Tag: 4@4

1. After “enhanced interrogation” by the CIA, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed confressed to being the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and 30 other plots.

   Today, at Guantánamo, he appeared before a military judge and, as the Miami Herald reports, Mohammed asked for the death sentence. “In Allah I put my trust,” he told the court in both Arabic and in English. When asked if he ‘understood that the crimes for which he was accused are punishable by a death sentence.’

   “This is what I wish — to be martyred,” Mohammed answered.

   The LA Times adds “Mohammed also told the judge… that he regarded the military proceedings against them as “an inquisition, not a trial,” and that he rejected all U.S. laws as ‘evil.'”

   Mohammed also rejected representation by Navy Capt. Prescott Prince, because “he wore the uniform of his American enemies and had pledged allegiance to President Bush, ‘who wages systemic war against the Islamic world.'”

   I get the feeling that somehow, this “trial” may not go according to the the Bush administration’s plan.

2. Two news items about the Bush administration’s pack of lies about Iraq.

   • McClatchy Newspapers report Bush knew Iraq claims weren’t true. “A long-awaited Senate Select Intelligence Committee report made public Thursday concludes that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made public statements to promote an invasion of Iraq that they knew at the time were not supported by available intelligence.”

     “Before taking the country to war, this administration owed it to the American people to give them a 100 percent accurate picture of the threat we faced… There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence. But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate,” said committee Chairman John Rockefeller (D-WV).

   • While, The Independent contributes with Revealed: Secret plan to keep Iraq under US control. Bush is demanding 50 military bases in Iraq, control of Iraqi airspace, and legal immunity for all American soldiers and contractors.

     The precise nature of the American demands has been kept secret until now. The leaks are certain to generate an angry backlash in Iraq. “It is a terrible breach of our sovereignty,” said one Iraqi politician, adding that if the security deal was signed it would delegitimise the government in Baghdad which will be seen as an American pawn.

     The US has repeatedly denied it wants permanent bases in Iraq but one Iraqi source said: “This is just a tactical subterfuge.” Washington also wants control of Iraqi airspace below 29,000ft and the right to pursue its “war on terror” in Iraq, giving it the authority to arrest anybody it wants and to launch military campaigns without consultation.

     Mr Bush is determined to force the Iraqi government to sign the so-called “strategic alliance” without modifications, by the end of next month.

     “Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated.”

   Prediction: Americans will sleep. Congress will do nothing. This is Bush’s attempt to sandbag the next administration. Can anyone explain to me why such an agreement would not have to be ratified by the Senate?

Four at Four continues with stories about record number of home foreclosures and a possible return of Zeppelins to our sky.

1. In “Slogging to Victory“, the Washington Post looks at Obama’s campaign strategy that allowed him to win the necessary delegates for the Democratic nomination. It’s an interesting read and will likely tick off a few people and not just Clinton supporters.

   Much of Obama’s strategy is already apparent. For example, Obama focused on the caucus states, avoided head-to-head match-ups with Clinton in battleground states while trying to limit her delegate counts, and concentrated on states where Democrats rarely visited.

   But, there is more than what’s already common knowledge. For instance, I think this move by his campaign was brilliant:

   The campaign leadership had wanted no distractions before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, so the planning in Chicago was done in secret. But on the night of Jan. 4, as Obama’s Iowa staff staggered into his Des Moines campaign headquarters, still ragged from celebrating the senator’s improbable victory there, field director Paul Tewes took it public.

   Everyone on the payroll in Iowa would be assigned to another state, he announced. Hotels had already been booked and rooms in the homes of volunteers arranged. Marygrace Galston, who had helped oversee the ground-game deployments, gave staff members until 6 p.m. to say whether they were accepting their new assignments.

   While necessary for Obama’s campaign to win, the way they maneuvered on Florida and Michigan is likely to raise ire.

   To avoid the danger zone, two things had to happen: Obama would have to win Indiana to augment an expected victory that day in North Carolina, and Michigan and Florida could not be allowed to vote in June. He did not win Indiana, but he got the next-best thing…

   Obama caught a break in Florida. When the Florida Democratic Party drafted a detailed plan for a revote, largely by mail, the entire Florida Democratic House delegation — Clinton and Obama supporters alike — recoiled, their memories of the 2000 election debacle still too fresh to risk it. Obama’s Florida backers did not have to lift a finger…

   Michigan was different… Obama campaign lawyer Robert F. Bauer drafted a lengthy memo on March 19, raising a series of questions about the revote but stopping short of opposing it…

   In short, Obama ran out the clock.

Four at Four continues with stories about Homeland Security declaring all foreigners as terrorists, Yucca Mountain, and the discovery that bees translate the dances of foreign species.

1. Nobody other than Hillary Clinton knows what her plans are now that Barack Obama may win the delegates needed for the nomination today. Reuters reports Clinton campaign says she’s not conceding as race nears end. There is a “flurry of speculation that Hillary Clinton will quickly drop her White House bid.” But, her campaign is denying reports that she will “say on Tuesday night that Obama has the delegates to secure the Democratic nomination.” Terry McAuliffe said Clinton was “absolutely not” conceding the campaign.

   What I think is likely is the Clinton campaign will spend the next week trying to convince the superdelegates she remains the Democratic Party’s best candidate to face John McCain in the 2008 general election.

   The Obama campaign, for their part, are keeping subdued. The Hill reports of an Obama memo to surrogates: No victory yet. He “telling his surrogates not to make that assertion just yet, according to an internal campaign memo.” Despite having enough delegates to win the nomination, “his campaign is telling his supporters that the senator will not claim victory in his speech in Minnesota.”

   I suspect Clinton’s run is all but over. In his column today, Dana Milbank wrote about Bill Clinton’s campaign stop in Milbank, South Dakota — “A No-Name Town Looks Like Waterloo“. The former president told the people of Milbank:

   “I want to say,” he told about 500 Milbankians — about 15 percent of the town’s population — “that this may be the last day that I’m ever involved in a campaign of this kind. I thought I was out of politics until Hillary decided to run, but it has been one of the greatest honors of my life to be able to go around and campaign for her for president.”

   “Last day”? Past tense? It was the first time either Clinton had allowed the pervasive pessimism to infiltrate a public utterance.

   Lastly, I’m reminded of what Bill Clinton said last April 2007 in an interview with Larry King:

   “You know she’s not — some people who run for president can’t wait to get out of the Senate, or out of whatever other job she’s got. She loves it. She’s still doing it. She’s still going to her committee meetings, going to upstate New York and trying to run for president as well,” Clinton told CNN’s Larry King. “So, for her personally she’s going to be fine regardless. I think it’d be best for the country if she were elected president, but if voters make another choice, she’s a great senator, and she loves her job, and we’ll have a great life.”

   I think the best thing we can do now is give Clinton space to make her decision that will be best for the country and the Democratic Party. She’s fought hard and we wanted a fighter.

Four at Four continues with probe news from NASA, China’s latest move against Tibet, and the Medal of Honor.

1. Arghhh!

   The Associated Press reports Bush weighs in against Senate climate bill.

   Bush weighed in Monday against a Senate bill that would require dramatic cuts in climate-changing greenhouse pollution, cautioning senators “to be very careful about running up enormous costs for future generations of Americans.”

   Unlike Bush’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined with his tax cuts to the wealthiest few. Unlike letting climate change and dependence on oil and other fossil fuels will not be “enormous costs” to current and future Americans.

   Bush, during a White House event that focused on keeping taxes low, said the Senate bill “would impose roughly $6 trillion in new costs on the American economy.” The president in the past has expressed opposition to mandatory limits on carbon dioxide and other pollution linked to global warming…

   Bush did not say how the $6 trillion figure he cited was arrived at.

   His damned war in Iraq has cost us many lives and an estimated $3 trillion in debt and we got squat from it. Now he pulls a number from the “air” and worries about future costs? What are the costs of not addressing climate change? Famine? Water shortages? Mass migration? Wars?

   The members of Congress have sat on their hands for the past 7½ years, they may as well wait 6½ months for a new administration too. Compromising on climate change policy with Bush will accomplish nothing good.

Four at Four continues with microgeneration rivaling nuclear power, the Gaza Fulbright grants, and Bill Clinton’s political mastery.

1. The Defense War Department has replaced the judge, Army Col. Peter Brownback III, in the Guantánamo Bay “show trial” for Canadian detainee Omar Khadr. The official reason? He is “ill”. The likely reason? Brownback has made rulings in favor of the defense. The Miami Herald reports Pentagon is silent on Guantánamo judge’s ouster.

   Military prosecutors had been pressing Brownback to set a trial date, but he has repeatedly directed them first to satisfy defense requests for access to potential evidence. At a hearing earlier this month, he threatened to suspend the proceedings altogether unless the detention center provided records of Khadr’s confinement.

   The Bush administration is worried Canada might “demand Khadr’s repatriation.”

2. The LA Times notes that Grandpa McCain’s Web gap is showing. Seems the McCain campaign just can’t keep up with the young whippersnappers these days. “Six of the top 10 videos returned by a “John McCain” YouTube search Thursday pegged the 71-year-old as inconsistent, extreme, wooden or a combination of the three… Contrast that with a YouTube search of “Barack Obama.” It’s a swoon fest, with virtually all of the top entries featuring the Illinois senator at his eloquent, uplifting best.”

   “So how do McCain & Co. get into the YouTube game?” asks the LA Times. “It may be time for McCain to play his own, less-menacing Hollywood ace: Wilford Brimley… He’s got those Quaker Oats ads and that stolid, old-man cool.” I guess Grandpa Simpson is already booked?

3. I don’t know if America’s corporate media is going to pick up on this, The Guardian reports McCain is using a picture of himself shaking the hand of a uniformed General David Petraeus in his campaign fundraising material. Both Sen. John Kerry and Wisconsin’s Gov. Jim Doyle said this was an inappropriate politicisation of the military. Just like George W. McBush.

   The pair also leapt on the Arizona senator’s remarks yesterday in Wisconsin that US troop levels had declined to pre-surge levels and that some cities in Iraq are “quiet”.

   “I assume Senator McCain just doesn’t know the facts here,” Doyle said.
   “It’s very disturbing to have John McCain continually raise questions about what he knows and what he bases his judgments on,” said Kerry, a Navy veteran of Vietnam.

   “If you don’t know the number of troops it’s very difficult” to assess if they are overextended. The comments raise “serious questions about his comprehension of this challenge”.

   McCain’s reponse? ‘The surge is a success.’ The reality? “The level of violence has been inching up since January, after a 60% drop in attacks nationwide in the second half of last year, according to U.S. military figures.”

4. Clean coal is a myth and guess what? According to the NY Times, Mounting costs slow the push for coal plant carbon capture. The coal power industry wants “to take the carbon dioxide that spews from coal-burning power plants and pump it back into the ground… But it has become clear in recent months that the nation’s effort to develop the technique is lagging badly.”

   In fact, viable techniques to pump CO2 underground are practically nonexistant. “Considerable research is still needed to be certain the technique would be safe, effective and affordable.”

   Scientists need to figure out which kinds of rock and soil formations are best at holding carbon dioxide. They need to be sure the gas will not bubble back to the surface. They need to find optimal designs for new power plants so as to cut costs. And some complex legal questions need to be resolved, such as who would be liable if such a project polluted the groundwater or caused other damage far from the power plant.

   Test projects have failed and “in January, the government pulled out after projected costs nearly doubled, to $1.8 billion. The government feared the costs would go even higher.” Clean coal is snake oil.

1. Carbon Footprints

   The New York Times reports Urban areas on the West Coast produce the least emissions per capita. The Brookings Institution has concluded a study that has found metropolitan areas along the West Coast and Hawaii have lower carbon footprints than other parts of the United States. Honolulu was ranked first, or the metropolitan area with the smallest carbon footprint.

   “The region’s mild climates, hydropower and aggressive energy-reduction policies give its residents smaller carbon footprints, on average, than those of their counterparts in the East and Midwest.”

   The Associated Press adds “Each resident of the largest 100 largest metropolitans areas is responsible on average for 2.47 tons of carbon dioxide in energy consumption each year, 14 percent below the 2.87 ton U.S. average”. But, the top 100 cities account for 56% of America’s carbon dioxide pollution.

2. The Oregonian reports Geothermal prospector hopes to tap central Oregon’s Newberry Crater.

   For more than 30 years, geologists have boasted about the fiery depths of central Oregon’s Newberry Crater, a geothermal resource said to be one of the best in the world. And public and private prospectors have drilled, measured and poked the landscape.

   Still, no one has ever built a power plant near the volcano, an area of high-desert forests, shrub and obsidian flows. Money demands and environmental concerns always have proved insurmountable. A large portion of the storied natural setting came under the protections of the federally designated Newberry National Volcanic Monument in 1990.

   This go-round, it may be different. High energy prices and the West’s search for clean, renewable power have returned Newberry Crater to the spotlight, where it’s viewed as a potential mother lode of geothermal.

   The modern-day miner is Davenport Power, a young renewable-energy company with offices in Connecticut and Bend, just 25 miles northwest of the crater. It began exploratory drilling on the volcano’s western flank in April, and by year’s end, executives should know whether there’s a sufficient brew of heat and water in deep underground fissures to justify full-on pursuit.

3. The Guardian reports General Electric believes Water shortages and drought are the next scourge. To meet the coming challenges brought by water shortages, General Electric claimed “it would cut its own use of water by 20% by 2012 and export water-saving and recycling technology to countries – often emerging economies – hit by shortages… The move by GE comes as scientists are warning that 50% of the world’s nations will be hit by water shortages by 2025 and 75% by 2050.”

4. The Associated Press brings news that For centuries Stonehenge was a burial site. “England’s enigmatic Stonehenge served as a burial ground from its earliest beginnings and for several hundred years thereafter, new research indicates. Dating of cremated remains shows burials took place as early as 3000 B.C., when the first ditches around the monument were being built, researchers said Thursday. And those burials continued for at least 500 years, when the giant stones that mark the mysterious circle were being erected, they said.”

1. Resources Scarce, Homelessness Persists in New Orleans
   By Shaila Dewan, The New York Times

   Mayor C. Ray Nagin recently suggested a way to reduce this city’s post-Katrina homeless population: give them one-way bus tickets out of town.

   Mr. Nagin later insisted the off-the-cuff proposal was just a joke. But he has portrayed the dozens of people camped in a tent city under a freeway overpass near Canal Street as recalcitrant drug and alcohol abusers who refuse shelter, give passers-by the finger and, worst of all, hail from somewhere else.

   While many of the homeless do have addiction problems or mental illness, a survey by advocacy groups in February showed that 86 percent were from the New Orleans area. Sixty percent said they were homeless because of Hurricane Katrina, and about 30 percent said they had received rental assistance at one time from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

   Not far from the French Quarter, flanking Canal Street on Claiborne Avenue, they are living inside a long corridor formed not of walls and a roof but of the thick stench of human waste and sweat tinged with alcohol, crack and desperation.

   Read the whole article. What we’ve let New Orleans become is to our nation’s shame.

Four at Four continues with stories about Democrats, climate change, and the monkeys that will replace us all.

1. $1.85 Fee to See a Doctor? Some Say It’s Too Much

   An interesting story from The New York Times about health care being a basic human right in the Czech Republic and how the right wing wishes to undo this. See if this sounds familiar – “What we want to achieve in the health system is a higher individual responsibility, making the consumers more responsible for what they consume”. No longer are people patients or the sick, instead they are consumers and a profit center.

   In the Czech Republic, you can now see a doctor for about $1.85. A day in the hospital can verge on $4. This is not cause for celebration.

   For Czechs, who visit their doctors more often than anyone else in Europe, it has led to great outrage. In fact, the idea of charging anything at all for health care can generate significant controversy, not to mention abrupt about-faces in policy, here and in other Central European countries…

   For healthy people with jobs, the fees are quite literally pocket change, usually paid with the same 10 and 20 crown coins as streetcar tickets in Prague ($1 is worth around 16 crowns)… But many Czechs see it as a matter of principle that health care should be free — though the system is financed in part through payroll deductions — along with a strong sense of solidarity for the poor.

Four at Four continues with the housing boom, dictatorships being held accountable, and yet another report that Osama bin Laden is dead.

1. Military Chief Warns Troops About Politics
   By Thom Shanker, The New York Times

   The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has written an unusual open letter to all those in uniform, warning them to stay out of politics as the nation approaches a presidential election in which the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be a central, and certainly divisive, issue.

   “The U.S. military must remain apolitical at all times and in all ways,” wrote the chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, the nation’s highest-ranking officer. “It is and must always be a neutral instrument of the state, no matter which party holds sway.” …

   “As the nation prepares to elect a new president,” Admiral Mullen wrote, “we would all do well to remember the promises we made: to obey civilian authority, to support and defend the Constitution and to do our duty at all times.”

   “Keeping our politics private is a good first step,” he added. “The only things we should be wearing on our sleeves are our military insignia.”

   Admiral Mullen said he was inspired to write the essay after receiving a constant stream of legitimate, if troubling, questions while visiting military personnel around the world. He said their questions included, “What if a Democrat wins?” and, “What will that do to the mission in Iraq?” and, “Do you think it’s better for one party or another to have the White House?”

   What if a Democrat wins? Can you imagine what the blowback would have been if Mullen said ‘What if a Republican wins?’ Coming on the tail of Gen. Petraeus expecting troop cuts in September. Hrmmm… the Brass is sure staying clear of politics.

2. Soft landing on a rough Mars terrain
   By Mark Carreau, Houston Chronicle

   NASA’s Phoenix Lander settled softly onto the frozen plains surrounding the unexplored Martian north pole late Sunday and sent back a crystal clear portrait that revealed a healthy machine in one piece.

   Signals confirming the three-legged spacecraft’s arrival reached NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at 6:53 p.m. CDT, unleashing a burst of cheers from an anxious squad of flight controllers…

   Signals heralding Phoenix’s arrival were relayed to Earth through NASA’s Mars Odyssey, a spacecraft circling the Red Planet… Odyssey sailed over Phoenix for a second time, 90 minutes after the dramatic landing to collect a lander self-portrait and relay the photos to Earth.

Four at Four continues with Obama at Wesleyan and ship antics in Duluth.

1. Iraq Spending Ignored Rules, Pentagon Says
   By James Glanz, The New York Times

   Where did the pallets of cash bound for Iraq really go?

   A Pentagon audit of $8.2 billion in American taxpayer money spent by the United States Army on contractors in Iraq has found that almost none of the payments followed federal rules and that in some cases, contracts worth millions of dollars were paid for despite little or no record of what, if anything, was received.

   The audit also found a sometimes stunning lack of accountability in the way the United States military spent some $1.8 billion in seized or frozen Iraqi assets, which in the early phases of the conflict were often doled out in stacks or pallets of cash. The audit was released Thursday in tandem with a Congressional hearing on the payments.

   In one case, according to documents displayed by Pentagon auditors at the hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, a cash payment of $320.8 million in Iraqi money was authorized on the basis of a single signature and the words “Iraqi Salary Payment” on an invoice. In another, $11.1 million of taxpayer money was paid to IAP, an American contractor, on the basis of a voucher with no indication of what was delivered…

   The mysterious payments, whose amounts had not been publicly disclosed, included $68.2 million to the United Kingdom, $45.3 million to Poland and $21.3 million to South Korea. Despite repeated requests, Pentagon auditors said they were unable to determine why the payments were made.

   We was robbed!

2. The Washington Post adds there has been a Surge in U.S. airstrikes in Iraq. In Iraq, two black funeral banners hang outside of a ruined home. The banners read: “They were killed because of the cowardly American bombings”.

   “Since late March, the military has fired more than 200 Hellfire missiles in the capital, compared with just six missiles fired in the previous three months. The military says the tactic has saved the lives of ground troops and prevented attacks, but the strikes have also killed and wounded civilians, provoking criticism from Iraqis.” Criticism?!?! The Iraqis want us to stop killing them? That isn’t criticism. That’s a plea for us to get out. Many Iraqis think the U.S. is making indiscriminate attacks on their family, friends, and homes.

   Those civilians include people like Zahara Fadhil, a 10-year-old girl with a tiny frame and long brown hair. Relatives said she was wounded by a missile on April 20 at approximately 8 p.m. in Baghdad’s Shiite enclave of Sadr City. The U.S. military said it fired a Hellfire missile in Zahara’s neighborhood at that time, targeting men who were seen loading rockets into a sedan.

   Her face drained of color and her legs scarred by shrapnel, Zahara spoke haltingly when asked what she thought of U.S. troops.

   “They kill people,” she said. Lying in bed, she gasped for air before continuing. “They should leave Iraq now.“

   Compare and contrast:

   [Capt. Ben] Katzenberger, of Kansas City, Mo., fired his first missiles last month. Arriving in Iraq last winter on his first deployment was nerve-wracking, he said.

   “You’ve been building up for this for three years and now you’re going to get to do what you were trained to do,” he said. “You get this bit of excited rush feeling, like right before you get out of the locker room before a game. We got in the helicopter and started flying up and you start looking down and you’re like — wow. I’m in Iraq now. This isn’t back in Texas where we were just training. People down there are going to try to shoot me. This is for real. Game on.” …

   Katzenberger said pilots adhere to strict rules of engagement. They occasionally get reports of what happened on the ground after they fire the missiles. After that, “we never hear about it again,” he said. “It leaves you a little sense of wondering. You kind of get that detached feeling.“

   He’s not alone. Thanks to a near total governmetn and media blackout of the news, people back in America have a detached feeling from the battles going on in Iraq too. We have little idea what we’re asking our troops to do on a daily basis in Iraq (and Afghanistan).

3. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reports House aims at Pentagon ‘propaganda’ on Iraq war.

   The House of Representatives moved Thursday to crack down on a Pentagon program that Democrats say planted false and overly optimistic news stories about the Iraq war, using military analysts who appeared regularly on television.

   Acting on a 2009 defense policy bill, lawmakers forbade the Defense Department from engaging in “a concerted effort to propagandize” the American people over the war.

   The amendment by Rep. Paul W. Hodes (D-N.H.), which passed by voice vote, also would force an investigation by the General Accounting Office of efforts to plant positive news stories about the war. The overall bill passed 384-23.

Four at Four continues with the Bush administration uniting Russia and China in opposition to the U.S. Plus bonus stories salmon and the increasing acidity levels along the Pacific coast.

1. So Israel and Syria have begun peace talks. The type of dialogue that Bush compared attempts to “negotiate with the terrorists and radicals” with appeasement of Hitler. So was Bush using the horrors of Nazi Germany to attack Obama or disrupt Israel’s peace talks with Syria?

   According to “Advice From White House Is Not Always Followed“, a news analysis by Helene Cooper in The New York Times, The Bush administration was “initially opposed” to the talks.

   The Israel-Syria announcement, in particular, offers an interesting case study, because Israeli officials have said for months that the United States was the only obstacle blocking talks with Syria, which both Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak advocated.

   In particular, Elliott Abrams, Mr. Bush’s deputy national security adviser, has cautioned against an Israeli-Syria negotiation, according to Israeli and Bush administration officials. Administration officials said they feared that such a negotiation would appear to reward Syria at a time when the United States was seeking to isolate it for its meddling in Lebanon and its backing of Hezbollah.

   But a few weeks ago, Israeli officials told their counterparts at the State Department that they planned to begin the negotiations, which are being mediated by Turkey.

   “They weren’t asking our permission,” one senior administration official said. Another Bush official characterized the Israeli announcement as “a slap in the face.”

   And there it is: talk of peace is a slap in the face of the Bush administration. Hat tip a gnostic.

2. Yet another way Bush’s failed war in Iraq impacts Bush’s failed war in Afghanistan. The Associated Press reports One NATO soldier killed in Quran protest.

   Gunfire broke out Thursday at a protest in western Afghanistan against a U.S. sniper in Iraq who used a Quran for target practice. Officials said a NATO soldier and two civilians were killed.

   Police opened fire on demonstrators who threw rocks and set tents on fire near a military airfield in western Ghor province, said NATO spokesman Maj. Martin O’Donnell.

   Two civilians were slain and seven others were wounded, he said.

   Gunfire also killed one NATO soldier from Lithuania and wounded another, but it was not clear who shot at them, O’Donnell said. The Lithuanian Defense Ministry identified the dead soldier as Sgt. Arunas Jarmalavicius, 35, the first Lithuanian soldier killed in Afghanistan.

3. Meanwhile back in Iraq, The New York Times reports another U.S. airstrike kills 8 civilians in Iraq. “Iraqi officials said an American helicopter strike on Thursday killed eight civilians including two children and an elderly man during an assault near the northern Iraqi town of Baiji. American officials confirmed that two children had died in an American assault on Sunni insurgent suspects in the area and expressed regret. Iraqi officials, however, said the incident was likely to stoke anti-American resentment.”

   “Unfortunately, two children were killed when the other occupants of the vehicle in which they were riding exhibited hostile intent,” said the American statement, which was released in Baghdad.

Four at Four continues with this year’s Atlantic hurricane outlook.

1. The Washington Post reports that FBI reports Of detainee abuse were ignored by the White House.

   Complaints by FBI agents about abusive interrogation tactics at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other U.S. military sites reached the National Security Council but prompted no effort to curb questioning that the agents considered ineffective and possibly illegal, according to an internal audit released yesterday.

   Reports that Guantanamo detainees were being subjected to extreme temperatures, religious abuses and nude interrogation were conveyed at White House meetings of senior officials in 2003, yet these questionable tactics remained in use, a lengthy report by the Justice Department’s inspector general concluded.

   In one instance, colleagues of then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft reported that he personally aired concerns about Defense Department strategy toward a particular detainee with Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, while other Justice managers shared similar fears with the council’s legal adviser in November 2003, the report said.

   From the report via TPM Muckraker, an inventory of the abuse and torture reported by the FBI agents to the Justice Department Inspector General. Of the 450 interviewed, “nearly half reported witnessing or hearing about ‘rough or aggressive treatment of detainees, primarily by military investigators.'”

Four at Four continues with stories about big oil, the environment, and tornadoes.