The Daily Muck

According to transcripts released by the US Court of Appeals, Abdallah Higazy confessed to a crime he did not commit because the FBI threatened his family with torture in Egypt. According to Andrew Sullivan, “the Court tried to keep this part of the judgment classified, yanking it from the official site after mistakenly posting it – but not till the interrogation details were exposed. Higazy’s false confession – that he was using a radio transmitter in his hotel room to converse with terrorists in airplanes – was rendered moot by the owner of the transmitter, an airline pilot who had also stayed in the room, subsequently claiming it from the hotel as his own. But that didn’t stop the threat of torture. And that didn’t stop the conviction.” (Atlantic, “The Daily Dish”)

The U.S. State Department believes in second chances when it deals with problematic private contractors. First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting Co., the firm attempting to complete the massive U.S. Embassy complex in Baghdad, is part of team that recently won a $122 million State Department contract to build a U.S. consulate in Saudi Arabia. Never mind the massive construction defects, allegations of criminal misconduct, forced labor, and cost overruns in the Baghdad project, the Kuwaiti company is run by a Lebanese businessman who is an ally of Syria and the Iranian-backed Islamic militant group Hezbollah. (McClatchy)

Secretary Rice admitted yesterday that the U.S. government was a poor host to a Canadian citizen (Maher Arar) whom it sent to Syria where he was allegedly tortured. Rice clarified the U.S. position in this case of mistaken extraordinary rendition by stating, “we do absolutely not wish to transfer anyone to any place in which they might be tortured.” (New York Times)

The U.S. government has spent $38 million dollars on a computerized accounting system to help the Iraqi government move beyond Saddam Hussein’s bookkeeping methods but now the project is on hold because the Ministry of Finance in Baghdad prefers paper. Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, stated that “nobody noticed” when the information system was inoperable for an entire month because nobody uses it to produce reports. (Washington Post, New York Times)

A new government report states that it would take four years to test the thousands of people who might be exposed to radiation if a “dirty bomb” detonated in a major city. According to the House Committee on Science and Technology report, there are few labs capable of doing this testing, and the tests available would be unable to identify more than half the radiological isotopes that would likely be used in a dirty bomb. (USA Today)

You know you’re in trouble when “Heckuva job Brownie” says you are in denial about the country’s compromised disaster response due to deployment of National Guard to war zones. (Politico)

Fred Thompson’s bundler in his cash-cow home state, Beth Harwell, has a history of campaign finance trouble. As chair of the Tennessee Republican Party (2001-2004), her organization was fined $30,000 in a settlement with the Federal Elections Commission. Harwell insists that it was just an accounting error and blamed the McCain-Feingold law. (Politico)

As we noted yesterday, the White House drastically altered Center for Disease Control and Prevention Director Julie L. Gerberding’s testimony to Congress on global warming. Gerberding’s testimony shrank from 12 to 6 pages after portions about the effect of global warming on Americans, including sentences like, “CDC considers climate change a serious public concern.” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino defended the scientific merits of the edits, and Gerberding insists she is “perfectly happy” with the testimony she delivered. (Washington Post)