Seems that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government wants to remove public juries from some coroner inquests. I suppose some detainees' causes of death might threaten national security, right?

Provisions in its counter-terrorism bill, published last week, would also allow home secretaries to replace coroners with their own appointees.

Ministers insist the new powers would be used sparingly and the vast majority of inquests will still stay public.

But the move has triggered alarm among opposition MPs, human rights campaigners and lawyers.

Critics say the changes are dangerous and unnecessary meddling with a system that has worked well for 800 years.

A clause in the new bill would allow the home secretary to prevent a jury being called to an inquest and even to change the coroner for "reasons of national security".

You know, in case Winston Smith doesn't confess.

After all, they must be wondering how we can be leaders of the free world -- a nation others look up to -- if we don't torture people we don't like?

Via Raw Story: The Blotter: CIA Bans Water-Boarding in Terror Interrogations:

The officials say the decision was made sometime last year but has never been publicly disclosed.

One U.S. intelligence official said, "It would be wrong to assume that the program of the past moved into the future unchanged."

A CIA spokesman said, as a matter of policy, he would decline to comment on interrogation techniques, "which have been and continue to be lawful," he said.

So said David Addington, Cheney's legal counsel and chief of staff.

The view from seven non-commissioned officers in Iraq:

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere....

A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.

As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.

What are we still doing there? Why do we pretend we can achieve anything, let alone the mysterious "victory" that President Bush claims to be after?

Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict — as we do now — will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.

At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums.

How is any kind of victory supposed to be possible when the billions of dollars we're throwing at Halliburton and billions more thrown at other contractors are resulting in such an utter failure of accomplishing any sort of basic services?

Why is it that the Bush administration and the nutroots are so eager to stroke the gun without question? Why is it that wingnut "think" tanks continue to deny reality? This seems to have gone beyond any sort of logic. It's about irrational fear, zealotry and ego now.