Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

The Bush administration suggested Tuesday that prisons in Iraq where hundreds of detainees apparently were abused were only "nominally" under the control of the central government in Baghdad.

How do a few rogue government officials (if that's the case) divert power and water to two facilities (located in a country where electricity and water are frequently scarce) for more than a year without anyone noticing?

How do a few government mavericks assign personnel to those facilities -- which requires payroll-related paperwork, official orders, etc. -- without raising eyebrows, if not questions?

I find it hard to believe that former Iraqi P.M. Iyad Allawi was genuinely blind to the torture; if it turns out that he did know what was going on, it would hardly be surprising given how vociferously his Bushite puppet masters fought to legalize their own ability to use torture while at the same time claiming that they would never indulge its use.