change (in specifics)

NYT: military commission system (MCS) prepares to charge 6 Guantánamo detainees for crimes related to Sept 11 attacks, one of whom was subjected to waterboarding. Actual charges have not been announced.
[please refer to Kafka's unfortunately relevant depiction]
AP: MCS slowed down by objections to secret evidence
"The law authorizing the war-crimes tribunals allows the use of classified evidence, and prosecutors say they fulfill their obligation to share it with the other side. But some defense attorneys say the government uses too narrow an interpretation of what information is relevant and should be provided to the defense." [again, please see Kafka]
Slate: torture's not legal? ok, waterboarding isn't torture. wait, yes it is. but it's legal now.
"This is not simply the theory of a unitary executive at work; this isn't the notion that the president makes the law, and acts of Congress are legal elevator music. This vision of executive power is that the law not only emanates from the president but also ebbs and flows with his hunches, hopes, and speculations, on a moment-to-moment basis. What we are hearing now from senior Bush administration officials is that if the president thinks someone looks kinda like a terrorist and the information sought from him seems kinda worth getting, it will be legal to torture him. And it's legal no matter who justified it, regardless of the supporting legal doctrine, because, well, the president just had a feeling that the information would prove valuable."

Foreign Affairs: all of the above central to change in 2009.
"To build a better, freer world, we must first behave in ways that reflect the decency and aspirations of the American people. This means ending the practices of shipping away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries, of detaining thousands without charge or trial, of maintaining a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of the law."
BG: Q&A with Obama on these issues: see especially Qs 5,7,8,9,10
BG: and Clinton too

NYT: SecDef Gates says Europeans are resisting stepping up NATO commitments because they're angry about Iraq, "confusing" it with the war in Afghanistan
"'Many of them, I think, have a problem with our involvement in Iraq, and project that to Afghanistan, and do not understand the very different — for them — the very different kind of threat.'"
Slate: the alliance wasn't sustainable from the beginning
"In early 2006, NATO made plans to relieve the United States of command over operations in Afghanistan. The mission was seen as vital, above all, to NATO. It was a test of whether, in the post-Cold War era, the alliance had any role to play as a unified expeditionary force. To get all the nations involved, "caveats" were negotiated. Some nations would send troops, but only if they didn't have to fight; others would fight, but not at night; and so forth. Troops under NATO command, in general, could engage in "proactive self-defense," a deliberately vague term that permitted commanders to fire when fired upon and go after insurgents if they were spotted nearby. But they could not initiate offensive operations. (For that reason, the United States would keep 13,000 troops, mainly airmen, under its own command—in addition to the 7,000 it was placing under NATO's—so that somebody could continue to go after Taliban forces on the Pakistan border.)"

NYT: Dick wants his right to shoot friends in the face protected in the District

NYT: Pakistan People's Party disputes Scotland Yard's report on Bhutto's death

NYT: progress made on peace talks in Kenya
"The opposition has agreed to recognize Mr. Kibaki as the president and drop its demand for a new election, the person said, and the president’s negotiators have reciprocated by talking of a 'broad-based government.'"
Slate: background on Kikuyus and resentment towards them

NYT: Venezuelans growing restless with Chávez
"'I cannot find beans, rice, coffee or milk,' said Mirna de Campos, 56, a nurse’s assistant who lives in the gritty district of Los Teques outside Caracas. 'What there is to find is whiskey — lots of it.' The gulf between revolutionary rhetoric and the skewed availability of imported luxury items, many of which are consumed by a new elite aligned with Mr. Chávez’s government, known as the “Bolivarian bourgeoisie,” has led to even wider questioning of the priorities of his political movement."

McSweeney's: Tintin in the 21st century

judgments

middle east
BBC: new flag over Baghdad
LAT: Diyala valley claimed by militant group
"The invaders pinned notices on the walls of mosques informing residents that they now lived in the Islamic State of Iraq."
LAT: Iraqi army and police rivalries slow handover
"Separated by tribal and regional differences, and a personality clash between top officers, the two branches of the Iraqi security forces have largely refused to coordinate their activities."
LAT: focus on professionalizing the police, an enormous challenge
WP: US troops kill 3 more civilians in another raid

WP: Hamas claims responsibility for suicide bomb in Israel; Israel retaliates with missile attacks, killing 9
New Yorker: why did Israel bomb Syria in Sept?
BBC: HRW calls for release of activist in Syria, opposition members

Gdn: Iranian missile test makes Russia nervous

LAT: Christians in Pakistan
WP: Mormons in the world
WP: Islamists in Chechnya
LAT: (liberal) Shiites in Lebanon

SWJ: link to full Afghanistan Study Group report
"It is time to re-vitalize and re-double our efforts toward stabilizing Afghanistan and re-think our economic and military strategies to ensure that the level of our commitment is commensurate with the threat posed by possible failure in Afghanistan."
SWJ: summaries of, links to other assessments

BBC: Poland chastises NATO allies for not sending enough troops, support to Afghanistan
Gdn: UK will deploy paratroopers to Helmand in April
BBC: announcement comes during Sec Rice visit to London

BBC: alternative development needed to reduce Afghan farmers' incentives to grow poppy
"Britain plays the lead role in coordinating counter narcotics policy in Afghanistan and six years on the failure in this area makes for grim reading...There have been some successes - half as many provinces grow opium poppies this year as last - but the report says there are ominous signs that the drugs business is increasingly linked to insecurity."
BBC: UNODC releases report estimating higher poppy growth in south

americas
LAT: Hayden acknowledges that only (at least?) 3 Al-Qaeda suspects were waterboarded
NYT: (despite the torture) Al-Qaeda is a growing threat. and more on those tricky guidelines:
"[director of national intelligence] Mr. McConnell said that a future C.I.A. request to use waterboarding on a detainee would need to be approved both by Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey and by President Bush...

Both Robert S. Mueller III, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told lawmakers that their agencies had successfully obtained valuable intelligence from terrorism suspects without using what Mr. Mueller called the “coercive” methods of the C.I.A.

But General Hayden bristled when asked about Congressional attempts to mandate that C.I.A. interrogators be required to use the more limited set of interrogation methods contained in the Army Field Manual, which is used by military interrogators.

'It would make no more sense to apply the Army’s field manual to C.I.A.,' General Hayden said, 'than it would to take the Army Field Manual on grooming and apply it to my agency, or the Army Field Manual on recruiting and apply it to my agency. Or, for that matter, the Army Field Manual on sexual orientation and apply it to my agency [???!!!].'"

(does this mean we can trust gays to gather important intelligence?! i'll keep watch for conservative reaction to such risky policy)

SWJ: preparing soldiers for deployment - using Habermas's 'communicative action'?

NYT: upcoming detainee hearings in the Supreme Court
"Cases that have been proceeding on completely separate judicial tracks may be about to converge."

WP: Bush tries to sap new ombudsman post of power to implement more transparency, faster response to FOIA requests
"By law, agencies must respond within 20 days to FOIA requests, but in practice the process can take months or years. Delays grew after the terrorist attacks in 2001 as agencies began to favor nondisclosure in the name of national security.
Under the new law, requests will be assigned public tracking numbers. Agencies that exceed the 20-day deadline for responses will be denied the right to charge requesters for research or copying costs." [But Bush wants to move the position from the non-partisan National Archives dept to the Justice Dept, notoriously evasive when it comes to FOIA requests.]

WP: DC gun ban challenged by those who argue against militia interpretation of 2nd amendment
"It has been 70 years since the [Supreme Court's] last substantive review of the Second Amendment, and supporters and opponents of gun control remain adamantly divided on whether it protects an individual's right to possess guns or only provides a "collective" right of citizens related to military service.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit last spring became the first appeals court to use the individual-rights interpretation of the amendment to strike a gun-control law. Most of the courts that have examined the issue have ruled that it protects only the collective right."

IHT: millions march against the FARC in Colombia, across the world
LAT: the marches became politicized, but many participated despite misgivings
"We're not talking about politics, just a condemnation of what the FARC does. We're tired of it."
BBC: Colombian cocaine capo sentenced to 30 years in NY court

Slate: series on visiting Venezuela
"Another time, I caught Chávez at a new hospital pledging to build or modernize hundreds more. He earnestly whipped out pencil and paper to make a list of all the things a great hospital needs. "Let's see," he told the assembled group of medical workers, "You need an X-ray unit with all the latest equipment, and what else, let's see …" On and on he went. It makes for seductive television, a bit like watching your Uncle Fred run the country from a reality TV show."

africa
NYT: rebellion in Chad on pause; bodies collected in the capital and opposition politicians arrested
BBC: Deby received pledged support from France, actual support from Darfur rebel group
AP: rebels agree to Libya-brokered cease fire

BBC: explosions kill at least 20 in Ethiopian migrant housing on Somali coast

BBC: Annan wants truth and reconciliation commission in Kenya
BBC: opposition threatens more rallies if regional meeting goes ahead

asia
BBC: speaker de Venecia ousted in Phillipines, after launching accusations of corruption against president Arroyo

BBC: UN hands off power to Timorese police

BBC: US approves more sanctions on Burma

europe
BBC: EU approves Kosovo mission,
BBC: delays deal with Serbia
BBC: because the PM has denounced the plan

BBC: Spanish judge issues arrest warrants for 40 Rwandan soldiers; charged with mass killing, genocide, terrorism, and crimes against humanity

NYT: elections set for April in Italy

misc
The Onion: Bob Seger tries to get Cleveland to open up, share its feelings and fears
"Maybe you can all just start by telling me a little about yourself. What do you do for fun, for example? I know you enjoy that old-time rock and roll, but what else? What is it like living in Cleveland? I have heard that the subprime mortgage crisis has hit Cleveland especially hard. That sucks."