STICK IN THE EYE
Susan J. Crawford, convening authority of the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, and a retired judge who served as general counsel for the Army during the Reagan administration and as Pentagon inspector general, is hardly anybody's liberal pundit. Crawford recently told Bob Woodward that the charges against Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed al-Qahtani were dropped because he was tortured. This has devastating consequences for the Bush administration's entire rationale for the new techniques of interrogation: that they would make the United States safer by producing intelligence and keeping dangerous individuals off the streets. We now know they do neither. The torture produced no useful information from al-Qahtani, and the cruelty heaped upon him will make it more difficult, if not impossible, to justify his long-term incarceration.

MOBILE MARDI GRAS MOVIE TO AIR ON PBS
For those of you who missed the local premiere, PBS' Independent Lens will air The Order of Myths on February 24. The film follows the parallel racial universes of Mardi Gras. Director Margaret Brown exposes not only the obvious dichotomy but also the historical connection between the white and black organizations that embody Mobile's inescapable racial divide.
(MOTHER JONES)