In Iraq in 2006, U.S. soldiers herded 11 members of a family into a room, including a 75 year old woman and five children, handcuffed them, and shot them point blank.

The story was widely reported in 2006 (we covered it here, and even I gave the soldiers the benefit of the doubt as to whether they shot the kids at point-blank range -- silly me.)

A newly released cable from Wikileaks (available here) authored by Philip Alston, Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, a few weeks after the killings, recounts the original police report of the killings stating that the family was handcuffed and shot at close range. The cable says soldiers then called in an airstrike to bomb the house and destroy the evidence.

The U.S. had maintained that the soldiers raided the house after getting a tip that a member of al-Qaida was at the house. The U.S. said a fierce gunfight ensued that left the house in a rubble and a few people, including the al qaeda suspect, dead. It refused to conduct a further investigation. [More...]

Many lawyers offer their clients the convenience of paying by credit card. The Feds have just instituted new reporting rules (available here) on such paymnts.

The IRS has implemented new compliance requirements through Internal Revenue Code Section 6050W that will affect all merchants (including government and non-profit entities). Beginning in calendar year 2011, all merchants will be required to report gross payments received through debit or credit card transactions to the IRS on an annual basis. To verify this reporting, banks and merchant service providers will be required to provide both merchants and the IRS with Form 1099-K by January of 2012.

From now on, your merchant name on your credit account at the bank must match your legal name on your tax ID number. Banks will be instituting compliance measures to check.

Here are the final regulations.

NYTimes:

The federal agency that oversees the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is set to file suits against more than a dozen big banks, accusing them of misrepresenting the quality of mortgage securities they assembled and sold at the height of the housing bubble, and seeking billions of dollars in compensation. The Federal Housing Finance Agency suits, which are expected to be filed in the coming days in federal court, are aimed at Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, among others, according to three individuals briefed on the matter. [. . .] The suits will argue the banks, which assembled the mortgages and marketed them as securities to investors, failed to perform the due diligence required under securities law and missed evidence that borrowers’ incomes were inflated or falsified. When many borrowers were unable to pay their mortgages, the securities backed by the mortgages quickly lost value. Fannie and Freddie lost more than $30 billion, in part as a result of the deals, losses that were borne mostly by taxpayers.

Count me among the fans of Nicole Polizzi, aka Snookie on Jersey Shore. Her personality is infectious, and if if I were in high school with her, I'm sure I'd want us to be friends. She also speaks in Snookiisms, which at times (although not in this newscast) range from hilarious to endearing. A few from her book are here. And she's laughing all the way to the bank.

Take off your age and gender bias lenses, and give her a look and listen:

Will she replace Diane Sawyer one day? Doubtful. But she surely could deliver the news on a channel like MTV.

Via the Washington Post, there are now more agents in the CIA's counter-terrorism division than there are core members of al-Qaeda around the world (about 2400.). Not only that, the CIA's mission has changed since 9/11.

In the decade since the Sept. 11, 2011, attacks, the agency has undergone a fundamental transformation. Although the CIA continues to gather intelligence and furnish analysis on a vast array of subjects, its focus and resources are increasingly centered on the cold counterterrorism objective of finding targets to capture or kill.

Even analysts are now being used to track targets for capture and kill operations: [More...]

President Obama will speak next Thursday at 7pm ET, so he doesn't interrupt NFL football. I could care less about football, but I would hate to miss eviction night on Big Brother, and with 8 million viewers, that's nothing to sneeze at. On tonight's show, here's hoping Shelley goes home.

Condi Rice had some sharp words today for Dick Cheney's portrayal of her as "tearful" in his book.

"It certainly doesn't sound like me, now, does it?" Rice said in the interview. "I would never -- I don't remember coming to the vice president tearfully about anything in the entire eight years that I knew him."

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today that due process rights apply to all, even the undocumented. The opinion is here.

There's also a new Jersey Shore and Project Runway tonight. This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Via Krugman, the IMF report (PDF) on how Iceland has put itself on the right path. This stuck out for me:

A new and significantly smaller banking system has emerged from the crisis, with substantial private sector involvement. The banking system now holds assets of about 200 percent of GDP (one-fifth the size of the system pre-crisis) and is comprised of 14 institutions (23 before the crisis). This downsizing was largely achieved by transferring domestic assets and deposits to new institutions and imposing losses on general unsecured creditors. Work to address legacy vulnerabilities in the financial system (including the high level of nonperforming loans, loan and deposit concentration, and financial imbalances) is progressing. In particular, household and corporate debt restructuring is finally advancing and will help restore bank and private sector balance sheets.

Facing up to reality of the banks' true financial condition worked in Iceland. Maybe it can work here.

Speaking for me only

College football season starts tonight. Go Gators!

Open Thread.

Time for dinner and Big Brother here.

Anyone have any interesting Labor Day plans? Maybe you can get in the mood with Salt of the Earth with Mick and Keith -- the Concert for 9/11 version.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

A lawsuit between two private contracting companies that transported detainees between the U.S., Guantanamo and secret black-hole overseas prisons has revealed major new details about the Government's secret rendition program under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

The company is DynCorp, now known as Dyncorp Internatiobal.[More...]

The Associated has published two documents proving the existence of the Demographics Unit inside the NYPD. (Background here.) Mayor Bloomberg said the unit didn't exist.

Working with the CIA, the New York Police Department maintained a list of "ancestries of interest" and dispatched undercover officers to monitor Muslim businesses and social groups, according to new documents that offer a rare glimpse inside an intelligence program the NYPD insists doesn't exist.

The documents add new details to an Associated Press investigation that explained how undercover NYPD officers singled out Muslim communities for surveillance and infiltration.

The documents are here and here.

NYTimes DealBook:

The Justice Department filed a complaint on Wednesday to block AT&T’s proposed $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile, a deal that would create the largest carrier in the country and reshape the industry.

The complaint, which was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, said that T-Mobile “places important competitive pressure on its three larger rivals, particularly in terms of pricing, a critically important aspect of competition.” The complaint also highlighted T-Mobile’s high speed network and its innovations in technology.

Here is the complaint. Here is Department of Justice Statement:

In order to ensure that competition remains and that everyone – including consumers, businesses and the government – continues to receive high quality, competitively priced mobile wireless products and services, the Department of Justice today filed an antitrust lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. to block AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile.

The Department filed its lawsuit because we believe the combination of AT&T and T-Mobile would result in tens of millions of consumers all across the United States facing higher prices, fewer choices and lower quality products for their mobile wireless services.

More detailed analysis on the flip.