Weekend Update (09/10 September)

First off, a big Happy Birthday to the Rev. Dr. Mom, without whom I wouldn't be the good liberal that I am...

While You Were Signing the Anti-ABC Petitions

• A declassified report released yesterday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence revealed that U.S. intelligence analysts were strongly disputing the alleged links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda while senior Bush administration officials were publicly asserting those links to justify invading Iraq. Far from aligning himself with al-Qaeda and Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Hussein repeatedly rebuffed al-Qaeda's overtures and tried to capture Zarqawi, the report said. [WaPo]
  
  
• Long before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld forbade military strategists to develop plans for securing a postwar Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said.
  
  Brig. Gen. Mark E. Scheid told the Newport News Daily Press in an interview published yesterday that Rumsfeld had said "he would fire the next person" who talked about the need for a postwar plan. [WaPo and Daily Press]
  
  
• President George Bush yesterday faced growing opposition from his fellow Republicans to a pillar of his war on terror: his plans to prosecute detainees at Guantánamo at military commissions.
  
  Under the White House plan the fate of Guantánamo defendants would be decided by a jury of five military officers - 12 if the charges carry the death penalty. As well as the use of classified evidence off limits to the defendant, the prosecution could use hearsay and evidence obtained through coercion. "It would be up to the judge to determine, based on an argument by the accused, whether he believed something was torture and needed to be prohibited," John Bellinger, the state department legal adviser, said. [The Guardian]
  
  
• In a follow-up to the revelation that Baghdad deaths had not decreased (see previous post), McLatchy delves into the discrepancy:
  

  U.S. officials, seeking a way to measure the results of a program aimed at decreasing violence in Baghdad, aren't counting scores of dead killed in car bombings and mortar attacks as victims of the country's sectarian violence.
  
  In a distinction previously undisclosed, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Johnson said Friday that the United States is including in its tabulations of sectarian violence only deaths of individuals killed in drive-by shootings or by torture and execution.
  
  That has allowed U.S. officials to boast that the number of deaths from sectarian violence in Baghdad declined by more than 52 percent in August over July.
  
  But it eliminates from tabulation huge numbers of people whose deaths are certainly part of the ongoing conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Not included, for example, are scores of people who died in a highly coordinated bombing that leveled an entire apartment building in eastern Baghdad, a stronghold of rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

  
  
• A Muslim-majority town in western India buried its dead as troops patrolled the streets on Saturday to prevent religious riots, a day after bomb blasts killed 32 people and wounded dozens.The town of about 700,000 people was hit by three near-simultaneous blasts during weekly Islamic prayers when thousands had gathered at a mosque inside a burial ground. [Reuters]
  
  
• The CIA quietly disbanded its bin Laden unit last fall. In the Senate Thursday, Democrats pushed through a measure that would refund the unit. "What does it say to violent jihadists that a terrorist mastermind remains alive and well five years after killing 3,000 Americans?" asked Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad. [...] Republican Sen. Ted Stevens complained that the measure was an election-year "slam on the intelligence community" -- then encouraged his GOP colleagues to vote for it anyway. [Salon's War Room]
  
  
• The Bush administration’s Office of Cuba Broadcasting paid 10 journalists in Miami to provide commentary on Radio and TV Martí, which transmit to Cuba government broadcasts critical of Fidel Castro, a spokesman for the office said Friday.
  [...]
  Other journalists have been found to accept money from the Bush administration, including Armstrong Williams, a commentator and talk-show host who received $240,000 to promote its education initiatives. But while the Castro regime has long alleged that some Cuban-American reporters in Miami were paid by the government, the revelation on Friday, reported in The Miami Herald, was the first evidence of that. [NYTimes]

And if you haven't signed one, here's the link to the ThinkProgress petition.

Green Celebs

• Blame it on inappropriate funding and inefficient planning. When Coldplay released their second hit album, A Rush of Blood to the Head, the band said that part of the environmental damage caused by its production would be offset by the planting of 10,000 mango trees in southern India. Five years after the album's release, however, many of Coldplay's good intentions have withered in the arid soil of Gudibanda, Karnataka state, where the saplings it sponsored were planted. [Hugg | original news source]
  
  
• Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver (aka, the Naked Chef) wants to make his new restaurant more eco-friendly by installing wind turbines. He has applied to put two turbines on the roof of Fifteen in Watergate Bay, near Newquay, Cornwall. By harnessing the wind, Oliver hopes to halve the power consumption in his restaurant. Each turbine measures 1.8m in diameter and would be painted the same colour as the roof. [The Guardian]

More to come as the weekend progresses...