Now British soldiers are also caught on film abusing prisoners.

Of all the great heroes serving in Iraq, it takes just a few people to fuck everything up. Iraq is lost- we just can't bring ourselves to admit it yet.

We're bound by the Geneva Convention (when we feel like it) so we can't torture prisoners constantly. Our hired guns have no such restrictions.

Colonel Jill Morgenthaler, speaking for central command, told the Guardian: "One contractor was originally included with six soldiers, accused for his treatment of the prisoners, but we had no jurisdiction over him. It was left up to the contractor on how to deal with him."

She did not specify the accusation facing the contractor, but according to several sources with detailed knowledge of the case, he raped an Iraqi inmate in his mid-teens.

Col Morgenthaler said the charges against the six soldiers included "indecent acts, for ordering detainees to publicly masturbate; maltreatment, for non-physical abuse, piling inmates into nude pyramids and taking pictures of them nude; battery, for shoving and stepping on detainees; dereliction of duty; and conspiracy to maltreat detainees".

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Paul Krugman analyzes the Iraq situation one day short of a year after "Mission Accomplished."

"We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield." That's from George Orwell's 1946 essay "In Front of Your Nose." It seems especially relevant right now, as we survey the wreckage of America's Iraq adventure.

Tomorrow a year will have passed since George Bush's "Mission Accomplished" carrier landing. Throughout that year — right up to the surge in violence this month — administration officials assured us that things were going well in Iraq. Living standards, they said, were steadily improving. The resistance, they insisted, consisted of a handful of dead-enders aided by a few foreign infiltrators — and each lull in attacks brought pronouncements that the campaign against the insurgents had turned the corner.

So they lied to us; what else is new? But there's more at stake here than the administration's credibility. The official story line portrayed a virtuous circle of nation-building, one that could eventually lead to a democratic Iraq, allied with the U.S. In fact, we seem to be faced with a vicious circle, in which a deteriorating security situation undermines reconstruction, and the lack of material progress adds to popular discontent. Can this situation be saved?

Even among harsh critics of the administration's Iraq policy, the usual view is that we have to finish the job. You've heard the arguments: We broke it; we bought it. We can't cut and run. We have to stay the course.

I understand the appeal of those arguments. But I'm worried about the arithmetic.

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I know these don't fit on the page all pretty in some browsers... I'm crazy like that... I'll post stuff that doesn't fit! I'm outta control!

Here's a short video clip of Brit Hume claiming that the Bush White House is "not a very leaky White House."

I know, it made me laugh too. Enjoy.

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Let’s start with this. What’s the signature pattern of Bush’s life?

When he faces a challenge or a tough scrape, he lets his family and friends bail him out. He has always let others do his fighting for him.

You see it in his failed businesses, where well-heeled family friends again and again came in to bail him out. It’s there in the legal scrapes. And it’s there in the whole matter of ducking service in Vietnam — first by getting his father’s and his father’s friends’ help in jumping the queue to get into the Texas Air National Guard, and then again with help cleaning up the subsequent unfortunateness while he was serving in the Texas Air National Guard.

(As was reported this week in Salon, despite assurances to the contrary from the White House, the president still refuses to release his complete Vietnam-era service record.)

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Link (3.05MB Real Video File)

MATT DRUDGE IN RARE TV APPEARANCE: LIVE FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 8 AM ET ON C-SPAN'S WASHINGTON JOURNAL...

Atrios, Daily Kos, Calpundit and others were all over this in February when it broke- I had the images but apparently never got around to posting anything about this. Weird.

Here, finally, are the images of Bush's unredacted and redacted records.

From the version of the records obtained by Marty Heldt in 2000:



And the White House's 2004 version:



Here is today's Salon article about these growing questions about James Bath's relationship with the President and Marty Heldt's site with the original docs.

This is scary. A man's name was redacted from Air National Guard records released by Bush a few months back. What's interesting is that most other people's names were not redacted. Further, the redacted man was suspended from the guard within a month of when Bush was suspended. That's weird enough, but it turns out that other records show the man's name was James R. Bath. It seems to turn out that Bath worked for the CIA, possibly as a liason to wealthy Arab families including: the bin Ladens.

Here are three questions a one Web site is suggesting be posed to Bush:


3. President Bush, was your friend from the National Guard, James R. Bath, arrested for cocaine around the same time? Is this why both of your National Guard records show suspensions in 1972 for refusal to submit to annual medical exams? Is this why you were no longer allowed to fly? If so, why did you make up the story that you no longer WANTED to fly?

5. James R. Bath was appointed by your father as a CIA operative in 1976 leasing aircraft in Houston and serving as a liaison between wealthy Arab sheiks (including the Bin Ladens) and American entrepreneurs. According to all sources, Baths company served as a front for the CIA. Before 1976, Bath was broke, according to all accounts. What was it that prompted your father to select James R. Bath in 1976? Did he hold incriminating evidence against you?

6. James R. Bath, representative of wealthy Saudi sheiks, channeled investment money into your first company in 1977, Arbusto Energy Corporation of Midland, Texas. Were you personally acquainted with Salem bin Laden (Osamas brother) and Khalid bin Mahfouz (Osamas brother-in-law) who poured thousands into your first company and millions into your subsequent enterprises?

Chris Vlasto has a story up on ABC News that's trying to stir up some controversy about John Kerry's military honors and what he did or didn't do with his medals and ribbons.

You may remember Vlasto from such hard news stories as, "HOWARD DEAN's driver BEATS HIS WIFE" and "SADDAM HAS A MISTRESS" and "THE CLINTONS ARE CORRUPT WHORES"

This is the same Chris Vlasto who paid for a celebratory dinner for Paula Jones after they had succeeded in compelling Clinton to testify under oath about his sexual history.

Yeah, this is a reporter you can trust.

Today in a federal court in Washington, senior government lawyers will try and gag Mrs Edmonds, claiming that disclosure of her evidence "would cause serious damage to the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States".

Mrs Edmonds, 33, a Turkish-American who had top secret security clearance while working for the FBI, claimed earlier this month that information she had seen while working in the bureau's headquarters in Washington proves senior officials knew of al Qaeda's plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes happened.

She said the claim by the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that there was no such information was "an outrageous lie".

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If she wasn't telling the truth, would they bother gagging her?

Attorneys warned firm that use of uncertified vote-counting software violated state law

By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER

Attorneys for Diebold Election Systems Inc. warned in late November that its use of uncertified vote-counting software in Alameda County violated California election law and broke its $12.7 million contract with Alameda County.

Soon after, a review of internal legal memos obtained by the Oakland Tribune shows Diebold's attorneys at the Los Angeles office of Jones Day realized the McKinney, Texas-based firm also faced a threat of criminal charges and exile from California elections.

Yet despite warnings from the state's chief elections officer, Diebold continued fielding poorly tested, faulty software and hardware in at least two of California's largest urban counties during the Super Tuesday primary, when e-voting temporarily broke down and voters were turned away at the polls.

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I'll never trust Diebold to count the vote fairly- they're irreparably corrupted. Last year, the CEO of Diebold promised to deliver it's home state of Ohio's electoral votes to Bush in a fundraising letter to Republicans. Is it really just a coincidence that Diebold's machines have no way to verify that the count is correct? No audit trail?

If there's a problem with the count (like in Florida, when Al Gore was given NEGATIVE 16,022 votes and George W. Bush was given 4,000 extra votes) nothing can be done? Is it still sane to assume these procedures were not put in place because Diebold just hadn't thought of using the same technology ATMs have used for decades? Or is a more likely answer that Diebold has a horse in this race, and audit trails could make things inconvenient for their candidate?

ATMs work- they give you a paper receipt. That's not a failure of our so-called paperless society- it's accountability. It's reassurance. That's what we need when voting- and it's incredible that it's not there yet.