Details of the suffocation death of Iraqi Major General Abed Hamed Mowhoush have been filed in court Monday. Four U.S. soldiers from Colorado are charged with murder and derelection of duty in his death. The documents show the technique used on Mowhoush had been used before rendering that prisoner unconscious.

The army had closed the hearing to the public and the Denver Post filed suit to stop the hearing until the decision could be reviewed. The new documents were filed in response to the Post's suit.

Mowhoush was placed in a sleeping bag and tied with an electrical cord in what the Army referred to as stress positions during a Nov. 26, 2003, interrogation at the Qaim detention facility northwest of Baghdad, according to the charges and other documents.

Special forces and other individuals previously interrogated the general, leaving him with "bruises, contusions and possibly some fractured ribs," the document said....

"This particular stress position has been used in the past and had rendered one person unconscious," Army lawyers wrote. "After that incident, CW3 Welshofer directed that only he and (another soldier) could use the sleeping bag technique."

Background available here.

Details about mistreatment of Iraqi detainees continue to emerge from the documents obtained by the ACLU. Wednesday's Washington Post reports the abuse was widespread. It also occurred over a three year time period -- blowing out of the water Administration claims of a few bad apples at a particular place like Abu Ghraib or even a particular point in time.

New documents released yesterday detail a series of probes by Army criminal investigators into multiple cases of threatened executions of Iraqi detainees by U.S. soldiers, as well as of thefts of currency and other private property, physical assaults, and deadly shootings of detainees at detention camps in Iraq.

In many of the newly disclosed cases, Army commanders chose noncriminal punishments for those involved in the abuse, or the investigations were so flawed that prosecutions could not go forward, the documents show. Human rights groups said yesterday that, as a result, the penalties imposed were too light to suit the offenses.

On December 29, a new law takes effect that changes the way asylum is granted.

Beginning next Wednesday, immigrants seeking asylum in the United States or Canada will have to apply to whichever country they arrived in first. Refugees who first travel to the United States, before attempting to enter Canada, will be turned away.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said the so-called Safe Third Country agreement between the United States and Canada is meant to cut red tape for asylum seekers. Critics predict it will lead more immigrants to try to illegally cross the U.S. border.

Immigrant shelters on both sides of the border are trying to cope with the large numbers of asylum seekers showing up this week. They are filled to capacity. The shelters are asking resident immigrants to take the refugees into their homes.

19 U.S. soldiers are among the 24 killed today in the deadliest attack on U.S. forces in Iraq to date. It occurred in a mess tent near Mosul as the soldiers were eating lunch.

An explosion ripped through a mess tent at a military base near Mosul where hundreds of U.S. troops had just sat down to lunch Tuesday, and officials said more than 20 people were killed and at least 57 were wounded.

A military spokesman said 19 of the dead were American soldiers, which would make the attack the deadliest single strike against U.S. troops since the start of the Iraq war.

A radical Muslim group, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, claimed responsibility. The dead included U.S. military personnel, U.S. contractors, foreign national contractors and Iraqi army, said Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, commander of Task Force Olympia in Mosul.

MSNBC says the soldiers base was Fort Lewis. Bush's comment: They died in a valiant struggle for peace.

"Hey Dude, Where's My Car" actor Erik Aude is coming home.

He's been jailed in Pakistan on a drug charge since February, 2002. He served almost three years of a seven year sentence.

State Department officials said Monday that a Pakistani judge last week ordered a sentence of time already served and upheld a previously imposed fine of 50,000 rupees -- about $860.

Erik Aude had been hired to pick up leather samples from a manufacturer in Islamabad, Pakistan's capital city, his mother said. But after Aude picked up a suitcase containing the samples and got to the Islamabad airport, Pakistani customs officials found eight pounds of opium hidden in the sample suitcase's lining.

Sherry Aude said her son had no knowledge the drugs were there. She worked tirelessly to free her son, appealing to officials in Congress and holding rallies on her son's behalf and at the Pakistani consulate in Los Angeles.

For background, see our earlier post, Midnight Express Redux and Seamus McGraw's extensive article about Erik.

The ACLU reports that new documents it received from its Freedom of Information Act request on Iraqi prisoners contain a shocking revelation:

A document released for the first time today by the American Civil Liberties Union suggests that President Bush issued an Executive Order authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq. Also released by the ACLU today are a slew of other records including a December 2003 FBI e-mail that characterizes methods used by the Defense Department as “torture” and a June 2004 “Urgent Report” to the Director of the FBI that raises concerns that abuse of detainees is being covered up.

“These documents raise grave questions about where the blame for widespread detainee abuse ultimately rests,” said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. “Top government officials can no longer hide from public scrutiny by pointing the finger at a few low-ranking soldiers.”

New York Governor George Pataki granted no clemencies this year to state inmates.

Traditionally, it is during the Christmas season that Mr. Pataki grants clemency, which he has done 31 times. This year, Mr. Pataki looked over several petitioners' cases but decided that none merited clemency.

With all the non-violent prisoners serving draconian sentences under the Rockefeller drug laws, it's hard to believe he couldn't find a few worthy of mercy. The marginal revisions to the law passed last month are no excuse. Only 400 prisoners are expected to be eligible for early release.

According to this 2002 Human Rights Watch Report, children are the hidden casualties of the Rockefeller drug laws:

Three highly decorated U.S. Forest Service workers have been sued by a San Diego businessman under the civil RICO Act (known as the Racketeering Act) for trying to block a luxury condo development and the Justice Department has left them to fend for themselves.

Okovita sued under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a statute originally passed in 1970 to strengthen the government's arsenal against mobsters and drug lords. As time has passed, the law has been used against a variety of individuals and groups. Legal experts, however, said they believed this was the first time the law had been targeted at Forest Service employees.

The three Forest Service employees and Steers said the charges against them are patently false. The government workers maintain that they were acting in their official capacity as Forest Service employees and have done nothing wrong. Steers said Okovita's suit was brought partly "to intimidate other activists from speaking out. That won't work," she said.

Some conservative Republicans have too much time on their hands. Case in point: Minnesota state representative Marty Seifert, whose latest proposal is to test welfare recipients to see if they are smokers - and reduce the benefits of those that test positive

"If you're going to take the taxpayer's money, we're going to expect good behavior," the Marshall Republican said Friday. "I'm not interested in subsidizing bad habits. It makes no sense to give out health and welfare subsidies if the payments go to smoking and the detriment of people's health and welfare."

[link via email from Soccerdad.]

Move over Monopoly. From across the border in Canada comes "The Grow-Op Game" where you get the chance at running your own "B.C. Bud" marijuana farm, complete with legal pitfalls. In fact, the creators of the game label it an "educational board game" and say it is aimed at teaching kids about the dangers of the pot business:

"You get ratted on by neighbors, hydro cuts you off, you get floods, there are tons of stuff that is negative about it," Vancouver-based creator Ivan Solomon said Saturday.

Solomon said the Monopoly-style game is the brainchild of a young, 20-something reformed pot grower, known only as the "Rabbit," to conceal his identity. Solomon said Rabbit came up with the idea for the game while serving time in jail.

Crooks and Liars has the 1986 videoclip of Frank Zappa on Crossfire, in which he argues against censorship and tells John Lofton of the Washington Times to "kiss my a**":

"The biggest threat to America today is not communism, it's moving
America toward a fascist theocracy. And everything that's happened
during the Reagan administration is steering us right down that pike.

I can only imagine what he would have thought of Bush and Ashcroft. Too bad he never got a chance to debate Jerry Falwell.

President Bush has made "legal reform" a top priority of his second administration. The New York Times reports Monday on the battle that will ensue in Congress over the issue.

"Legal reform" really means protecting big corporations from legal liability through statutory grants of immunity. Check out the Center for Justice and Democracy, whose mission is to protect the right to a jury trial and an independent judiciary, and their first-time awards for the Top Ten Zany Immunity Laws (pdf).

The next time you hear "legal reform," instead of buying into Republican images of towns without ob-gyns to deliver babies because of the price of malpractice insurance, picture instead special interest groups with beaucoup bucks in outstretched hands to Congresspersons, pleading "Shield us."