"Every time Obama takes even more counsel from wingnuts, don't you feel the earth move in the scintillating "Team of Rivals" way that's got the Village all a-twitter?
Ooh, ahhh, just a little more to the right. OOOOOHHHH! YES! YES! YES!"
On a scorching morning earlier this year, Talib Mohammed Farkhan, who had been imprisoned for 15 months, shuffled into Hearing Room 3 to hear his U.S. captors explain the allegations against him for the first time.
Farkhan, a Shiite Muslim, appeared to follow along as the American officers said he had been detained for membership in the Mahdi Army, the anti-American Shiite militia. But he looked totally baffled when they also accused him of working with al-Qaeda in Iraq, the extremist Sunni Muslim group that kills Americans and Shiites.
"I don't understand how that could be possible," said a visibly flustered Farkhan, a welder from the southern city of Iskandariyah, who denied all the accusations. "They are Sunni. I am Shia."
Yet the three U.S. servicemen before him, a panel of non-lawyers convened as part of a new quasi-judicial process to review each detainee's case every six months, did not need to decide whether Farkhan had violated the law. Their task was to decide whether he posed an "imperative security threat" to the U.S.-led coalition or the Iraqi people. And they concluded that credible evidence, which they would not describe to Farkhan or a Washington Post correspondent allowed to view the 19-minute hearing, suggested that he probably did.
"I'm not looking at whether they are guilty or innocent," said Air Force Maj. Jeff Ghiglieri, the president of the review board that convened in May. "We're trying to determine as best we can whether they will do bad things if we release them."
THE main Indian airports were on high alert last night after intelligence warnings that India may be the target of a fresh airborne terrorist attack following the assault on Mumbai last week.
India's Bureau of Civil Aviation issued hijack warnings for Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai airports and deployed hundreds of extra airport security personnel.
The Indian Air Force chief, Fali Homi Major, confirmed the threat of a possible airborne attack. "This is based on a warning, which has been received and we are prepared as usual," he told the Press Trust of India news agency. . .
Times of India:
Intel Sources Say Pakistan Military Involved in Terror Attack, Not Civilian Government
The names of trainers and the places where meticulous training took place are also known to the government, the sources said.
The United States is believed to have even more evidence, some of which it has shared with India, they said.
Chairman of US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, who was in Pakistan on Wednesday, is believed to have told his Pakistani interlocutors that Washington had enough evidence to show a Pakistani hand in the attack, the sources said.. .
"A husband and wife have been charged with torture after a bruised, terrified 17-year-old showed up at a gym with a chain locked to his ankle, claiming he had just fled his captors, US authorities said Tuesday.
Kelly Layne Lau, 30, and Michael Schumacher, 34, were arrested late Monday, said Matt Robinson, a spokesman for police in Tracy, 60 miles east of San Francisco.
They had been taken into custody for questioning earlier in the day at their home in Tracy, where the emaciated boy was allegedly held against his will. A search of the home turned up evidence implicating the couple, Robinson said.
They were charged with torture, kidnapping and child abuse, and were set to appear in court Thursday, officials said. Bail was set at $1.2 million for Michael Schumacher but his wife's bail had not been set, authorities said.
Police said they were searching for a third suspect but wouldn't give details.
The boy turned up half-naked Monday at the In-Shape Sports Club, near the couple's home. It's not clear how he ended up in Tracy; authorities said he ran away last year from a foster home in Sacramento, about 70 miles to the north.
Robinson said the boy was confused when approached by detectives Monday, unsure where he had come from and how long he had been held against his will. He was taken to a hospital.
"The wounds he had and his physical condition as well as having a chain around his leg corroborated his basic statement that he was being held against his will," Robinson said.
Chuck Ellis, a manager of the In-Shape Sports Club, said the boy came into the fitness centre Monday afternoon wearing only boxer briefs, covered with what appeared to be soot. Ellis says the teen was scared someone was going to come after him and asked to be hidden.
'He said 'Don't let them get me, don't let them get me,'" Ellis said. 'He was totally terrified.'"
----
Oh, and for all you rabid fans of random parenthood, don't miss: TEEN MOM SMOTHERS INFANT SON WITH TEDDY BEAR.
(More suitable subjects for tonglen, it would seem.)
"THERE is something about Hillary Clinton. She is not very tall, she is a conservative dresser, but when she enters a room she fills the space, even when she shares it with the president-elect.
On Monday, when Barack Obama and his choice as vice-president, Joe Biden, stood before eight American flags crowned with gilded eagles and revealed the names of the six top members of his national security team, it was the petite woman in the inky navy pantsuit who was the centre of attention. [will they ever stop talking about her clothes?]
No matter that on one side stood the first African-American attorney-general of the US, Eric Holder, and the long-standing Bush Administration official Robert Gates, who has agreed to stay on to end the Iraq war he has been running for two years.
Or that on the other side she was dwarfed by Jim Jones, a former supreme allied commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, a physically imposing former marine who makes Mr Obama look puny. . .
Mr Obama said he preferred to have strong-minded people with strong opinions around him.
He chided the media, saying the far bigger risk in the White House was the tendency towards "group think"."
"The handwriting and character of the Mumbai events demonstrates that they were not ordinary terrorists," said Vladimir Klyukin, an Afghan war veteran.
"Behind this terrorist attack there are 'Green Flag' special operations forces, which were created by the Americans in Pakistan, just an year before the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, and in the initial period were under full US control," stressed Klyukin, a veteran of the special "Vympel" commando group of the former Soviet KGB.
He said for such guerrilla operations at least two-three years of preparatory work with the involvement of experienced instructors is required.
Klyukin did not rule out that the Mumbai attackers could have taken part in similar attacks in other regions.
"People from the streets, without any planning and training are simply not able to hold four big complexes in a city so long," Soviet special services veteran was quoted as saying by largest Russian Interfax news agency.
He also presumed that there were at least 50 attackers given the geography and scale of the strikes.
Doing no evil whatsoever
Practice virtue perfectly
Tame your mind completely
This is the teaching of the buddha
Incest [predator] Josef Fritzl says he's turned to Buddhism - and wants doctors to help cure him so he can be reunited with his wife Rosemarie.
Evil Fritzl spends much of his 23 hours a day in his cell studying the peaceful Far Eastern philosophy and is considering formally changing his religion in prison.
Speaking through his lawyer Rudolf Mayer, Fritzl said that he has found a lot of comfort in reading Buddhist literature and finds the religion "fascinating".
Fritzl first discovered Buddhism on a family holiday in Thailand but has only started studying the religion in depth while behind bars.
Prosecution sources remain suspicious of his Buddhist conversion.
"It's a bit late in his life to present himself as a man of peace. If he ever gets reincarnated, what would he come back as? Even making him a worm would be an insult to worms," said one.
Fritzl's facing the rest of his life in jail after imprisoning his daughter Elisabeth as a sex slave in a home-made cell under the family home in Amstetten, Austria. She was locked up for 24 years where she gave birth to seven of his children. An eighth child was miscarried.
But the dungeon demon has astonished medics by asking them to cure him so he can start a new life with his family.
"I realise now that I am not normal, and I see that somebody who did what I did cannot be regarded as normal.
"With the help of therapists I want to know what the real reasons are for why I behaved like I did and I want to get treatment, I want to be healthy again at some point," he told his lawyer.
And the deluded demon says he hopes therapy will lead to a reunion with wife Rosemarie and their children.
"I hope one day that we will be able to live together again," he said.
Fritzl, 73, has dismissed psychological reports that his cold, emotionless upbringing turned him into an incest monster.
"I don't want to blame my mother for the way I am. There's been enough bad things said about her. I don't know what the answer is and there is no solution in simply saying she is responsible for everything," he said.
Towards the end of her life cold-hearted Fritzl kept his mother locked up.
"She was not a bad woman although she had psychological problems that led her to be aggressive right up until she died - something which got worse in old age when she suffered from dementia as well.
"I forgave her a long time ago for what she did for me because I know she had a very hard life. At the end she always wanted to dress herself in rich clothes and it was one of the saddest days of my life when I went to her funeral and saw how few people had bothered to turn up," he explained.
Fritzl has also begun studying law behind bars to help him beat the charges he faces - murder, rape, slavery, incest, imprisonment and abuse.
Now it has emerged that Fritzl has been pouring over legal books about Austrian law looking for loopholes to save his neck.
While he will admit four charges which would put him in prison for a maximum of 10 years - he rejects the two more serious allegations that could see him locked up for life.
He claims that the charges of murder and slavery have been manufactured to make sure he is never free again.
Fritzl told his lawyer Rudolf Mayer: "I am guilty, but only to the first four charges, not to slavery and not to murder. The truth is that I am not a murderer either by accident or deliberately.
"I can understand how Elisabeth feels. I know that she hates me and that she is terrified I might one day again see freedom. But the fact is that many of the things she has said are just not true."
Astonishingly he admits to threatening to kill his cellar family with gas or electric shocks - but claims he never intended to go through with it.
"It is true that when they were underground I threatened them with murder, and led them to believe they would die from electricity shock or be gassed if they tried to escape. But I am not a murderer," he told his legal team."
"Fighting room-by-room through two luxury hotels, over dozens of bodies and through darkened corridors slick with blood, the commandos came up against well-trained and determined gunmen.
Explosions and gunfire continued intermittently at the Taj Mahal hotel Friday afternoon, two days after a chain of militant attacks across India's financial center left [153] people dead and the city in panic. . . .
It was a game of cat and mouse through the hotels' hundreds of rooms, and in many cases the gunmen had the advantage.
"These people were very, very familiar with the hotel layouts and it appears they had carried out a survey before," the commando said.
The gunmen used their knowledge to move skillfully from place to place, thwarting efforts to pin them down. To further confuse the commandos, they switched off lights and plunged the rooms into darkness. . . .
The gunmen showed "no remorse to anybody, whoever came in front of them they fired," said the commando.
They were armed with assault rifles and hand grenades and knew how to use them.
'It's obvious they were trained somewhere ... not everyone can handle the AK series of weapons or throw grenades like that,' the commando said."
"Television footage showed the assailants carrying automatic rifles and backpacks filled with ammunition and grenades. Analysts said the fact that the gunmen quickly fanned across the city and were able to hold off Indian security forces over three days suggested that they had received training at organized camps.
"What is striking about this is a fair amount of planning had to go into this type of attack," said Roger W. Cressey, a former White House counterterrorism official in the Clinton and Bush administrations. "This is not a seat-of-the-pants operation. This group had to receive some training or support from professionals in the terrorism business." "
The only people . . ."he sees [are] the camp guards who bring his meals. He has had no other human contact. The glaring lights in his cell are on 24 hours a day, seven days a week. When we left the cell, we could hear Saber shouting -- brief, truncated cries. We could not understand what he was saying."
Some beings go from dark to dark.
Some from dark to light.
And some from light to dark.
May you go from light to light.
