By Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 14, 2009; Page A01

The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial has concluded that the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, interrogating him with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a "life-threatening condition."

"We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani," said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution.

Crawford, a retired judge who served as general counsel for the Army during the Reagan administration and as Pentagon inspector general when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense, is the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured.

Summaries of 9/11 Commission Interviews Released

Kevin Fenton
January 14, 2009
Posted at History Commons Groups

The National Archives today released a set of records the 9/11 Commission gave it. It did so today because the commission told it it had to wait until 2009 to do so, presumably on the off chance that people would have forgotten about it all by then. The records are in two groups, Memorandums for the Record (MFR), which are available online, and other records, which are not available online.

I have been trawling through the ones that are available online and I have learned a few things of interest.

From The National Archives Legislative Branch - The Center for Legislative Archives
January 14, 2009

FAQs on the 9/11 Commission Records

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, known as the 9/11 Commission, was an independent, bipartisan commission created by Congress. The Commission's mandate was to provide a "full and complete accounting" of the attacks of September 11, 2001 and to provide recommendations as to how to prevent such attacks in the future. The Commission, extant from 2003 - 2004, held hearings, conducted interviews, and produced a report.

When the 9/11 Commission closed on August 21, 2004, it transferred legal custody of its records to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The Commission encouraged the release of its records to the fullest extent possible in January 2009. Because the Commission was part of the legislative branch its records are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Approximately 35% of the Commission's archived textual records are now publicly available. Due to the collection's volume and the large percentage of national security classified files, NARA staff was unable to process the entire collection by January 2009. Review and processing focused on the portion of the collection that contains unique documents created by the Commission and those that reveal the most about the scope of the investigation and the internal workings of the Commission and its staff.

Click Here To Listen: http://noliesradio.org
LIVE Thursday, Jan 15th at 6am Pacific - 9am Eastern - 14:00 GMT

Who is the real Eric Holder? Is he a real civil rights advocate who recently made a speech advocating the closing of Gitmo and the stopping of rendition, torture, and warrantless secret domestic searches and wiretaps? Is he a coverup attorney who has been accused of deflecting press attention from a possible murder of a witness regarding the government's culpilbility in the Oklahoma Federal Building bombing and defending Chiquita Brands role in the funding of death squads in Columbia? Or is he simply a slimy lawyer accused of infuence peddling in his role in the pardon of Mark Rich in the Clinton Whitehouse? See our website for the sources on these statements.
http://noliesradio.org

Michael J. Fox to play paraplegic on FX series

By DANIEL FRANKEL
January 14, 2009

It's been a hot-potato even for the most heavyweight of political pundits in recent years, but the fifth season of the FX series "Rescue Me" will intrepidly delve into the controversial theory that the 9/11 attacks were aided or perpetrated by the U.S. government.

Season five will find the men of Engine 62 divided over the polarizing theory after a journalist working on a 10-year-anniversary story delves up painful memories.

"I think there are a lot of well-thought-out ideas and theories (about 9/11) that to me make more sense than has been popularly espoused, and I'm glad we could explore it in the context of the show," said cast member Daniel Sanjata, addressing tube journos at the Television Critics Assn. confab in Universal City Tuesday.

January 13, 2009
by Larisa Alexandrovna
RawStary.com

New information surrounding the December plane crash which killed GOP internet consultant Michael Connell casts doubt on some of the rumors and speculation surrounding his death but doesn't close the books on the circumstances surrounding the Republican technology star's tragic end.

Michael Connell, a high-level IT guru for the Republican National Committee and the US Chamber of Commerce, died Dec. 19, 2008 at 5:53 PM ET when his airplane crashed near Ohio’s Akron-Canton airport.

Although there has been speculation in the media about the possibility of sabotage in Connell death, authorities do not suspect foul play. The official investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has not yet determined the cause of the crash; their final report is required to be produced within a year.

Every second there is a bomb
Adham Khalil writing from Jabaliya refugee camp, the occupied Gaza Strip, Live from Palestine, 13 January 2009
... We are living under complete siege with daily killings and our houses destroyed. Hamas and other Palestinian factions are trying to defend Palestinians from the continuing massacres, invasions and air strikes. The Israeli occupation and actions in Gaza are terrorist actions, as are many of their actions and policies dating back to their ethnic cleansing campaign in 1948.

But I think this, right now, is the worst catastrophe I will see in my life.

I don't have any guns or weapons. I struggle by simply telling the truth. Many people have asked me if there is a way to send money or food. But what we really need is our freedom and an end to the fire.

Don't keep silent about the Israeli massacres and Holocaust against Palestinians. The demand for an end to this siege must be louder than the bombs that rain down upon us.

Adham Khalil is a resident of Jabaliya refugee camp and a youth leader at the al-Assria Children's Library. His blog, Free Free Palestine, is at http://nagyelali.blogspot.com. (Reprinted from Electronic Intifada)

– Ed.

by Reprehensor
911blogger.com
January 14, 2009

Yesterday, (1.12.2008), Rep. Kucinich explained why he voted against a resolution endorsing Israel's over-the-top aggression in Gaza. Also, please take a moment to sign this petition at AVAAZ.org;

GAZA: STOP THE BLOODSHED

Kucinich Part 1 of 2

January 13, 2008
Email call to action from Center for Constitutional Rights

The inauguration is almost upon us, and I am writing you with two important related matters. The first is a call to action to phone your senators with questions for Eric Holder's hearing on his nomination to be the next Attorney General. The second is to send you a link to a report we released yesterday on the simple steps to closing Guantanamo.

While President-Elect Obama has said he will close the base, he has yet to say how or when, which are the most important questions. We are all excited at the chance for a new beginning: it is up to us to make it one we can be proud of. Please call your senators, and please download and distribute our report so we can end this terrible chapter in our history.

At 10am EST tomorrow morning, General Eric Shinseki, President-elect Obama's choice for VA Secretary, will try to convince Congress he's the right person for the job.

In advance of the hearing, IAVA released ten crucial questions that Congress needs to ask the nominee. And I'm going to be live-blogging about the hearing straight from DC, watching to see what issues are addressed.

Click here to follow along with my commentary in real time.

If he's confirmed, General Shinseki will be facing an urgent and critical fight to improve support for our nation's veterans. As a wounded and decorated combat veteran, and the first Asian-American in US history to be a four-star general, he has the potential to lead the second-largest bureaucracy in the US government into the 21st century.

January 12, 2009
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Meg White

As Bush gives his final press conference today, lamenting the "mistakes" of his presidency, some are wondering if he and other members of his administration will get a chance to tell such tales to a special prosecutor.

"History will look back,'' he told reporters, most likely hoping the next administration's Justice Department will solely look forward. Judging from the most recent comments from his successor, that may very well be the case.

It all started when Bob Fertik, progressive writer and co-founder of Democrats.com, posed this question to President-elect Barack Obama:

"Will you appoint a special prosecutor -- ideally Patrick Fitzgerald -- to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush Administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping?"

Fertik submitted the question to Change.gov, the official transition Web site for the incoming Obama Administration. The site has a forum called "Open for Questions" where people can post items of particular concern for the Obama team to review. Fertik's question got so much attention and approval from other users on the site that it made its way to the top of the Change.gov list and onto the Sunday talk shows, finally garnering this response from Obama when George Stephanopoulos asked the question directly:

Catherine Austin Fitts
January 9, 2009
Solari.com/blog

In fiscal 1999, the Department of Defense was "missing" $2.3 trillion dollars. To put that amount of money in perspective, it is approximately 3X what President-elect Obama is proposing to spend to revitalize America.

In fiscal 2000, the Department of Defense was "missing" $1.1 trillion, about 1.5X what President-elect Obama wants to invest in America.

So between October 1998 and September 2000, the Department of Defense was "missing" $3.3 trillion. Because the amount of money disappearing is so enormous, years ago we started a archive of articles on the "missing money" to try to keep up with the trillions sliding out of the federal accounts.

The audio of Griffin's excellent presentation, "9/11 and Nationalist Faith" was broadcast on Bonnie Faulkner's KPFA program, Guns and Butter, on Wednesday, January 07, 2009, and is now available at her archives for online listening.

In "9/11 and Nationalist Faith," Dr. David Ray Griffin shows that the greatest obstacle to seeing the truth - that 9/11 was an inside job - is not the lack of evidence, but what can be called "nationalist faith" ...

Visit Guns and Butter to listen to this presentation here. (Or play mp3 stream here.) Many other excellent shows are archived for listening here.

In the grim, sleepless months of excavation after the September 11 attacks, forensic pathologists in New York City worked day and night to identify the dead. They didn't have much to go on. The collapsed World Trade Center towers had burned at temperatures reaching 2,000 degrees, incinerating those trapped inside. Many of the bodies of the passengers aboard the two airplanes that struck the buildings were consumed by burning jet fuel, leaving only traces of DNA, much of it so damaged that it was impossible to read. Few bodies were found intact. Most of the human remains culled from the vast wreckage at Ground Zero were little more than tiny fragments of charred tissue and bone. The volume was overwhelming. Robert Shaler, who headed the city's Department of Forensic Biology and was a leader of the identification effort, worried his lab would be paralyzed if it tried to identify every piece. At first, they decided they would only attempt to test samples that were "the size of a thumb or larger," he says. But when they saw how small many of the fragments were, they changed their minds. "If we were really going to make an honest effort," Shaler says, "we had to do everything that came along."

Shaler and his colleagues at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner gave weekly updates to family members of the victims, reporting how many of the dead had been identified and reassuring them that the city was doing everything to identify their loved ones. But the families weren't only concerned with their own dead. In meeting after meeting, Shaler says, relatives would ask about the hijackers. Had the scientists identified any of their remains?

by Josh Israel
January 7, 2009
A Center for Public Integrity Investigation

As America approaches a historic transfer of power, it is becoming ever-clearer what a daunting set of tasks awaits the new administration. When Barack Obama takes the oath of office at noon on January 20 he will inherit an economy collapsing before our eyes and a pair of ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But he will also inherit a federal government whose machinery should bear an “out of order” sign.