The Daily Muck

The federal grand jury investigating Blackwater Worldwide heard witnesses yesterday as a private lawsuit accused its employees of ignoring orders and abandoning their posts shortly before taking part in a Baghdad shooting that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead. The civil complaint also accuses Blackwater of failing to give drug tests to its guards in Baghdad even though an estimated 25% were using steroids or other “judgment altering substances.” (USA Today)

For the second day in a row, U.S. soldiers accidentally killed Iraqi civilians yesterday when they fired a warning shot on a vehicle that they thought was a threat. The military reports two people died and four were injured when an American soldier fired at a minibus that was transporting workers to a bank, but Iraqi police said four people were killed and two injured. The minibus was driving near a U.S. military outpost on a road where only car traffic is permitted, and the soldier fired after the minibus failed to respond to a signal to stop. (McClatchy)

Lawyers for several Guantanamo Bay detainees are suing a subsidiary of Boeing for their involvement in extraordinary rendition flights to secret prisons where the detainees were allegedly tortured. The U.S. government is asking a federal court to dismiss the suit because it could “risk the disclosure of highly classified information.” (Guardian)

It’s the end of 2007 and the State Department’s top lawyer (John Bellinger) now thinks that the U.S. should clarify what techniques are permissible during an interrogation. Mukasey’s confirmation testimony was apparently not helpful, nor are Bush’s assurances that we don’t torture, so Bellinger is asking the new attorney general to help him “reaffirm our commitment to international law.” (Reuters)

A Texas oilman who pleaded guilty to violating the rules of the United Nations oil-for-food program was sentenced yesterday to a year and a day in prison for paying $200,000 in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s government in 2001 to gain access to lucrative Iraqi oil contracts. The kickbacks broke the rules of the United Nations program, under which Iraq was allowed to sell oil on the open market only if the profits were used to purchase food and medicine for the Iraqi people, as well as United States sanctions on Iraq. (The New York Times)

In 2002 the Bush administration made a big deal about designating a prominent Italy-based businessman (Ahmed Idris Nasreddin) an internationalist terrorist financier. Two weeks ago, the government quietly took Nasreddin off their terrorist list without any explanation. As a a former deputy assistant secretary of State for international law enforcement remarked, “In order to have credibility, you have to explain to the world what has happened, and you have to justify both decisions.” (LA Times)

Trent Lott (R-LA) is set to retire the day before new rules kick in that require senators to be sidelined from lobbying their former colleagues for two years after leaving office. This timely departure has also raised questions about who will fill the vacant seat and by what process – appointment or election. (Bloomberg)

David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, has been enormously influential in the administration and helped aggressively expand conception of executive power. His virtual invisibility make him an appropriate symbol for the secrecy of the Bush administration. Check out The New York Review of Books’ portrait of “the man behind the torture.” (The New York Review of Books)