Sunday, December 09, 2007

SPB News for Sunday.


Iran drops dollar from oil deals: report TEHRAN (AFP) — Major crude producer Iran has completely stopped carrying out its oil transactions in dollars, Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari said on Saturday, labelling the greenback an "unreliable" currency.


GOP Rep. McCrery (LA) to retire.


Huckabee called homosexuality 'sinful' — Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, surging in Iowa polls in the Republican presidential race, wrote on a questionnaire while running for U.S. Senate in 1992 that homosexuality is "aberrant" and "sinful." — "I feel homosexuality is an aberrant …


Detainee Says He Was Tortured in C.I.A. Prison — The first of the so-called high value Guantánamo detainees to have seen a lawyer claims he was subjected to "state-sanctioned torture" while in secret C.I.A. prisons, and he has asked for a court order barring the government from destroying evidence of his treatment.


Lawyers Reveal Existence of 'Camp 7' Secret Guantánamo Detention Unit --Prisoner says subjected to "state-sanctioned torture" in secret C.I.A. prisons. The first of the so-called high value Guantánamo prisoners to have seen a lawyer claims he was subjected to "state-sanctioned torture" while in secret C.I.A. prisons, and he has asked for a court order barring the government from destroying evidence of his treatment. The request, in a filing by his lawyers, was made on Nov. 29, before officials from the Central Intelligence Agency acknowledged that the agency had destroyed videotapes of interrogations of two 'Qaeda' operatives that current and former officials said included the use of harsh techniques torture. Lawyers for the prisoner, Majid Khan, claim he "was subjected to an aggressive C.I.A. detention and interrogation program notable for its elaborate planning and ruthless application of torture" to numerous detainees. The documents also suggest that Mr. Khan, 27, and other high-value detainees are now being held in a previously undisclosed area of the Guantánamo prison he called Camp 7.

Military Lost Track of Equipment In Iraq Worth Millions, Audit Says Pentagon auditors said they could not account for millions of dollars worth of rocket-propelled grenades, armored vehicles, ammunition and other supplies and equipment, because of inadequate paperwork and a lack of oversight personnel. A report released Thursday by the Defense Department's inspector general looked at $5.2 billion in the Iraq Security Forces Fund, which is part of the $44.5 billion U.S. 'reconstruction' effort in Iraq.
State Dept. retains manager of troubled embassy project A State Department project manager banished from Iraq by the U.S. ambassador and under scrutiny by the Justice Department continues to oversee the construction of the much-delayed new American embassy in Baghdad from nearby Kuwait, State Department officials disclosed Thursday. James L. Golden, a contract employee, is still managing the $740 million project, said Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy, the department's top management official.
House Democrats Close to Deal on War Funds --DemocRATs Would Drop Iraq Timeline House Democratic leaders could complete work as soon as Monday on a half-trillion-dollar spending package that will include billions of dollars for the war effort in Iraq without the timelines for the withdrawal of combat forces that President [sic] Bush has refused to accept, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said yesterday. If the bargain were to become law, it would be the third time since DemocRATs took control of Congress that they would have failed to force Bush to change course in Iraq and continued to fund a war that they have repeatedly vowed to end.

CIA has recruited Iranians to defect

WASHINGTON -- The CIA launched a secret program in 2005 designed to degrade Iran's nuclear weapons program by persuading key officials to defect, an effort that has prompted a "handful" of significant departures, current and former U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the operation say.

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