This evening's music features r&b singer and guitarist Barbara Lynn.

Here are some stories from tonight's post:

The Historic Roots of Homan Square, Chicago's CIA-Style Black Site

The Chicago Police Department didn't need the War on Terror to teach it to violate civil rights.

Police brutality in the wake of Ferguson is often framed in terms of militarization. Once upon a time, the narrative goes, law enforcement in American cities focused on community policing and non-violent methods. Then there was 9/11 and the War on Terror. Anti-terror money was funneled into police departments, which purchased or received military-grade equipment and were corrupted by the example of Abu Ghraib and a general domestic environment of paranoia.

This narrative informs the (excellent, horrifying) new report from Spencer Ackerman on a CIA-style black site* run by the Chicago Police Department (CPD)—an "off-the-books interrogation compound" where suspects are restrained, denied access to legal counsel, and sometimes beaten. ... Ackerman and Siska aren't wrong here; Chicago policing does echo Abu Ghraib, and using torture overseas can affect domestic law enforcement. But the causality is confused. The CPD didn't need, and doesn't need, the War on Terror to teach it to violate civil rights. It's had decades of practice already (as Ackerman acknowledges.) The problem is not that the War on Terror is bleeding into domestic policing, but rather that the War on Terror and domestic policing are part of a single, vicious whole, in which tactics and ideologies are shared between military, police, and the public, allowing for state torture and violence both at home and overseas. ...

When we act like police needed to go to Iraq to learn to torture, we forget our own history of lynching. When we say that 9/11 frightened us into civil liberties abuses, we forget that the American South, less than 200 years back, was one giant prison camp—a vast, unaccountable, antebellum Homan Square. For that matter Charles Graner, one of the guards who abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib, formerly worked at a Pennsylvania State Correctional Institute. Guards there were accused of beating and sexually humiliating inmates. If Abu Ghraib has come to the United States, it's only because the United States first went to Abu Ghraib. ...

Hopefully Ackerman's report leads CPD to close the Homan Square site. But even if it does, the police in Chicago will undoubtedly continue to beat, torture, and hold people (especially people of color) without lawyers. Police brutality and impunity weren't invented on 9/11, and they weren't brought here from anywhere else. If we want a different kind of policing, we need to acknowledge the history, and the brutal Americanness, of the policing we've got.

The warmongering fools in the White House continue their sabre-rattling at Russia:

Obama to send US troops into more countries surrounding Russia

WASHINGTON — The US military's plans to send troops into Romania and Bulgaria as a deterrence to Russian aggression could expand to include Hungary, the Czech Republic and Russia's southern neighbor, Georgia, according to a US Army official spearheading the effort.

Exercises between US troops with Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, which began last April, will expand through the summer, said Col. Michael Foster, of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, based in Vincenza, Italy. The exercises are part of the US Army Europe-led land force assurance training mission, known as Operation Atlantic Resolve — now expanded into "north" and "south" components.

"So by the end of the summer, you could very well see an operation that stretches from the Baltics all the way down to the Black Sea," Foster said, speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies here on Monday. "As you connect countries, there is almost a line of US troops."

The 173rd this week will also be sending nearly a battalion's worth of soldiers to the Ukraine to train troops from its national guard, considered separate from Atlantic Resolve, Foster said, "but certainly tied into deterring Russian aggression."

Rebranding: US May Look to al-Qaeda Faction as New ‘Moderate’ Allies in Syria

The dissolution of the Hazm Movement, one of the last US-armed “moderate” rebel factions in northern Syria, has created a paucity of factions for the US to throw weapons at, at a time when the Pentagon is talking up the creation of a huge moderate force.

Enter al-Qaeda? It’s hard to imagine, but Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper is insisting now that moderates are “anyone who is not affiliated with ISIS,” and that the only obstacle to arming such groups are the international rules of law.

There are ways around that too though. Al-Qaeda’s Syria faction, Jabhat al-Nusra, is being courted by Qatar to publicly distance itself from al-Qaeda’s parent leadership as a way to get around international bans on funding al-Qaeda.

Just as Iraq has decided that it's a little tired of Americans bullying, bombing and shooting them - Americans seem to be thinking that it's time for another round of bullying, bombing and shooting Iraqis.

The propaganda is working:

America’s war fever is rising: How fear & bloodlust are bringing Americans together

Has the whole world gone crazy?

I was feeling this way already, but the latest poll from Quinnipiac University has pushed my anxiety to a new level. According to Quinnipiac, a robust 62 percent of registered voters in the United States hold the opinion that sending American men and women to kill and be killed in Syria and Iraq is something their government should do. In fact, despite the politics of our time being largely known for discord and division, Quinnipiac finds that the wisdom of launching another ground war in Iraq — the third in 30 years — is one policy question about which nearly all Americans agree. Sixty-eight percent of men are into it; 57 percent of women are all-aboard; 73 percent of Republicans are a go; and 60 percent of independents, as well as 53 percent of Democrats, are right there with them.

The unanimity goes even deeper. Sixty-four percent of 18-34 year-olds want to send troops back again, and 66 percent of 35-54 year-olds agree. The least gung-ho age group, respondents aged 55 and up, are only marginally less enthusiastic, with 59 percent registering their support. As you might expect, there’s also a remarkable degree of conformity when it comes to how various Americans view the ISIS threat, and how they expect U.S. troops would fare in a full-scale war against the paramilitary group. Sixty-seven percent of all registered voters see ISIS as a “major” threat to the “security” of the U.S., and 69 percent say they’re either “very confident” or “somewhat confident” that a war against ISIS is one America would win.

Of course, none of this is to say that Americans have entirely forgotten the almost 10 years their armed forces recently spent fighting and dying in Iraq. They remember them well; it’s just that they’ve drawn from the experience some odd conclusions. When asked by Quinnipiac, a majority — 53 percent, to be precise — said that their chief worry concerning another major war in Iraq is that the U.S. might “not go far enough” in taking the fight to ISIS. Quite likely, many of them believe that ISIS would not be a problem today if the U.S. hadn’t exited the country during President Obama’s first term. Quite likely, few of these Americans understand that ISIS is the spawn of Al Qaeda in Iraq, a group that did not exist in the country until after the Americans showed up.