The Truth

UK complained to US about terror suspect torture

2010-03-09T19:24:00.001-06:00

The government protested to the US over the torture of terror suspects, the former head of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller revealed last night.
She also said the Americans concealed from Britain the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 2001 attacks.
"The Americans were very keen that people like us did not discover what they were doing," Lady Manningham-Buller told a meeting at the House of Lords.
She also admitted MI5 were slow to recognise that the US was torturing detainees. Asked if Britain protested, she replied: "We did lodge a protest." She declined to elaborate but it is believed that the protests were made at ministerial level.

More at the Guardian.

More on the FBI's illegal phone record searches

2010-01-20T22:36:00.004-06:00

Here's a Justice Department report on laws broken by the FBI, with the full cooperation of certain phone companies:

http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/s1001r.pdf

(you'll need a PDF reader like Foxit Reader or Adobe Reader)

And here's a PC World article about it:

US DOJ: Operators helped FBI illegally obtain phone records

FBI broke law in phone record searches

2010-01-19T07:01:00.004-06:00

From the Washington Post:

The FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply persuading phone companies to provide records, according to internal bureau memos and interviews. FBI officials issued approvals after the fact to justify their actions.
FBI officials told The Post that their own review has found that about half of the 4,400 toll records collected in emergency situations or with after-the-fact approvals were done in technical violation of the law. The searches involved only records of calls and not the content of the calls. In some cases, agents broadened their searches to gather numbers two and three degrees of separation from the original request, documents show.
Bureau officials said agents were working quickly under the stress of trying to thwart the next terrorist attack and were not violating the law deliberately.

And the road to hell is paved with...

Alastair Campbell had Iraq dossier changed to fit US claims

2010-01-11T18:30:00.001-06:00

Fresh evidence has emerged that Tony Blair's discredited Iraqi arms dossier was "sexed up" on the instructions of Alastair Campbell, his communications chief, to fit with claims from the US administration that were known to be false.
The pre-invasion dossier's worst-case estimate of how long it would take Iraq to acquire a nuclear weapon was shortened in response to a George Bush speech.
As Campbell prepares to appear before the Iraq inquiry on Tuesday, new evidence reveals the extent to which – on his instructions – those drafting the notorious dossier colluded with the US administration to make exaggerated claims about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

From the Guardian

US intelligence chief criticises spy failings in Afghanistan

2010-01-05T15:14:00.002-06:00

It's bad enough that the Obama administration refused to publicly investigate and expose the mistakes of the previous administration. It now appears that they refuse to even learn from those mistakes.

According to Maj Gen Michael Flynn and two other intelligence advisers, the huge intelligence apparatus in Afghanistan is "only marginally relevant" to Nato's overall war plan because nearly all of its effort is spent finding Taliban fighters to kill rather than trying to understand the needs and grievances of ordinary Afghan civilians. Their support is now seen by military chiefs as key to beating the insurgency.
Bogged down producing detailed flow diagrams of rebel cells, intelligence officers are consequently "ignorant of local economics and landowners, hazy about who the powerbrokers are and how they might be influenced, incurious about the correlations between various development projects and the levels of co-operation among villagers", the report says.
It claims that some battalion-level officers looking for an overview of the political and economic situation in key areas "acquire more information that is helpful by reading US newspapers than through reviewing regional command intelligence summaries".

Tony Blair used deceit to justify Iraq war

2009-12-15T16:31:00.001-06:00

Tony Blair used "deceit" to persuade parliament and the British people to support war in Iraq, Sir Ken Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions, said today.
In an article in the Times, Macdonald attacked Blair for engaging in "alarming subterfuge", for displaying "sycophancy" towards George Bush and for refusing to accept that his decisions were wrong.
Macdonald's comments about Blair's decision to go to war are more critical than anything that has been said so far by any of the senior civil servants who worked in Whitehall when Blair was prime minister.

MacDonald is telling us something we already know, but it's still nice to hear it from someone who was close to the action.

It would have been a lot nicer to hear it back in 2003.

US neglected post-war planning for Iraq, inquiry told

2009-12-02T18:35:00.003-06:00

We've heard all this before, but this is the first time we've heard it on the record from high-ranking British officials. They were giving evidence at the UK government's inquiry into the Iraq war. I urge all Americans to read the accounts of the British inquiry, since it seems clear that we will never have such an investigation here in the US.

There was a "dire" lack of planning in Washington for what would happen in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion, a senior British diplomat has said.
The US had a "touching faith" that its troops would be welcomed in Iraq and democracy would soon follow, Edward Chaplin told the Iraq inquiry.
Mr Chaplin, director of Middle East policy at the Foreign Office in the run-up to the 2003 invasion and ambassador to Baghdad after the war, said preparations for what would follow the toppling of Saddam Hussein were a "real blind spot" in Washington.
Although the State Department looked at the issue in detail, Mr Chaplin said there was less interest "elsewhere" in Washington and that policy was largely dictated by the White House and Pentagon.
"They [US officials] had a touching faith that once Iraq had been liberated from the terrible tyranny of Saddam Hussein everybody would be grateful and dancing in the streets and there would be really be no further difficulty.
"And then the Iraqis would somehow magically take over and restore their state to the democratic state it should be in.
"We tried to point that this was extremely optimistic."
The US put too much faith in Iraqi opposition groups and political exiles about how quickly the country could be stabilised after the invasion, Mr Chaplin said, while coalition forces did not fully realise how "fractured" Iraqi society had become under Saddam Hussein.

From BBC News

What should have been the plan from the beginning

2009-11-13T22:57:00.001-06:00

It must suck to be elected president and have to do your predecessor's job in addition to your own.

The Obama administration today ordered that the self-confessed mastermind of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and four others be transferred from Guantánamo Bay to New York to stand trial.
The US attorney general, Eric Holder, told a press conference in Washington he would be seeking the death penalty.
President Obama, speaking at a press conference during a trip to Japan, said he was sure Mohammed would receive a fair trial, in spite of the problems of finding unbiased jurors in New York, and of evidence being tainted by torture. "I am absolutely convinced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be subjected to the most exacting demands of justice. The American people insist on it, and my administration insists on it," he said.

US ambassador to Afghanistan opposes troop buildup

2009-11-11T22:41:00.003-06:00

The US ambassador in Kabul has written to the White House arguing against sending thousands more American troops to Afghanistan.
In a leaked cable, Karl Eikenberry expressed doubts about the competence of President Hamid Karzai's government.
Mr Eikenberry, a former US commander in Afghanistan, also raised concerns about corruption within the Afghan government.
He said it was "not a good idea" to send more troops, the BBC has been told.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. I don't support the current nation-building project in Afghanistan, but I do support the hunt for Osama bin Laden, and I think we should commit however many troops it takes to get that job done.

But one thing we shouldn't do is say we want to achieve an objective but then fail to commit the resources for it. We should go all in or not at all.

Blackwater Said to Pursue Bribes to Iraq After 17 Died

2009-11-10T22:45:00.001-06:00

From the New York Times:

Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.
Blackwater approved the cash payments in December 2007, the officials said, as protests over the deadly shootings in Nisour Square stoked long-simmering anger inside Iraq about reckless practices by the security company’s employees. American and Iraqi investigators had already concluded that the shootings were unjustified, top Iraqi officials were calling for Blackwater's ouster from the country, and company officials feared that Blackwater might be refused an operating license it would need to retain its contracts with the State Department and private clients, worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
Four former executives said in interviews that Gary Jackson, who was then Blackwater's president, had approved the bribes and that the money was sent from Amman, Jordan, where the company maintains an operations hub, to a top manager in Iraq. The executives, though, said they did not know whether the cash was delivered to Iraqi officials or the identities of the potential recipients.

CIA agents guilty of kidnapping

2009-11-04T21:04:00.003-06:00

Twenty-three Americans were tonight convicted of kidnapping by an Italian court at the end of the first trial anywhere in the world involving the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" programme for abducting terrorist suspects.
The former head of the CIA in Milan Robert Lady was given an eight-year jail sentence for his part in the seizure of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, known as Abu Omar, who claimed that he was subsequently tortured in Egypt. Lady's superior, Jeff Castelli, the then head of the CIA in Italy, and two other Americans were acquitted on the grounds that they enjoyed diplomatic immunity.
But another 21 alleged CIA operatives and a US air force officer were each sentenced to five years in jail. All were tried in absentia and those who were convicted will be regarded as fugitives under Italian law.
Extraordinary rendition, which has been criticised as "torture by proxy', involves the snatching of suspects and their forcible transfer for interrogation to third countries – often those states where torture is routinely employed.

Now to get these guys extradited. If they're smart, they'll testify against the people who gave them orders.

Edited to add a link to the BBC story. I was going to link to this one originally but the BBC website was having problems.

CIA agents guilty of Italy kidnap

The Obama administration has expressed its disappointment at the convictions.
"We are disappointed by the verdicts," state department spokesman Ian Kelly said in Washington.
He declined to comment further pending a written opinion from the judge, but said an appeal was likely.

Instead of being disappointed, he should be arranging for extradition of these criminals. You can contact the White House here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/.

New book describes Pat Tillman as increasingly disillusioned with Iraq war

2009-09-15T13:50:00.000-05:00

Pat Tillman was the poster boy for the US war in Iraq.
President Bush heralded him as a hero in life when the young American football player walked away from a multimillion dollar contract to serve in Iraq after the 9/11 attacks, and an even greater hero in death when Tillman was killed in Afghanistan two years later - until it came out that the Pentagon had lied to cover up that his death was from friendly fire.
What Bush did not know was that Tillman regarded him as a "cowboy" who had led the country in to an "illegal and unjust" war in Iraq.

On Lies

2009-09-13T19:54:00.005-05:00

I'm seeing a lot of outrage, real or feigned, about Representative Joe Wilson yelling "You lie!" during President Obama's speech. I don't think it was a nice thing to say, because the claim Obama was making was probably true. False accusations of lying aren't cool. I don't know if it's outrageous enough to warrant the amount of hubbub it generated.

What would be equally outrageous, if not more so, would be if a president did lie during a speech to Congress and nobody in Congress objected. That's what happened on several occasions between 2002 and 2008. Some of the same people now objecting to Wilson's false accusation are the very same people who didn't say anything when George W. Bush lied about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction and being involved with al Qaeda.

There seems to be a current of thought lately that speaking directly and bluntly to the president, as Joe Wilson did to Obama and as hundreds of Democratic representatives and senators should have done to Bush, is unacceptable behavior, that showing extreme deference to the president is somehow good for our country.

Fuck that. This is America. We purposefully did away with kings when we made this country. The president is a citizen, like the rest of us. He or she is someone we choose to do a job. If he lies, we should say he lied. If he gets a few blow jobs from an intern, we should say he got a few blow jobs from an intern. Pussyfooting around the truth is bad for a republic.

Joe Wilson was wrong, but the people criticizing him are doing so for the wrong reasons. If you're going to call someone a liar, get your facts straight first. But if your facts are straight, call him a liar. If you don't, you're enabling his lies.

Obama Facing Major Strategy Decisions

2009-09-01T21:59:00.003-05:00

The actual headline of the article I'm linking to is Taliban Surprising U.S. Forces With Improved Tactics. The headline made me angry, as I suppose it was designed to do. Why would you be surprised that your enemy would adapt to your tactics and change theirs?

It's important to remember that the reporters who write newspaper articles do not get to write the headlines. As I read the article, I realized the officers in Afghanistan aren't surprised. And they shouldn't be. The Taliban is doing what most insurgent forces do against a larger and better-equipped enemy.

The insurgents have largely abandoned the large-unit attacks they used several years ago. "In 2005, Marines and Army units were having pretty decisive engagements" against massed Taliban fighters, another senior officer said, adding that "every time, we killed them in very large numbers." Small bases and checkpoints manned by Afghan national security forces have become preferred targets for the Taliban, he said, because they are "isolated and easy to kill," and the Afghan units are relatively easy to infiltrate for intelligence.
The Taliban has also taken advantage of changes in U.S. air and artillery tactics, adopted to decrease civilian casualties that have alienated the population. U.S. airstrikes and culturally offensive night ground raids are authorized far more selectively than they were. The Taliban has also adjusted its own tactics, gathering in populated areas and increasing its night operations, and "the playing field is leveled," one U.S. officer said.
A number of officials and experts, within and outside the military, said that while the Taliban was able to regroup militarily while U.S. attention was diverted to Iraq, its widening influence has as much to do with Afghan government corruption, tensions among regional ethnic groups, lack of state service and justice in rural areas, and high rates of unemployment as it does with insurgent efforts.
Military officials expressed confidence in the evolving U.S. counterinsurgency strategy, but also concern about whether there is time to make it work. "I'm not one myself to believe it's a zero-sum game of winning and losing," said an official with long experience in Afghanistan.
"To the Taliban, winning is, in fact, not losing," he said. "They feel that over time, they will ultimately outlast the international community's attempt to stabilize Afghanistan. It's really a game of will to them."

This was always the danger of pursuing a nation-building project instead of limiting the mission to Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda leaders associated with him. It didn't help that the Afghanistan mission was deprived of resources because of the Iraq campaign.

Democrats Ignoring History

2009-08-14T10:58:00.004-05:00

If you've been following the opposition to President Obama's health care plan, you probably noticed that opponents of the plan are using the same tactics they used to oppose Bill Clinton's plan in 1993. One of their lies, the "death plan" rumor, is identical to one they were telling in 1993. And yet the Democrats seemed utterly unprepared for these tactics. They had no plan in place to counter them. It's as if they were completely unfamiliar with Karl Rove's playbook, despite the events of the last nine years.

Another thought that struck me is that we couldn't muster up nearly this level of opposition to the Iraq War. There are several reasons for this, one being which protestors the media decide to pay attention to. But the big reason is that, unlike the opponents to the health care plan, the opponents of the Iraq war did not have the support of the opposition political party. The Democrats made the decision that tepid approval for the war would be more politically expedient than opposition to it. This is the same strategy they employed in 1968, and as we know it was a bitter failure. Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Why Hillary Clinton must never be president

2009-07-29T19:22:00.003-05:00

Just one of several reasons Hillary Clinton must never be elected president of the United States.

Clinton moved to halt disclosure of CIA torture evidence, court told
Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, personally intervened to suppress evidence of CIA collusion in the torture of a British resident, the high court heard today.
The dramatic turn emerged as lawyers for Binyam Mohamed, the UK resident abused in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Morocco and Guantánamo Bay, joined by lawyers for the Guardian and other media groups, asked the court to order the disclosure of CIA material.
It consists of a seven-paragraph summary of what the CIA knew, and what it told MI5 and MI6, about the treatment of Mohamed. Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones, the judges hearing the case, have said that the summary contains nothing that could possibly be described as "highly sensitive classified US intelligence".
However, David Miliband, the foreign secretary, has repeatedly told the court that the US would stop sharing intelligence with the UK if the CIA material was published. The judges, as well as lawyers for Mohamed and the media, have challenged that assertion.
"Is it remotely credible that [the Obama administration] would stop intelligence-sharing?" Thomas asked yesterday, referring to Obama's recent decision to publish CIA torture documents in the US. "The judgment of the foreign secretary is the key," he added.
The court has heard how the Foreign Office and Miliband have solicited US help in keeping the CIA material secret. Today, it heard how Miliband met Clinton in Washington on 12 May this year.
In a written statement proposing a gagging order, Miliband told the court that she "indicated" that the disclosure of CIA evidence "would affect intelligence sharing". Pressed repeatedly by the judges on the claim yesterday, Karen Steyn, Miliband's counsel, insisted that Clinton was indeed saying that if the seven-paragraph summary of CIA material was disclosed, the US would "reassess" its intelligence relationship with the UK, a move that "would put lives at risk".

Off Topic: Beware the Spinal Trap

2009-07-29T16:07:00.004-05:00

The following has nothing to do with the usual subjects of this blog. I'm posting it for the benefit of my readers in England and Wales. It is a reprint of a commentary Simon Singh wrote for the Guardian. The British Chiropractic Association sued the author and the Guardian for libel, and because of the extremely strict nature of English libel laws, where factual truth is not necessarily a defense, the Guardian took it down.

truthspeaker.org is hosted here in the USA and I'm an American citizen living in the US, so I don't have to worry about English libel laws. Simon Singh still does, so let me stress here that I am posting this article without the author's knowledge or permission.

Beware the spinal trap
Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all but research suggests chiropractic therapy can be lethal
Simon Singh originally published in The Guardian, Saturday April 19 2008
This is Chiropractic Awareness Week. So let's be aware. How about some awareness that may prevent harm and help you make truly informed choices? First, you might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that, "99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae". In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body.
In fact, Palmer's first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra.
You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact they still possess some quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything. And even the more moderate chiropractors have ideas above their station. The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments.
I can confidently label these treatments as bogus [changed to "utter nonsense" in the scrubbed version] because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world's first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.
But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic.
In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors.
More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures.
Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection.
Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: "Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck."
This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Professor Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher.
Bearing all of this in mind, I will leave you with one message for Chiropractic Awareness Week - if spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.
· Simon Singh is the co-author of Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial
www.simonsingh.net

Several bloggers are posting this today. Thanks to Respectful Insolence for the uncut version of the article.

Illegal Wiretaps Were of Limited Value

2009-07-10T23:06:00.003-05:00

It's always disappointing to violate the Constitution and receive little reward for your efforts.

While the Bush administration had defended its program of wiretapping without warrants as a vital tool that saved lives, a new government review released Friday said the program’s effectiveness in fighting terrorism was unclear.
The report, mandated by Congress last year and produced by the inspectors general of five federal agencies, found that other intelligence tools used in assessing security threats posed by terrorists provided more timely and detailed information.
Most intelligence officials interviewed "had difficulty citing specific instances" when the National Security Agency’s wiretapping program contributed to successes against terrorists, the report said.

New York Times: U.S. Wiretaps Were of Limited Value, Officials Report

Human Rights Watch corroborates UK-Pakistan torture allegations

2009-07-09T19:31:00.003-05:00

Further evidence that Pakistan tortured suspects for Britain

Further evidence of the close involvement of British agents in the torture of British citizens in Pakistan has emerged during a series of interviews with Pakistani intelligence officers.
Researchers from the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) say several Pakistani officials have corroborated accounts of torture given by several victims. The officials not only made clear that their counterparts in British intelligence were fully aware of the methods they were employing during interrogations but claim the British agents were "grateful" it was happening.
In a statement issued today, HRW said senior Pakistani officials had told it "on numerous occasions" that British officials were aware of the mistreatment of a number of terrorism suspects from the UK, including Rangzieb Ahmed and Salahuddin Amin, who are now serving life sentences in the UK, Zeeshan Siddiqui, whose whereabouts is unknown, and Rashid Rauf, who is said to have died in a US missile strike after escaping from custody.

UK Government Outsourced Torture

2009-07-07T22:22:00.003-05:00

We already knew Tony Blair's government allowed the CIA to use airbases in Britain and Northern Ireland during the transport of prisoners to secret prisons where torture was performed. Today we learn MI5 took a suspect from the UK to Pakistan, turned him over to Pakistani agents knowing they would torture him, then arrested him and took him to the UK when they were finished. And Tony Blair new about it.

Notice how British newspapers actually use the word "torture" to describe torture, something most American news outlets won't do.

Revealed – the secret torture evidence MI5 tried to suppress

The true depth of British involvement in the torture of terrorism suspects overseas and the manner in which that complicity is concealed behind a cloak of courtroom secrecy was laid bare last night when David Davis MP detailed the way in which one counter-terrorism operation led directly to a man suffering brutal mistreatment.
In a dramatic intervention using the protection of parliamentary privilege, the former shadow home secretary revealed how MI5 and Greater Manchester police effectively sub-contracted the torture of Rangzieb Ahmed to a Pakistani intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), whose routine use of torture has been widely documented.
This is the first time that the information has entered the public domain. Previously it has been suppressed through the process of secret court hearings and, had the Guardian or other media organisations reported it, they would have exposed themselves to the risk of prosecution for contempt of court.

Saddam interview tapes released

2009-07-02T16:50:00.001-05:00

US investigators have released accounts of the questioning of Saddam Hussein, offering a goldmine of historical and personal details on the Iraqi leader.
The documents released under freedom of information rules are from interviews and informal conversations he had in US custody with the FBI in early 2004.
Saddam Hussein said he refused to allow UN weapons inspectors into Iraq to stop Iran knowing how weak it had become.

No surprise there. This is what many analysts were hypothesizing before the invasion.

NPR's pathetic excuses

2009-06-30T16:30:00.005-05:00

After a week-long absence, National Public Radio's ombudsman has responded to her critics on her blog.

Your Voices Have Been Heard ... and Ignored

I won't repeat Alicia Shepard's pathetic excuses here, because I care about your digestion. It really is sad. The worst part is, she teaches a graduate-level course in Media Ethics at Georgetown University. I hope any potential students do their research before enrolling in her class, as she is obviously not qualified to teach it.

She has also refused an interview with Glen Greenwald at Salon. Can't take the heat, I guess.

Addendum:
Shepard did consent to a short interview with NPR's own program, "On the Media", and, wow. She appears to try to defend her position, but does a very poor job of it.

Torturous Wording

A drop of common sense

2009-06-29T21:48:00.003-05:00

Obama junks "global war on terror" label

The Obama administration has junked the term “global war on terror” because it does not describe properly the nature of the terrorist threat to the US, according to Janet Napolitano, secretary for homeland security.

It never made much sense. Our enemy is one affiliation of groups that use terrorist techniques. Making war on every organization in the world that uses terrorist tactics is beyond our abilities and isn't something we need to do to stay safe.

Why National Public Radio sucks

2009-06-24T13:06:00.008-05:00

Many years ago, I used to listen to NPR news a lot. I found they offered in-depth coverage that was less insulting to my intelligence than the mainstream commercial media.

Over the last ten years, and especially after the Iraq invasion, things have changed there, and not for the better.

This column by Alicia Shepard, the NPR Ombudsman, is a great example of how far NPR News has fallen. The ombudsman is supposed to represent listener interests, but this column, about why NPR News does not use the word "torture" to describe torture techniques authorized by the Bush administration, reads like a public relations piece. It could have been written by Karl Rove, and for all I know it was written by Karl Rove. It exemplifies everything that is wrong with mainstream American news coverage today.

Read it, but only if you have a strong stomach. And then read Glenn Greenwald's excellent criticism of it on Salon.

According to her bio, Shepard has an M.A. in Journalism from the University of Maryland. I think she should ask for her money back.

Confidential memo reveals US plan to provoke an invasion of Iraq

2009-06-24T00:25:00.004-05:00

A confidential record of a meeting between President Bush and Tony Blair before the invasion of Iraq, outlining their intention to go to war without a second United Nations resolution, will be an explosive issue for the official inquiry into the UK's role in toppling Saddam Hussein.
The memo, written on 31 January 2003, almost two months before the invasion and seen by the Observer, confirms that as the two men became increasingly aware UN inspectors would fail to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) they had to contemplate alternative scenarios that might trigger a second resolution legitimising military action.
Bush told Blair the US had drawn up a provocative plan "to fly U2 reconnaissance aircraft painted in UN colours over Iraq with fighter cover". Bush said that if Saddam fired at the planes this would put the Iraqi leader in breach of UN resolutions.
The president expressed hopes that an Iraqi defector would be "brought out" to give a public presentation on Saddam's WMD or that someone might assassinate the Iraqi leader. However, Bush confirmed even without a second resolution, the US was prepared for military action. The memo said Blair told Bush he was "solidly with the president".

With luck the actual memo will show up on Wikileaks soon. Until then we'll have to take the Observer's word for it, but most of their other sources about Iraq turned out to be legit.