http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/Safe...ID=17584&c=206

This morning, the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit charging that Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld bears direct responsibility for the torture
and abuse of detainees in U.S. military custody. The lawsuit seeks a
court declaration that Secretary Rumsfeld violated the U.S. Constitution
and international laws.

Officials at the highest levels of government bear the ultimate
responsibility for the actions of the U.S. military. I urge you to join
us in our call for accountability by viewing a two-minute Web movie and
calling on the Attorney General to appoint an outside special counsel to
investigate how our government's torture policies took such a misguided
path. (Movie at http://aclu.org/)

This landmark lawsuit was filed by a coalition of human rights advocates
on behalf of eight former detainees who were incarcerated in U.S.
detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, where they were subjected
to torture and other cruel and degrading treatment. None of the men was
ever charged with a crime.

Don't want you to miss this, Jimcomma:



By Mark Steyn

Three years ago - April 6 2002, if you want to rummage through the old
Spectators in the attic - I wrote: "The stability junkies in the EU, UN and
elsewhere have, as usual, missed the point. The Middle East is too stable.
So, if you had to pick only one regime to topple, why not Iraq? Once you've
got rid of the ruling gang, it's the West's best shot at incubating a
reasonably non-insane polity. That's why the unravelling of the Middle East
has to start not in the West Bank but in Baghdad."

I don't like to say I told you so. But, actually, I do like to say I told
you so. What I don't like to do is the obligatory false self-deprecatory
thing to mitigate against the insufferableness of my saying I told you so.
But nevertheless I did.

Consider just the past couple of days' news: not the ever more desperate
depravity of the floundering "insurgency", but the real popular Arab
resistance the car-bombers and the head-hackers are flailing against: the
Saudi foreign minister, who by remarkable coincidence goes by the name of
Prince Saud, told Newsweek that women would be voting in the next Saudi
election. "That is going to be good for the election," he said, "because I
think women are more sensible voters than men."

Four-time Egyptian election winner - and with 90 per cent of the vote! -
President Mubarak announced that next polling day he wouldn't mind an
opponent. Ordering his stenographer to change the constitution to permit the
first multi-choice presidential elections in Egyptian history, His
Excellency said the country would benefit from "more freedom and democracy".
The state-run TV network hailed the president's speech as a "historical
decision in the nation's 7,000-year-old march toward democracy". After 7,000
years on the march, they're barely out of the parking lot, so Mubarak's move
is, as they say, a step in the right direction.

Meanwhile in Damascus, Boy Assad, having badly overplayed his hand in
Lebanon and after months of denying that he was harbouring any refugee
Saddamites, suddenly discovered that - wouldja believe it? - Saddam's
brother and 29 other bigshot Baghdad Baathists were holed up in
north-eastern Syria, and promptly handed them over to the Iraqi government.

And, for perhaps the most remarkable development, consider this report from
Mohammed Ballas of Associated Press: "Palestinians expressed anger on
Saturday at an overnight suicide bombing in Tel Aviv that killed four
Israelis and threatened a fragile truce, a departure from former times when
they welcomed attacks on their Israeli foes."

No disrespect to Associated Press, but I was disinclined to take their word
for it. However, Charles Johnson, whose Little Green Footballs website has
done an invaluable job these past three years presenting the ugly truth
about Palestinian death-cultism, reported that he went hunting around the
internet for the usual photographs of deliriously happy Gazans dancing in
the street and handing out sweets to celebrate the latest addition to the
pile of Jew corpses - and, to his surprise, couldn't find any.

Why is all this happening? Answer: January 30. Don't take my word for it,
listen to Walid Jumblatt, big-time Lebanese Druze leader and a man of
impeccable anti-American credentials: "I was cynical about Iraq. But when I
saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, eight million of them, it was
the start of a new Arab world. The Berlin Wall has fallen."

Just so. Left to their own devices, the House of Saud - which demanded all
US female air-traffic controllers be stood down for Crown Prince Abdullah's
flight to the Bush ranch in Crawford - would stick to their traditional line
that Wahhabi women have no place in a voting booth; instead, they have to
dress like a voting booth - a big black impenetrable curtain with a little
slot to drop your ballot through. Likewise, Hosni Mubarak has no desire to
take part in campaign debates with Hosno Name-Recognition. Boy Assad has no
desire to hand over his co-Baathists to the Great Satan's puppets in
Baghdad.

But none of them has much of a choice. In the space of a month, the Iraq
election has become the prism through which all other events in the region
are seen.

Assad's regime knocks off a troublemaker in Lebanon. Big deal. They've done
it a gazillion times. But this time the streets are full of demonstrators
demanding an end to Syrian occupation.

A suicide bomber kills four Jews. So what's new? But this time the
Palestinians decline to celebrate. And some even question whether being a
delivery system for plastic explosives is really all life has to offer, even
on the West Bank.

Mubarak announces the arrest of an opposition leader. Like, who cares? The
jails are full of 'em. But this time Condi Rice cancels her visit and the
Egyptian government notices that its annual cheque from Washington is a
month late.

Three years ago, those of us in favour of destabilising the Middle East
didn't have to be far-sighted geniuses: it was a win/win proposition. As Sam
Goldwyn said, I'm sick of the old clichés, bring me some new clichés. The
old clichés - Pan-Arabism, Baathism, Islamism, Arafatism - brought us the
sewer that led to September 11. The new clichés could hardly be worse. Even
if the old thug-for-life had merely been replaced by a new thug-for-life,
the latter would come to power in the wake of the cautionary tale of the
former.

But some of us - notably US deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz -
thought things would go a lot better than that. Wolfowitz was right, and so
was Bush, and the Left, who were wrong about the Berlin Wall, were wrong
again, the only difference being that this time they were joined in the
dunce's corner of history by far too many British Tories. No surprise there.
The EU's political establishment doesn't trust its own people, so why would
they trust anybody else's? Bush trusts the American people, and he's happy
to extend the same courtesy to the Iraqi people, the Syrian people, the
Iranian people, etc.

Prof Glenn Reynolds, America's Instapundit, observes that "democratisation
is a process, not an event". Far too often, it's treated like an event: ship
in the monitors, hold the election, get it approved by Jimmy Carter and the
UN, and that's it. Doesn't work like that. What's happening in the Middle
East is the start of a long-delayed process. Eight million Iraqis did more
for the Arab world on January 30 than 7,000 years of Mubarak-pace marching.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/m...3/01/ixop.html


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John H

"All decisions are the result of binary thinking."