August 30, 2009
— DrewM Funny how after almost a week of parsing this, the important parts only came out in the Washington Post yesterday.
Let's see...a Saturday in August when everyone was either away or paying attention to the Kennedy funeral? Yeah, that might be a good time to fess up that EITs turned Khalid Sheik Mohammed into a fount of information about the ideology, structure and plans of al Qaeda.
After enduring the CIA's harshest interrogation methods and spending more than a year in the agency's secret prisons, Khalid Sheik Mohammed stood before U.S. intelligence officers in a makeshift lecture hall, leading what they called "terrorist tutorials."..."KSM, an accomplished resistor, provided only a few intelligence reports prior to the use of the waterboard, and analysis of that information revealed that much of it was outdated, inaccurate or incomplete," according to newly unclassified portions of a 2004 report by the CIA's then-inspector general released Monday by the Justice Department.
The debate over the effectiveness of subjecting detainees to psychological and physical pressure is in some ways irresolvable, because it is impossible to know whether less coercive methods would have achieved the same result. But for defenders of waterboarding, the evidence is clear: Mohammed cooperated, and to an extraordinary extent, only when his spirit was broken in the month after his capture March 1, 2003, as the inspector general's report and other documents released this week indicate.
Over a few weeks, he was subjected to an escalating series of coercive methods, culminating in 7 1/2 days of sleep deprivation, while diapered and shackled, and 183 instances of waterboarding. After the month-long torment, he was never waterboarded again.
"What do you think changed KSM's mind?" one former senior intelligence official said this week after being asked about the effect of waterboarding. "Of course it began with that."
...John L. Helgerson, the former CIA inspector general who investigated the agency's detention and interrogation program, said his work did not put him in "a position to reach definitive conclusions about the effectiveness of particular interrogation methods."
"Certain of the techniques seemed to have little effect, whereas waterboarding and sleep deprivation were the two most powerful techniques and elicited a lot of information," he said in an interview. "But we didn't have the time or resources to do a careful, systematic analysis of the use of particular techniques with particular individuals and independently confirm the quality of the information that came out."
Read the whole thing and then read the Weekly Standard's wrap up of analysis of the reports.
Some will always argue that we should never do any of these things. I suppose that's a moral argument that can never be settled. What clearly can not be argued with any legitimacy is that the EITs did not work in generating desperately needed information.*
The second argument many will make, and that is made repeatedly in the article despite the evidence to the contrary, is that we might gotten the same information using kinder and gentler means. We'll never know but that's besides the point. We know what did work. This is a bottom line endeavor, you either get the information or not. There are no style points.
You know, instead of investigating CIA interrogators perhaps we should be handing out medals.
*I jumbled that in the original post and cleaned it up to be clear about what I meant.
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— Ace 47% approve, 52% disapprove. And 42% strongly disapprove -- nearing Obama's number for total approval.
Support for ChappaquiddiCare remains at 43%, with 53% disapproving. No movement there.
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08:22 AM
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— LauraW From Veeshir over at Doubleplusundead.
I love how they just start lying and making stuff up when challenged about the law.
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08:13 AM
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August 29, 2009
— Purple Avenger
Long live inflation. Inflation is our friend. Inflation is good. All hail our savior inflation.
...Before the United States gets serious about raising taxes, I suspect that inflation will start to seem much more attractive, even if few are willing to say so publicly. In the past, inflation has enabled the United States to reduce the burden of repaying existing debt, and China, for one, has voiced fears we will do it again. Widespread inflation could also make depreciated assets — like homes — worth more dollars than the owner now owes...Well, if you're going to be lazy and allow the great redeemer inflation to do all the dirty work, there's one more thing the NYT dismisses that I suspect our benevolent most ethical congress ever won't.
...that bill did nothing about the alternative minimum tax, which was supposed to catch wealthy citizens with big deductions and force them to pay something. By not lowering the A.M.T. rates when ordinary tax rates were cut, the law negated the cuts for millions of middle-class people. Now Congress passes a temporary fix every year to keep that from happening. President Obama wants to make that fix permanent, something Mr. Bush was hesitant to do because it would have made deficit forecasts look worse...
Well, now that the Obama "forecasts" are an order of magnitude worse than anything the Bush administration ever burped out, maybe NOT FIXING this AMT thing, and just kinda "ignoring" it because you were so busy working on other oh so critical things like destroying the country and it just kinda "slipped through the cracks", along with our good friend, best buddy, comrade in arms, and all around great guy inflation, will suck a whole bunch more people into paying a lot higher taxes because inexplicably, the AMT was never indexed for inflation.See how this works? Congress and Obama can claim they didn't pass "new taxes", sit back and allow our friend inflation and the already-on-the-books AMT do all the dirty work and they can claim they're blameless as the middle class all start to swirl around the AMT black hole's event horizon.
Inflation, is like bacon.
All powerful and oh so tasty.
There is nothing it can't do.
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— Open Blog Good evening morons and moronettes. Genghis is taking the night off. And after last night's excitement with the firefight with the Seattle PD and the subsequent manhunt, well I can't say I blame him. So tonight let's talk about things blowing up both literally and figuratively.
Now sometimes you're in a tight spot with enemy forces breathing down your neck and you just don't have time to wait for a bombing run. So what do you do? Well that's when you bring out the MK-9 nuclear artillery shell. And pray that it doesn't fall short. This video is from the Upshot-Knothole Grable nuclear test that took place on May 25, 1953. A 280mm MK-9 nuclear shell was fired from an artillery piece and landed 6.25 miles away. The MK-9 was based on the same design as the Hiroshima bomb and had about the same yield, 15 kilotons.
Later the military tweaked the design making it smaller and upping the yield to 72 kilotons. The last nuclear artillery shell was made in 1969 and they were stationed in Europe until 1991 when they were finally withdrawn.
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— Open Blog Since the release of al-Megrahi by the Scottish government rumors have been swirling around that it was actually part of a larger deal that the British government made with Libya over oil exploration rights. Well the Times UK seems to have found direct evidence that this was the case in the form of letters between Jack Straw and Kenny MacAskill.
In 2007 the British were negotiating with Libya to allow British Petroleum to explore the waters off the Libyan coast but the Libyans were balking unless there was an agreement to release Libyan prisoners held in the UK.
The prisoner transfer agreement — and specifically the fate of Megrahi — were inextricably linked with the BP deal. Six months after Blair’s trip, and with Gordon Brown in No 10, the Libyans were frustrated that the prisoner transfer agreement had not even been drafted. The BP contract was also waiting to be ratified.The key reason for the delay in the prisoner transfer agreement was Megrahi. Lord Falconer, who was Blair’s justice secretary, had told the Scottish government in a letter on June 22, 2007 that “any prisoner transfer agreement with Libya could not cover al-Megrahi”.
The Brown government initially tried to exclude Megrahi by stipulating that any prisoner agreement would only cover prisoners convicted after a certain date. The Libyans rejected this and demanded Megrahi be part of the deal. With the oil deal in jeopardy the British caved.
The British government decided it was “in the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom” to make Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, eligible for return to Libya, leaked ministerial letters reveal.Gordon Brown’s government made the decision after discussions between Libya and BP over a multi-million-pound oil exploration deal had hit difficulties. These were resolved soon afterwards.
The letters were sent two years ago by Jack Straw, the justice secretary, to Kenny MacAskill, his counterpart in Scotland, who has been widely criticised for taking the formal decision to permit MegrahiÂ’s release.
So it's clear now that the fix was in since at least 2007 which explains why a single non-oncologist doctor was allowed to pronounce Megrahi's prostate cancer as 'terminal'. Further given that the whole oil deal could be worth up to £15 billion we now know Britain's price - it's about £51 million per death.
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— DrewM Mike Enzi of Wyoming is one of the 3 Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee who has been working on a bi-partisan deal on health care. Now he says the plans as laid out stink.
A leading GOP negotiator on health care struck a further blow to fading chances of a bipartisan compromise by saying Democratic proposals would restrict medical choices and make the country's "finances sicker without saving you money."The criticism from Sen. Michael Enzi, R-Wyo., echoed that of many opponents of the Democratic plans under consideration in Congress. But Enzi's judgment was especially noteworthy because he is one of only three Republicans who have been willing to consider a bipartisan bill in the Senate.
In the Republicans' weekly radio and Internet address on Saturday, Enzi said any health care legislation must lower medical costs for Americans without increasing deficits and the national debt.
"The bills introduced by congressional Democrats fail to meet these standards," he said.
Expect to hear more talk about Democrats going it alone. Don't expect much actual action on that front however.
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02:29 PM
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— Open Blog ItÂ’s a slow news day, so if thereÂ’s nothing else on the intermesh or tv, letÂ’s pause for a moment and think about a young woman named Mary Jo, who's life was cut short during the summer of 1969.
By all accounts she was an earnest and idealistic young woman, involved in a variety of political causes and campaigns. Some background:
"Kopechne, born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, was the only child of insurance salesman Joseph Kopechne and his wife, Gwen. She was of Polish American heritage. The family moved to New Jersey when she was an infant. She attended parochial schools growing up.""After graduating with a degree in business administration from Caldwell College for Women in New Jersey in 1962, Kopechne moved to Montgomery, Alabama, to teach for a year at the Mission of St. Jude as part of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1963, she moved to Washington, D.C., to work as secretary to Florida Senator George Smathers."
She later went on to work for Senator Robert Kennedy (D - N.Y.) on his secretarial staff and continued working for him until his assassination in 1968. Following that she went on to work in political consulting and appeared to be well on her way to having a very successful career. In addition:
"She lived in the Georgetown neighborhood with three other women. She was a fan of the Boston Red Sox and fellow Polish American Carl Yastrzemski. She was a devout Roman Catholic with a demure, serious, "convent school" demeanor, rarely drank much, and had no reputation for extramarital activities with men."
Accounts vary as to how she died, but for what it's worth:
"On July 18, 1969, Kopechne attended a party on Chappaquiddick Island, off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, held in honor of the Boiler Room Girls. It was the fourth such reunion of the Robert Kennedy campaign workers.""Kopechne reportedly left the party at 11:15 p.m. with Robert's brother Ted Kennedy, after he — according to his own account — offered to drive her to catch the last ferry back to Edgartown, where she was staying. She did not tell her close friends at the party that she was leaving and she left her purse and keys behind."
Kennedy stated he made a wrong turn on the way and came upon a narrow, unlit bridge without guardrails. Kennedy drove the 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88 off the bridge and it overturned in the water. Kennedy extricated himself from the submerged car but Kopechne died, after what Kennedy said were several diving attempts to free her."
The rest of course is history. Regarding Ms. Kopechne's funeral:
A funeral for Kopechne was held on July 22, 1969, at St. Vincent's Roman Catholic Church in Plymouth, Pennsylvania, attended by Kennedy. She is buried in the parish cemetery on the side of Larksville Mountain.
It should be noted that Ms. Kopechne is not being laid to rest today at Arlington National Cemetary. But I would like to wish that she continue to rest in peace.
Note: Most of the photos available of Ms. Kopechne are from her high school yearbook. Here's one of her in what appears to be a policy meeting (it's cropped from a larger photo) looking a bit serious. Despite that, she was clearly a very attractive woman.
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— DrewM It's rainy and I got nothing.
Continue to talk amongst yourselves but with less reload time!
Ah, here you go...Worst first date ever (at least with someone whose last name isn't Kennedy).
Terrance Dejuan McCoy, 23, may have inadvertently chosen a life of celibacy. If allegations against him prove true, future dates would be wise to cancel.Ferndale police say during an April dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings on Nine Mile road McCoy, of Detroit, asked to borrow his date's keys to get his wallet from her car. As she sat waiting for him to return, she watched through a window as he sped off.
via Allah.
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August 28, 2009
— Open Blog Welcome to Friday. Please donÂ’t leave mystery stains on the carpet againÂ…very hard to get out.
If bacon hasn't jumped the shark yet, it's just about to. Maet sends along this article from Time about the mainstreaming of bacon.
We knew this day would come. Time to clear out any baconish bookmarks or links such as this one about Tactical Bacon. Canned bacon that's got a 10-year shelf life. I think canned bacon has been brought up before but the reviewer calls this "The Cadillac of preserved pork." Plus it has a weapon on the label. What's not to like?
While not entirely about bacon, but with some bacon content, be sure to also check out 10 Meat Structures That Require Engineering Degrees to Make and a Death Wish to Eat. There's a mouthful. A mouthful of tasty meat that is.
Seattle Police scanner is here. more...
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