In a radio interview Tuesday, Vice President Cheney confirmed that detainees were subjected to water-boarding, the first such admission by a Bush administration official. “It’s a no-brainer for me,” Cheney said.
$10.49 billion: Exxon’s third-quarter profit, “its second highest total ever.”
The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a complaint asking the IRS to investigate Kansas attorney general Phill Kline’s (R) efforts to politicize the use of churches for his reelection effort. CREW’s Melanie Sloan notes that the IRS has not been even-handed in its enforcement, often targeting liberal organizations but taking few actions against conservatives.
At a public signing ceremony today, President Bush will sign a bill authorizing 700 miles of new fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border. “The decision to have a public ceremony is a reversal for the Bush administration, which had appeared reluctant to tie itself so publicly to the enforcement-only measure.”
According to a secret intelligence report, the CIA offered to let Germany have access to one of its detained citizens in return for Berlin’s assistance in silencing EU protests about the clandestine torture flights program. The classified documents make clear that the U.S. sought Morocco’s participation in the rendition program.
In Baghdad’s violent Washash neighborhood, which is predominantly Shiite with pockets of Sunni residents, U.S. troops suspect “that Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army are conducting what amounts to an ethnic cleansing campaign.”
United Nations agencies report that “thousands of Iraqi women are being taken advantage of by unscrupulous sex worker traffickers seeking to exploit young girls’ desperate socio-economic situation for profit.”
“A month after NATO forces claimed a major victory in fierce fighting in southern Afghanistan, large numbers of Taliban forces returned to the region Tuesday and battled NATO forces.” The Taliban has “regrouped, helped by a booming illegal opium trade and growing frustration at the slow pace of reconstruction and a lack of jobs or a real economy.”
And finally: Dustee Tucker may no longer be the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s spokeswoman, but she isn’t just sitting around. On Nov. 11 she will be participating in upcoming charity Blondes v. Brunettes powder puff football game. (Tucker is a brunette.) From Tucker’s game bio: “If I were to win the lottery, I would buy 200 pairs of Jimmy Choo shoes to carry me in style on my quest to save the world.”
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