The New York Times reports that interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison began reporting prisoner abuse last November:

Beginning in November, a small unit of interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison began reporting allegations of prisoner abuse, including the beatings of five blindfolded Iraqi generals, in internal documents sent to senior officers, according to interviews with military personnel who worked in the prison. The disclosure of the documents raises new questions about whether senior officers in Iraq were alerted about serious abuses at the prison before January. Top military officials have said they only learned about abuses then, after a soldier came forward with photographs of the abuse.

The Red Cross previously has said it told the U.S. of the abuse charges last November.

The Red Cross has issued an ultimatum to President Bush on Saddam Hussein: Charge him by June 30 or release him.

Saddam Hussein must either be released from custody by June 30 or charged if the US and the new Iraqi government are to conform to international law, the International Committee of the Red Cross said last night. Nada Doumani, a spokeswoman for the ICRC, told the Guardian: "The United States defines Saddam Hussein as a prisoner of war. At the end of an occupation PoWs have to be released provided they have no penal charges against them."

....The occupation officially ends on June 30 and US forces will be in Iraq at the invitation of its sovereign government. "There are all these people kept in a legal vacuum. No one should be left not knowing their legal status. Their judicial rights must be assured," Ms Doumani said.

[link via Atrios.]

Jason G. Damron, a student at Portland State University, has written this letter to President Bush, inviting him to attend a day of classes with him and get a real education. It's terrific, go read it.

Update: We do take issue with the phrase "Zionist zealotry"--we didn't catch it on our initial reading of the article. (Commenters have pointed out the two words, about five lines from up from the end--it's hardly the focus of article.)

Update: Too many off-topic comments, despite warnings. Comments closed, the last several were deleted entirely.

Captain Sensible has found a new set of diary entries for Abu Ghraib interrogator Joe Ryan. They cover March 7th - 18th. Some points of interest:

• On March 7th, CACI were still using untrained and unqualified interrogators at Abu Ghraib (according to Ryan)

"In reviewing our manning document with LTC Faust this evening, I noticed that we have three people doing interrogations that are not school trained or certified. This is a rather large problem. LTC Faust stated that Tom Howard, one of our CACI higher ups working at the C2, told him that we could use analysts that showed promise and turn them into junior interrogators. After recovering from my convulsions, I explained that I would like my next stop to be home, not Ft. Leavenworth."

• Ryan claims that the International Red Cross were banned from Abu Ghraib on March 18th for distributing 'anti-American propaganda'

• Ryan reveals a lot about tensions with "another government agency" (code for CIA I think), and that the OGA had "already burned bridges here by coming in and removing a couple detainees without authorization".

• Ryan reveals there were video cameras in the interrogation booths (something that's been speculated about but not proven).

To summarize, there are now three sets of Joe Ryan diary entries:

This is great news.

A group of former US officials is urging voters to defeat President Bush in the November election, saying his policies have isolated the United States, a spokesman for the group said on Sunday.....26 former diplomats and military officials, including appointees of former Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, plan to issue an open statement on Wednesday criticizing Bush's foreign policies.

"We just came to agreement that this administration was really endangering the United States," said William Harrop, a former ambassador to Israel under the previous Bush administration.....Signers of the statement are concerned that the administration has undermined U.S. leadership in the world and alienated U.S. allies, Harrop said.

The Washington Post reports that the torture history of the C.I.A. goes back 40 years.

A CIA handbook on coercive interrogation methods, produced 40 years ago during the Vietnam War, shows that techniques such as those used in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have a long history with U.S. intelligence and were based on research and field experience. Declassified 10 years ago, the training manual carries in its title the code word used for the CIA in Vietnam, "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation -- July 1963." Used to train new interrogators, the handbook presents "basic information about coercive techniques available for use in the interrogation situation."

The specific coercive methods it describes echo today's news stories about Guantanamo and the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. At Abu Ghraib, for example, photographs and documents have shown that detainees were hooded, blindfolded, dressed in sloppy garb and forced to go naked.

So much for the "few bad apples" theory.

The New York Times has a fascinating investigative report on immigrant smugglers from Ecuador:

In collaboration with The New York Times, a reporter from El Tiempo, a newspaper in Cuenca, Ecuador, took the eight-day voyage, covering 1,100 nautical miles from a cove near this scruffy Ecuadorean beach resort to the northern coast of Guatemala. Her journey as a client of smugglers — and sometimes a hostage — provides a rare look inside one small part of the vast pipeline that carries untold numbers of migrants to the United States each year.

Not surprisingly to us, the real portrait of the smugglers differs considerably from that advanced by American law enforcement:

Up close, the typical migrant smuggler is unlike the sophisticated, violent mastermind portrayed by American law enforcement officials. Most never went to high school. They are often unarmed. They are motivated by the same poverty that drives migrants from their homelands. The smugglers run a business built for the poor by the poor, relying on willpower and wooden boats to move thousands of people. They do not always prey on migrants. Their business is based on trust that runs deep in communities that have sent migrants to the United States for decades.

The Ecuadoran route is one of the newer favorites in an industry generating $20 billion a year --second only to drugs:

Have you ever heard late President Ronald Reagan's pro-marijuana speech? We laughed out loud.

Reporters were given a grand welcome at Guantanamo this week. Here's how the military described the interrogation process: it's just a mental chess game with no torture or confrontational attitudes--they try to earn the prisoners' trust. One interrogator even brings her own thermos of tea to share with her subjects. Sometimes, they may give out food from McDonalds. We doubt it's quite the picnic the military describes.

Some released Guantanamo prisoners have said they were shackled in "stress" positions for hours while they were questioned and that threatening dogs, strobe lights, freezing air and other methods were used.

PFC Lynndie England's defense team has submitted a list of 100 witnesses it wants to call at her Article 32 hearing on charges of abusing Abu Ghraib prisoners. The list includes Vice President Cheney.

By putting top government officials like Vice President Dick Cheney on their witness list, England's attorneys are serving notice that in defending their client, they will attempt to put on trial the Bush administration's policies on intelligence gathering from detainees. Like most other military police reservists charged in the abuse scandal, England has claimed military intelligence officers ordered the MPs to "soften up" the detainees prior to interrogations.

Don't hold your breath. It's the military investigating officer in charge of the hearing who gets to decide which witnesses are relevant enough to call. Since the hearing is the equivalent of a probable cause hearing, to decide whether there is enough evidence to initiate a court-martial, it's unlikely such higher-ups will be called. Who else is on the wish list?

....Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Defense Undersecretary for Intelligence Stephen Cambone; Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and other high-ranking Army officers; White House General Counsel Alberto Gonzales; and Justice Department officials.

Report from DC: A Saturday night in a random upscale but not luxe-luxe hotel bar in the heart of DC. Not a single person mentioned Ronald Reagan. The topics of discussion at the bar: Kobe Bryant, Scott Peterson, Michael Jackson, JonBenet Ramsey and Michael Skakel, in that order. All topics were introduced by the female bartender who has been on the job at this establishement for 16 years. Here's the consensus, from bartender and patrons:

• Kobe: Not guilty
• Scott Peterson: He did it but it was an accident and he panicked, denying all.
• Michael Jackson: Not sure, but the settlement in the first case a decade ago makes them think he might be guilty.
• JonBenet: The killer's out there and they think it's great that her father, John Ramsey, is running for office in Michigan.
• Michael Skakel: His own words convicted him, but it might have been his brother.
• OJ: He either did it or had someone go over there to cause mischief which got out of control--but the prosecution didn't prove its case and Mark Furhman has zero credibility.

Talk about a jury pool...we've been in enough hotel bars around the country to know they are a pretty good barometer. And, by the way, the show this group watched most consistently, usually the late night re-run, and the host they trusted the most, was Dan Abrams of MSNBC.

US News and World Report says there is now evidence that Gen. Richard Sanchez was directly involved in hiding prisoners from the Red Cross:

The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, issued a classified order last November directing military guards to hide a prisoner, later dubbed "Triple X" by soldiers, from Red Cross inspectors and keep his name off official rosters. The disclosure, by military sources, is the first indication that Sanchez was directly involved in efforts to hide prisoners from the Red Cross, a practice that was sharply criticized by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba in a report describing abuses of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

....The disclosure of Sanchez's involvement may focus more attention on him. There have been reports that his top Army lawyers sought to curb Red Cross access to Abu Ghraib, only weeks after the humanitarian agency uncovered abuses and sexual humiliation at the prison late last year. Some Army officers, including Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the commander of the 800th MP Brigade, have blamed Sanchez's staff for refusing to release security detainees from Abu Ghraib even when they were believed to pose no threat to coalition forces.