ChezLark

Strange, but true. In May of 2003, U.S. District Court Judge Harold Baer, Jr., sitting in the Southern District of New York, ruled that Saddam Hussein was complicit in the 9/11 attacks and ordered him to pay restitution to 9/11 families that had brought suit against him, Osama bin Laden, and others in US court. The full ruling is available online.

From CBS News:

A federal judge Wednesday ordered Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and others to pay early $104 million to the families of two Sept. 11 victims, saying there is evidence – though meager - that Iraq had a hand in the terrorist attacks.
[...]
U.S. District Judge Harold Baer ordered that the damages be paid by bin Laden, al-Qaida, the Taliban, Saddam and the former Iraqi government. The judge ruled against them by default in January after they failed to respond to the lawsuits brought on behalf of two of the trade center dead.
[...]
Beasley called Baer’s finding “a significant victory” because it represented the first time a judge linked al-Qaida and Iraq in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

In his ruling, Baer concluded that lawyers for the two victims “have shown, albeit barely … that Iraq provided material support to bin Laden and al-Qaida” and collaborated in or supported al-Qaida’s Sept. 11 attacks.

Baer said lawyers relied heavily on “classically hearsay” evidence, including reports that a Sept. 11 hijacker met an Iraqi consul to Prague, Secretary of State Colin Powell’s remarks to the United Nations about connections between Iraq and terrorism, and defectors’ descriptions of the use of an Iraq camp to train terrorists.

I was very curious about this, so I skimmed through the ruling. As far as I can tell,

• Saddam was named in the lawsuit but (of course) did not respond.
• For regular mortals, such as the Al Qaeda defendants, failure to respond to a lawsuit means they are automatically found liable (default judgment)
• Because Saddam is a head of state, however, special rules apply:
  

  The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act provides that: “No judgment by default shall be entered by a court of the United States or of a State against a foreign state, a political subdivision thereof, or an agency or instrumentality of a foreign state, unless the claimant establishes his claim or right to relief by evidence satisfactory to the court.”

• More specifically, the standard the court applied against Saddam was that of “a legally sufficient evidentiary basis for a reasonable jury to find for plaintiff.” As I understand it, this means that the court had to find that there was enough evidence that, if a jury trial were held, it is conceivable that a jury could find in favor of the plaintiffs.

The court considered a bunch of affidavits, news reports, and live testimony to support the Saddam / Al Qaeda link. Two experts testified:

Robert James Woolsey, Jr., the Director of Central Intelligence from February 1993 to January 1995; and Dr. Laurie Mylroie, an expert on Iraq and its involvement in terrorism generally and the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 in particular.

Mylroie noted that:

• Iraq provided support for two of the main perpetrators of the Trade Center bombings in 1993, Abdul Rahman Yasin and Ramsey Yusef.
• bin Laden’s fatwah was motivated by the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia to fight the Gulf War against Iraq.
• “threats by bin Laden in late 1997 and early 1998 which led up to the bombing of the U.S. embassies (on August 7, 1998) were “in lockstep” with Hussein’s threats about ousting the U.N. weapons inspectors”

For some reason, based (apparently) on these facts, she concludes that “Iraq, I believe, did provide support and resources for the September 11 attacks” and “I think that in many respects, al Qaeda acts as a front for Iraqi intelligence. Al Qaeda provides the ideology, the foot soldiers and the cover . . . [a]nd Iraq provides the direction, the training and the expertise.”

Woolsey seemed a little more credible. he pointed to:

• The Salman Pak facility in Iraq, which he claimed was a terrorist training facility.
• A “meeting that allegedly occurred in Prague in April 2001 between Mohammad Atta, the apparent leader of the hijackings, and a high-level Iraqi intelligence agent”
• Alleged “interactions between Hussein/Iraq and bin Laden/al Qaeda” described in a letter from George Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence, to Senator Bob Graham on October 7, 2002.

Based on this, he concluded:

I believe it is definitely more likely than not that some degree of common effort in the sense of aiding and abetting or conspiracy was involved here between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Based largely on these experts’ live testimony, the court concluded:

Although these experts provided few actual facts of any material support that Iraq actually provided, their opinions, coupled with their qualifications as experts on this issue, provide a sufficient basis for a reasonable jury to draw inferences which could lead to the conclusion that Iraq provided material support to al Qaeda and that it did so with knowledge and intent to further al Qaeda’s criminal acts. [...] Juries are invited to draw inferences from facts presented and this constitutes circumstantial evidence and this is what the Court has done here.

So, what have we learned?

The court issued its finding that Saddam had a hand in the 9/11 attacks because two credible experts testified that, in their opinion, this was true, and the court applied the standard that a jury could conceivably have believed them. I think two things are worth pointing out:

Firstly, the test used here of “someone could conceivably have believed this” is not, shall we say, the most impressive standard of proof. So, it would be misleading to describe this ruling as anything like judicial agreement, endorsement, or confirmation that Saddam and al Qaeda had any kind of operational relationship.

Secondly, as far as I can tell, all the specific allegations made by the two experts have been disproved. According to Wikipedia’s article on the matter,

• Investigations by the Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York, the F.B.I., the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York, the C.I.A., the N.S.C., and the State Department “all found no evidence implicating the Iraqi government in the first Trade Center attack.”
• Investigations by the CIA, the FBI, the Czech Police, and the 9/11 Commission all indicate that the “Atta in Prague” meeting never took place.
• The Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA concluded that there was no evidence Al Qaeda fighters were ever trained at Salman Pak.

All in all, though, it’s more than a little troubling that the “fact” that Saddam had a hand in the 9/11 attacks, now almost universally believed to be false, managed to get enshrined into a court decision in this way. There was an honest-to-God order issued against Saddam Hussein putting him on the hook for part of a $104 million settlement. Obviously, nobody including me is going to feel inclined to feel sorry for Saddam being liable for anything, but we now know that finding Saddam liable for 9/11 damages was an objectively incorrect decision. It’s never a good thing when courts reach conclusions we can later demonstrate to be in error.

I admit, I have no data for that claim. But seriously, how utterly depressing is this graph?

This is from a survey published in Science magazine. Behold and despair, to pick just one depressing datum, that 57% of fundamentalist political moderates with graduate school educations still do not “believe” in evolution!

Is there any hope at all for sane, democratically derived public policy with a voting electorate that harbors these kinds of retrograde beliefs?

(via Pandagon)

John Steward shellacs a social conservative on the gay marriage issue:

The Republicans have been objecting to the Democrats’ insistence on using the word “escalation” to describe Bush’s plan for sending more troops to Iraq. Because obviously, military policy is best described by a noun that sounds like it describes either a caffeinated soft drink or what happens when lighting strikes a power line.

We’ll use Condoleezza Rice as the punching bag here; in testimony before the Senate yesterday, she said:

RICE: [...] Now, as to the question of escalation, I think that I don’t see it, and the president doesn’t see it, as an escalation. What he sees…

HAGEL: Putting 22,000 new troops, more troops in, is not an escalation?

RICE: Well, I think, Senator, escalation is not just a matter of how many numbers you put in. Escalation is also a question of, are you changing the strategic goal of what you’re trying to do? Are you escalating…

HAGEL: Would you call it a decrease, and billions of dollars more that you need for it?

(CROSSTALK)

RICE: I would call it, Senator, an augmentation that allows the Iraqis to deal with this very serious problem that they have in Baghdad.

Here’s what Webster has to say:

es·ca·late:

intransitive verb : to increase in extent, volume, number, amount, intensity, or scope

transitive verb: to increase the extent, number, volume, or scope of : ENLARGE

es·ca·la·tion: noun

The plan is to increase the number of troops. That is exactly described by the word “escalation”.

As per CNN:

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told CNN that Bush’s condemnation of what she called “Iran’s meddlesomeness” was an important signal to the region.

“Surely the United States is not the one being threatening,” she said. “We are not the ones being meddlesome and troublesome in Iraq.”

((boggle))

via

This exchange between White House spokesperson Tony Snow and MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, yesterday, suggests that the White House is not conceding that it needs Congressional approval for an attack on Iran (all bolding is mine):

MATTHEWS: [...] Last night the president said this about Iran. Let‘s listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.

(END VIDEO CLIP[)]

MATTHEWS: Tony, will the president ask Congress‘ approval before any attack on Iran?

TONY SNOW, WHITE PRESS SECRETARY: You‘re getting way ahead of yourself, Chris. Nobody here is talking about attacks on Iran.
[...]
MATTHEWS: [...] My concern is we‘re going to see a ginning-up situation whereby we follow in hot pursuit any efforts by the Iranians to interfere with Iraq. We take a couple shots at them, they react. Then we bomb the hell out of them and hit their nuclear installations without any action by Congress. That‘s the scenario I fear, an extra-constitutional war is what I‘m worried about.

SNOW: Well, you‘ve been watching too, too many old movies featuring your old friend Slim Pickens is what you‘re doing now, come on.

MATTHEWS: No, I‘ve been watching the war in Iraq is what I‘ve been watching.

As long as you say to me before we leave tonight that the president has to get approval from Congress before making war on Iran.

SNOW: Let me put it this way. The president understands you‘ve got to have public support for whatever you do. The reason we‘re talking to the American public about the high stakes in Iraq and why it is absolutely vital to succeed is you‘ve got to have public support. And the president certainly, whenever he has taken major actions, he has gone before Congress.

Obviously, this is a non-answer (and an amusing one, at that, since Snow cites the primacy of public support for military confrontation at a time when public opinion is massively against escalating our commitment to Iraq). Also, “going before Congress” is not the same thing as “seeking approval by Congress”.

This sounds like the non-answer of an administration that reserves the right to confront Iran militarily without approval from Congress.

Glenn Greenwald has several examples of past positions taken by this administration that suggest, taken together, that it is their explicit belief that they can unilaterally attack other countries without approval by Congress.

There is a company called Meth Coffee, out of San Francisco.

I am not making this up.

Canadian artist Carl Zimmerman has created a series of images of ruined or deserted, but entirely fictional, buildings:

This is apparently accomplished by photographing architectural models and then digitally manipulating the photos (presumably, among other things, to insert the human figures that appear in some of the images)

You can read a longer discussion of the images at BLDG BLOG, and buy prints online either at buynewart or the Stephen Bulger Gallery.

I caught a good NPR story on the raid of an Iranian consulate in Iraq just now; listen at npr.org.

Today, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a Senate Committee that:

Not all of Baghdad has fallen into a civil war.

Oh, OK then.

A new study says that this was the number of homeless people in the United States in 2005. I don’t know about you, but this seems like a lot to me. As Shakespeare’s Sister points out, that’s more than the population of Washington, D.C., Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming (not combined). It’s more than the population of the city of Seattle as well, of course.

It seems increasingly likely that, as many have worried, the White House plans to confront Iran militarily, as crazy as that seems. Bush’s speech yesterday had this language:

Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial integrity and stabilizing the region in the face of extremist challenges. This begins with addressing Iran and Syria. These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We’ll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.

To put it mildly, language like this bodes very poorly for a diplomatic solution to instability caused by Iraq’s neighbors.

This morning, the BBC reported that US forces had stormed what may or may not be an Iranian consulate:

US forces have stormed a building in the northern Iraqi town of Irbil and seized six people said to be Iranians, prompting a diplomatic incident.

Iranian and Iraqi officials said the building was an Iranian consulate and the detainees its employees.

The US military said it was still investigating, but that the building did not have diplomatic status.
[...]
One Iranian news agency with a correspondent in Irbil says five US helicopters were used to land troops on the roof of the Iranian consulate.

It reports that a number of vehicles cordoned off the streets around the building, while US soldiers warned the occupants in three different languages that they should surrender or be killed.

Glenn Greenwald has a rundown of recent language and actions that suggest a coming confrontation with Iran. His post includes this comment about the consular incident:

This is the most serious action yet. Isn’t it a definitive act of war for one country to storm the consulate of another, threaten to kill them if they do not surrender, and then detain six consulate officers?

I’ve (mostly) stopped being surprised by what Fox News passes off as journalism, but I was dismayed that the Washington Post actually used the word “catfight” as well to describe a recent disagreement between Rep. Jane Harman and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Catfight aftermath: Rep. Jane Harman is still quite irked that House Speaker-designee Nancy Pelosi nixed her for chairman of the House intelligence committee — and she’s not exactly being stoic about it.

Lois Romano, the author, ran an apology defense uh… something or other in her most recent column:

We heard a number of complaints last week because we used the word “catfight” to describe a disagreement between two distinguished members of Congress — Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.). To those who civilly articulated reasons why the term is inappropriate, we say: Point taken.

So, it was inappropriate, yes? Perhaps it would behoove Lois to actually say so and apologize?

David Brin has an interesting post in which he argues that the current Internet is missing a vitally important piece — robust mechanisms for separating the wheat from the chaff.

There is a lot of fuss going on about Time Magazine’s decision to put a mirror (framed by a computer screen) on its latest cover and announcing tat the 2006 Person of the Year is… “you.” Which translates as Joe and Jane Public — millions of us — who are starting to flex our cyber-empowered wings and express ourselves as never before.

But… David opines that successful human-organization mechanisms like

[...]markets, science, courts and democracy each have “centripetal vs centrifugal” social phases.
[...]
In science, markets, courts and democracy, the CENTRIFUGAL PHASE is when each individual participant may disperse, find allies/collaborators, and safely organize with others under some degree of protection, in a zone where product can be refined and readied for competitive testing.
[...]
Note that this is the phase that exists now, copiously, in the nascent “fifth arena” of the internet!
[...]
What the cybersphere does NOT have is anything even remotely resembling the CENTRIPETAL phase that also empowers the four older, more mature “arenas.”

What is the centripetal phase? This is where in all of the disparate and dispersed participants in an arena are summoned together by a ritual CALL TO COMBAT. What ensues is a battle - competition - that has transformed ancient human bloody-mindedness into something much more like a game. One in which rules have been laid down to ensure that the outcome of competition correlates at least somewhat with quality of product, and much less with power or influence or other means of cheating.

In science the centripetal competition phase compels researchers to publish papers and present them for criticism. In markets the ritual battleground is retail sales - where customers compare goods and services. In democracy the role is filled by elections, and courts have trials.

Phil Bogle has a follow-on post in which he points out that some nascent “centripetal” mechanisms exist already:

Collaborative filtering sites like Digg do provide a way for better ideas to rise to the top, but their algorithms for selection are hidden and can be gamed or subverted from within.

Likewise, Google has a metric for quality based on sifting through the linking behavior of millions of pages, but this metric is opaque and shifting. Google has mixed motives given that they are also trying to increase their own Adsense revenue and deliver value to shareholders.
[...]
To attempt to complete Brin’s (David’s, not Sergei’s!) thought: There are clearly mechanisms for finding quality on the internet, in some ways uniquely powerful, but not institutions for doing so.

By institutions, I mean systems that have a degree of underlying stability and trustworthiness based on history, checks and balances, transparency, and so forth. Such institutions take a great deal of time to evolve and are at least as much social as technical in nature, often requiring multiple revolutions and upheavals before being solidly established. Perhaps its unrealistic to expect secure institutions of quality and competition would evolve in internet time, even on the internet.

These are great observations. Many people seem to be coming around to the idea that the next significant step forward on the Internet will need to be improved mechanisms for filtering and managing the tidal wave of content being relentlessly created by the masses.

No, really.

I was idly paging through this interesting collection of images purporting to show the evolution of the beauty standard for women (worth a visit) and came across the often-repeated claim that Marilyn Monroe wore a size 14, along with this rebuttal:

I’ve read in a couple very reliable sources (women’s fitness magazines) that Monroe’s “size 14″ is comparable to a size 8 today, due to vanity sizing and such.

I became curious, so I looked into it further. Ever-reliable snopes.com has a good discussion of the Marilyn-wore-14 issue (a claim they present as “Marilyn Monroe wore a size 16 dress”)

So, what can we say with any certainty? We can at least establish a range of measurements for Marilyn Monroe based on the available sources:

Height:	5 feet, 5½ inches
Weight:	118-140 pounds
Bust:	35-37 inches
Waist:	22-23 inches
Hips:	35-36 inches
Bra size:	36D

A woman of Marilyn’s height, at the extreme of Marilyn’s weight range (140 lbs), would probably wear a size 12 dress today (which is the same dress size listed for Marilyn in the book The Unabridged Marilyn). Perhaps at one time she did wear dresses that might have been considered size 16 (or even 18) back in the 1950s, but she almost certainly did not wear dresses equivalent to today’s size 16.

Snopes has a newspaper citation indicating that a Monroe dress that was sold at auction was found to be a British size 16, which is apparently the equivalent of an American size 12.

Nothing in the above should be taken to mean that I think it’s better for women to wear smaller dress sizes.

Yes, that’s a real screenshot.

Via Feministing.

I am apparently something of a classic anarcho-syndicalist (libertarian socialist). This apparently puts me in the company of the likes of Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Ghandi.

Determine your own political compass!

Go look at this image.

Now look at one participant’s effort at post-processing it.

Now, realize: the capture phase and the processing phase are both important, and both have enormous room for creativity.

That is all.