The world agrees: US screwed up Iraq.

Whether you’re talking to troops over there at the moment or citizens around the world, there seems to be a common consensus: the Iraq War was not a good idea, we’re in danger, and we need to get outta there as soon as possible. For our first bit of evidence, I turn your attention to a worldwide poll showing 60% feel more in danger than the did before the United States’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.

“Though the Bush administration has framed the intervention in Iraq as a means of fighting terrorism all around the world, most people view it as having increased the likelihood of terrorist attacks,” Steven Kull, Director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland told the B.B.C. “The near-unanimity of this assessment among countries is remarkable in global public opinion polling.”

Just shy of 42,000 people in thirty-five countries were polled, with more people even saying we shouldn’t have removed Saddam than saying we should have. That’s pretty surprising to me, since most of the war-opposers over here still concede that we should have taken Saddam out of there. It makes me wonder how that opinion started on our side. Part of me believes that there are people who want to say we shouldn’t have removed Saddam but are afraid to do so for fear of looking like left-wing loonies.

I would also venture a guess that those who say we shouldn’t have removed Saddam are not saying it was a good thing for Iraq to have the man in charge, but that aside from us not having the right to take him out we totally screwed things up along the way. Such is my opinion on the matter, so perhaps I’m supplanting my own beliefs onto everyone else.

Okay, so that’s what the world is thinking, what about our own troops? Funny you should ask that, since it seems that 70% of US troops think we should get out in 2006. The number is split between branches to a small degree, with “only” 60% of Marines expressing this sentiment and around 90% of Coast Guard and reservists thinking so, with the Army sitting at a moderate 70%.

However, one paragraph of this one made me outright laugh:

However, there is considerable confusion about the reason for the invasion. According to the poll, 85 percent of the survey respondents said the U.S. mission is mainly “to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9-11 attacks,” and 77 percent said they also believe the main or a major reason for the war was “to stop Saddam from protecting al-Qaida in Iraq.”

Maybe it’s just me, but I think that goes a long way in explaining the mindset of the great bulk of war supporters. They’re still holding onto this false belief that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11. I wonder if that’s a downshot of the war. They’re not in a position to see what’s actually going on back on American soil and are out of the loop. It might also explain why so many vets of “Operation Iraqi Freedom” are coming back and turning democrat within a few months. Not a lot of war vets come back angry at having gone in the first place. Even those from Nam are mostly angry at their public image at the time.

The world feels like they’re in danger, and the vast majority of American troops think we need to get out of Iraq, at the latest, within a year. And they’re saying that still under the belief that they’re responding to Iraq’s involvement with the 9/11 attacks. Imagine what they’d be saying if they were told that ” President George W. Bush acknowledged in 2003 that Iraq was not directly involved in the terrorist attacks.”

I love America, I hate the people running it.

Evolution even wins in Utah.

Take that one, Intelligent Design people. In what even surprised me, Utah shot down an Anti-Darwin bill. The most stereotypically religious and republican state that I can think of, with a republican majority no less, shot down the bill in the House.

The Origins of Life bill, in its initial form, would have required teachers to issue a disclaimer to their students saying that not all scientists agree about evolution and the origin of species. It did not mention any alternative theory to Darwinism, but was viewed by some supporters and opponents as part of the drive to encourage the teaching of intelligent design, which says that life is too complicated to have evolved without an architect.

As I mentioned in my first article here, it’s always evolution. There are an uncounted number of theories out there that are never contested by any of these groups. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints never seems to come out and demand that gravity be delivered with a disclaimer. I haven’t heard about atomic theory being refuted. Naw, it’s always evolution. And it’s being shut down almost universally. Science is winning folks, accept it.

The Bible is fine for morality, fine to live your life by its rules if you want, but nothing in it has any bearing on science. Who do you trust for medicine? A doctor or a priest? The answer’s pretty obvious, and it makes the soul I don’t believe I have smile to see that the country’s catching onto that.

“If the creationists can’t win in a state as conservative as Utah, they’ve got an uphill battle,” [a spokesman for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Joe] Conn said.

Damn right.

US: Risk of civil war over. Iraq: lots more dead.

Sometimes you get smacked with a pair of stories and have to immediately start writing even if you didn’t plan on it. Here we have people from the US saying the risk of civil War is over in Iraq. Despite a brief mention of an Al Qaeda representative being caught, the bulk of the article is about this issue, including this quote:

“I think the country came to the brink of a civil war, but the Iraqis decided that they didn’t want to go down that path, and came together,” the ambassador told CNN. “Clearly the terrorists who plotted that attack wanted to provoke a civil war. It looked quite dangerous in the initial 48 hours, but I believe that the Iraqis decided to come together.”

I must admit that does sound pretty encouraging. As I wrote in an earlier article about the Iraqi violence, the prospect of civil war started to look pretty serious. Over 140 people were listed as dead in only a few days. Later in the article that hops to over two hundred.

Sunni leaders accused the Shiite-dominated police and army of standing by as Shiite militiamen sprayed their mosques with machine-gun fire and took over some of them. More than 200 people were reported killed in sectarian violence.

But, as the article states, the violence apparently calmed down. It’s sad that so many people died, but the number was fairly low and we can go back to working toward a democracy, right? Well, no, not really. As it turns out, the number of deaths in Iraq was off by a factor of ten, as over 1,300 Iraqis have died in Sectarian violence since last Wednesday.

The Statistics Department of the Iraqi police put the nationwide toll at 1,020 since Wednesday, but that figure was based on paperwork that is sometimes delayed before reaching police headquarters. The majority of the dead had been killed after being taken away by armed men, police said.

This is not a small roadbump. I’m as glad as anyone that the violence has calmed down, but I don’t believe that we’re talking about a “roadbump” here. Over a thousand people don’t die in under a week of riots only to be followed by immediate peace. These attacks will continue. Let’s just all pray the government will work hard to keep it from turning into an all out war.

White House: no special counsel

Once again I really wish I could be surprised by this kind of thing. Eighteen democrats banded together and proposed a special counsel to investigate the president’s Illegal Domestic Spying program (I think that’s what they should officially call it, myself). In a completely predictable move, the White House rejected the idea. Even more painfully predictable was Scott McClellan’s reasoning for the rejection:

“I think that where these Democrats who are calling for this ought to spend their time is on what was the source of the unauthorized disclosure of this vital, incredible program in the war on terrorism, “White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. “I really don’t think there is any basis for a special counsel. … But the fact that this information was disclosed about the existence of this program has given the enemy some of our playbook.”

I’ve been screaming this for the longest time and never gotten an answer: how does knowing about the program give the enemy some of our playbook? What good is that going to do al Qaeda to know that spying exists? More importantly, what does knowing that spying occurs do to help them evade it? The White House has been hiding behind this for as long as the issue has been at hand, and still no one seems to be buying into it.

Plain and simple, the only people that will benefit from knowing what’s happening with the NSA are the American public. Al Qaeda could know everything about the program and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference, because knowing that your phone calls and emails are tapped isn’t going to help you send emails and make phone calls without them being tapped. Some may argue that it means they can find other ways of communication, but they’ve already been tagged for appropriate spying so it really doesn’t make a difference.

This bit got to me as well:

Congress’ investigative arm, the General Accountability Office, similarly declined to open a review, noting the administration would be expected to designate the necessary documents as foreign intelligence materials and limit access to them.

The extreme level to which the administration is hiding their actions should just scream to everyone that it isn’t legal. Look at how this has gone so far. First they lied that warrants would be issued. Then they denied the program. Then they told us the program was legal. Then they wanted to change the laws. Now they won’t let us see what they’ve done so far, blocking any ability for the other branch to touch ‘em.

All the while they hide behind the Constitution, specifically that the powers Congress granted him, give him the ability to do this. First of all, I have found nothing that would suggest this is true in reading the appropriate articles of the Constitution, and as far as I can tell no amendments pertain to the issue. The president is in charge of the Army and Navy (as well as “militias”), that’s his status as Commander-in-Chief.

The truly strange issue is that, when you look at it, he’s withholding information from Congress because, he claims, Congress gave him the power to do so. Think about that one again. Bush and his cronies are withholding information from Congress and defending it by saying they let him do it. It’s almost like he’s sticking his tongue out at the legislative branch and saying “if you wanted to see this you shouldn’t have granted me these powers! Nyah!” Congress handed over some powers, he claims, and now they can’t get it back.

The framers of the Constitution clearly wanted the legislative branch to have the most power. These were men who escaped from a king, with a president who refused the title of king. They did not want one man to hold all of the power. Congress is a great number of people who can vote on issues, rather than one man deciding all by himself. They can grant powers, which is a big indicator. If the Constitution was intended to give the president unilateral power at ANY time, he wouldn’t need to get permission from another branch. It’s simple logic.

This is an issue that needs to get resolved rather quickly. It’s transcended, by this point, the simple matter of spying. We’re fighting against a stormcloud of tyranny, and democrat or republican, no president should have this kind of power.

Pope: embryos have rights from conception.

Well that’s a relief. You know, we’ve had doctors working on this issue for however long, but fortunately we’ve got the Pope to say when embryos have rights, thus efficiently quieting any debate in the medical community.

Speaking in Italian, the Pope said the Church had always proclaimed the “sacred and inviolable character of every human life, from its conception to its natural end.” He added: “This moral judgment is valid from the start of the life of an embryo, even before it is implanted in the maternal womb.”

My question is: why? Who cares what the Pope has to say about anything concerning science these days? I understand, religion is important to a lot of people, the religious community wants to hear what he has to say about things. But the problem is that nothing he says is based in anything remotely educated. I would take a Pope’s humanitarian proclamations, look through history and popes help a lot in the world.

A pope’s scientific knowledge is coming from the Bible and gut feelings. By almost definition, any scientific evidence that contradicts the Bible is going to get thrown out unless a serious revolution happens a la Copernicus and Galileo. I have a respect for the Pope, the dedication and the fact that our last one was amongst the best men ever to walk the planet as far as I’m concerned. But I’d take medical advice from a tree stump as soon as I’d take it from that guy.

The Iraq War: success!

I was mulling this over last night while writing about the UAE port deal and my feelings on Iran, Hamas, and the UAE. It struck me as odd that suddenly in early 2006 these countries which have for decades been violently militant regions are suddenly switching gears to looking at the roads of peace. It’s pretty uncharacteristic for TWO such nations to go that route. Hamas maybe you could understand all on its own thanks to the elections, but Iran, too? Then the answer struck me, the only thing that’s changed.

The United States entered Iraq.

The entire purpose of the occupation in Iraq, after the president conceded that WMDs were as likely to be found as a unicorn, was to liberate the Iraqi people from under the stronghold of Saddam. We were told we’d be liberators, that the people there would thanks us and everything was going to be awesome as soon as they got an election. What happened instead? 30,000 or so civilians are dead and now there’s a civil war brewing. Mosques are being destroyed and the only way to keep peace is to make a curfew.

So is Iraq a beacon of hope for the rest of the world to be inspired to follow? No, but they sure as hell are a good inspiration for other countries to do what they can to make sure the United States never comes in to “liberate” them. It’s like watching your dad try to fix the car and completely destroy it. You’re going to do everything in your power to make sure you take great care of your car so he never, EVER comes over to “help”. See, that was the idea all along. Instead of being inspired by the success, people are terrified by the destruction. It’s almost a tailor-made SNL sketch.

BUSH: So… Iran, you sure everything’s okay? Don’t need our help?
IRAN: Oh I’m quite sure! It’s all juuuust fine!
BUSH: Really? We did a good job with Iraq, did you see that?
IRAN: Um… yes, I’m watching it on the news right now. Ah… good job, George!
BUSH: Thanks! So, you’re SURE you do-
IRAN: NO HELP, thanks.
BUSH: Rea-
IRAN: REALLY.

So George succeeded exactly where he wanted to. He wanted to fix the Middle East and by God that’s what he’s doing. Sure a few tens of thousands of civilians died along the way as well as uncountable cities being destroyed, but this a big omelette, so you gotta break a lot of eggs. Anyone can liberate a nation, but the problem with that is it’ll make other countries want you to liberate them, too. You know as well as I do that we can’t be parading around fixing every country in the world, that’ll take forever. But we what we can do is screw up a country so badly that other countries will shape up ASAP. See? Bush truly is a genius.

Teach a man to fish, as they say. Or, more accurately, show a man that you gouged out another guy’s eyes trying to teach him how to fish, and he’ll teach himself.

It’s not six ports, it’s twenty-one for the UAE.

This one showed up on Countdown with Keith Olbermann (great show, by the way, 8pm/12am EST on MSNBC), but I didn’t want to write about it unless I was sitting with the article in front of me. Well, it finally showed up. Remember all the talk about how it’s six ports the Dubai Port World company was going to take? Seems that ain’t quite true, the deal is for twenty-one US ports for the Dubai company.

Now, at this point, what’s starting to bother me more than anything else isn’t the purchase itself any more, it’s what’s happening around it. It’s the exactly same deal as Cheney’s hunting accident. What would initially have looked like a fairly benign, if suspicious, deal has turned into a full-blown fiasco thanks to the way it’s been handled. Information came out slowly, ties were hidden, the president was claimed to have been uninformed, and now it turns out they’ve been lying about the number of ports all the while.

P&O (the company to be bought out) is the parent company of P&O Ports North America, which leases terminals for the import and export and loading and unloading and security of cargo in 21 ports, 11 on the East Coast, ranging from Portland, Maine to Miami, Florida, and 10 on the Gulf Coast, from Gulfport, Miss., to Corpus Christi, Texas, according to the company’s Web site.

This isn’t the kind of thing people forget. You aren’t talking about what ports are going to be handed over and forget fifteen of the twenty-one. This is the kind of thing that is consciously kept quiet. But why? Why would something like the number of ports to be put under UAE control be undershot like that? It just screams of “downplay it as much as possible”, and looks to be another instance where the media (and thus the population) will only be given as much information as the administration is literally forced to give.

At the same time, finally, the administration is accepting a port-deal review over security concerns in the issue.

In six pages of documents sent earlier in the day to the White House, Dubai-based DP World asked for a 45-day investigation of plans to run shipping terminals in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia.

Uh-oh, looks like no one told anyone there about the other fifteen ports. Hopefully they’ll make it into the investigation now that we’ve mentioned ‘em. Now, I know I might look rather hypocritical in my discussion of the UAE because, admittedly, they seem to be on the right track:

Since the terrorist attacks, [the UAE] has cut ties with the Taliban, frozen just over $1 million in alleged terrorist funding, and given the United States key military basing and over-flight rights. At any given time, there are 77,000 U.S. service members on leave in the United Arab Emirates, according to the Pentagon.

Thus, why am I saying the UAE doesn’t deserve our trust but Hamas and Iran do? It’s a pretty murky issue, I’ll agree. In the case of Hamas and Iran, it’s progress I see. Hamas was a previously militant “kill all of the Jews” group who is now offering a truce if a few (what I consider to be reasonable) conditions are met. With Iran, they’re being totally open about their operations and are also working with Russia. A far cry from the crazy nation that wanted to blow the world up at any cost that we’d previously considered them.

Hamas is looking for something that helps their own country establish peace, Iran is aiming for independence. The UAE, on the other hand, seems more in the middle of doing something in order to get something. They play nice for a little bit in order to get access to the country where they’ll be in control. Iran, if the deal comes through as it might, is going to be placed under UN inspection and will be doing things on a minor scale. The UAE is taking control of an already disgustingly insecure station, and doing so with what will amount to no oversight as reports are speculating.

More than that, it’s HOW it’s happening that’s making me wonder. When Hamas protested peacefully or went to talk to the United Nations, when Iran started up its nuclear operations and went to the UN, everything was out in the open. It wasn’t found out by some sneaky inspector that Iran started up its 10 centrifuges, they showed the world. Hamas is being public as well. Maybe I’m being naive, but when something appears to be out in the open, as long as nothing else has been found and it’s not just someone SAYING things, I tend to think that’s a genuine gesture.

When something is hidden, though, it seems shady. As Bush keeps saying, innocent people don’t hide things. This is another story that’s being taffy pulled out as long as he can manage. And when details slowly emerge, you start to wonder what else is happening and if what we’re being told is genuine. When did those funds get frozen? When did the UAE cut its ties with the Taliban? How do we know that? I just don’t trust it.

And that’s ignoring Bush’s unprecedented change of heart. With this president, it’s a safe bet that if he’s doing something that doesn’t make sense, he’s got something to be gained by it.

Israel calls Abbas “irrelevant”, Hamas talks of truce.

I’ll tell you, the more this whole scene plays out, the more I start to wonder why we consider the terrorists who they are and the poor victims who they are. Israel’s killed a bunch of Palestinians recently and Hamas responds with peaceful protests. And now we find that the incoming Hamas chief is proposing a truce with Israel.

Haniyeh was quoted by The Washington Post in its Sunday edition as saying Hamas would establish “peace in stages” if Israel would withdraw to its 1967 boundaries before it captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.

The “peace in stages” part is important. It’s not a truly peaceful agreement, but it is a truce. Really, though, what do we care between a formal peace agreement and a truce? The end result is going to be a lack of violence between the two regions, but they aren’t going to be friendly to each other. I know there are a lot of people who are going to want Palestine to recognize Israel, but that’s not only unrealistic but unfair to Palestine to force them to like Israel.

What’s strangest in all of this is how completely resistent to negotiations Israel is. Hamas has some provisions to the truce talks, but Israel will have none of it. They refuse to move out of Gaza and the east half of Jerusalem and will not accept anything less than Hamas’s full recognition of Israel as a sovereign nation.

Israel says it will refuse to deal with a Hamas government unless the group recognizes the Jewish state, disarms and accepts past peace accords with Israel. Until Hamas meets these conditions, “everything else is empty words,” said Cabinet Minister Roni Bar-On.

Which side seems irrational to you folks? Don’t forget we’ve also got Israel calling the Palestinian president “irrelevant”. Isn’t that nice? Who’s refusing to accept who, now?

Let’s give a quick background on things.

Prior to 1900, there was no such thing as Israel. It was all Palestine, and it was occupied by Palestinians. At the time, Palestinians were all kinds of religions. Muslims, Christians, etc. These people lived in that area for centuries. Around the turn of the century, Zionists started to emerge, and Jewish immigration caused the Jewish population to go from 2% to over 30% in the nation over the next 47 years.

Shortly after that, roundabout 1947, the United Nations split the country up (thank you, Harry S Truman), giving 55% of the country to the 35% minority, with the remaining 45% going to the native population. Naturally, Palestine was incredibly unhappy with that. Unfortunately, things were going to get worse for ‘em. Over the next 20 years, Israel would destroy many Palestinian villages and make refugees of the people there. In the process, it would expand its borders.

In 1967 Israel took more of the West Bank and Gaza “officially” and put up numerous blockages to keep Palestinians out of the regions entirely. Not on the roads, not in any villages, nothin’. Along the way the border of Jerusalem, which had been previously split in half between the two nations, started to get moved until it was almost entirely a part of Israel, where they quickly put their capital. Any Arab opposition to Jewish settlements in Arabian territory was considered wrong by the United Nations.

Imagine, for a second, if the United Nations suddenly turned the south half of Texas, Florida, and California over to the Hispanic population and considered it a crime to be anti-Hispanic. And then South America started giving them weapons.

Does Israel have a right to be in the area? Sure they do. They live there. They can still live there. Is it fair for them to have annexed as much of Palestine away from a population that had lived there centuries prior? Hell no. The pre-1967 map still gives Israel half of Palestine and over half of the nation. It’s not a completely logical looking map, but it’s something Palestine is willing to concede, which is impressive since a scant century ago they had the entire thing.

The bizarre part is how demonized Palestine is to the general American public. They’re taught that Israel is the victimized nation and the evil Palestine is running around blowing them up and killing babies just to watch them bleed. Hamas is a bunch of terrorists who want to cause death simply out of their own sadism. The idea of them being a reactionary group is never even brought to the table. They went from being a militant underground group to the elected officials, a bloodthirsty militia to a group willing to make truce talks and conducts peaceful protests.

Some will call it an “impossible deal”. I think that’s bullshit, m’self. It’s been unfair of the United Nations to force Palestine to accept so much of the border changes. At this point we should be impressed they’re even holding out a hand of truce and that Hamas is willing to go back on their “destroy Israel” statements. Can’t keep expecting them to have to do all of the “compromising”. It’s progress with Hamas no matter how you slice it, and I think they deserve some credit for it.

Specter proposes NSA bill.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot that in the midst of everything else going on in the world we’ve still got that domestic spying program to worry about. I’d mentioned in an earlier article about the White House’s refusal to brief on the NSA that Specter said he was going to draft a bill to modify the NSA rules. At the time I wasn’t too convinced, since it was Specter who said Alberto Gonzales didn’t need to be sworn in before his laughable “testimony”.

Well, color me corrected, because Specter actually proposed the NSA bill, and I’m mildly impressed with it. Under this proposal, the NSA would be under the jurisdiction of the FISA courts. Now, if you’ve been following this issue with even moderate attention, chances are you’re aware that this is the crux of the entire issue. What really confused me in this article was this passage:

Specter’s plan could put him at odds with the administration, which has praised a rival proposal that would exempt the NSA program from the surveillance law.

Okay, first we’re being told that the program is legal because the NSA doesn’t need the same permissions the FISA requires. The other side is saying that, no, the NSA does need to get permission from the FISA courts and, as they haven’t, the program is breaking the law. Yet here we are with two proposals, one of which would force the NSA to get permission from FISA courts, one that would exempt it from doing so.

So… which is it? Is the NSA under FISA’s umbrella or isn’t it? One of these laws is superfluous and the other is in direct contradiction to it. Simple logic could tell you that much. It’s like we’re in some kind of legal limbo with the NSA where it somehow managed to evade all previous legislature. If there isn’t any clause in the NSA’s lawbook that says it doesn’t need FISA’s approval, then it does. It’s as simple as that.

That’s the problem with this whole issue. We simply aren’t being told what is and isn’t true under this program. Either that or, quite likely, the program was written with such loose language that they could do whatever they wanted in the hopes that no one would pick up on it. Whoops.

Of course, there are still complaints about the verbiage:

Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, a civil rights group, said the bill’s language is alarmingly broad. “It’s not limited to al-Qaeda or even terrorism,” she said. Those who communicate with “foreign powers” could include a vast array of innocent people, Martin said.

That’s fine by me. As it’s currently written, the FISA says this of foreign powers:

1) a foreign government or any component thereof, whether or not recognized by the United States;
2) a faction of a foreign nation or nations, not substantially composed of United States persons;
3) an entity that is openly acknowledged by aforeign government or governments to be directed and controlled by suc hforeign government or governments;
4) a group engaged in international terrorism or activities in preparation therefor;
5) a foreign-based political organization, not substantially composed of United States persons; or
6) an entity that is directed and controlled by a foreign government or governments.

Okay then, that’s how it’s written. That’s what a foreign power is, and as far as I’m concerned that’s a pretty good definition. Read the rest of that to get an idea of what kind of rules are required to get a warrant under the FISA courts. It’s not going to be some random guy calling a friend in Germany. Under FISA’s rules you need to be able to make a solid case that no one innocent will get caught up in it. If the language wasn’t so limiting, Bush wouldn’t be trying to circumvent it. Specifically, you need to prove that the communication is solely between agents of foreign powers and there is no “substantial likelihood” that an innocent party will be tapped.

What’s rather hilarious is how adamantly against this proposal supporters of the program are. You’d think that supporting this law would be a no-brainer. But once again, we find the Bush administration fighting laws that would make illegal what they’re telling us they aren’t doing.

Afghanistan’s Bagram prison under scrutiny

First we had Abu Ghraib out in Iraq, then Gitmo starts to look bad, and now there’s Bagram in Afghanistan to worry about. As if things weren’t looking bleak enough for the way we’re handling this “war” business, a third prison has emerged to let us know the problem is bigger than we initially thought.

Bagram shares a lot of the same traits as Gitmo, lots of prisoners that are coming in faster than they’re going out, conditions that don’t quite match up to what you’d consider “humane”, and people being held without knowing what they’re there for. What sets Bagram apart is that, in addition to just being there and not knowing why, they don’t even get a chance to make a case for themselves.

The two sets of panels that review the status of detainees at Guantánamo assign military advocates to work with detainees in preparing cases. Detainees are allowed to hear and respond to the allegations against them, call witnesses and request evidence. Only a small fraction of the hundreds of panels have concluded that the accused should be released.

The Bagram panels, called Enemy Combatant Review Boards, offer no such guarantees. Reviews are conducted after 90 days and at least annually thereafter, but detainees are not informed of the accusations against them, have no advocate and cannot appear before the board, officials said. “The detainee is not involved at all,” one official familiar with the process said.

The conditions in the prison itself were terrible before, but are apparently not as terrible now. While in the past detainees were being chained by the arms to their ceiling and had their legs beaten or terrified with dogs a la Abu Ghraib, some of these tactics have slowed down. Which of course isn’t to say any of us would like to stay there. They’re kept in wire cages and many use a bucket for a toilet. Even worse, many are kept for years without really knowing why.

Here’s a part that jumped out at me:

Other military and administration officials said the growing detainee population at Bagram, which rose from about 100 prisoners at the start of 2004 to as many as 600 at times last year, according to military figures, was in part a result of a Bush administration decision to shut off the flow of detainees into Guantánamo after the Supreme Court ruled that those prisoners had some basic due-process rights. The question of whether those same rights apply to detainees in Bagram has not been tested in court.

I’m not really sure that’s too difficult to figure out. The Supreme Court says prisoners at A have some rights, so they start getting shipped to B. It doesn’t really take a Mensa member to figure out that chances are those guys at B are indeed not being afforded the same rights as those back at A.

What’s most bothersome about this is that we might not have any idea how many Bagrams and Gitmos there are around the world that the United States is running. These “black sites” may be greater in numbers than anyone knows, and as you can see nothing gets changed until they’re found and forced to. Abu Ghraib was strolling along for a while until those pictures came out, Gitmo was cool until the courts stepped in, and now Bagram.

In the future, prisoners may be sent out, but officials say the prison will still be functional and take in anyone captured by the US and NATO operations, particularly amusing since the vast majority of the prisoners there were apparently picked up during American operations back in the Spring of ‘04.

That’s three prisoners violating human rights in three separate non-US countries. Any bets on how many more are out there no one’s found out about yet?