How nice that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, a Republican Congressman from Alabama, and 206 of his House GOP colleagues live in a country where political opponents are not disappeared, tortured, or murdered in the dead of night, their children stolen to be brought up by the very intelligence officers that disappeared them.

So maybe Rogers didn’t appreciate the criminal absurdity of his comments to the Washington Post on Friday May 13, after a House vote defeated a proposed amendment by Democratic Rep. Maurice Hinchey (NY) on the declassification of U.S. intelligence files regarding the 1976 Argentine generals coup and the bloody seven year dictatorship that followed. According to the Post, Rogers “said declassifying them would distract U.S. spies from the fight against al-Qaida.”

We’ve been writing a bit about Mohamed Osman Mohamud, the young Oregon man charged on WMD charges for allegedly trying to detonate an inert bomb the FBI helped him get. His attorneys are preparing an aggressive entrapment defense (those defenses almost never work, but there are some interesting factors in his case), arguing that Mohamud refused early entreaties to engage in violence yet the FBI kept pressing him to do so.

Things were going along pretty well for the Bush Administration Apologists Alumni Association. Sure, they were out of their old offices, but things were good. Obama adopted their wars as his own, the economy has sputtered along long enough to have become (in the public’s mind) at least as much Obama’s fault as theirs (thus the cries of “deficits! deficits! deficits!” from those who launched us into two wars), and most of the BAAAA have landed in cushy lucrative new digs.

Then Obama had to ruin it by getting bin Laden. Suddenly, all the old discussions are back — at least as far as torture goes — and this has at least some of them very worried, like Michael Mukasey.

He should worry. A lot.

Mark Hosenball, who yesterday broke the news that Obama had issued a Finding authorizing the CIA to operate covertly in Libya in the last 2-3 weeks, today says “intelligence operatives” were on the ground before Obama signed that Finding.

The Director of National Intelligence has floated a “shockingly bad” proposal on how much review GAO will be permitted within the intelligence community. According to Steven Aftergood, because the proposal defines the intelligence community broadly, it might result in the loss of GAO review in agencies like DOD and State.

Most of the folks running DC may not much care that our middle class has disappeared along with our manufacturing base. But convince them that our declining manufacturing base might imperil their cherished military might, and they might finally wake up.

In my last update on the Raymond Davis case, I suggested that it appeared that Davis would possibly be convicted for the killing of two Pakistanis on January 27 in Lahore before his March 14 hearing scheduled on the issue of diplomatic immunity. Tuesday, however, proceedings in the murder case were adjourned until March 16, two days after the immunity hearing. Other related developments include the granting of bail for Aaron DeHaven and discussions in multiple venues (see Scott Horton’s discussion in the video and this NPR story) of the increasing tensions between the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI that this case has exposed.

Brian Ross (disclaimer: often, what we learn from Ross is what the CIA wants us to know, search on “Brian Ross” “anthrax” and “Glenn Greenwald” for details) reports that the US has categorically rejected the concept of trading Aafia Siddiqui for Raymond Davis. At the same time, BBC provides a very interesting background piece on the Davis affair, in which they describe the agendas of various government and non-government entities involved in the legal and political conflict that has arisen from the case. Buried in that description, however, is a very interesting report that the uncle of the widow who committed suicide out of remorse that her husband’s killer would never face judgment now reports that he was attacked by two men who tried to force rat poison down his throat. Possibly (but not necessarily) related is a new report in the New York Times letting us know that Dewey Clarridge’s shadowy group has not yet been disbanded and has been doing work for the FBI. Finally, we also learn from Dawn that at least 45 people whose contact information was in Davis’ cell phone have been arrested.

Hmmm. “Tactics developed for use on terrorists may have been unleashed against citizens.” That sounds like something I would have written about the HB Gary scandal.

The Guardian has its version of the Arthur Brisbane article approving of NYT’s decision to withhold all mention of Raymond Davis’ identity. One of the two main reasons why the Guardian chose to publish even as CIA and MI5 were warning that that might endanger Davis is the one I keep pointing out: all the people who might harm Davis already knew he was some kind of spook.