Nearly three years after the Enron scandal broke, the first Enron trial is starting in Houston, and it's been mostly ignored by the press, except for the occasional article in the back pages of the Wall Street Journal. This trial isn't the Big One (the one that will put former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay and former President Jeffrey Skilling up for a long, slow grilling); it only covers one small type of transaction among the many iffy stunts Enron pulled to make their finances look better than they really were. The folks on trial this time include a mid-level accountant and a VP at Enron, and a handful of Merrill Lynch employees who advised them. Why is it taking so long to put the big boys on trial? Well, for one thing, Enron's off-balance-sheet partnerships were so complicated that it's taking a really, really long time to even understand what was going on. For another, it's hard to find evidence that would convict Lay and Skilling hands-down. This is true for a couple of reasons: 1) prosecutors usually need witness testimony from more than one colleague--in this case only Enron's former chief financial officer, Andrew Fastow, has pled guilty and cooperated with investigators--and 2) accounting rules have not kept up with the ingenuity of businesses and financial planning firms. That's not by accident. Businesses, including major accounting firms, have lobbied heavily to keep any oversight groups and the rules they issue stuck back in the dinosaur era. Everything from hedge funds to stock options to leasing transactions to executive compensation is a gray area in accounting these days. In spite of George Bush's boast that he's been tough on corporate criminals, very little has been done to head off another Enron. And don't hold your breath waiting for Kenneth Lay to stand trial, either.--Maria Tomchick

Speaking of another Enron, mortgage giant Fannie Mae is under investigation by the SEC for fiddling with its books. The charges are vague, but include moving expenses and income around from one year to the next in order to make the company look more consistently profitable that it really was. On top of that, executive compensation at Fannie Mae was tied to the company's stock price, which only encouraged its upper level management to get creative with the numbers (in order to pad their own pockets). Fannie Mae isn't likely to implode the way Enron did, but because Fannie Mae is the largest guarantor of mortgages in the US, the investigation and subsequent penalties could have a dramatic impact on the housing market, mortgage rates, and the US economy in general. And right now, the housing market and mortgage refinancing is the one bright spot in our dismal economic scene. Stay tuned.--M.T.

It'd be funny if it weren't so pathetic. Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi smirked for the cameras on his visit to the US last week and attempted to reassure Congress that all is well in Iraq. In a typical imitation of George W, Allawi said that the rise in the number of guerrilla attacks on US soldiers in Iraq was a sign of the insurgency's weakness, not its strength. Huh? At the same time, he averred that Iraqi troops would take back the cities of Ramadi, Samarra, Baquba, Fallujah, and the al-Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad before the election in January. Failing that, the election would occur anyway, disenfranchising nearly half of Iraq. This is a prescription for civil war, but did anyone in the US press say so? Nope.

Happily, somebody was paying attention. The French Press Agency interviewed British Brigadier General Nigel Aylwin-Foster, the number two man in charge of training Iraqi security forces. Aylwin-Foster affirmed that Iraqi police won't be fully armed and equipped until the end of 2005--the end of NEXT YEAR--long after the scheduled elections. The Iraqi army won't even have all of its bulletproof vests until late February. Also, the army only has about 20,000 troops, which is not nearly enough to tackle the insurgency, even with US cluster bombs, helicopter gunships, and bunker-buster bombs behind them. And with daily suicide car bombings targeting Iraqi police and army recruitment centers all over Iraq, Allawi's prediction looks like pure fantasy.--M.T. Sources: "Iraqi police need to await end-2005 to be fully equipped: military," AFP, 9/19/04, and "Pentagon Admits Shortfalls in Training Iraq Forces," Will Dunham, Reuters, 9/20/04.

Phil Shiner, a British attorney with the Birmingham-based group Public Interest Lawyers (www.publicinterestlawyers.co.uk), claims he has taken statements from detainees in Mosul, Iraq, about torture and abuse of prisoners at a facility referred to as "The Disco". Inmates at this location are subjected to loud music as part of the interrogation process. Apparently, the stories of torture in Iraq are not restricted to Abu Graib prison. A civilian engineer who was detained at the Mosul facility stated that he had been handcuffed and hooded and then kicked and beaten unconscious. The man reported that he witnessed a 14-year-old Kurdish boy laying on the floor and bleeding from his anus, allegedly as a result of sexual abuse with a metal object. US soldiers arrested an Iraqi human rights attorney at his home at 3 AM after he began investigating reports of torture at the Mosul detention center. The lawyer was held for five days and claims he was tortured while at the infamous facility. Shiner says that both men plan to sue the US government for damages under the Alien Tort Claims Act.

"This is a systematic policy," Shiner told journalist Amy Goodman on September 21st. "To suggest that Abu Graib is the responsibility of a few low ranking soldiers just sounds absurd." Shiner complained that the US has not signed on to the International Criminal Court and "flagrantly disregards international humanitarian law" and the Geneva Convention. As a British citizen, he also condemns the UK for its involvement with the US in the illegal war in Iraq. "We, the UK, we have blood on our hands to the same extent. We've killed people and we've tortured people. We have our own clear legal responsibility in circumstances where we go to war and occupy Iraq with the US." The Pentagon has denied charges of torture at the Mosul Detention facility.--Mark Taylor-Canfield