony had been heavily redacted by the White House and much of that was information on the public health impact of Global Warming.

When a letter was sent to President Bush asking for clarification on the redacted portions of the testimony, Boxer claims she received a letter back from White House Counsel, Fred Fielding, refusing her request claiming….you guessed it — Executive Privilege.

And,

California sues US over car fumes

California is suing the US federal government over its failure to back the state's tough new anti-pollution laws regulating greenhouse gas emissions.

In lighter news,

Barbie Trabbed in Carbonite. Cool.

Link Salad, size: small

Public Lands, Recreational Opportunities, and Natural Resources Or, yes, Virginia, global warming is real, the EPA knows it, and it's having a dramatic effect on Alaska, my much-loved home, that will never be the same again, gods curse every damn polluting one of us.

Drivers stranded by car signals. See? This is why I want a damn *KEY*.

The Last Word on Waterboarding -- It's Torture, Pure & Simple

Waterboarding is Torture… Period, from Malcolm Nance at the Small Wars Journal.

As a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California I know the waterboard personally and intimately. SERE staff were required undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception. I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. It has been reported that both the Army and Navy SERE school’s interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques used by the US army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What was not mentioned in most articles was that SERE was designed to show how an evil totalitarian, enemy would use torture at the slightest whim. If this is the case, then waterboarding is unquestionably being used as torture technique.

Once at SERE and tasked to rewrite the Navy SERE program for the first time since the Vietnam War, we incorporated interrogation and torture techniques from the Middle East, Latin America and South Asia into the curriculum. In the process, I studied hundreds of classified written reports, dozens of personal memoirs of American captives from the French-Indian Wars and the American Revolution to the Argentinean ‘Dirty War’ and Bosnia. There were endless hours of videotaped debriefings from World War Two, Korea, Vietnam and Gulf War POWs and interrogators. I devoured the hundreds of pages of debriefs and video reports including those of then Commander John McCain, Colonel Nick Rowe, Lt. Dieter Dengler and Admiral James Stockdale, the former Senior Ranking Officer of the Hanoi Hilton. All of them had been tortured by the Vietnamese, Pathet Lao or Cambodians. The minutiae of North Vietnamese torture techniques was discussed with our staff advisor and former Hanoi Hilton POW Doug Hegdahl as well as discussions with Admiral Stockdale himself. The waterboard was clearly one of the tools dictators and totalitarian regimes preferred.

It's torture, and the DOJ and White House know it because an Assistant Attorney General went out to assess it, had it inflicted it on himself to truly understand it, and concluded that yes, it's torture. Legally and ethically, it's torture. And he got fired for it.