What a victory for democracy (not.)

The U.S. has backed the Shi'ites in the Iraq Constitution fight - which would make Islamist law predominant. The Sunnis want the U.S. to withdraw their support for the draft document.

A retreat to Sharia law would be the antithesis of a democratic state. Didn't George Bush tell us we were going to war to bring a democracy to Iraq? What a total failure both Bush and his war are.

A letter written in jail by Saddam Hussein has been distributed by the Red Cross and published.

"I and my family offer ourselves as a sacrifice for this nation, including dear Palestine and our steadfast, beloved, and wretched Iraq," he writes."Life without faith, love and the inherited traditions of our nation is destruction.

"He who sacrifices his property and soul for his nation is but doing a little because this nation deserves much to be done." He ends the letter: "Long live Palestine. Love your nation."

by Last Night in Little Rock

My wife, from a long line of anti-war protestors, whose father fought in the Pacific in WWII and came home to protest the Vietnam War outside Nixon's San Clemente Western White House, just returned from two days protesting at President Bush's Crawford, Texas ranch.

She reported that the pro-Bush supporters were taunting Cindy Sheehan just before Sheehan departed "We don't care." I was appalled and couldn't believe it. No, she was dead serious. She was tearing up talking about it. It was, in fact, reported in the DailyKos here.

This is no surprise to those of us who have followed the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, but still, it's gratifying to hear one of the already sentenced guards, with nothing left to lose, say the abuse occurred at the orders of higher-ups:

Sergeant Javal Davis was sentenced to six months in jail after admitting to having deliberately stepped on the hands and feet of handcuffed prisoners. In an interview aired on Channel 7, Sgt Davis said he was instructed to make life as unpleasant as possible for those he was guarding.

"I was left with an open door to pretty much almost do whatever I want, you know like 'hey, make sure this guy has a bad night you know' or 'make sure this guy gets the treatment'," he said.

Sgt Davis says he found some of the things he was asked to do distressing. "For example, the nakedness, the hooding, the handcuffing of the detainees in compromising positions, like handcuffed behind their back in an uncomfortable way or handcuffed to the bar door door or something," he said.

He says he asked that orders he was given to abuse prisoners be put in writing.But despite repeated requests, his superiors never agreed to do so.

In other words, they covered their as*es.

Frank Rich has a scathing account in the Sunday New York Times about the current administration's mismanagement and deceit about the Iraq War.The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan is a must read.

But this time the Swift Boating failed, utterly, and that failure is yet another revealing historical marker in this summer's collapse of political support for the Iraq war.

....THIS summer in Crawford, the White House went to this playbook once too often. When Mr. Bush's motorcade left a grieving mother in the dust to speed on to a fund-raiser, that was one fat-cat party too far. The strategy of fighting a war without shared national sacrifice has at last backfired, just as the strategy of Swift Boating the war's critics has reached its Waterloo before Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury in Washington. The 24/7 cable and Web attack dogs can keep on sliming Cindy Sheehan. The president can keep trying to ration the photos of flag-draped caskets. But this White House no longer has any more control over the insurgency at home than it does over the one in Iraq.

There's an interesting article in today's Globe and Mail about Patrick Fitzgerald and his prosecutorial strategy. Here are the money quotes:

And always, he has methodically, inexorably pursued his investigations to target the man at the top of the organizational pyramid....People who have watched Mr. Fitzgerald operate in Chicago, and before that as assistant U.S. Attorney in New York City, are not surprised by his zeal in pursuing the journalists. But don't expect him to stop there.

That's how he operates: Apply maximum pressure to reluctant witnesses in order to build an air-tight case against the most senior member of a criminal conspiracy.

[hat tip Patriot Daily.] I wonder if he believes the top dog here is Libby, Rove or Cheney.

This is just too bizarre not to mention:

A controversial exhibit of human corpses, stripped of their skin to reveal muscles, organs and blood vessels, opened in Tampa, despite the state Anatomical Board's refusal to approve it....The "Bodies: The Exhibition" show includes human bodies and body parts preserved with a process that replaces human tissue with silicone rubber.

The dissected and preserved corpses belonged to Chinese people and went unclaimed or unidentified before being turned over to a medical school in China, according to the exhibit's owner, Premier Exhibitions of Atlanta.

Remember Operation Tips, where neighbors and workers were going to be recruited in the Government's war on terror to inform on their neighbors?

It seems some local law enforcement agencies are creating their own "tips" programs. In this case, it's pest control workers:

Technicians from Truly Nolen Pest Control of America are being trained by local law enforcement to spot anything unusual as they visit customer's homes...."Our vehicles really get into the bowels of the neighborhood and we're back there where all the homes are, in the cul-de-sacs," Truly Nolen spokesman Barry Murray said. "And part of being a good neighbor is looking out for one another." The pest control workers will call police if they see something unusual during their stops, according to the report.

Nonsensical statement of the day (so far):

"Our point is not to invade people's houses or make them feel like their privacy is being invaded. It's just to try to have an extra set of eyes and ears out there," Truley Nolen worker Ronnie Rachels said.

The LA Times today explores the topic of radical muslim groups in California state prisons:

Federal investigators suspect that an Islamist prison gang, called Jamiyyat Ul Islam Is Saheeh, or Assembly of Authentic Islam, may have links to three Muslim men recently implicated in a possible plot to attack National Guard Recruitment Centers in California.

....Last month, police in Torrance arrested Gregory Vernon Patterson, 21, and Levar Haney Washington, 25, in connection with a string of gas station robberies. Washington converted to Islam in Folsom while serving time for assault and robbery, authorities said. Police staked out the pair and were led to Hammad Riaz Samana. Sources familiar with a federal investigation of the trio say they are suspected of planning to stage a series of terrorist attacks in California.

The vast majority of Muslim inmates are peaceful.

by TChris

Many in the "lock 'em up" crowd believe deprivation of liberty alone provides inadequate suffering to constitute true punishment. Some (particularly those who are certain that the innocent are never convicted) believe that any incarcerated person deserves whatever pain and abuse might be inflicted upon him. Others just don't care, which is why society largely ignores the problem of prison rape.

The National Prison Rape Elimination Commission is learning that the problem is too endemic to ignore. The effect of sexual abuse on individual inmates is devastating, but, as commission chairman Judge Reggie B. Walton recognizes, "people [who] say inmates get what they deserve ... don't think about the overall impact on society."

Mounir al-Motassadeq, 31, was convicted yesterday in a German court of being a member of an al-Qaeda cell. He was acquitted on the charge he was involved in the 9-11 attacks. This was Motassedeq's second trial. At his first trial, he was found guilty of helping to prepare for 9-11 and sentenced to 16 years, but the conviction was reversed on appeal because the U.S. failed to provide potentially exculpatory information from alleged 9-11 participant Ramzi Binalshibh and others whom the U.S. has been holding in secret, foreign detention facilities for a few years.

For the re-trial, the U.S. said it would provide summaries of interviews with Binalshibh.

In a three-hour judgment, read out before a court in Hamburg, Judge Ernst-Rainer Schudt said that the US Justice Department had refused to co-operate fully with the German court. “How are we supposed to do justice to our task when important documents are withheld from us?” the judge asked.

Although Washington did send transcripts of interviews with two al-Qaeda members in American custody, Judge Schudt complained that the testimony was incomplete and that the two witnesses should have been interviewed in person.

In Motassedeq's case, the German paper Die Zeit reports that the little bit of information from Binalshibh exonerated him of participation in the 9/11 attacks. This is the same argument Zacarias Moussaoui has been making for years. How can he get a fair trial, particularly on the issue of the death penalty, when Ramzi Binalshibh, among others, reportedly has favorable evidence to provide that would show he was not involved in the 9-11 attacks?

by TChris

Joseph Califano Jr. misses the point when he claims, “If you don’t reduce the use of marijuana, you can't possibly reduce illegal drug use because marijuana is far and away the most used drug.” Of course it is. It is among the safest of illicit drugs, and millions of world-wide tokers have learned that responsible use will not adversely affect their lives. Not only is it possible to “reduce illegal drug use” while largely ignoring marijuana use, it should be the government’s priority to help individuals reduce their reliance on drugs that have the greatest potential for dangerous abuse.

John Walters, the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, makes the same mistake when he tells reporters: “The issue here is not meth or marijuana. We’re concerned about substance abuse generally.” If we’re to take our drug policy seriously, shouldn’t reduction efforts be most closely targeted to the most dangerous drugs?

Focusing resources on marijuana users is wasteful. Between snacking and napping, pot smokers have little time (and even less energy) to rip apart the social fabric. If the government were serious in its desire to address actual (rather than imagined) social harm, it would direct its attention to predatory lenders.