Moments ago we felt a bit of a shake for 10 to 15 seconds or more here at The BRAD BLOG World News Headquarters. The USGS puts the time at 8:39pm PT, and rates it as a magnitude 5.0...

I'll be speaking on Election Integrity in Orange County, CA, at the Canyon Democrats monthly meeting on Monday, 5/18. (Yes, there are Dems in Orange County, CA!) If you're in the 'hood, please come by and say hello!

Here are the deets: Norman Murray Center, 24932 Veteran's Way, Oso Viejo Park, Mission Viejo, CA. Doors open at 6:30pm, I speak at 7:30pm. More info... | Map...

P.S. I await my invitation to speak to Orange County Republicans, as I'd be delighted to address them as well, anytime!

For those who have wondered (particularly when looking at the incredible miscarriages of prosecutorial injustices and improprieties in cases like Gov. Siegelman's), no, Obama has yet to replace Bush's partisan U.S. Attorneys, incredibly enough. But he will, says AG Holder, according to Politico...

Gosh. Take your time, kids. Although, in fairness (where any may be due here), the following bears keeping in mind...

With Democrats like these, who needs Republicans?...

Details on some of those "compromises" follow, along with a reminder that it'll get even worse once the Republicans get to water down the legislation further still...

These are said to be among the photos of prisoner abuse/torture whose release Obama has determined to block. Some of them were obtained, and posted several years ago, by The Sydney Morning Herald (who have more here).

Remember, these prisoners were captured in the war on Iraq, so even the disingenuous claims of Geneva Conventions not applying cannot be used here.

As Drudge and Rush have (predictably) taken to ridiculing these latest noticed photos of abuse/torture of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. captors, I thought it worth running some of them here, so you could similarly see how "ridiculous" it is to be concerned about this sort of treatment of prisoners on our watch. I'm certain that no U.S. military family would ever object, in the slightest way, were their son or daughter treated this way after being captured by an enemy country.

'Security via obscurity' didn't work as a concept during the Bush Administration. It's difficult to fathom how the Obama Administration would believe it'll work any better for them.

Last night, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow did a bang-up job in detailing/summarizing "our story so far," as we know it, in regard to the use of torture by the Bush/Cheney Regime. Her report goes on to include interviews with Bush's Iraq WMD inspector, Charles Duelfer, and journalist Robert Windrem, who yesterday detailed the push by "the office of Vice President Cheney" to use torture on Saddam Hussein's security goon, who had been talking and cooperating just fine after being captured in the fall of Baghdad. But he had not been saying the things the OVP wanted him to, so waterboarding was recommended.

We've now officially moved from the imaginary bad Hollywood movie realm of the use of illegal torture to stop 'ticking time-bomb' attacks against Americans, to its use in a desperate attempt to stop 'ticking political-bombs' --- such as no Iraqi WMD and no connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda --- against the Bush/Cheney Regime itself.

This video should bring you largely up to date with the latest known-knowns in the torture time line, and the cynical, realpolitik motives thereof...

(And remember, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the CIA detainee who is reported to have just "committed suicide" in a Libyan prison is known to have been tortured into "confessing" a connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda, the precise thing that the OVP reportedly sought from Hussein's captured goon. Al-Libi's forced "confession" was subsequently used over and over again by Bush/Cheney/Powell in the march to war, and thereafter found to have been completely made up by al-Libi to help put an end to his torture. When al-Libi recently turned up dead, he was in the process of being reportedly sought by prosecutors in regard to torture allegations against the Bush/Cheney Regime. Dots connecting yet?)

In case you missed it, former Navy SEAL and Gov. Jesse Ventura (I-MN) absolutely obliterated 'Worst President' Bush, 'Coward, Chicken Hawk' Cheney, 'Hanoi Hilton' Guantanamo, and the entire torture regime, on Monday's Larry King (via Crooks & Liars)...

Just in from Washington Post...

They also add, for those keeping track...

UPDATE 5/15/09: RAW STORY's Larisa Alexandrovna has a number of questions she'd like to see asked of Rove, in regard to the Siegelman case.

At right is the video from Rove's appearance at his attorney's office this morning to meet federal prosecutors for his questioning (via RAW).

IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: Zombie lies that just won't die (if the rightwing media can help it); EPA bans pesticide in U.S. (sorry, kids in developing countries!); Just whose side is God on in the climate legislation debate?; PLUS: Glenn Beck explains it all for you!.... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail, Jesus sprinkles of climate-y goodness? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (links below): Dirty Tricks and Toxic Waste in Ivory Coast (BBC); Will New Rules for ethanol and biodiesel hurt the alternative fuels industry?; Eco-Marathon racer gets 8,000 mpg; How do you get a Republican to buy a hybrid?; Fighting Texas fire ants with brain-eating flies...seriously...See below for more!

Info/links on stuff we talked about on today's episode, plus MORE green news, all follows below...

Incredibly, the Bush-appointed prosecutors in the Siegelman case (who are, inexplicably, still on the job!) have now requested an even longer sentence for the former Democratic Gov. of Alabama who was railroaded as part of a Rove-led political prosecution.

RAW STORY offers the amazing details on the twenty-year sentence now being sought by the federal prosecutors to replace the seven years he was originally screwed with. The entire prosecution needs to be entirely thrown out, just as the case against Republican Sen. Ted Stevens was.

And where is AG Eric Holder in all of this? I'd sure as hell love to know, as I asked in my April 13th letter to him on behalf of VR's Restore Justice at Justice campaign requesting an investigation of all illegal, Bush-era political prosecutions. (If you haven't yet, please sign on to that letter, to add your voice!)
My brief interview with Siegelman at last Summer's Democratic National Convention in Denver (originally posted here), is re-posted at left, wherein he warned, if action wasn't taken "Karl Rove is simply going to get in his get-away car and thumb his nose at the Constitution, the Congress and the American People."

VROOOM....

Even if I say so myself, the 'Clean Coal' industry helped us to make Tuesday's 'Green News Report', one of our most amusing (and, of course, informative) to date. As tomorrow's (Thursday's) episode, will quickly push the May 12th version into the background, I wanted to recommend it here, if you've yet to give it a listen.

I also wanted to mention that we've added a new feature allowing folks to directly, and easily, embed any 'GNR' episode onto their own blog/website in order to help spread the word. We'd appreciate if you did so, where inclined, and, if possible, touched base with your favorite local progressive radio station to ask them to carry the 'Green News Report'! It's free to them, and we'd be delighted to add their station to our growing list of affiliate/partners. Contact GreenNews@BradBlog.com for more info.

Here's what the embedded version of GNR --- in this case, the Tuesday episode I mentioned --- will look like on your website...

Andy Worthington, who largely broke the story of the reported 'suicide' of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi in a Libyan prison, into the English-language press on Sunday (as we helped that night), picked up last night on our followup to the original story, decrying the paucity of coverage of the disturbing report in the U.S. corporate mainstream media.

Al-Libi was, after all, the 'ghost detainee' who had offered a false link between Iraq and al-Qaeda, used loudly by the Bush Administration before the war as a key justification for it, after being tortured by the CIA and Egypt, where he'd been secretly renditioned from U.S. custody at Guantanamo. He would later recant his false 'confession,' explaining that it had come about only after 17 hours of 'mock burial,' and a session of brutal beatings by his captors which followed it.

Newsweek describes the al-Libi affair today as "one of the biggest intelligence fiascos of the run up to the Iraq War" and "a major embarrassment for the Bush administration."

Worthington asked why the initial "media silence," before noting that while U.S. outlets have finally begun to cover the story, one of the better initial reports, from Peter Finn at Washington Post fails to follow up on the paper's own previous coverage of 'ghost detainees,' which included al-Libi, who had disappeared, at some point, from the Bush Administration's long list of suspected 'terrorists' captured following 9/11.

Al-Libi was one of those captives previously reported on by WaPo. His re-emergence in Libya --- where he was spotted by Human Rights Watch at the Abu Salim prison in late April, in apparent good health, but refused to be interviewed, reportedly saying only "Where were you when I was being tortured in American prisons?" --- was punctuated, just two weeks later, by the surprising news of his reported 'suicide.'

But where WaPo covered some of the points mentioned in a press release on al-Libi's death from HRW, they failed to mention any of the other 'ghost detainees' mentioned in the very same press release, whose whereabouts had been a mystery up until now. That, even though WaPo had previously reported the 'missing' status of those same detainees!

Given the disturbing fate of al-Libi --- who, HRW's Tom Malinowski charges, "was missing because he was such an embarrassment to the Bush administration. He was Exhibit A in the narrative that tortured confessions contributed to the massive intelligence failure that preceded the Iraq war" --- it's disappointing that the paper has so far failed to connect dots that could, in this case, help shine a spotlight on growing concerns about some of those other detainees: A spotlight which may help keep them alive, at this point.

There is certainly good reason to question both the timing, and reported means, of al-Libi's death, not the least of which is the point made in several media reports, including AP's, where some have "expressed doubts that al-Libi killed himself, saying al-Libi was a 'true Muslim and Islam prohibits committing suicides.'"

Yet, as Worthington notes, the Post failed to even mention the current status of the other detainees HRW discovered in the Libyan prison, even as they had similarly been sent there by the CIA following claims of abuse and torture at the hands of the U.S....

Guest Blogged by Ernest A. Canning
Part II of a Five-Part Special Series
(Part I is here. Part III is now here. Part IV is now here. Part V is now here.)

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." -Voltaire

I don’t want to give the wrong impression. All nations possess a legitimate need to gather intelligence. There have been large numbers of extraordinarily dedicated CIA employees, like Ray McGovern and Valerie Plame Wilson, who have sought to protect this nation from harm. But there is the dark side of the agency, a covert branch which has engaged in deception, intrigue, torture and assassinations, all designed to destabilize democratic governments in order to advance and consolidate the power and influence of a US-based, multi-national corporate empire.

In Part I of this five-part series, I described how the George W. Bush administration did not wait for legal "permission" from its Department of Justice before embarking on its plan to use torture as means of forcing confessions and other information from detainees. In "Prosecute or Perish" I stressed that the current torture scandal is the product of a half-century of CIA torture; that by failing to prosecute those who tortured in our name in the same manner that we prosecuted the Japanese officers who waterboarded my father during World War II, we not only will expose our nation to the charge of hypocrisy but will endanger the very survival of our constitutional democracy and the rule of law.

As I noted in Part I, we cannot move forward unless we honestly examine our past --- which, in this instance, mandates a careful look at the origins of the CIA...

Dark Beginnings

In a sense, it may be said that the CIA was a stepchild of Nazi Germany. As noted by Joseph Trento in Prelude to Terror (2006), its founder, Allen Dulles, had done business with the Nazis before World War II. Dulles served in the O.S.S. in Bern, Switzerland. From 1945 to 1947, preceding the creation of the CIA, Dulles ran his own private and entirely illegal intelligence service in which he “began a massive ex-Nazi recruitment* campaign, using a State Department refugee office as a front.” The recruitment campaign, Prof. Alfred McCoy observed, in A Question of Torture (2006), entailed more than the use of war criminals as spies. It included German scientists “who had directed Nazi experiments into human physiology and psychology” and whose early research would lay the ground work for CIA torture techniques…

Guest Blogged by Ernest A. Canning

During a news conference yesterday (video here courtesy of TheUptake.org) Marc Elias, representing Sen.-elect Al Franken in the election contest brought by former Sen. Norm Coleman, announced the filing of Franken's brief [PDF] responding to Coleman's appeal [PDF] of the decision by the tri-partisan, three-judge election contest panel's ruling which found: "Franken received the highest number of lawfully cast ballots in the November 4, 2008 general election for United States Senator and is entitled to receive the certificate of election."

Noting that, because of its ability to make credibility determinations, a trial court's factual findings are entitled to "great deference" in an appeal, Elias observed that Coleman had a "heavy burden" in showing that the three-judge panel erred on the facts and the law. He says it's a burden the Coleman team has not met in their appellate arguments. Elias noted that the legal contentions made in Coleman's opening brief were "virtually identical" to those that were made and rejected by the three-judge panel.

We discussed Coleman's arguments, and the three-judge panel's rejection of them, last month in 'For Coleman, the End is Near...'. As our legal analysis detailed, we agree with Elias' May 11, 2009 assertion that the Coleman legal challenge is "without merit."

For example, per Elias, Coleman attorney Ben Ginsberg continues to tell the media that 4,400 uncounted absentee ballots were improperly rejected, but as we observed...

IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: Obama abandons polar bears, but exposes hidden Bush EPA study detailing cancer risks from coal ash; The highest ski run in the world, melted; PLUS: The awesome new 'Clean Coal' ringtones you've been waiting for! .... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail, dirty ring tones? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (links below): San Francisco bets on solar; 'Ghost Nets' threaten the world's oceans; Cheap, innovative solar-powered lantern could light poor villages; Chocolate-powered biodegradable race car; Hard times for climate plans in Canada and Australia; Plus: Who could've foreseen a Boom-and-Bust cycle in the Natural Gas Industry?!?...See below for more!

Info/links on stuff we talked about on today's episode, plus MORE green news, all follows below...