Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Four CIA detainees dead, others "just got lost"

By Steve Hynd


ABC News just posted an account of Brian Ross' report for World News tonight, in which Ross writes that an offcial source has leaked some of what is contained in the most heavily redacted sections of the IG Report Jay posted on earlier.



The blacked-out portions hide the Inspector General's findings on the circumstances that led to the deaths of at least three of the detainees in the CIA's program, the official said. Two of the men reportedly died in CIA in Iraq and the third died in Afghanistan.


The Inspector General's findings about a fourth death involving a prisoner in Afghanistan were made public in the report. A CIA contract employee was convicted of assault in that case and is now in prison.


...Also hidden from public scrutiny, according to the official, was the discovery by the CIA Inspector General that the CIA could not adequately account for several of the 100 al Qaeda suspects who were part of the detainee program that the CIA maintained had been well administered.


The official said "a few just got lost and the CIA does to know what happened to them."


Sounds like, even though its unforgiveable that the prosecutor's remit doesn't go nearly far enough, there's going to be plenty to keep him busy in any case.


There's plenty more on the IG report and the appointment of a prosecutor at Memeorandum. It's the devisive issue de jour, with even saner conservatives apparently unable to get the notion that criminal acts at all levels need prosecutions at all levels and that the universal rule of law is the cornerstone of liberty. I'm not sure it's even possible to talk across the ideological divide on this one.



1 comment:

  1. Good for ABC. Of course, the number of people tortured to death in US custody under Bush may be around 100 according to this investigator:
    http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-05-05/how-many-were-tortured-to-death/

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