Maliki’s office is claiming that Al Zaida has apologized – a report which is very hard to believe when Maliki’s government has not produced Al Zaida in court or allowed the ICRC to visit him. Al Zaida’s brother is not convinced:

After that beating I’m sure he said anything they wanted him to. Its no shame to give into torture the shame is with the people who torture you.

All Bush had to do was speak up

So proud.. I am. When the USA asks the Egyptians to censor their media.

Thanks Siun for keeping us updated on this story.

Digg is open. Comment on Digg. Then rate other comments with a thumbs-up. Each action counts as another Digg. Help out the Lake! Start shoveling.

PS – For Thers subjects from last night – its worth noting that the law under which Al Zaida is being charged is one enacted during the early days of the Baathist regime, when Saddam Hussein was the vice president.

Its still on the books but but I thought Bush was bringing the Iraqi’s Democracy! Is there a single Western Democracy with a law and penalties like that on the books?
What other surprises are in the new Iraqi legal code?

Funny Bush might have just created a movement that will get us out of Iraq and further radicalize the Middle East.

Why aren’t they letting people see him what about the Red Cross I thought they inspected things like this? Or the UN where are they?

Its been a few days normally they let you visit your relatives in jail.

Any idea who beat him was it us, the Iraqi police?

OT: BBC evening news today reports that Russian ships have entered Havana Harbor.

you know today michelle malkin said she wanted to throw her shoe at bush pretty much endorsing the act

I don’t want her to track back here so right click hit copy then paste this into your address bar;

http://michellemalkin.com/2008.....is-coffin/

He already wrote his epitaph.

The $17.4 billion bailout he just announced drives the final nail in his coffin. Stuart Varney calls it “a punt with conditions.”

The conditions are non-binding.

It’s an expensive joke on taxpayers.

Hurling my shoe.

ps, “the other mccain” right wing blog also says he thinks we should finally impeach bush over this issue and he actually agrees with greenwald;

Really. If Glenn Greenwald wants to prosecute Bush now, why should any conservative object?

he’s pretty far right too

We don’t know. There were reports that he was hit with a rifle butt, some of the reported injuries sounds as if he was repeatedly kicked and clearly he was hit around the head since the judge admitted that. Who did it? hard to tell.

On the day Bush dies I will have a wake to celebrate his glorious passage to hell. I will raise such a fuss the devil will awaken, know that his golden boy has left this world and begin immediate preparations. And then I’ll dance a jig and kiss a pretty girl to commemorate the happy occasion.

I’m just hurling

Sahar Issa of McClatchy just posted this . al Zaidi’s sister also says he wouldn’t have apologized.

So glad you’re on this Siun. Thank you.

How did such a law from the Baathist era survive the implementation of the Jerry Bremer-imposed shiny new Iraki constitution? Surely such legal atrocities were outlawed?

have at it

There’s new video from Reuters of the sit-in today – you can view it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvdHkmP-7Mg

I’ve just updated the post with the Reuters video which includes interviews with Al Zaida’s family and scenes from their sit-in. They too are very brave!

OT
“Meanwhile, both Stranded Wind and the British press question what exactly the difference is between Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi pyramid and the ones executed by the respective governments. A Ponzi scheme relies on neverending future payments, on a limitless stream of new ‘clients’ coming in. How does that differ from governments spending today what only our children, and their children, can pay back (if they can at all)? Well, except for the scale, of course. When it comes to sheer amounts, Madoff is an amateur compared to Paulson and Bernanke.”

American military recently denied Human Rights Watch observers access to Iraqi detainees under US control. This does not bode well for anybody to get near him. They also threatened to throw the Rights observers out of court if they spoke to detainees. With this track record, the US would deny the Red Cross/UN or anybody else, the right to interview him.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…..51542.html

…

“Marc Drier, founder of Drier LLP, seems to personify the behavior of those in power here at the dawn of the Greater Depression. The firm, a two hundred fifty lawyer behemoth with six offices from Manhattan clear to Los Angeles, has a clutch of specialties that ought to have them working nonstop in this environment. Instead of being buried in bankruptcy and securities work the firm is now disbanded, unable to meet payroll after the SEC froze Mr. Drier’s assets.

Drier was arrested last week in Canada trying to sell $33 million in bogus securities to a Toronto pension fund. He spent a short stint in jail there and was immediately arrested when he stepped off the plane in New York, facing charges of securities and wire fraud. It seems before the Canadian arrest he’d walked into the offices of a New York City real estate developer, cajoled a receptionist into letting him use a conference room, and sold hedge fund executives $113 million in bogus securities supposedly backed by the unwitting firm hosting the meeting. The funds remain missing at this time.”

…

“Last, largest, and at the moment not (yet) broadly viewed as a criminal act is the $700 billion bank bailout under the supervision of Henry Paulson. Half of the funds have simply vanished, handed out without supervision to ‘friends of Hank’. Now Congress, stampeded into committing the full faith and credit of the United States to an exercise that was doomed from the outset have begun to ask questions. And well they should, for how are the behaviors of Pickpocket Paulson and his accomplice Bubbles Bernanke any different than Drier and Madoff?”

…

“Bernanke has presided over something similar to Madoff’s Ponzi scheme – a massive, speculative bubble that should have been headed off by regulation. In the same vein as Drier’s cheeky use of a client’s conference room, Paulson marches right into the halls of Congress and demands the nation’s checkbook and none shall gainsay him. How are the activities of Drier and Madoff any different than those of Paulson and Bernanke? If you guessed Congressional involvement in the scam I think you’re on the right track.”

…

“The influence on future US economic policy in the hands of Goldman Sachs and Citigroup is alarming, as evidenced by Obama’s appointment of Geithner at the Treasury and now Gensler in a “clean up derivatives” role. They are all linked to Robert Rubin and the whole cabal that made immense fortunes through derivatives trading. And now we should believe that one of them will clean up the mess they themselves made? No, what will happen is that losses are transferrred to the public, while any links to illegal activity will be buried. the boys are taking care of their own.”

Precisely – I know the family was asking that the ICRC be allowed to see him but no one has been allowed access. As his mother says in the video above, we don’t even know if he is still alive.

What disturbs me about this incident is that it was Iraqis who subdued him in the press conference when his hand was apparently injured. Then there was some info that he was at Camp Cropper – a prison complex controlled by the US. The US denied they had him in custody. But then there was an announcement that he had been ‘turned over to the Iraqi government for prosecution’.

So, in this instance – I am thinking that everyone’s hands are dirty and the fact that the US is trying to shut the media up about the incident to get attention off it tells me there is really something fishy about the whole affair.

I fear for him. And his family.

# 16. The last several years, it has seemed to me that everyone who criticized bush in a substantial way would say they were wrong a few days later. Is this a personal characteristic of our chimperor? Just can’t stand criticism and did he just invent another apology?

Well said Loky … it does seem that that both US and Iraqi security had a role in this.

You are correct about Chimpy not being able to stand criticism. Examples abound.

In this case however, the possibility/probability that Mr. Muntader al-Zaidi has been beaten and/or tortured in some way to get him to ‘apologize’ cannot be dismissed at this point. The refusal to produce him in open court, or let the ICRC see him is very telling. An apology is not an apology if you have to beat it out of someone.

The faces of the government have changed, the behaviour has not.

Which one of our goons water boarded him for that apology. Make no mistake about it these GOONS are Nuremburg flunkies and WAR CRIMINALS PERIOD ’bout had my fill of this shit. There are no Iraq war heroes only thugs in the service of scum boy george and can you tell I’ve about had enough of America the beautiful.

speak up? sounds like emperor no-clothes did speak up… to shutter a newspaper that dared embarass the king. shrub wants him tortured and disappeared, I’m sure

This is not good. The UN Observer and International Report says that al-Zaidi is well known for his hard hitting reporting on the Americans and the Baghdad Government.

http://www.unobserver.com/inde…..#038;blz=1