The Guardian has a devastating article by David Rose recounting one British prisoner’s ordeal in Guantanamo.

The fifth paragraph addresses the reliability of the account, acknowledging that there’s no guarantee that it’s truthful, although it apparently accords with other accounts and the reporter’s experience visiting Guantanamo. Likewise, the prisoner’s account of what he was doing in Afghanistan in the first place is underwhelming. Nevertheless, after 26 months of interrogations, there was no evidence that he was in any way a threat to our security and he was released back to his native Briton.

If this story is even roughly true, we Americans ought to be ashamed. And don’t tell me that the fight against terrorism justifies this sort of treatment of prisoners. In fact, as the article points out, the treatment seems custom-made to generate false information.

For shame. I’m sending links to my senators — Kennedy and Kerry — and asking for an investigation. Yeah, sure, that’ll happen in an election year.

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Joe Trippi begins by pointing to a non-Net reality that shaped the campaign: After Jimmy Carter was elected, the Democratic Party’s Hunt Commission changed the rules to work against insurgents. Since then, the rules have been tightened further. The only way for an insurgent to win, Joe says, was to win Iowa and New Hampshire.

We are now at the point TV was at 40 years ago, he says. The Dean campaign was the Kennedy-Nixon debates. But TV is a one-way medium. “The Internet is the singlemost powerful tool ever put in the hands of citizens.” It allows us to network together, and we’re just learning that we can change the country if we take action in common cause with others. Corporations and campaigns won’t be able to keep secrets any more.

The Dean campaign was just the tip of the iceberg, he says.

He talks about how the Internet took an obscure governor and made him into the front funner, raising more money than any Democrat in history. How?

Blogs. That’s where the debates about WMDs were happening in the blogosphere, not in the mass media which had embedded its reporters. Likewise, the blogosphere really pushed the awareness of the problems with electronic voting machines. He talks about how he first heard about MeetUp on the mydd.com blog.

Also, giving up some centralized control.

“There are 2 million Americans who would borrow $100 to get rid of George Bush, and it’s going to happen this year.” That, he says, will change American politics forever. “There’s only one medium in the world that allows this to happen.”

We did have to give up some control. But what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with allowing people to work for their candidatee in their communities the way they want? MSNBC after 12 years has 250,00 viewers. In just a few months, the Dean campaign had 600,000 members. That’s the power of giving up control.

“A guy like Dean [an insurgent] isn’t supposed to get to where he got to. It’s a dot com miracle.”

“You’re not going to tear down a system as corrupt as this one that’s been built up over 40 years, it isn’t going to be torn down in 13 months.” But, he says, it will happen.

It’s not just about defeating Bush: “If Howard Dean had gotten elected, there’s practically no way his health care would have passed.”

In 2008, we’ll all look at the Dean campaign and laugh at how primitive it was.

Trippi: We were in trouble well before the Iowa primary. The Gore endorsement motivated the other candidates to decide to “kill” Howard Dean. And the press said, “Oh, man, he’s going to be the nominee. We’re supposed to scrutinize the nominee and be tough on him.” That’s the first time the candidates went after someone at the same time that the media went after him. And a 527 backed by Gephart and Kerry were beating the living daylights out of us with a million dollars. “And Iowa is the worst state in the union for a guy like Howard Dean”: 65% of caucus attendees are over 65, and Gephart is telling them that Dean is going to take away their Medicare. “It had nothing to do with whether the Internet worked or the 3,500 orange hats.”

[Cross-posted at Loose Democracy]

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Eli Pariser and Zach Exley, names probably familiar from your inbox — Eli has a disconcertingly consistent pattern of vowels and consonants — are talking to a packed crowd of about 400, explaining how MoveOn.org got started and how the Internet is enabling us to rebuild some of the community that’s been lost over the decades.

They humbly stress how they stumbled into success, and make the good point that, when something succeeds, inevitably people look for geniuses which is “terribly disempowering” to everyone else.

They stress that we’re just at the beginning of the Net-izing of politics. “In a few years, we won’t be talking about a 2 million person email list. And we won’t be focusing on MoveOn. We’ll be talking about 40 million people and hopefully lots of groups.”

They say that the report of 6M names on a Republican list is an exaggeration, and if they have that many, it’s because they bought ’em and thus the names are less effective. “The Republicans are doing a good job on the Internet, but don’t be intimidated by that 6M number. It’s more like 400,000.”

“And they haven’t yet learned the power of having a two-way dialogue.”

What will the connective platform in 2008, they’re asked. Who knows, they answer.

The unsinkable Molly Ivins introduced them. She loves the Net and the way it’s connecting us. I’d take issue with her call to find “some way” to get rid of the bad information on the Net — get used to it, Molly — but what a treat to hear her talk, if only for a few minutes.

[Cross-posted at Loose Democracy]

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I’m in the Boston Admirals Club lounge, waiting for my flight to Dallas, connecting to Austin, where sxsw is being held. The Admirals Club is American Airline’s lounge, about which I have two questions:

1. To enter an Admirals Club, you have to press a buzzer. Someone then presses a switch that unlocks the door for you. So here’s my question: What’s the difference between a locked door that is unlocked for anyone who presses a buzzer and an unlocked door?

2. Why did an airline name its lounges after admirals?

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And in case you’re wondering, it’s pronounced “South by Southwest.”

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I’ll be out all day tomorrow (Saturday) at a politics-and-tech confab, and then on Sunday morning (6:30AM plane) I’m off to the Wireless Future portion of SXSW. And that’s just the beginning of the chain of conferences I’m going to.

I’m tired of traveling already, and I haven’t even left yet.

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This site graphically compares the hits returned by Google and Yahoo for any query you try. Cool and interesting.

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I finally looked at my schedule and realized that I just can’t go to David Isenberg‘s WTF conference April 2-4. Damn! I’m only home 3 days between now and the end of March. Conference conference conference conference conference. Conference. I can’t add another one to the list no matter how enticing…and WTF is durn enticing.

It sounds like it’ll be a great get-together. I’m sorry to miss it. But I hope not to see you there. Wait, that’s not right. I hope you won’t see me there. Nope. I hope you go. Some fantastic people are attending. You could be one of them. And Isenberg knows how to throw an A Quality event.

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AKMA responds in public to a question of mine about Mel’s Passion. Thanks, Rev!

My question was prompted by AKMA’s learned and diversity-loving and committed comments on the movie here, here, here and then here. (AKMA’s son Si blogs about it here.)

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The Boston Globe is running a periodic caption-the-photo contest. The current photo has Bush touching a cow and pointing at a young woman. You can vote until 2pm today.

Possible entries:

“Sorry, sweetheart, but you’re in the Coalition of the Willing. You cain’t fight the Eeeny Meeny Miney Mo.”

“Sorry, sweetheart, but Bessie’s been outsourced.”

“Dick, the coast is clear. You can come out of the cow now.”

Eh. Do better. Make us laugh.

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