Bad Deeds for 6-18-2008

Medical Exams Reveal Abuse and Torture of Detainees – Former terrorist suspects detained by the United States were tortured, according to medical examinations detailed in a report released Wednesday by a human rights group. The Massachusetts-based Physicians for Human Rights reached that conclusion after two-day clinical evaluations of 11 former detainees, who had been held at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan. The detainees were never charged with crimes.

We found clear physical and psychological evidence of torture and abuse, often causing lasting suffering,” said Dr. Allen Keller, a medical evaluator for the study. In a 121-page report, the doctors’ group said that it uncovered medical evidence of torture, including beatings, electric shock, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, sodomy and scores of other abuses.

The report is prefaced by retired U.S. Major Gen. Antonio Taguba, who led the Army’s investigation into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in 2003. There is no longer any doubt that the current administration committed war crimes,” Taguba says. “The only question is whether those who ordered torture will be held to account.

 

Rumsfeld Overruled Military Lawyers Who Warned Against Torture
A Senate investigation has found that senior Pentagon officials began planning to use abusive tactics at Guantánamo Bay earlier than they previously acknowledged, borrowing from a program that trained US troops to resist cruel interrogations. The new documents show that lawyers in the army, navy and marines objected vigorously to the use of violent methods against detainees but were overruled by aides to the former US defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.

 

Republican Congressman Uses Tribute to Tim Russert as an Excuse to Push for More Oil Drilling – House Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) perhaps mistook a resolution honoring recently deceased journalist Tim Russert for one involving oil and natural gas drilling. “We’re going to miss Tim Russert when it comes to the people on both sides of the issue of why we have…$5 gasoline and $135 oil,” Issa said during his condolence speech. “I think Tim Russert would have been just the right guy to hold people accountable who would talk about the 68 million acres that are, quote, ‘inactive,’ while in fact, 41 million are under current lease and use, and are producing millions of barrels of oil and natural gas a day.”

 

Sean Hannity Falsely Claims China is Drilling for Oil 60 Miles Off Shores of Florida – To bolster support for offshore oil drilling, Fox News’ Sean Hannity falsely claimed on his radio show, “[W]e’ve got China, you know, joining with Cuba, they’re drilling 60 miles off our shores of Florida.” But even Vice President Dick Cheney has reportedly issued a correction for making the same claim, as has George Will, whom Cheney cited as the source of his claim.

 

Bush and McCain Both Want More Offshore Oil Drilling – President Bush plans to make a renewed push Wednesday to get Congress to end a long-standing ban on offshore oil and gas drilling, echoing a call by GOP presidential candidate John McCain. On Monday, McCain made lifting the federal ban on offshore oil and gas development a key part of his energy plan. But experts say additional drilling would only boost production by about 2 million barrels a day. That’s only about 2% of total worldwide demand, so its impact on prices would likely be marginal.

 

Civilian Pentagon Official Fired After Refusing to Pay Unjustified Expenses of One Billion Dollars to KBR – A civilian Pentagon official in charge of the largest US military contract in Iraq was removed from his job in 2004 after refusing to pay one billion dollars to KBR Inc. because the company was unable to credibly justify its expenses. KBR is an engineering, construction and services company that until April 2007 was a subsidiary of the Houston-based energy firm Halliburton, which was formerly led by Vice President Dick Cheney.

“They had a gigantic amount of costs they couldn’t justify,” the official, Charles Smith, told The New York Times. “Ultimately, the money that was going to KBR was money being taken away from the troops, and I wasn’t going to do that.” According to a recent report by the Pentagon’s inspector general, nearly eight billion dollars in US military contracts to subcontractors in Iraq did not respect federal guidelines aimed at preventing fraud

 

Wounded Soldiers Become Homeless Waiting for Benefits – Thousands of wounded soldiers discharged from the Army risk financial ruin as they wait six to nine months for their disability benefits. Nearly 20,000 disabled soldiers were discharged in the past two fiscal years, and lawmakers, veterans’ advocates and others say thousands could be facing financial ruin while they wait for their claims to be processed and their benefits to come through.

 

McCain Contradicts Himself Over Similarities With Bush -The latest video to come to fruition on YouTube shows John McCain contradicting himself on his support of President Bush. McCain makes the mistake of standing in front of a green screen, and ends up pointing out his own flip-flopping on his similarity to President Bush on policy views.

 

 

Political Hiring in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division – Karen Stevens, Tovah Calderon and Teresa Kwong had a lot in common. They had good performance ratings as career lawyers in the Justice Department’s civil rights division. And they were minority women transferred out of their jobs two years ago — over the objections of their immediate supervisors — by Bradley Schlozman, then the acting assistant attorney general for civil rights.

Schlozman ordered supervisors to tell the women that they had performance problems or that the office was overstaffed. But one lawyer, Conor Dugan, told colleagues that the recent Bush appointee had confided that his real motive was to “make room for some good Americans” in that high-impact office, according to four lawyers who said they heard the account from Dugan.

Regards,

Jim