April 18, 2009 by mike.

Torturing people is a war crime. Ordering the torture of a person is a war crime. The US must appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the torture and war crimes.

This is not about politics or retribution. This is about whether the US is a nation of laws.

clipped from www.nytimes.com Divisions Arose on Rough Tactics for Qaeda Figure WASHINGTON — The first use of waterboarding and other rough treatment against a prisoner from Al Qaeda was ordered by senior Central Intelligence Agency officials despite the belief of interrogators that the prisoner had already told them all he knew, according to former intelligence officials and a footnote in a newly released legal memorandum. The escalation to especially brutal interrogation tactics against the prisoner, Abu Zubaydah, including confining him in boxes and slamming him against the wall, was ordered by officials at C.I.A. headquarters based on a highly inflated assessment of his importance, interviews and a review of newly released documents show. A footnote to another of the memos described a rift between line officers questioning Abu Zubaydah at a secret C.I.A. prison in Thailand and their bosses at headquarters, and asserted that the brutal treatment may have been “unnecessary.”

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April 18, 2009 by mike.

In a victory for science so basic it’s almost not science at all, the Obama EPA has acknowledged the obvious: global warming is a threat to the planet and the emission/accumulation of greenhouse gases is a significant cause of global warming.

It’s a start. I am happy to see it.

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com EPA Says Emissions Are Threat To Public Finding Could Lead to Greenhouse Gas Limits By Juliet Eilperin Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, April 18, 2009 The Environmental Protection Agency yesterday officially adopted the position that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions pose a danger to the public’s health and welfare, a move that could trigger a series of federal regulations affecting polluters from vehicles to coal-fired power plants. The EPA’s action marks a major shift in the federal government’s approach to global warming. The Bush administration opposed putting mandatory limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, on the grounds that they would hurt business, and the EPA had resisted identifying such emissions as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. Officials from the industries that stand to be most affected indicated yesterday that they would rather help shape standards through the legislative process than defer to federal regulators.

Posted in News, Politics, Connect the Dots, Small Foot Print, Global Warming | Print | 1 Comment »