Morning News Roundup (03 Mar)

• The BBC was able to ask questions, through a lawyer, of one of the detainees (aka, prisoners) down in Guantanamo who was engaged in a hunger strike recently, and he paints a stark picture:
  

  Fawzi al-Odah said hunger strikers were strapped to a chair and force-fed through a tube three times a day.
  
  He told how detainees were given "formulas" to force them to empty their bowels and were strapped to a metal chair three times a day, where a tube was inserted to administer food.

  The report also notes a legal challenge to the force-feeding policy by another inmate, "the first test for a new law explicitly outlawing torture of terrorism suspects, which President George W Bush signed in December."
  
  You might remember that one--John McCain proposed it and Vice President Dick "Big Time! Dick" Cheney vehemently opposed it and worked like hell to have the Congress derail it. It was also the bill that included a signing clause that essentially stated that the President could ignore it. Well, the WaPo reports that is exactly the position of federal prosecutors:
  

  Bush administration lawyers, fighting a claim of torture by a Guantanamo Bay detainee, yesterday argued that the new law that bans cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody does not apply to people held at the military prison.

  In federal court yesterday and in legal filings, Justice Department lawyers contended that a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, cannot use legislation drafted by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to challenge treatment that the detainee's lawyers described as "systematic torture."

• You've no doubt read about or seen the video of President Bush receiving dire warnings before Hurricane Katrina hit--and then stated in an ABC-TV interview that no one could have anticipated the magnitude of the destruction. Well, here's another briefing that the President received and turned a blind eye toward via heroic investigative reporter Murray Waas over at the National Journal:
  

  Two highly classified intelligence reports delivered directly to President Bush before the Iraq war cast doubt on key public assertions made by the president, Vice President Cheney, and other administration officials as justifications for invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein, according to records and knowledgeable sources.
  [...]
  Among other things, the report stated that the Energy Department and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research believed that the tubes were "intended for conventional weapons," a view disagreeing with that of other intelligence agencies, including the CIA, which believed that the tubes were intended for a nuclear bomb.
  [...]
  On October 7, 2002, less than a week after Bush was given the summary, he said in a speech in Cincinnati: "Evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his 'nuclear mujahedeen' -- his nuclear holy warriors.... Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons."

• A nationwide strike called by Islamist parties paralyzed Pakistan on Friday and anti-U.S. protests erupted in several Pakistani cities Friday, with crowds burning American flags, chanting "Death to Bush!" and scuffling with police shortly before the U.S. president was to arrive for a two-day visit. [AP/Yahoo!]
  
  
• And things aren't going so well on the homefront either--an LATimes/Bloomberg poll puts the President's approval rating at 38% a drop from 43% in January (which is in line with other polls noted yesterday). [Chicago Tribune]
  
  
• Suspected Sunni Arab insurgents killed at least 19 electric power plant employees and poor Shiite Muslim laborers during a rampage in a rural stretch of the country. [LATimes]
  
  
• The top U.S. commander in Iraq said on Friday that the crisis of sectarian violence triggered by last week's bombing of a Shi'ite shrine has passed but refused to rule out the possibility of a civil war. [Reuters/Yahoo!]
  
  
• Two new satellite surveys show that warming air and water are causing Antarctica to lose ice faster than it can be replenished by interior snowfall, and thus are contributing to rising global sea levels. [NYTimes and WaPo]
  
  
• Whew... this is a shitty day for news. What about some Happy News (from our favorite source for happy news, HappyNews.com):
  
  
  • Carol Burnett will soon be appearing on Desperate Housewives
  • An agriculture engineering professor at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology has successfully extracted 1.4 milliliters (0.042 ounces) of gasoline from every 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of cow dung by applying high pressure and heat.
  • A study of older men in The Netherlands, known for its luscious chocolate, indicated those who ate the equivalent of one-third of a chocolate bar every day had lower blood pressure and a reduced risk of death.

But the happiest news of all? I'm going to see Ultraviolet with Mrs. F tonight. Well, I'm not jumping for joy ecstatic about that, but it's a trade-off for her watching The Unbearable Lightness of Being (one of my very most favorite movies) with me. And that is very happy indeed.