WASHINGTON - Documents that should have been written to explain gaps in President Bush (news - web sites)'s Texas Air National Guard service are missing from the military records released about his service in 1972 and 1973, according to regulations and outside experts.
For example, Air National Guard regulations at the time required commanders to write an investigative report for the Air Force when Bush missed his annual medical exam in 1972. The regulations also required commanders to confirm in writing that Bush received counseling after missing five months of drills.
No such records have been made public and the government told The Associated Press in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that it has released all records it can find.
[Caution: graphic video not suitable for work or children. Full-length version here.]
On the fifth of April, WikiLeaks released a classified US military video from an Apache helicopter gunship as it killed over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad in 2007, including two Reuters new staff, as well as seriously wounding two young children. One of the journalists, gravely wounded in the attack, was then shot in a second barrage as he tried to crawl away, and his body run over by a Humvee. Since the attack, Reuters had been attempting to obtain this video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success. Now it is public for the first time.
Wikileak’s organisers were given the footage by an unnamed source, which they then decrypted and posted on-line. So far, the Pentagon has had no response. The high-quality video, according to BBC’s Adam Brookes in Washington, appears to be authentic, and includes the recording of the pilot’s radio transmission and troops on the ground. Wikileaks has also published a statement from Reuters news editor-in-chief David Schlessinger saying that the video was ‘graphic evidence of the dangers involved in war journalism and the tragedies that can result’.
Wikileaks has complained of surveillance and harassment by the US and other governments, primarily for their role in leaking documents on sensitive subjects, from the assassination of human rights lawyers in Nairobi, photos of murders committed in Tibet followed by a mass attack on Swedish servers by Chinese computers in retaliation, threats by the head of Germany’s BNP of prosecution over a report of CIA involvement in Kosovo, and more. This tiny blogsite, which won Amnesty International’s 2009 media award, is nearly broke and has depended on donations from human rights groups, journalists, technology experts and simply concerned individuals for survival, a ludicrous game of David and Goliath of the internet.
But it seems someone within the DoD or US Army Counterintelligence or CIA or somewhere still believes in the public’s right to know what our elected government is up to. According to documents leaked to Wikileaks, even our own government has conspired to shut down the organization, including exposing sources and identifying whistleblowers and retaliating by termination of employment, criminal prosecution, defamation of the organization to weaken its credibility. The lessons of Valerie Plame and the Freedom of Information Act be damned.
Be warned. This video is not for the faint-hearted. I watched the whole thing. It made me feel ill, but I watched it all. It's the least I could do for those people who lost their lives. At one point you can even see one of the men from the van trying to rescue the wounded journalist looking up at the helicopter, he knew it was there. He knew what he was risking, and tried to help anyway. The bravery of that man is astounding. And he died. If it were left up to our own government, he would have died without you or me or anyone else ever knowing, our ignorance the biggest weapon in any military arsenal. If this ungodly, horrible war is ever to end, it is not only the public’s right to know what we have done and are still doing in Iraq, and Afghanistan, it is our responsibility to demand to know.
What truly bothers me is the absolute callousness of the conversation going on in the Apache helicopter. Beyond the 'fucking prick' and the 'bastards' comments, it's the laughter, particularly during the shooting as if it's all just a video game, cheering each other on as the wounded journalist crawls on the ground, willing him to reach for a ‘weapon’ so they can shoot him again, laughing when his body is run over by a military truck. The comment when the crew realized children have been wounded was shocking: ‘Well, it’s their own fault for bringing their kids to a battle.'
Bringing their kids to a battle? Those children live there! This wasn't a 'battlefield' - it was just an ordinary neighbourhood that got pasted by an American helicopter, twice. We brought the war to them. Where the hell were the kids supposed to have been? Loma Linda? Ann Arbor? Tampa?
The Brad Blog: Kentucky election officials found guilty of election fraud
Petrelis Files: There's a fantastic online archive of a multitude of federal records of all sorts, from many agencies, that were pried loose through Freedom of Information Act requests.
Imagine that! First of all, who can believe that they'd lie to us about just how much they can see with these airport scanners? (That was irony, folks.) And not only that, they have the capability to take, say, celebrity scans and email them to the National Enquirer. Who'd a thunk it?
Washington (CNN) -- A privacy group says the Transportation Security Administration is misleading the public with claims that full-body scanners at airports cannot store or send their graphic images.
The TSA specified in 2008 documents that the machines must have image storage and sending abilities, the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) said.
In the documents, obtained by the privacy group and provided to CNN, the TSA specifies that the body scanners it purchases must have the ability to store and send images when in "test mode."
That requirement leaves open the possibility the machines -- which can see beneath people's clothing -- can be abused by TSA insiders and hacked by outsiders, said EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg.
EPIC, a public-interest group focused on privacy and civil rights, obtained the technical specifications and vendor contracts through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
The written requirements also appear to contradict numerous assurances the TSA has given the public about the machines' privacy protections.
"The machines have zero storage capability," the TSA Web site says.
A TSA video assures passengers "the system has no way to save, transmit or print the image."
And the TSA has distributed numerous news releases with similar language as it lobbies for public acceptance of the machines as a less intrusive alternative to pat-downs.
A TSA official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official is not authorized to speak on the record said all full-body scanners have "strong privacy protections in place" and are delivered to airports "without the capability to store, print or transmit images."
Conservatives have been working like mad to whitewash out of public view the existence of violent right-wing extremists, only to run into one problem: They keep popping back up again, time after time. Darned reality intrudes again.
"I think it's utter nonsense to say it's racial," said Carter Clews, spokesman at Americans for Limited Government. Clews said Obama's "doctrinaire socialistic approach to government" has triggered a populist backlash, but "it's inappropriate to use the word militia."
The SPLC report came just four months after the Department of Homeland Security issued a controversial report on "right-wing extremists." That assessment carried many of the same themes and warnings as the new "militia" report, also warning that the election of the first black president could be exploited as a recruiting tool.
According to data ALG obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, the DHS relied in large part on news articles, questionable Web sites and several already-public SPLC reports -- not official government sources -- in writing its "right-wing extremists" report.
William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, said the latest SPLC report suggests that DHS and the law center are relying largely on the same pool of information to make their claims about the rise in right-wing extremism.
"They are attempting to brand all right-of-center protesters as potential domestic terrorists or extremists," he said. "They are painting whole swaths of people as hate groups and extremists."
This is, of course, pure bunk of a sort: The report specifies that the key to considering someone under the influence of the Patriot movement is their willing adoption of the various conspiracy theories and provably false "facts" that form the bedrock of the movement's belief systems. Things like, for instance, believing Obama is actually a non-citizen born in Kenya.
So to the extent that the SPLC is branding "whole swaths" of people, that's only true as far as these kinds of far-right beliefs spread. Unfortunately, as we've seen with the adoption of "birther" beliefs by nearly half of all Republicans, that now includes a much broader swath of society than we'd heretofore suspected.
But that is not the SPLC's fault. Rather, all that point raises is serious questions about the direction that movement conservatism is now taking.
While I was away for almost two weeks, the ACLU and many of my blogger pals took to their keyboards and wrote about the many brutal deaths that occurred at the hands of people engaging in torture for the US. The torture issue is horrifying and the longer we get away from the Bush years, the more information the ACLU is able to gather. These documents are, in a word, vile.
Today, several prominent bloggers are writing about detainees who died in U.S. custody, using documents released through the ACLU’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. We’re not talking suicide, or death by "natural causes." No, this is death as a result of torture and abuse while in custody. This effort comes on the eve of the release — we hope — of the CIA Inspector General’s report on waterboarding. (You might’ve heard last Friday that the release was delayed.)
The interrogation and detention regime implemented by the U.S. resulted in the deaths of over 100 detainees in U.S. custody — at least. While some of those deaths were the result of "rogue" interrogators and agents, many were caused by the methods authorized at the highest levels of the Bush White House, including extreme stress positions, hypothermia, sleep deprivation and others. Aside from the fact that they cause immense pain, that’s one reason we’ve always considered those tactics to be "torture" when used by others — because they inflict serious harm, and can even kill people. Those arguing against investigations and prosecutions — that we Look to the Future, not the Past — are thus literally advocating that numerous people get away with murder.
Now I’m no doctor–and I definitely can’t make sense of the cardiac findings. But it sounds like "stress positions," "sleep deprivation," "walling," and "water dousing" are all leading candidates to have caused the death of 04-309.
Drational at Daily Kos zeroes in on one detainee, known as Habibullah, and the circumstances of his death.
I know there were people saying this at the time, but the people bent on war refused to believe it. Oh well, what's a few hundred thousand dead people killed in the name of saving us all?
WASHINGTON - Saddam Hussein feared Iran's arsenal more than a U.S. attack, and even considered asking ex-President George W. Bush "to protect" Iraq from its neighbor, once secret FBI files show.
The FBI interrogations of the toppled tyrant - codename "Desert Spider" - were declassified after a Freedom of Information Act request.
The records show Saddam happily boasted of duping the world about stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. And he consistently denied cooperating with Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda.
Of all his enemies, Iraq's ex-president - who insisted he still held office during captivity - hated Iran most.
Asked how he would have faced "fanatic" Iranian ayatollahs if Iraq had been proven toothless by UN weapons inspectors in 2003, Saddam said he would have cut a deal with Bush.
"Hussein replied Iraq would have been extremely vulnerable to attack from Iran and would have sought a security agreement with the U.S. to protect it from threats in the region," according to a 2004 FBI report among the declassified files.
Without Bush's help, "Iraq would have done what was necessary," he told FBI Agent George Piro in his Baghdad International Airport cell.
That didn't mean an alliance of evil with Al Qaeda, he insisted months into what he called a "dialogue" with Piro.
The interrogations unfolded in 2004 after his capture the previous December at the same farm where he said he'd hidden after orchestrating a failed 1959 coup plot.
Saddam denied ever laying eyes on the "zealot" Bin Laden, bent on striking the U.S.
He said he "did not have the same belief of vision" as the terror kingpin.
Saddam never sought Al Qaeda assistance because he feared the terror group would turn on him. To protect his country, the more likely ally "would have been North Korea."
Saddam also said the U.S. "used the 9/11 attack as a justification to attack Iraq" and "lost sight of the cause of 9/11."
The U.S. "was not Iraq's enemy," just its policies, Saddam explained.
Asked about WMDs, Saddam insisted: "We destroyed them. We told you."
"By God, if I had such weapons, I would have used them in the fight against the U.S," he added.
Wacky wingnut Sen. Jim "Your Conservative Voice in the Senate" DeMint (R-SC) is trying to raise a stink about this. Are people being put to work with the stimulus money? If yes, then shut your piehole, Jim:
WASHINGTON — President Obama and congressional Democrats have defended the $787 billion stimulus package against accusations of pork-barrel spending by saying the bill did not direct money to projects requested by members of Congress.
Still, that hasn't stopped lawmakers from working behind the scenes to try to influence how the money is spent, according to agency records.
Dozens of members of Congress from both parties have called, written or e-mailed agencies urging them to fund projects in their districts or states.
So freakin' what? As Barney Frank points out, isn't that their job?
Among the projects supported by members of Congress that have been funded: $116 million for a federal courthouse in Austin; $35 million to $60 million for toxic waste cleanups in Massachusetts and Colorado; and $5 million for the removal of pine trees killed by bark beetles in Colorado, records show.
Ten of 27 departments and agencies receiving stimulus money have released records of contacts by lawmakers under Freedom of Information Act requests USA TODAY filed in April. Those records detailed 53 letters, phone calls and e-mails recommending projects from 60 members from February through the end of May. Thirteen of those lawmakers voted against the stimulus package.
Seems to me that's the real story. Why doesn't USA Today list the lawmakers who voted against the stimulus but are still trying to grab the dough? Could it be because of their party affiliation, perhaps?
Budget watchdogs worry that political pressure from members of Congress could threaten the impartiality of agency decisions.
"This is really subverting the intent of the legislation, when members call an agency and say, 'Fund my project,' " says Thomas Schatz of the non-partisan Citizens Against Government Waste. "Especially if it's an appropriations committee member that's in charge of the agency's budget, it's likely the agency will accede to that request."
Oh, let's talk about Citizens Against Government Waste, shall we? A right-wing group funded by the usual suspects - the Olin Foundation, the Bradley Foundation - and Big Biz, like the tobacco lobby and Microsoft. Coincidentally, one of their biggest campaigns was against... open source software, that well-known threat to humanity. They also lobbied Congress on behalf of the tobacco industry. Hmm.
Lawmakers say they are just doing their jobs.
"One of the dumbest things I've ever heard is the notion that members of Congress should have no say on how government money is spent," said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who successfully petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to use stimulus money to speed cleanup of a polluted harbor.
Congress enacted rules two years ago requiring lawmakers to disclose their requests for funding of projects inserted into annual spending bills and to certify that the projects would not directly benefit themselves or close relatives. The stimulus bill, however, contained no specific projects — known as earmarks — prompting lawmakers to seek other ways to direct spending.
Horrors! A bill gets passed that doesn't specify how it's spent - and Congress tries to lobby on behalf of projects! The sky is falling!
Sounds like a lazy reporter got a press release from Citizens Against Government Waste, is how it sounds to me. But what do I know?
It was one thing when President Obama reversed himself last month by announcing that he would appeal the Second Circuit's ruling that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) compelled disclosure of various photographs of detainee abuse sought by the ACLU. Agree or disagree with Obama's decision, at least the basic legal framework of transparency was being respected, since Obama's actions amounted to nothing more than a request that the Supreme Court review whether the mandates of FOIA actually required disclosure in this case. But now -- obviously anticipating that the Government is likely to lose in court again (.pdf) -- Obama wants Congress to change FOIA by retroactively narrowing its disclosure requirements, prevent a legal ruling by the courts, and vest himself with brand new secrecy powers under the law which, just as a factual matter, not even George Bush sought for himself.
The White House is actively supporting a new bill jointly sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman -- called The Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009 -- that literally has no purpose other than to allow the government to suppress any "photograph taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States." As long as the Defense Secretary certifies -- with no review possible -- that disclosure would "endanger" American citizens or our troops, then the photographs can be suppressed even if FOIA requires disclosure. The certification lasts 3 years and can be renewed indefinitely. The Senate passed the bill as an amendment last week.
Just imagine if any other country did this. Imagine if a foreign government were accused of systematically torturing and otherwise brutally abusing detainees in its custody for years, and there was ample photographic evidence proving the extent and brutality of the abuse. Further imagine that the country's judiciary -- applying decades-old transparency laws -- ruled that the government was legally required to make that evidence public. But in response, that country's President demanded that those transparency laws be retroactively changed for no reason other than to explicitly empower him to keep the photographic evidence suppressed, and a compliant Congress then immediately passed a new law empowering the President to suppress that evidence. What kind of a country passes a law that has no purpose other than to empower its leader to suppress evidence of the torture it inflicted on people? Read the language of the bill; it doesn't even hide the fact that its only objective is to empower the President to conceal evidence of war crimes.
That this exact scenario is now happening in the U.S. is all the more remarkable given that the President who is demanding these new suppression powers is the same one who repeatedly vowed "to make his administration the most open and transparent in history." After noting the tentative steps Obama has taken to increase transparency, the generally pro-Obama Washington Post Editorial Page today observed: "what makes the administration's support for the photographic records act so regrettable" is that "Mr. Obama runs the risk of taking two steps back in his quest for more open government."
The American Civil Liberties Union responded today to a stunning new report that the NSA has effectively revived the Orwellian "Total Information Awareness" domestic-spying program that was banned by Congress in 2003. In response, the ACLU said that it was filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for more information about the spying. And, the group announced that it was moving its "Surveillance Clock" one minute closer to midnight.
The ACLU said the new report confirmed its past warnings that the NSA was engaging in extremely broad-based data mining that was violating the privacy of vast numbers of Americans.
