Forgotten amid the chaos into which Iraq has descended during the past three years are some of the more brutal tactics Saddam Hussein employed. Of course, much of it seems somewhat irrelevant now. As awful as some of the strongman's crimes were, the potency of discussion about his regime often fades when compared to the dire situation on the ground today.

And then you read about something like this:

Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq wanted foreign cash to build thousands of concrete bunkers to bury dead Kurds, an Australian inquiry into abuses of the UN oil-for-food program heard Friday."

The Australian firm that stands accused of sending money to Saddam isn't looking so good in the final days of its sensational nine-month inquiry. Take a look at this excerpt of one of the company's internal e-mails, which was presented to the probe's panel:

The bunkers will have cement walls and floors so they are actually designed for burying the Kurds ... the mind boggles as to whether they are fumigating insects or any other pest that pisses them off.... On a serious note they will have cement flooring."

The inquiry is expected to hand down its decision on November 24. We'll keep an eye out for any more disturbing details.

HT: Newsdesk.org 

Answer: Anyone. The Washington Post is reporting that over the weekend the White House and its House allies successfully watered down an earlier version of the military commissions bill to include a less restrictive description of how the government could designate civilians as "unlawful enemy combatants."

The [unlawful enemy combatant] definition applies to foreigners living inside or outside the United States and does not rule out the possibility of designating a U.S. citizen as an unlawful combatant.

That means that anyone the government decides "has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States" [ital mine] or its military allies can be detained indefinitely. In other words, a U.S. citizen in the United States. And they've successfully defined the "battlefield" as anywhere and everywhere. Plus, if Congress writes and passes it, it's unlikely the Supreme Court would step in and declare the definition unconstitutional. I'm less enthused by this military commissions compromise by the minute.   

Despite having the support of a majority of the Senate, the alternative plan for military commissions backed by Sens. McCain, Graham, and Warner might face a filibuster led by Sen. Bill Frist, who is seriously toeing the White House line on the treatment of detainees and warrantless wiretapping. But since the White House might ultimately get most of what its wants out of a possible compromise bill, why the threat of a filibuster? Could it be that Frist, who clearly harbors presidential aspirations, wants to steal McCain's spotlight?

In other news, the International Committee of the Red Cross will meet next week for the first time with the 14 high-level detainees now held at Gitmo who sparked off this current row in the first place.

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Won't the midterms be dirty. Bush has thrown down the gauntlet. In his speech today, the president announced that he is immediately sending legislation to Congress that would allow the United States to establish military tribunals for enemy combatants - the same tribunals that the Supreme Court struck down in June (finding them unconstitutional because Congress hadn't approved them). This move is predictable. Ever since the Supreme Court decision came down, the administration has been planning to seek congressional approval. But the announcement today that more than a dozen high-value enemy combatants - including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the architects of the 9/11 attacks - have been transferred to Guantanamo Bay puts anyone wishing to debate the legality, fairness, and sensibility of these tribunals - during the fifth anniversary of 9/11 and the run-up to the midterms - in a very unenviable position. Hence the brilliant political timing.

So, it looks very likely that the administration will get to keep its closed tribunals - where those prosecuted and their counsel can be prohibited from even learning the evidence against them. I haven't yet seen the legislation in question, which could be vastly different from what ultimately emerges from Congress. But the tribunal the administration wanted initially looked a little something like this:

A few weeks ago, after reading Chicago Tribune reporter Paul Salopek's tour-de-force piece on the origins of the fuel at your local gas station, I linked to the piece here on Passport and praised Salopek's ingenuity in asking (and answering) a simple, but elegant question about the journey oil takes from the ground to refineries and on to your gas tank. I made a mental note to look out for Salopek's next story.

But now Salopek is sitting in a Sudanese jail, charged with being a spy after illegally entering the country's Darfur region from Chad while on assignment with National Geographic. The two-time Pulitzer Prize winner was captured three weeks ago by a militant group allied with the government, handed over to the Sudanese Army, and held without outside contact until about 10 days ago, when Khartoum infomed the local U.S. embassy of his arrest for espionage. He could face jail time. A Slovenian filmmaker was sentenced earlier this month to two years in prison on charges similar to those Salopek faces.

The Chicago Tribune and National Geographic are working to secure Salopek's release, but it's unclear if they'll have any sucess. Better still would be to get someone in the State Department to exert some serious pressure on Khartoum. With Salopek's trial coming in less than two weeks, time is running out. 

Today in Britain another terror suspect was arrested, bringing back up to 24 the number in custody there. But the most interesting development is this allegation in the Guardian:

Reports from Pakistan suggest that much of the intelligence that led to the raids came from that country and that some of it may have been obtained in ways entirely unacceptable here. In particular Rashid Rauf, a British citizen said to be a prime source of information leading to last week's arrests, has been held without access to full consular or legal assistance. Disturbing reports in Pakistani papers that he had "broken" under interrogation have been echoed by local human rights bodies. The Guardian has quoted one, Asma Jehangir, of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, who has no doubt about the meaning of broken. "I don't deduce, I know - torture," she said. "There is simply no doubt about that, no doubt at all." If this is shown to be the case, the prospect of securing convictions in this country on his evidence will be complicated. In 2004 the Court of Appeal ruled - feebly - that evidence obtained using torture would be admissable as long as Britain had not "procured or connived" at it. The law lords rightly dismissed this in December last year, though they disagreed about whether the bar should be the simple "risk" or "probability" of torture."

As I've mentioned before, if the case collapses there would be the most almighty stink in Britain. It would introduce into British politics U.S. style judge-bashing. Calls for Britain to scrap the Human Rights Act would grow ever louder.

On Monday, for the first time ever, a U.S. federal court provided online access to nearly all the exhibits submitted in a recent criminal case. The case? United States v. Zacarias Moussaoui. Several of the exhibits are still classified and under seal (including one entitled "schizophrenia video" submitted by the defense), but there are nearly 1,200 other documents, videos, and photographs available - everything from Moussaoui's report cards from 1975, photographs of the inside of a flight simulator, and "1 box cutter". There's also the "substitution for testimony" from several terror detainees, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks. I'm guessing that releasing all of the exhibits is kosher despite Moussaoui's pending appeal of his life sentence, but it just makes every armchair attorney out there able to now render an opinion on whether he should be able to withdraw his guilty plea.

The International Criminal Court may have a warrant out for his arrest, but that didn't stop Uganda from offering full amnesty to the rebel leader Joseph Kony, head of the infamous Lord's Resistance Army.

It's a strange move on the part of the Ugandan government, as their military - and the United Nations - have long been trying to capture Kony, considered responsible for the death and kidnapping of thousands of civilians, especially children, during the 19-year civil war. Perhaps the Ugandan government is hoping the offer could facilitate peace at talks that begin next week in Sudan. But Kony has already rejected the amnesty deal, calling it irrelevant since it has no effect on the ICC proceedings against him.

Winners

The ocean: Bush creates the world's largest marine reserve northwest of Hawaii. Baby seals everywhere rejoice.

Karl Rove: Bush's Brain escapes indictment in CIA leak case. As if the Dems could have had a worse week.  

Maoists in Nepal: Parliament is dissolved and rebels are invited to join new government. 

ICC: May issue indictments for Darfur war criminals soon. Someone has to take a stand. 

Losers

TB, malaria, guinea worm: Bill Gates will quit Microsoft in two years to tackle neglected diseases full-time.

Serbia & Montenegro: 6-0 loss to Argentina in today's World Cup match. Ouch.

Fake Show turkeys: The faux bird that accompanied Bush on his first surprise trip to Iraq in 2003 is left home alone. (Yes, the turkey was real. Thanks to everyone who wrote in about that. But no one ate it. It was a decoration.)

Guantanamo: You know things are bad when they kick the journalists out.

As if you needed any more proof that Oprah Winfrey is among the world's most powerful  women, she's also a one-woman crime-fighting machine. Or, at least, the FBI thinks so. It has devoted an entire Web page on its site to the sexual predators Oprah has profiled on her show. It's great that these criminals are getting as much publicity as possible, increasing the chances of their capture. But does the fact that the FBI is getting its tips from the Oprah Winfrey Show kind of terrify anyone else?

 Forty years ago today, the Cultural Revolution began in China, yet the government in Beijing made sure that the anniversary passed without so much as a mention in the state-run press. Officials did manage to mark the day by sentencing a cyberdissident to 12 years in prison for posting an anti-government article online and shuttering a polling site that asked a question about Tiananmen compensation. Plus, the government re-indicted an NYT researcher; charges against Zhao Yan had been dropped shortly before Hu's visit to Washington as a token gesture to US officials.

Memories of the Revolution's chaotic decade are clearly still raw in the minds of many Chinese, as these eyewitness accounts attest. Officials may demand silence on the topic, but there are signs of cracks in the facade: An unoffical museum has opened in southern China, and

Xu Youyu, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who has pressed for an open assessment of the Cultural Revolution, revealed a few days ago that researchers held a secret meeting on the Cultural Revolution in Beijing in March.

You've heard this before: what do China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United States have in common? They execute people. 

But executions around the world are down: 3797 in 25 countries during 2004, as opposed to 2148 in 22 countries last year. Amnesty International singles out Iran as the only country to have executed juveniles in 2005 and suggests China (where you can be executed for tax fraud) may be responsible for as many as 8000 executions, though the published figure is about 1770.

Iran's total, 94, is slightly down from last year's 159. Saudi Arabia executed 86 people in 2005, including some by beheading. USA put 60 to death, about the same as 2004. Other big offenders: Jordan, Pakistan, and Vietnam.

Seven tenths of a percent of America is behind bars. That doesn’t sound like much, right? Well, that is actually more than 2 million people. And get this: prisoners in China are only .118 percent of the total population, while Brazil locks up only .183 percent of its citizens. The data comes from the International Centre for Prison Studies via the BBC’s in depth report on prison life. Here is the full chart: 

 *the zero was missing when we initially posted this

The transfer of former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor to The Hague will likely occur in the next few weeks. The irony of the move is that tribunals like that in Sierra Leone were intended to bring international justice closer to the people affected. The court for the former Yugoslavia, based in The Hague, often received brickbats for being too distant from the Balkans to effectively enlighten the populations and facilitate reconciliation. Now, it seems, those arguments have quickly yielded to fears that Taylor's presence in the neighborhood could shatter the fragile peace.

I think it's the right calculation. My time in the Balkans led me to appreciate the value of just getting bad actors out of the picture. One-way tickets to The Hague cleared out plenty of political obstructionists in Bosnia and helped make possible today's (admittedly fragile) peace. Doing justice at home is the ideal, but justice at a distance beats violence at home any day.