Bush: more sadism, more intelligence

* blumenthal:

"President Bush's torture policy has provoked perhaps the greatest schism between a president and the military in American history... Bush's argument for torture is partly based on the unstated premise that the more sadism, the more intelligence. "

* amy:

In the Gaza Strip, five Palestinians have died so far today in attacks by the Israeli military.

* amy:

In Israel, veterans of Israel's invasion of Lebanon and parents of slain troops disrupted a speech by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Wednesday. One protester began screaming "Go home Olmert." A new poll by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz found that public support of Prime Minister Olmert is plummeting. His approval rating now stands at 22 percent. The approval rating of his Defense Minister Amir Peretz is at just 14 percent.

* afp:

"The United States threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the stone age" in 2001 unless it cooperated in the US-led war on terror, President Pervez Musharraf said in an interview.

Musharraf, whose support for the US-led invasion of Afghanistan was instrumental in the fall of the hardline Taliban regime after the September 11, 2001 attacks, said the threat came from former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage.

"Abdul Qadeer Khan, held as hero in Pakistan for helping to make the country a nuclear power, admitted giving away nuclear secrets in a televised confession in February 2004, exposing a global black market in nuclear technology.

* afp:

"He (Tenet) took his briefcase out, passed me some papers. It was a centrifuge design with all its numbers and signatures of Pakistan. It was the most embarrassing moment," Musharraf says.

It was only then, he says, that he realised that not only had blueprints been leaked, but that centrifuges themselves -- a crucial technology needed to enrich uranium to weapons grade -- were being passed on, CBS said.

Musharraf denies that anyone in the government or military was aware of the leak.

He pardoned Khan the same month, but the ailing scientist has since lived under virtual house arrest in a leafy diplomatic sector in Islamabad and makes no public appearances."

* AP:

"The Pentagon inspector general's office said Thursday that a review of records from the unit, known as Able Danger, found no evidence it had identified ringleader Mohamed Atta or any other terrorist who participated in the 2001 attacks.
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Weldon questioned the "motives and the content" of the report and rejected its conclusions. "Acting in a sickening bureaucratic manner, the DOD IG cherry-picked testimony from witnesses in an effort to minimize the historical importance of the Able Danger effort," Weldon said in a statement."

* blumenthal:

The U.S. military is battling against Bush's torture policy and for the rule of law

President Bush's war on terror now exists outside the law. His great struggle for "freedom" and "democracy" has turned into a crusade for lawlessness.
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Instead he has tried to force the Congress to legitimate the conditions the Supreme Court has outlawed. His insistence on torture has aroused the intense opposition of the senior military.
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In his adamant demand for torture, Bush has thrown his "war paradigm" into legal chaos."