Fact x Importance = News (16 Dec): Camp X-Ray, Khatami, Bad Cheney, Lovely Obama

Other stories we're following:

SHHH! DON'T MENTION THOSE UNLAWFUL COMBATANTS

In contrast to the glare of publicity the Bush Administration shone on its trial of 9-11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, cut short when he and other defendants tried to plead guilty, all the President's men and women are keeping quiet about the latest developments at Guantanamo Bay.



Three of six Bosnians held at Camp X-Ray will soon released, according to defense lawyers with information from Guantanamo and Bosnian officials. Last month, a Federal judge ruled against the Bush Administration, declaring there was insufficient evidence to show that five of the six, all of whom were born in Algeria, were "unlawful combatants". No word, however, on the fate of the others, including Lakhdar Boumediene, whose name is associated with a Supreme Court decision regarding the legal rights of detainees.

Meanwhile, "the Supreme Court yesterday kept alive a lawsuit by four British citizens who had been detained as terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay and had alleged that former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other Pentagon officials were responsible for their torture and the denial of their religious rights".

TODAY'S NON-APOLOGY: CHENEY STILL GROWLS


For anyone who thought Vice President Dick Cheney might be regretting any of the Executive Power he grasped with his detaining/surveilling/renditioning/torturing/war-fighting/Constitution-shredding hands over the last eight years. Facing the tough interrogation of Rush Limbaugh, he held firm:

Once they get here and they're faced with the same problems we deal with every day, then they will appreciate some of the things we've put in place."

And...

Guantanamo has been very, very valuable. And I think they'll discover that trying to close it is a very hard proposition.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE:

The BBC's Today programme confidently reported this morning that the United Nations was on the verge of endoring "the Arab proposal", first mooted by Saudi Arabia in 2002, for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

There has been no further word, however, and The New York Times has a different perspective:

Senior Arab ministers met with the quartet of Middle East peace negotiators at the United Nations on Monday and lamented the lack of any concrete results after a year of renewed efforts

KHATAMI: WILL HE RUN, WON'T HE RUN?

From Iran, The New York Times offers a non-too-veiled boost to former President Mohammad Khatami as he continues his Hamlet-like indecision over whether to challenge for the Presidency next spring.

TODAY'S LONGEST LOVE LETTER: I HEART OBAMA


Helene Cooper writes in The New York Times, allegedly on President-elect Obama and foreign policy team:

[Obama] has read “Ghost Wars,” the history of the long adventure by the Central Intelligence Agency in Afghanistan and its fruitless effort to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. He has sought the counsel of an old Republican realist — Brent Scowcroft, the former national security adviser — who has long argued against an ideologically driven foreign policy.

And he has one-upped President Bush’s six intelligence briefings a week by demanding seven, prompting Mike McConnell, who handles presidential briefings as the director of national intelligence, to joke, “I don’t know if there’s some kind of competition going.”

Etc., etc. for 1000 words.

Update: The Torture Blame Game

Yesterday we noted the Senate Armed Services Committee's report concluding that top Bush Administration officials authorised the abuse and, dare you use the word, torture of detainees. Dan Froomkin, the outstanding blogger for The Washington Post, has an excellent round-up of the report and coverage.

It is his personal question, however, that is most striking:

There's...the obvious question that comes to mind after considering the sequence of events: How are these not war crimes?