So Assiri's number looks high, although as I said, he is probably talking about numbers of people detained overall, not just the ones currently held, but I think all these numbers look a little shocking, given that the media tends to repeatedly talk about how "3 detainees were water-boarded", and simply does not mention the tens of thousands of others being held by us or held for us by others, much less what is happening to them.

In the interview his explanation is this is the record of the number of arrests, which is not the same as the number of prisoners. His figure of 10,000 women arrested sounds plausible, but 9,500 raped requires more proof, as no one else has asserted a number like this. His assertion of 6,500 children is also plausible, in Afghanistan the number is 2,600 over the same period with an average detention of one year, and that number comes from the U.S. government (State Department).

The rape figure would have produced an official protest by several organizations, so I am skeptical at least initially.

His figure of 1000 ghost prisoners may or may not be true, it's higher than most others, but certainly would not be 'surprising'. But it confirms, even if true, that there are not 400,000 current prisoners, and again makes the rape claim very dubious (note that I'm certainly not disputing that there have been rapes, and the use of rape as torture, I think there have been and it was). The ghost prisoner figure would be those in enforced disappearance (he knows that, he cites the treaty), so it would be the estimate of those not visited by the ICRC.

He cites the IAEA as monitoring CIA detention practices, that isn't credible at all, so perhaps he misspoke.

What he says about the Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance is correct, there is an unenforceable version of it from 1992 which the U.S. is party to (it's a 'Declaration' passed by the U.N. General Assembly). Currently, enforced disappearance is illegal because it violates other treaties. In particular, prolonged enforced disappearance is considered both torture and collective punishment (because it's considered a torture violation committed on the family of the disappeared).

[...]

This is not an isolated case. Once the Bush team got into the habit of breaking the law, it became their operating procedure that any means are justified: ordering the nation’s intelligence agents to torture prisoners; sending innocents to be tortured in foreign countries; creating secret prisons where detainees were held illegally without charge.

Americans still don’t have the full story. Even now, most of what the inspectors general found remains classified, including other wiretapping that Mr. Bush authorized. Mr. Yoo’s original memo is also classified.

President Obama has refused to open a full investigation of the many laws that were evaded, twisted or broken — pointlessly and destructively — under Mr. Bush. Mr. Obama should change his mind. A full accounting is the only way to ensure these abuses never happen again.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/opinion/17fri1.html

The scenario in which the fires from the planes colliding with the buildings causes them to collapse is very simple. The detonation scenario, complete with it's secret setting of charges and even more secret detonation method, its thousands of co-conspirators, its elaborate explanations, and its arcane methods of soaking, leeching, and magnetically sorting blast debris to concoct the existence of pre-collapse nano-thermate is not. The onus is on you. Show that another theory is needed. That is the first step. You and your fellow true believers refuse to take it.

But let's start simple. Show that this building was built identically to those you've cited in detonated collapses. Show that any one of the on record detonated collapses proceeded from the top down. Show that the building really is falling any closer to free fall in a vacuum than it should. You can't. State how the building would have collapsed from structural weakening about 9/10 of the way to the top of the building, and why it is different from what happened. Never mind that, assert and prove that a building can't collapse from destruction at the top, if you like. Show that a building absent very strong lateral forces would do anything other than collapse into it's footprint. Show that any building is strong enough to topple a significant number of stories intact.

You don't have a scientific theory, you have a conspiracy theory. You won't shut up about it. But you refuse to come up with any of the necessary science.

That's how they proceeded because of Occam's Razor and the Law of Parsimony. Those are also basic tenets of science. The initial evidence was that planes hit the buildings and then the buildings collapsed. Your theory is substantially more complicated, so you need to find a reason for adopting it, they don't need one for adopting theirs. Another instance of how science works. The people who write reports like the one written are scientists, they accept the basic tenets of science. People who do not accept Occam's Razor and the Law of Parsimony are normally considered to be not credible. You know, like why we believe that the earth revolves around the sun.

And in 1968, it was a well known fact that no man had ever stepped on the moon before. Your stuff is pure junk. You did, in fact, pester everyone for a year and a day about the video of the towers collapsing. And prattle on ad infinitum (or perhaps, ad nauseum) about Newton's third law. Now you claim otherwise. And I will lecture you on science if I so choose. I have training in it, you do not.