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From Raw Story:

“I met my brother for around an hour. He has been tortured while in detention for 36 hours continuously. He has been hit with iron rods and cables,” the brother said.

“There is very severe bleeding in his eye, and he has bruises on his feet and nose, and he was also tortured with electric shocks.

“He was forced to sign a statement confessing to receiving money from different groups and saying that he did not throw his shoes for the honour of Iraq,” [Muntazer al-Zaidi's brother] Uday said.

But the judge presiding over the case ruled that there was no torture involved.  If convicted on charges, Muntazer al-Zaidi faces 15 years in prison.  The trial begins next month.

The Iraqi journalist best known as “the shoe thrower” - the man who showed off President Bush’s Matrix-like agility, the man who inspired flash video games, and inspired other Shias to hold rallies - was allegedly beaten up while in custody, according to his brother.

Muntadar al-Zaidi has suffered a broken hand, broken ribs and internal bleeding, as well as an eye injury, which contradicts the reports from the head of the Iraqi Journalist Union who claims the reporter has been treated well in custody.

The Iraqi authorities have said the 28-year-old will be prosecuted under Iraqi law, although it is not yet clear what the charges might be.

Iraqi lawyers have speculated that he could face charges of insulting a foreign leader and the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri Maliki, who was standing next to President Bush during the incident. The offence carries a maximum penalty of two years in jail.

Our correspondent says that the previously little-known journalist from the private Cairo-based al-Baghdadia TV has become a hero to many, not just in Iraq but across the Arab world, for what many saw as a fitting send-off for a deeply unpopular US president.

One would think it would not be difficult to corroborate whether or not the 28-year-old journalist was beaten in custody.  And if that is the case then we need to know who beat him up.  Was it Iraqi police?  If he’s Shia, was it the Sunni?  Anyway, this story keeps getting stranger and stranger with the thrown shoes being auctioned off fetching bids between $100,000 and $10million dollars, supposedly.

Update:  “The Maliki government, meanwhile, is accusing the guy of being a drinker and drug addict. If the abuse turns out to be true and if it happened at Camp Cropper at the hands of US personnel, then we are in the middle of a public relations and military crisis - one that manages to bring all the idiocy and dumb cruelty of the Bush-Cheney years together.

“I was wondering how Bush could make his legacy even more toxic in the few weeks left to him. Some thought it impossible in the middle of two failed wars, $10 trillion in debt; $32 trillion in new entitlement liabilties, and a second Great Depression. But we are always misunderestimating him,” so writes Andrew Sullivan in the Atlantic.

The Iraqi journalist who threw two shoes at President Bush over the weekend (he needs to work on his accuracy and arm strength - NFL teams will certainly not be trying him out) was tossed in jail afterwards.

Thousands of Iraqis have demanded the release of a local TV reporter who threw his shoes at US President George W Bush at a Baghdad news conference.

Crowds gathered in Baghdad’s Sadr City district, calling for “hero” Muntadar al-Zaidi to be freed from custody.

Officials at the Iraqi-owned TV station, al-Baghdadiya, called for the release of their journalist, saying he was exercising freedom of expression.

Iraqi officials have described the incident as shameful.

A statement released by the government said Mr Zaidi’s actions, which also included him shouting insults at President Bush, “harmed the reputation of Iraqi journalists and Iraqi journalism in general”.

Correspondents say the protesters are supporters of Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr - a leading critic of the US presence in Iraq. Smaller protests were reported in Basra and Najaf.

Yowzas, they really don’t like President Bush in Iraq do they?  Or at least one Iraqi journalist doesn’t.  How many White House Press Corp wished they’d done this at some point?  But President Bush has excellent reactionary skills.  It’s like he’s a wily mongoose.  The shoes don’t even come close to hitting him.  “All I can report,” Bush joked of the incident, “is a size 10.”

I was half-joking the other day that Bush should remain the figure head of the country for shiggles sake and Obama should go bunker down with the best and brightest, roll up their sleeves and get the job done.  On some level aren’t we all going to miss President Bush?  I mean for the absurd black comedy he brings to the table?  I miss him already.

Every news tidbit about the outgoing Bush administration seems to further confirm the suspicion that Dubya will no doubt go down as the worst president in US history.  At the very least he’s in the conversation and that’s bad enough.  Much of that is because he just never shifted course to right the wrong steps.  I can understand and to a certain degree forgive going to war in Iraq.  It’s not the move many of us would have chosen, but I can at least empathize with that decision.  What I can’t wrap my head around is how every questionable decision only pushed the boulder down the hill faster and faster until it crushed the town below.  He didn’t do anything to stop the boulder.

An unpublished US government report says US-led efforts to rebuild Iraq were crippled by bureaucratic turf wars, violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society, resulting in a 100-billion-dollar failure, The New York Times reported on its website.

The newspaper said it had gotten hold of a copy of the 513-page federal history of the reconstruction effort that is circulating in Washington in draft form among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts and senior officials.

The document has former secretary of state Colin Powell complaining that after the 2003 invasion, the Defense Department “kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces — the number would jump 20,000 a week! We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.’”

The overarching conclusions of the history is that the US government has in place neither the policies nor the organizational structure that would be needed to undertake the largest reconstruction program after the Marshall Plan, the report said.

All in all, the document concludes that the rebuilding effort never did much more than restore what was destroyed during the invasion and the pervasive looting that followed, The Times pointed out.

By mid-2008, according to the history, 117 billion dollars had been spent on the reconstruction of Iraq, including about 50 billion in US taxpayer money, the paper noted.

Not funny, is that this Republican president, will best be known for pissing the US taxpayers money down a drain to make up for poor executive leadership.  Bad policy decisions resulting in both foreign and domestic malfeasance only to burn taxpayers money in the hopes that things would magically get better.  Instead, it’s probably just going to make things worse.

The U.S. is ramping up covert operation inside Iran, essentially trying to lay the groundwork for an inevitable invasion there as well.? It’s been rumored that Pres. Bush wants to invade the country before the end of his Presidency, especially if it looks as if Sen. Obama is going to win the White House and put his administration in a difficult place.? On the other hand, if McCain wins then he knows his lacky will carry out his policies.

Yay for that.? This bit of news comes from one of the last great journalists, Seymour Hirsch (he who uncovered Abu Graib) in an article for this week’s New Yorker.? It’s thought that it will be Israel bombing Iran in the beginning and that the US would come to its aid.? Where the extra troops would come from … who knows?

Being interviewed by Wolf Blitzer, Hersch said, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have rejected findings from U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran has halted a clandestine effort to build a nuclear bomb and that they “do not want to leave Iran in place with a nuclear program.”

Hmmm… so they are once again basing decisions on their own internal logic rather than the facts that are presented to them.

Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of ?high-value targets? in the President?s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.

Under federal law, a Presidential Finding, which is highly classified, must be issued when a covert intelligence operation gets under way and, at a minimum, must be made known to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate and to the ranking members of their respective intelligence committees?the so-called Gang of Eight. Money for the operation can then be reprogrammed from previous appropriations, as needed, by the relevant congressional committees, which also can be briefed.

[Preparing the Battlefield]

This Keith Olbermann Special Commentary during last night’s show doesn’t really need any introduction or background information for context.

But here’s the shorthand. On a Fox News interview, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice compared the current situation in Iraq to the rebuilding of Europe at the end of World War II. Now Olbermann always likes to go over board with some of his special commentaries. And why not? Since they have brought him higher ratings, more buzz and much love from liberals.

So what exactly drew the ire of Olbermann? These are the exact words Rice spoke during her interview:

It would be like saying that after Adolf Hitler was overthrown, we needed to change then, the resolution that allowed the United States to do that, so that we could deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after he was overthrown.

Except that the President did go to Congress to fashion what would become the Marshall Plan. A plan that pumped $12 billion dollars into Europe to rebuild and maintain democracy, at least in Western Europe.

Though it makes for great television, Rice should have taken a history lesson before comparing Saddam to Hitler and Iraq to post-World War II Berlin.

While most newstations are eagerly reporting the hell out of the Anna Nicole Smith story (Yes, the judge is crazy. Yes, no one knows who the real father is. Yes Anna Nicole Smith is still, in fact, dead.) or the fact that Britney Spears has entered the hallowed “Mike Tyson Zone” of craziness (thanks Bill Simmons), it seems that the inurgency in Iraq (yes, you may remember it as the country where our troops are fighting) have used anti-aircraft missiles for the first time since the summer of 2006.

Back on Feb. 7 a US Marine helicopter was struck down and all seven Marines on board died. Though the original story was buried beneath the hoopla surrounding what should have been considered less important news stories, according to the Washington Post (via MSNBC) an investigation into the military tragedy found that the helicopter was blown up from Sunnis using “sophisticated SA-14 or SA-16 shoulder-fired missile.”

It appeared that the missile used was not the Vietnam-era SA-7, which insurgents and militias are known to have, but more likely an SA-14 or SA-16. Those pose a bigger threat because they have greater range, size and ability to overcome aircraft defensive systems. The helicopter’s defensive system did not appear to deploy properly, the Marine Corps commandant, Gen. James T. Conway, testified before the Senate last week. The Russian-manufactured SA-14 or SA-16 probably would have been brought into the country from abroad relatively recently.

The latest in a string of attacks against US aircraft has shown the enemy to be more patient, better armed, more prepared and also willing to change their strategy on the ground.? I’m not going to argue that an escalation in US troops is the answer but since no one in the Democratic Party has put forth an alternative plan and with the announcement this morning that Britain is withdrawing a portion of their troops from Basra it’s time for the Democrats or Republicans to grow a backbone and come up with a new strategy for our troops both in Iraq and at home.? Sending more troops to Iraq will only put more troops live’s at risk.? It’s not an answer to the quagmire Iraq has become.