Any break in this Friday’s newspaper from the inability to agree on a bailout of Wall Street is not likely to bear any better news: greenhouse gas emissions are building up in the atmosphere faster than predicted, ageless Sen. Ted Stevens started his corruption trial, and the Pakistan-Afghanistan border is exploding.

Oh, and interrogators from the Air Force brutally tortured captured Iraqis in 2002-03. The Washington Post’s Joby Warrick reports that Air Force Col. Steve Kleinman described in graphic detail to Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mi.) at a hearing yesterday how military interrogators physically and psychologically abused captured Iraqis. They were taking from the Survival Evasion Resistance Escape manual, or SERE, a manual supposed to teach military personnel how to avoid torture.

A hearing by Levin’s Senate Armed Services Committee previously unveiled the sinister misuse of the SERE manual. The Senate Judiciary Committee, meanwhile, has sought to subpoena documents from the Justice Dept. Office of Legal Counsel on what legal authority the Air Force had to do this.

With the worst financial catastrophe since perhaps the Great Depression, it’s understandable that the drip, drip revelations about torture get relegated to A14 status. But it seems essential when future presidents fight future wars that we know as much as we can about how this president has waged the "war on terror" and occupation of Iraq.-MB

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