"we've only waterboarded 3 detainees"

We've been told repeatedly that Bush waterboarded "only" 3 detainees
(which implies that a war crime is less of a crime if only 3 victims
are subjected to it). But here's the more relevant question: how
many times were each of these 3 victims waterboarded?

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times. Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times.

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When the CIA was interrogating Abu Zubaydah at a
secret prison in Thailand, the CIA agents realized that
the prisoner had no more information to give. But the sadists at
CIA headquarters in Washington demanded that the agents torture him
anyway.

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And it looks like one of the memos Obama released last week inadvertently revealed the name of "ghost detainee," Hassan Ghul. The memo appears to include Ghul (spelled "Gul" in the redacted text) in the group of 28 CIA detainees subjected to our government's "enhanced interrogation techniques."

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Obama and State Secrets

Obama's flip-flop last August on the issue of granting the telecom companies who were involved in warrantless surveillance immunity from lawsuits was clearly a sign of bad things to come.

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Bill Black interviewed by Bill Moyers

[Bill Black is a professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. In the 1980s, he helped expose the S&L crisis, and the Keating Five.]


BILL MOYERS: Why are they firing the president of G.M. and not firing the head of all these banks that are involved?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: There are two reasons. One, they're much closer to the bankers. These are people from the banking industry. And they have a lot more sympathy. In fact, they're outright hostile to autoworkers, as you can see. They want to bash all of their contracts. But when they get to banking, they say, ‘contracts, sacred.' But the other element of your question is we don't want to change the bankers, because if we do, if we put honest people in, who didn't cause the problem, their first job would be to find the scope of the problem. And that would destroy the cover up.

BILL MOYERS: The cover up?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Sure. The cover up.

BILL MOYERS: That's a serious charge.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Of course.

BILL MOYERS: Who's covering up?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Geithner is charging, is covering up. Just like Paulson did before him. Geithner is publicly saying that it's going to take $2 trillion — a trillion is a thousand billion — $2 trillion taxpayer dollars to deal with this problem. But they're allowing all the banks to report that they're not only solvent, but fully capitalized. Both statements can't be true. It can't be that they need $2 trillion, because they have masses losses, and that they're fine.

These are all people who have failed. Paulson failed, Geithner failed. They were all promoted because they failed, not because...

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, Geithner has, was one of our nation's top regulators, during the entire subprime scandal, that I just described. He took absolutely no effective action. He gave no warning. He did nothing in response to the FBI warning that there was an epidemic of fraud. All this pig in the poke stuff happened under him. So, in his phrase about legacy assets. Well he's a failed legacy regulator.

Sean Hannity's version of Jesus

"Because my attitude is that if we capture an enemy combatant in the battlefield -- or we can use Osama bin Laden -- who may have information about a pending attack. You know what, I don't have any problem taking his head sticking it underwater and scaring the living daylights out of him and making him think we're drowning him, and I'm a Christian,"

- Sean Hannity, Fox’s Hannity, broadcast Mar. 10, 2009.

statistic of the day

from the Chicago Tribune:

The median price of a home sold in Detroit in December was $7,500, according to Realcomp, a listing service. Not $75,000. Remove a zero—it’s seven thousand five hundred dollars, substantially less than the lowest-price car on the new-car market.

Letter to the Kellogg Company

Mr. David Mackay
Kellogg Company
One Kellogg Square
P.O. Box 3599
Battle Creek, MI 49016-3599

Dear Mr. Mackay:

I am disappointed to learn that the Kellogg Company has ended its marketing relationship with Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps. Mr. Phelps’ private activities have not impacted his athletic performance, so I’m surprised that a cereal company has an opinion on this controversy.

If Mr. Phelps’ private activities are relevant to his role as a Kellogg spokesman, why would Kellogg ignore his drunk-driving arrest in 2004?

A word of advice to corporations foolish enough to take sides on controversies like this: be consistent. Because hopefully someone (anyone?) at Kellogg is aware that drinking and driving is FAR MORE dangerous than cannabis consumption.

Sincerely,
Andy K.

"60 Minutes" report on Palestine

On Sunday, January 25, CBS aired an amazing "60 Minutes" report on Palestine. It was, as Alexander Cockburn put it this weekend on the CounterPunch site, "the single most savage indictment of Israel ever broadcast on U.S. network television."

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Part One



Part Two