Entries by emptywheel

Poland’s Torture Palaces

My supposition that one reasons Dana Priest’s black site article precipitated the torture tape destruction is because the tapes were dangerous to the country on whose territory the CIA tortured Abu Zubaydah led to me to read something I should have already read–the COE report on European participation in the US HVD program. This post lays out what it says about Poland.

The CIA Solidifies its Terror Tapes Story–or Tries To

Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane have done good reporting on the terror tape story. But their latest installment reads like an attempt on the part of the CIA to get its story straight. While it appears to present a nice coherent narrative people with CIA officers acting rationally, it raises more questions than answers.

One thing it does appear to support, though, is that the tapes were destroyed, in addition to an effort to prevent the tapes from coming out as Congress was trying to outlaw torture, because they were trying to protect the European ally on whose soil the torture took place.

Okay Already, Here’s Your Damn Trash Talk Thread

Everyone’s spoiling my Bhutto thread with their damn trash talk, so I’ll put up this one, a whole day early. Jeebus, you put the Pats on TV and people get all uppity. (Incidentally, this Pats-on-three-channels thing started after John Kerry complained; where was all this gumption in 2004 when we needed it???)

That said, as much as I’m hoping the Pats win (and recognizing that, even without Shockey, the Giants have a

Bhutto

I don’t have much wisdom about the Bhutto assassination. Pretty much everyone agrees her death devastates our Pakistan policy. But since so little is clear about who killed Bhutto–and particularly the Pakistani government’s role in her death–I think it remains impossible to forsee what will come next.

The “Other” Provision Of The Records Act

It appears the fluid and constantly evolving rationalization of the Bush Administration for their destruction of the torture tapes may be starting to congeal in an operative theory relying, at least in significant part, on a provision of the Federal Records Act allowing destruction of certain records located outside of the United States during wartime. Does it hold up?

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