Midday open thread

• Bears repeating a million times over:

  In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida -- chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates -- was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said.

  Moreover, within weeks of his capture, U.S. officials had gained evidence that made clear they had misjudged Abu Zubaida. President George W. Bush had publicly described him as "al-Qaeda's chief of operations," and other top officials called him a "trusted associate" of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and a major figure in the planning of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. None of that was accurate, the new evidence showed.

  Digby:

  They were desperate to keep up the fiction that Al Qaeda was the outsized foe they'd built them up to be. If they were merely a dangerous little gang of criminals rather than a deadly global army of supervillians, it would be hard to justify the spending of trillions on unnecessary wars and suspending inconvenient portions of the constitution. These Vietnam chickenhawks didn't want to hear anything that would imply that they weren't fighting the war of all wars.

  They knew these were false confessions and fictional plots and cynically used them to keep up the sense of panic --- even among themselves --- that fueled their global ambitions and fed their damaged egos. Ultimately they failed in that, not because they actually did anything that kept the babies safe, but because the American people just don't have the attention span to stay panicked about anything for very long.

  But apparently, there is no worse crime in the world than the president's spokesperson not treating these criminals with deference.

• What Digby said. More what Digby said. And one more, a reminder that she is always good.
• Via Atrios, now banks are walking away from properties after they foreclose on them.
• Wingnuts love to tell workers whether they can unionize or not, or whether they make too much money or not, but god forbid you demand executive accountability at a firm looking for a government handout! CEOs are sacrosanct.
• Yup, Breitbart is hilarious, particularly for someone who got his start with Drudge.
• I'm not on JournoList, and Mickey Kaus is an ass for printing this thread (I'm sure he's never had an email conversation about politics with more than two people, right?), but it warms my heart that they're using their super-secret cabal to trash the New Republic. Well deserved, and a great use of their time.

• Back in the late 60s and early 70s, both the San Francisco Bay Area and Washington DC built their rail transit systems. They each had a choice:

  San Francisco is in the 5th largest metropolitan area in the country. Washington DC is in the 4th largest. Both cities have old, urban cores with major employment centers surrounded by extensive post-war suburban development. In the 1960s, both decided to build a heavy rail system. And not only do those two systems use very similar technology, they are nearly the same length (104 miles vs. 106 miles).

  There is one significant difference between San Francisco’s BART and Washington’s Metrorail, though: Washington has 2 1/2 times the ridership (902,100 average weekday boardings compared to 338,100.) Why? I’ve lived in both places, and I’ve ridden both systems. And I think the difference is that BART is primarily a suburban system while Metrorail, even though it serves the suburbs as well, is at its heart a urban system.

  Even today, BART seeks to double-down on its commuter-rail approach to expansion, rather than to connect the already-dense urban core. It's obnoxious, especially when urban-to-urban riders are subsidizing the travel of commuters from the rail network's farthest-flung suburbs..

• According to Bill O'Reilly, Fox's elite security force apparently has a better conviction rate than Bush's Department of Justice anti-terrorism task force.
• The Obamas are paying for White House redecoration out of their own pockets.
• How often does North Dakota see the Coast Guard?