In a recent article in The New Yorker, Seymour Hirsch commented recently about the government's policy of keeping terrorism suspects in indefinite detention with no access to a lawyer or family. Ostensibly it's to keep the suspects from sending coded messages to other terrorists in the US. Hirsch pointed out that this makes no sense, given that US prosecuting attorneys have let Zacharias Moussaoui--the so-called "20th hijacker"--ramble on and on in open court about his wish to wage jihad against the US. Hirsch's article on Moussaoui is a good read, for anyone who's still murmuring incomprehensible swill about how it's necessary to give up a little freedom to keep us all safe. Lee Gomes, a writer for the Wall Street Journal, pointed out in mid-September that it would be impossible for Moussaoui and another person to have worked out a complete code before his capture, since Moussaoui was never supposed to be captured in the first place--he's supposed to be dead now, along with the other hijackers, right? And after being in an isolation cell for over a year, what new information could he possibly pass on to anyone? The same goes for bin Laden and other Al Qaeda members who are still running free. Gomes points out that there are a lot easier ways for bin Laden to send messages to sleeper terrorist cells than summoning an Al Jazeera camera crew and trying to remember some prearranged code system. Bin Laden could simply log on to the Internet and send e-mail to the cell's Hotmail account.

(Moussaoui's address was www.pilotz123@hotmail.com, in case you were wondering.)--Maria Tomchick Source: "Internet Makes Fears About Coded Signals A Thing of the Past," Lee Gomes, Wall Street Journal, 9/16/02, B1.

Speaking of Al Jazeera and detainees. It appears that one of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay may be a missing Al Jazeera cameraman who was scooped up in Afghanistan while covering the war. Al Jazeera's lawyers have filed motions to get access to him and win his release. Will the US release him? With Bush in the White House and Ashcroft in charge at the DOJ? Don't bet on it. Yet you'd think news outlets all over the US would be covering this, in the interest of protecting the rights of journalists to remain free of detention and torture for simply doing their jobs. No such luck. In this case, they seem to agree with the Bush administration's definition of "noncombatant."--M.T.

Will the 20th hijacker please stand up? At first, the government called Moussaoui the 20th hijacker. When it became obvious that Moussaoui was nothing more than a mentally unbalanced jihadi wannabe, they switched gears and said it could be some other unnamed person already in detention. Somewhere. Or an unindicted co-conspirator. Out there somewhere. Now they claim that they've arrested the 20th hijacker in Pakistan: a guy named Ramzi bin al-Shibh. But according to the Manchester Guardian Weekly, who interviewed Pakistani intelligence officers in Karachi, bin al-Shibh was just another little fish caught up in a net that was set for somebody else: the alleged mastermind of September 11, a man named Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who heads Al Qaeda's military command. Mohammed is a slippery fish; the CIA has been trying to catch him for years, with no luck. Pakistani intelligence confirms that there are a lot of senior Al Qaeda members hiding out in Karachi. (Maybe the 20th hijacker, too!) Could somebody please explain to me again why we're worrying about Iraq?--M.T. Source: "Al-Qaida mastermind eludes pursuers," Rory McCarthy, Manchester Guardian Weekly, 9/26-10/2/02, p 4.

Among the other bits of information you'll need in order to win an argument about not going to war with Iraq: it's now likely that Iraq has the ability to completely foil our precision-guided bombs. Since 1999, a Russian military supply company named Aviaconversia has been selling portable GPS signal jammers for as low as $39.99 each. The 4-watt jammers weigh about 19 pounds and are effective over an area of 100 square miles. (You can probably order one over the Internet.) How do they work? Simple. GPS (global positioning system) satellites beam radio waves 11,000 miles through the atmosphere to the Earth's surface. By the time the beams reach the ground, they're very, very weak--a single Christmas tree light is about 1,000 times brighter. So the signal is easy to disrupt. Since Russia is Iraq's main trading partner, it would be stupid to assume that Saddam hasn't stocked up on this little goody. Of course, George W., who wants to start this war with an enormous bombing campaign, is a very dim bulb indeed.--M.T. Source: "U.S. Bombs May Not Find Targets In Iraq Due to Satellite 'Jammers'," Anne Marie Squeo, Wall Street Journal, 9/24/02

So Premera wants to become a for-profit company. The state's largest health insurer wants to raise money, and the state is salivating at the chance to collect extra taxes from a for-profit corporation, so Gov. Locke and lots of Oly legislators love the idea, just like they did when the state's second-largest insurer, Regence, proposed the same thing a few months back. Nobody will suffer but us customers -- which is to say, everyone who needs health care at one time or another -- which is to say, everyone.

That's not the official line, of course, which enthuses about improved service and rates and blah blah blah. Bullshit. As with most privatization schemes, this has been a trend sweeping the country, and it's been a disaster everywhere it's been tried. On this score, consider those flaming Bolshies, the Washington State Medical Association. WSMA's CEO, Tom Curry, notes dryly of the idea that "We're not aware of any place in the country where these conversions have improved things for plan subscribers, patients, doctors, or hospitals....The experience nationally is that plans that convert to investor-based operations use their capital to acquire other plans."

A second round of public hearings will be held next month; meanwhile, the fact that all that money will be available to pay those extra state taxes, and companies still expect to come out way ahead, tells you what you need to know about how much of your health care would be reimbursable. The WSMA used to be the most radically conservative of health care advocacy groups. A decade's worth of doctors no longer being allowed to practice medicine changed all that. Too bad politicians can still be bribed.