April 26, 2009 by mike.

Ok, so they gave KSM a forced enema. Let me think. Aren’t they really trying not to say he was anally raped?

There is a good reason why the CIA guy Jose Rodriguez ordered the interrogation videotapes destroyed. Even if you thought the Abu Ghraib photos were disturbing, they would not have prepared you to watch the interrogation videotapes.

This is all simply completely immoral and illegal. No amount of discussion about risks, context of the time, etc. will change the simple fact that the treatment of the human beings was criminal, was torture, constituted war crimes.

Any discussion of the benefits of the treatment should be a non-starter. Or if you want to discuss the benefits, do it in a court of law and try to peddle a cost-benefit analysis defense to a jury.

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com Effectiveness Of Harsh Questioning Is Unclear During his first days in detention, senior al-Qaeda operative Khalid Sheik Mohammed was stripped of his clothes, beaten, given a forced enema and shackled with his arms chained above his head, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. It was then, a Red Cross report says, that his American captors told him to prepare for “a hard time.”

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April 26, 2009 by mike.

The success of the species, homo sapiens, has allowed the species to populate the planet at an unprecedented level. The population level is almost certainly not sustainable and yet the population continues to grow.

One of the constraints on population is disease. In the flu pandemic scenario, the population of human beings on the planet is essentially an ecosystem that can support an explosion of a virus population. The most “successful” virus population explosion is likely to be one that can spread through the air. A virus like HIV that spreads through body fluids is unlikely to match the infection numbers of an airborne pathogen.

Aside from the intrinsic contagious nature of a pathogen, the human population of the planet is highly mobile continuously creating vectors to spread a contagious pathogen across continents in a single day.

So, where is the good news in a story like this?

hmmm …. let me get back to you on that.

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com MEXICO CITY, April 25 — The World Health Organization rushed to convene an emergency meeting Saturday to develop a response to the “pandemic potential” of a new swine flu virus that has sparked a deadly outbreak in Mexico and spread to disparate parts of the United States. WHO Cites Potential for Swine Flu Pandemic By Joshua Partlow and Rob Stein Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, April 26, 2009 Health officials reported that at least eight students at a private high school in New York City had “probable” swine flu. They also confirmed three new cases — two in Kansas and one in California — bringing the total number of confirmed U.S. cases to 11. The president of Mexico, where the outbreak has killed as many as 81 people, issued an order granting his government broad powers to isolate patients and question travelers. “In the assessment of the WHO, this is a serious situation that must be watched very carefully,” she said. “It has pandemic potential.”

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