by TChris

Confronting continuing violence in Iraq, the Pentagon has scrapped its plan to reduce the level of U.S. forces to 115,000. Instead, 47,000 replacement troops will be sent to Iraq, maintaining a troop level of 135,000 to 138,000 at least through fall.

by TChris

This story will evolve as more details become available, but the initial conclusion is appalling.

The U.S. military has investigated the deaths of 25 prisoners held by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and determined that two prisoners were murdered by Americans, one an Army soldier and the other a CIA contractor, Army officials said on Tuesday.

What happened as a result of the investigation?

An Army official said that a soldier was convicted in the U.S. military justice system of killing a prisoner by hitting him with a rock, and was reduced in rank to private and thrown out of the service but did not serve any jail time.

Reduced in rank? No jail time? What's going on here?

Update: More details of the story:

An Army official said a soldier was convicted in the U.S. military justice system of homicide for shooting a prisoner to death in September 2003 at a field detention center in Iraq. ... The official said the soldier shot the prisoner after the prisoner had thrown rocks at the soldier, and the soldier was found to have used excessive force.

The official said the Army determined that this death was a homicide. The official said that because the CIA contractor was not in the U.S. military no legal action was taken because of lack of jurisdiction, but Army officials referred the case to the Justice Department for possible action.

The killers' identities are being withheld.

by TChris

Listening to conservatives over the last 25 years might lead to the conclusion that only fuzzy-thinking liberals who are "soft on crime" care about the rehabilitation of offenders. Now that the preferred correctional policy of conservatives -- lengthy sentences with no services that might interfere with the corrective value of punishment -- has (as TalkLeft reported yesterday) caused serious financial problems for states without corresponding benefits in crime reduction, some conservatives have come to accept that there may be more cost-effective means of reducing the likelihood of recidivism.

Having turned "rehabilitation" into a dirty word, and unwilling to admit their error, conservatives had to find a new phrase.

They are not calling it rehabilitation but re-entry, programs that help inmates make the transition from prison to returning home. These include drug treatment, job training and finding housing.

"We've got a broken corrections system," Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, said. "Recidivism rates are too high and create too much of a financial burden on states without protecting public safety."

No kidding. Brownback says that "the public forgot" that all those incarcerated people were eventually going to be released -- with no job skills, no education, no drug or mental health treatment, no support systems, a criminal record that will prevent them from finding a decent job, and no help in their efforts to avoid a return to crime. Well, actually, "the public" didn't forget; it was the right wing, continually ridiculing the left for being "soft on crime," that forgot to stay in touch with reality.

So now the right is backpedalling as "the public" sees how successful rehabilitation (sorry, "re-entry") programs can be.

by TChris

According to the Congressional Research Service, the Bush Administration violated federal law by ordering Richard Foster to withhold from Congress his estimates of the cost of legislation to add a drug benefit to Medicare.

In a report on Monday, the research service said that Congress's "right to receive truthful information from federal agencies to assist in its legislative functions is clear and unassailable." Since 1912, it said, federal laws have protected the rights of federal employees to communicate with Congress, and recent laws have "reaffirmed and strengthened" those protections.

Had the true cost of the controversial law been known, it is doubtful that Congress would have given the administration the legislation it wanted. The administration solved that problem, like so many others, with a lie, in violation of its duty to "make professional and reliable cost estimates, unfettered by any particular partisan agenda."

by TChris

States have frequently gone overboard with their sex offender registration laws, requiring everyone convicted of a sex offense, no matter the circumstances, to register. Michigan legislators may reform the law to give a break to a class of people who aren't reasonably viewed as dangerous -- teenagers who had sex with other teenagers.

All too often, it takes a tragedy to get the legislature's attention. That's what happened in the case of Justin Fawcett.

Fawcett, who as a teenager was charged with statutory rape for having sex with a fellow high school student, learned his name would appear for 25 years on the state's sex offender registry, despite a plea agreement that allowed him to avoid inclusion on the list.

A few weeks later, on March 19, the 20-year-old was found dead of an apparent drug overdose at his boyhood home in West Bloomfield Township. Fawcett, who battled drug problems throughout his high school years, clearly was bothered by the news, his father said. "Whether or not Justin actually would have had a good life and stayed off drugs and things like that, I don't know," David Fawcett said. "But I know that this did not help him."

Stigmatizing someone for 25 years because he slept with a girlfriend close to his own age doesn't make society more safe. It arguably makes society less safe by standing in the way of rehabilitation. Michigan should enact the proposed change to remove nonviolent teenagers from the registration requirement.

A Muslim civil rights group, Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), has issued a report on attacks on U.S. Muslims this past year, and says they reached a record number:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) said it received 1,019 claims of physical and verbal abuse, up from 602 the previous year. It said Muslims were harassed at work, in schools and in their communities.

Fears of terror attacks after 11 September 2001 and the Iraq conflict contributed to the increase, it said. The Cair also blamed what it called Muslim-bashing in the US media and the misapplication of the country's anti-terrorism bill, known as the Patriot Act.

We continue to monitor the possibility of the return of the military draft. The news today is this:

WASHINGTON - The chief of the U.S. Selective Service System has proposed registering women for the military draft and requiring that young Americans regularly inform the government about whether they have training in niche specialties needed in the armed services.

The proposal, which the agency's acting director Lewis Brodsky presented to senior Pentagon officials just before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, also seeks to extend the age of draft registration to 34, up from 25.

The information was obtained from a Freedom of Information Act request:

The plan, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, highlights the extent to which agency officials have planned for an expanded military draft in case the administration and Congress authorize one in the future. "In line with today's needs, the Selective Service System's structure, programs and activities should be re-engineered toward maintaining a national inventory of American men and, for the first time, women, ages 18 through 34, with an added focus on identifying individuals with critical skills," the agency said in a Feb. 11, 2003, proposal presented to Pentagon officials.

[link via Atrios and Democratic Underground]

Update: Julian Sanchez and Maxspeak on the draft. Max mentions a post of our's which is now located here. Max still says he doesn't think a draft will come to pass. We predict if Bush is re-elected, plans to reinstate will be announced around January.

The Dreyfuss Report says pressure is building in London and Washington for us to "cut and run" in Iraq....and John Kerry isn't listening.

Last week, conservative General William Odom—former head of the supersecret National Security Agency—became the first important former top military man to endorse the idea that the United States has bungled Iraq and needs to get out. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Odom said: "We have failed." He urged that U.S. forces be pulled out "from that shattered country as rapidly as possible.. The issue is how high a price we're going to pay—less by getting out sooner, or more by getting out later."

Former U.S. intelligence officials and ex-ambassadors who I've been in touch with are abuzz with Odom's remarks, and they are likely to follow in the footsteps of 52 British diplomats and others who rebuked hapless Tony Blair last week, called the Anglo-American policy in Iraq "doomed to failure."

Dreyfuss says:

Pity that John Kerry is, so far blind to the catastrophe in Iraq. His speeches and wishy-washy policy on Iraq have left him totally unable to capture America's anger over Iraq. Since calling for the UN to take over for the United States in Iraq, Kerry has tacked this way and that, calling for more U.S. troops and pledging to stand firm, whatever that means. It's clear that Kerry doesn't have the backbone to stand up to President Bush on Iraq, the single biggest issue of 2004. Will he get a spine transplant anytime soon? I doubt it. Ralph Nader is campaigning hard for the anti-war vote. He may get mine.

We'll stick with Kerry over Nader, but we'd love to see us out of Iraq sooner than later.

The Washington Post reports that two months ago, because of reports of Iraqi prisoner abuse, the Army "quietly" sent a team of 25 military police to Iraq to train the troops watching the prisoners:

The move followed an internal Army investigation that found military police at the Abu Ghraib prison largely unprepared for their role as guards and accused them of grossly mistreating Iraqi detainees, the officials said. The decision to send the special team reflected an acknowledgement by U.S. military commanders that the abuse of detainees and laxness in oversight evident at the prison may extend beyond the small group of enlisted soldiers and officers charged or reprimanded so far and require broader remedial action.

The article says the Administration is not making excuses for the guards' misbehavior:

The episode has focused attention not only on the training of military police guards, but also on the techniques used by military intelligence agents and private contractors responsible for interrogating prisoners. An internal Army investigation has reported that the accused prison guards -- enlisted personnel from a reserve military police unit -- were acting on instructions from the interrogators, who told the guards to "set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses."

It's also clear the misconduct of the guards violated the law:

by TChris

Every now and then, someone gets charged with a crime (usually a version of disorderly conduct) for uttering a naughty word in public. Courts often find that language common in locker rooms, high schools, and HBO isn't entitled to constitutional protection if, uttered publicly, it disturbs someone, or might have, particularly if the profanity falls upon the tender ears of a minor.

The Supreme Court declined to take a case that tested the limits of the government's ability to criminalize foul language. Malachi Robinson, a candidate for Stupid Criminal of the Week --

was walking down the street about midnight four years ago when he called the Missoula county deputy in a nearby squad car a "(expletive) pig." The deputy got out and confronted Robinson, who uttered another expletive at the officer.

It should come as no surprise that Robinson was arrested. But, unnecessarily obnoxious and offensive as Robinson was being, didn't he have a right to express his opinion about public employees? He didn't cause a confrontation; the officer could have stayed in the squad car. Police officers aren't children; they might not like what they hear, but this probably wasn't the first time the officer had encountered abusive opinions about law enforcement. Shouldn't the first amendment protect the right to be publicly disrespectful?

My DD's Chris Bowers compares the electabilty factors for Wesley Clark and John Edwards as running mate for John Kerry. He concludes Edwards is the better choice. We agree.

Update: CNN analysis of the veepstakes is here.

Frank Quattrone, the former banker who made a fortune taking hot tech companies public, has been found guilty of obstructing federal investigations into 1990's stock offerings.

Jurors delivered their verdict after deliberating about seven hours over two days, concluding the ex-banker tried to block grand jury and regulatory investigations by forwarding an e-mail to co-workers reminding them to "clean up" their files. It was the second trial for Quattrone, 48, who will likely face one to two years in prison at his sentencing, set for Sept. 8. The first trial ended in a hung jury. Quattrone, who grew up in a working-class neighborhood and later earned $120 million in one year as a banker, showed no emotion as the verdict was read. But he later hugged his crying mother.

Quattrone was represented at both trials by San Francisco's John Keker, one of the finest litigators in the country.

We are obviously grossly disappointed. I feel like we failed Frank," attorney John Keker said outside the federal courthouse where both trials were held. "He's innocent."