Informed Comment today has a great take on the Bush adminstration's motives for doing torture, especially in Iraq. Bottom line: torture is useful because it produces bad intelligence -- which is the goal!

Extended excerpts below the fold.

George Bisharat, a professor of law in San Francisco, visited Lebanon recently.  This is his description in Counterpunch of a "paradise" remembered:

[A few days ago], I walked through the familiar stone archway, descended steps worn smooth by the feet of others, and re-entered the paradise that is the American University of Beirut. It was my first trip back in 25 years. Here my father and four uncles were all endowed with the movable asset of education -- enabling them to later flourish in the United States, even after their homeland, Palestine, was given to another people. As a junior in college in the early '70s, I returned to this seat of enlightenment that had given so much to my family.

Per Raw Story :

As its ties to the U.S. war on terror are brought into the spotlight, more details about the ties between The United Arab Emirates and U.S. enemies abroad are being unearthed.

The AP recently reported that the Sept. 11 Commission report states U.S. intelligence believed that Osama bin Laden had visited an Afghan desert in 1999 near a hunting camp used by UAE officials.

According to the AP, commission sources claimed that: