In the July 15 issue of The New York Review of Books, Anthony Lewis has a long, devastating article called,
"Making Torture Legal" . It includes this line:

The memos read like the advice of a mob lawyer to a mafia don on how to skirt the law and stay out of prison.

In other words, our government is in the hands of criminals. [hat tip Theologicus]

by TChris

Advice for murderers: wipe off the blood before you go shopping.

Wal-Mart workers called deputies after a blood-soaked man walked into the store and bought some clothes, bandages and trash bags around 4 a.m. He paid with a blood-stained $100 bill, they said, and drove off in a pickup.

Sheddrick Deon Bentley wasn't hard to find -- just look for the blood-soaked guy with the Wal-Mart bag. He's been charged with the second-degree murder of Cory Brightman, whose stabbed body was found in a garbage bin.

Last we heard, the U.S. planned to turn over legal control of Saddam to Iraq but retain physical control of him because the Iraqis supposedly do not have secure enough jails to hold him. Today, Iraq's national security advisor says differently.

A handcuffed and chained Saddam Hussein will be hauled in front of an Iraqi judge within days to hear his arrest warrant, Iraq's national security advisor Muwaffaq al-Rubaie said in a televised interview. "We're going to have control of Saddam Hussein. "We're going to have two American military MPs to hand him over to four Iraqi policemen. They will put a chain (on him) and take him to the waiting room," Rubaie told CBS anchorman Dan Rather.

Update: The U.S. confirms a marine of Lebanese descent has been missing since June 21.

Family confirms Marine is held hostage and pleads for his release.
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Original Post:

If true, it was only a matter of time. Al Jazeera reports that an Islamic group is claiming to be holding hostage an American marine.

An Arab satellite TV network broadcast a videotape Sunday showing a blindfolded man in military fatigues and said he was a U.S. Marine taken hostage in Iraq. There was no immediate comment from the U.S. military, but the video showed a card identifying the man by a Pakistani name and as an "active duty" Marine. The man had a trimmed moustache and his eyes were covered with a white blindfold.

The Al-Jazeera network said the group claimed it infiltrated a Marine outpost, lured the man outside and abducted him. The station said the group demanded the release of all Iraqis "in occupation jails" or the man would be killed. The group identified itself as "Islamic Response," the security wing of the "1920 Revolution Brigades" referring to the uprising against the British after World War I.

On a related note, Turkey has refused to give into terrorist demands for the release of three Turkish hostages. Here's a picture of the hostages, taken from a video aired on Al Jazeera, with this caption:

Did President Bush lie when he told America we haven't authorized the use of torture on prisoners? You decide. This new report says "enhanced interrogation techniques will be stopped.

Citing unnamed intelligence officials, the [Washington Post] newspaper reported in Sunday's editions that what the CIA calls "enhanced interrogation techniques" were put on hold pending a review by Justice Department and other lawyers.The techniques include such things as feigned drowning and refusal of pain medication for injuries. (our emphasis.)

Withholding pain medication to the injured isn't torture? What planet is Bush on? If the techniques are being stopped, that means they had been authorized and in use. And that means this Administration authorized and engaged in torture. Period.

Here's the Washington Post report. Here's Froomkin.

In our last post, we expressed our preference for John Edwards as Kerry's VP candidate. We don't want to be unfair to Dick Gephardt, since we will be supporting the team if he's the chosen one--TL is ABB (anybody but Bush) all the way--so we decided to do a little research on the issues that matter most to us. Here's what we found:

On crime and the death penalty:

• Voted NO on funding for alternative sentencing instead of more prisons. (Jun 2000)
• Voted NO on more prosecution and sentencing for juvenile crime. (Jun 1999)
• Voted YES on maintaining right of habeus corpus in Death Penalty Appeals. (Mar 1996)
• Voted NO on making federal death penalty appeals harder. (Feb 1995)
• Voted NO on replacing death penalty with life imprisonment. (Apr 1994)
• More funding and stricter sentencing for hate crimes. (Apr 2001)
• Require DNA testing for all federal executions. (Mar 2001)

On Drugs

• Voted YES on military border patrols to battle drugs & terrorism. (Sep 2001)
• Voted NO on prohibiting needle exchange & medical marijuana in DC. (Oct 1999)
• Voted NO on subjecting federal employees to random drug tests. (Sep 1998)

Gephardt was a co-sponsor of the Innocence Protection Act.

The Washington Post nails it on Kerry's fear factor in choosing John Edwards for Vice President:

Among the biggest decisions Kerry faces is whether Edwards could check his ego and ambitions for four or eight years and play the loyal, subservient and rarely glamorous role of vice president, whose greatest concern is supposed to be the president's best interests. Purely in terms of campaigning this fall, the Massachusetts senator also must consider whether Edwards's sizzle would make his own more prosaic style seem unacceptably wooden by comparison.

Our advice to Mr. Kerry: If you want to be President, John Edwards can take you there. The others can't. If you lose in 2004, you don't stand a chance in 2008, and Edwards will own 2008. If you win in 2004, John Edwards can own 2012. Grab Edwards while he's willing. You can choose our father's Oldsmobile, Dick Gephardt, and we'll still vote for you, but our heart won't be in it. Nor will our dollars. Please, choose Edwards, and breathe some life into your campaign and us Democratic voters.

And please, think about Gary Hart for Secretary of State and Oscar Goodman for Attorney General. And abolishing the position of White House Drug Czar. Why Oscar? We'd love to write his biography one day, he's one of our all time defense heros, Do a "google search" or if you don't have the time, here's a fewsnippets:

This week's Sunday New York Times Magazine interview is with Ron Reagan. He's an atheist. He did not vote for George Bush in 2000. He's been hired by MSNBC to provide election coverage. A few snippets. First, on his father:

How do you account for all the glowing obituaries of him? I think it was a relief for Americans to look at pictures of something besides men on leashes. If you are going to call yourself a Christian -- and I don't -- then you have to ask yourself a fundamental question, and that is: Whom would Jesus torture? Whom would Jesus drag around on a dog's leash? How can Christians tolerate it? It is unconscionable. It has put our young men and women who are over there, fighting a war that they should not have been asked to fight -- it has put them in greater danger.

On Dick Cheney:

How did your mother feel about being ushered to her seat by President Bush? Well, he did a better job than Dick Cheney did when he came to the rotunda. I felt so bad. Cheney brought my mother up to the casket, so she could pay her respects. She is in her 80's, and she has glaucoma and has trouble seeing. There were steps, and he left her there. He just stood there, letting her flounder. I don't think he's a mindful human being. That's probably the nicest way I can put it.

On the election:

One thing that Buddhism teaches you is that every moment is an opportunity to change. And we will have a moment in November to make a big change.

Last week's Sunday New York Times Magazine featured an interview with Trent Lott. The opening topic is his hair and whether it's real. They move onto torture, and he again takes the position using dogs to threaten prisoners at Abu Ghraib is fine:

You recently created a stir when you defended the interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib.

Most of the people in Mississippi came up to me and said: ''Thank Goodness. America comes first.'' Interrogation is not a Sunday-school class. You don't get information that will save American lives by withholding pancakes.

But unleashing killer dogs on naked Iraqis is not the same as withholding pancakes.

I was amazed that people reacted like that. Did the dogs bite them? Did the dogs assault them? How are you going to get people to give information that will lead to the saving of lives?

He does a little better with gay adoption:

For the first time in an unrestricted interview, Ken Lay is speaking out about Enron. From Sunday's New York Times.

Now, on the eve of what may be the government's final decision on whether to charge him with a crime, Mr. Lay is talking for the first time about the company's collapse in 2001 and the scandal that enveloped it. In more than six hours of interviews with The New York Times, Mr. Lay remained steadfast in his expressions of innocence, even as he acknowledged, as head of the company, accountability for the debacle rests rightfully with him. ``I take full responsibility for what happened at Enron,'' said Mr. Lay, 62. ``But saying that, I know in my mind that I did nothing criminal.''

So whose to blame for the Enron fiasco, according to Lay?

As Mr. Lay describes it, the Enron collapse was the outgrowth of the wrong-headed and criminal acts of the company's finance organization, and specifically its chief financial officer, Andrew S. Fastow. He says that both he and the board were misled by Mr. Fastow about the activities and true nature of a series of off-the-books partnerships that played the decisive role in the company's collapse. Yet, Mr. Lay still argues that some of the company's most controversial decisions - including some that set up financial conflicts of interest for Mr. Fastow that could well be unprecedented in corporate America - had good reasons to be done, and can only be seen as mistakes in hindsight.

Lay's finances have changed dramatically the past few years:

by TChris

The NY Times reports that the FBI is still struggling to implement a long-awaited case management system. (TalkLeft called attention to the GAO's criticism of the project here.)

The Virtual Case File system, which would allow agents to share information easily — a critical shortcoming of the present system — is already two years behind schedule and one bureau official who spoke on condition of anonymity went so far as to suggest that the program might ultimately have to be abandoned.

The system was promised to be operational before the end of this year. Now the plan is to phase it in over an undetermined period of time, adding new capabilities after core functions are shown to work well.

The FBI's current system was already obsolete by the time it was installed. The agency may be repeating that mistake with the slow rollout of the unproven VCF system.

Law Prof Michael Froomkin of Discourse.Net has some more analysis of the Bybee torture memo sent to White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales. He says it reads like a one-sided brief.

We'd like to point out that after writing that memo, the Bush team worked hard to get Jay Bybee appointed to the federal court. Bush nominated him for a seat on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2002, and he was confirmed and sworn in last year.

Update: The New York Times has more on the Bybee memo .

Update: More from Professor Froomkin here.