Morning News Roundup (07 September)

Top Story: Secrets Revealed

• President Bush, calling on Congress to quickly authorize trials of suspected terrorists by military tribunals, acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that the Central Intelligence Agency has subjected dozens of detainees to "tough" interrogation at secret prisons abroad and said the remaining 14 have been transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to await trial. [ChiTrib]
  
  
• Well, it took awhile, but yesterday President Bush confirmed the story [originally written in November 2005 by the WaPo's Dana Priest]. Used it in a speech. Some might even say used it as political ammunition. Now, apparently, with the five-year anniversary of 9/11 approaching -- not to mention the midterm elections -- it's okay to talk about secret prisons, at least if your initials are POTUS. [Howard Kurtz in the WaPo]
  
  
• Flashback to the original Dana Priest article:

  The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.
  
  The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.
  [...]
  The existence and locations of the facilities -- referred to as "black sites" in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents -- are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.

• Why now? The MoJo blog points to this Time article:

  By transferring name-brand al-Qaeda prisoners recognized as dangerous men — such as alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad — to Guantanamo from secret detention abroad is likely to strengthen the rationale for the off-shore facility, and for dispensing justice via military courts. It is also precisely because the Supreme Court has ruled that military tribunals do not offer detainees sufficient legal rights that the President has now urged Congress to pass legislation to address those concerns.

• And former CIA anti-terrorism officer Larry Johnson over at TPMCafe adds:

  According to Bush, secret prisons and torture have kept America safe. Not entirely true. While fessing up to the secret prisons, one of the critical things Bush failed to tell the American people was that CIA interrogators learned the hard way that torture was not an effective interrogation method. Books written by Jim Risen and Ron Suskind during the past two years provide compelling accounts that torture against people, particularly Khalid Sheikh Mohamad (KSM), was ineffective.
  [...]
  During the Cold War we fought the Soviet Union, who were masters at using secret prisons and torture. We won the Cold War in part because we at least knew such behavior is reprehensible. Now, in the midst of a newly declared non-war war, we have met the enemy and surrendered our nation's integrity and honor. Republicans and Democrats need to come together on one critical point--when it comes to fighting terrorists, we cannot and should not act like terrorists. That's a point George Bush still does not grasp.

Middle East Sturm und Drang

• Just last week, several news agencies (such as the WaPo and LATimes) noted a report that violent deaths reported to the Baghdad morgue had dropped by as much as a quarter, offering encouragement that the build-up of American an Iraqi forces had helped to stem the blood-letting. But ThinkProgress points us to this ABCNews blog post that offers some revised numbers:

  It turns out the official toll of violent deaths in August was just revised upwards to 1535 from 550, tripling the total. Now, we’re depressingly used to hearing about deaths here, so much so that the numbers can be numbing. But this means that a much-publicized drop-off in violence in August – heralded by both the Iraqi government and the US military as a sign that a new security effort in Baghdad was working -- apparently didn’t exist.
  
  Operation Together Forward, the main thrust of the new strategy, involves establishing pockets of security in select neighborhoods and then slowly adding more. These latest numbers add substance to fears Together Forward creates a whack-a-mole effect: that is, secure one area and the violence will pop up somewhere else. Violent deaths now appear roughly in line with the earlier trend: 1855 in July and 1595 in June. Officials at the Baghdad morgue have no good explanation for the dramatically revised number. We’ll see what the U.S. military has to say.

• Today, a series of suicide car bombings and roadside blasts in Baghdad has killed about 15 people, including members of the police and security services. In the worst attack a car bomb exploded at a petrol station used by Iraqi police, killing at least five people. [BBC]
  
  
• A new poll found that on a 100-point “thermometer” scale, with 100 being the friendliest feeling, “Turkish attitudes toward the United States fell to 20 degrees, from 28 degrees, in the past two years. Over the same period, feelings toward Iran increased to 43 degrees, from 34 degrees.” [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]

Climate Crisis

• With more glaciers than any state in the Lower 48, Washington state has emerged as a bellwether for global warming. The signs are not encouraging. At Mount Rainier... the area covered by glaciers shrank by more than a fifth from 1913 to 1994, and the volume of the glaciers [declined] by almost one-fourth, the National Park Service says. From 1912 to 2001, the Nisqually Glacier on Mount Rainier retreated nearly a mile.
  
  Since the first stirrings of the Industrial Revolution 150 years ago, glaciers in the northern Cascades have shrunk by 40 percent, and the pace is accelerating. The South Cascades Glacier, one of the most studied in the nation, has lost roughly half its mass since 1928.... In the Olympic Mountains, glaciers have lost about one-third of their mass... [Scripps News; hat tip to Sightline's Daily Score]
  
  
• Global warming gases trapped in the soil are bubbling out of the thawing permafrost in amounts far higher than previously thought and may trigger what researchers warn is a climate time bomb. Methane -- a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide -- is being released from the permafrost at a rate five times faster than thought, according to a study being published today in the journal Nature.
  
  Scientists worry about a global warming vicious cycle that was not part of their already gloomy climate forecast: Warming already under way thaws permafrost, soil that has been continuously frozen for thousands of years. Thawed permafrost releases methane and carbon dioxide. Those gases reach the atmosphere and help trap heat on Earth in the greenhouse effect. The trapped heat thaws more permafrost and so on. [AP via Seattle P-I]
  
  
• Newest tool in the war on terror: renewable energy. Without renewable power, US forces “will remain unnecessarily exposed” and will “continue to accrue preventable…serious and grave casualties,” according to Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Richard Zilmer. [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]
  
  
• California's largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric Co., is asking its 5.1 million customers to petition automakers to speed up development of plug-in electric-gasoline hybrid vehicles. Along with their power and gas bills for September, PG&E customers are getting a request to lobby the automakers. PG&E has joined with thhe Texas-based organization "Plug-In Partners" that has set up an Internet petition drive to pressure U.S. and foreign automakers to make cars that can charge up by plugging in to a regular 120-volt household outlet. [Treehugger]

Big Blue Marble

• Israel announced Wednesday that it would lift its air and sea blockade of Lebanon on Thursday evening, three weeks after the cessation of hostilities, because international forces were ready to move into place to impose an arms embargo on the Hezbollah militia. French, Greek, British and Italian ships will patrol Lebanon’s coast until German ships arrive in two weeks. The Germans will also help patrol Lebanon’s airport to prevent the resupply of rockets, launchers and heavy arms to Hezbollah from its main supporters, Syria and Iran. [news]

Misc.

• Apple Computer Inc. will soon begin selling feature-length movies online for viewing on its iPod devices, according to Hollywood sources, as the company hopes to duplicate its success with selling music through its iTunes digital store. The service could be announced as early as Tuesday, when Apple has scheduled a "special event" of an undisclosed nature. [news] (PS - I've been following this and other Apple rumors over at the Amazon Electronics blog, and will have more updates through the special event scheduled for September 12.)

And finally... from The Stranger (Seattle's alternative weekly newspaper) comes this hilarious tidbit from hot-tipper Horationsanzserif's Lover posted in the Last Days column:

"Near my house is an ongoing public-utilities project that often reroutes two-way traffic down a narrow side street. Around rush hour today, I noticed two cars—a newer SUV heading south and an older Oldsmobile heading north—in an apparent standoff, with neither letting the other pass. Actually, what I saw was the SUV driver—a Gordon Gecko type—shrieking every possible 'bitch'-related phrase at the driver of the Oldsmobile, a hippie guy who sat motionless in his vehicle. Soon, the SUV driver was joined in his torrent by an equally shrieky blond woman, who pulled up behind the hippie in the Olds, thus spurring the SUV guy to return to his vehicle and accelerate full-throttle into the Olds' front bumper. Here's where it gets AWESOME: The SUV driver then got out of his car to retrieve something from the back seat. A rifle? A tire iron? No—his INFANT SON, whom the man handed to the blond woman (did they know each other?) for a better view of Daddy's next act: jumping up and down on the Oldsmobile's hood, after which the man retrieved his son, backed up his SUV, and went home." Deep thanks to Hot Tipper HL for watching and writing, and congratulations to the hippie in the Olds for winning the standoff.

[ posted with ecto |  ]