Waterboarding: Torture or Not?

by Aileen at People First Politics

It's just so darned hard to get a straight answer out of policy makers and policy hacks. Though, interestingly enough, it's not that hard to get opinions from warriors (or prisoners) who have been subjected to it.

Yes, it's torture. It's labeled such, known as such, practiced as such. The fact that we subject our SEALs and Rangers and other special forces operatives to it to give them an idea of what torture *is* and how to resist it, tells us that it's legitimately, objectively classifiable as TORTURE.

So, you might ask with wonder in your eyes, why are Senators and Congresscitters and administration hacks arguing about it in public? Why is it "important" on somebody's scale of things to make this long-ago made distinction? Why won't AG candidate Michael Mukasey lend us his views on the issue? It's a fair question, let's ask it...
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Those Very Strangely "Missing" Nukes

by Aileen at People First Politics

Way back in early September I posted about a strange incident at Minot AFB in North Dakota, where 5 (now increased to 6) stockpiled nuclear warheads were taken out of storage, armed, attached to supposedly decommissioned Advanced Cruise Missiles, loaded onto the pilons of a B-52 strategic bomber, and flown to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana - a forward staging base for deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq.

My analysis at that time was that the whistleblowers who reported the incident to The Army Times - which then broke the story - were just doing their job, which had to do with some rather obvious "Saber-Rattling" by the Bush administration against Iran. In that post I noted that ex-CIA analyst Larry Johnson> agreed with my analysis on his blog.

On Halloween investigative reporter Dave Lindorff posted a diary on DKos based on his article for The American Conservative [October 22 issue online]. He titled his diary The Air Force Cover-Up of that Minot-Barksdale Nuclear Missile Flight and it's full of little tidbits of information from the Air Force's investigation report on the incident.

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