Word: sodium
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Posner elaborates in startling detail how U.S. interrogators used drugs--an unnamed "quick-on, quick-off" painkiller and Sodium Pentothal, the old movie truth serum--in a chemical version of reward and punishment to make Zubaydah talk. When questioning stalled, according to Posner, CIA men flew Zubaydah to an Afghan complex fitted out as a fake Saudi jail chamber, where "two Arab-Americans, now with Special Forces," pretending to be Saudi inquisitors, used drugs and threats to scare him into more confessions...
Finally, the details of Zubaydah's drug-induced confessions might bring on charges that the U.S. is using torture on terrorism suspects. According to Posner, the Administration decided shortly after 9/11 to permit the use of Sodium Pentothal on prisoners. The Administration, he writes, "privately believes that the Supreme Court has implicitly approved using such drugs in matters where public safety is at risk," citing a 1963 opinion...
...Korea's military machine. Pyongyang gets precursor chemicals for its chemical and biological weapons programs from Europe, China and Russia, according to U.S. and South Korean officials. The freighter that took the North Korean Scuds to Yemen returned to the North via Germany, loading up with a shipment of sodium cyanide?a chemical used in metal plating and gold extraction that can also be used to make nerve gas. That shipment was blocked by German and French authorities. Germany also recently blocked a North Korea-bound consignment of aluminum tubes?key components for the centrifuges used to enrich uranium...
...they arrested 36-year-old Alias Osman in a Kuala Lumpur suburb. Alias, they claim, was a member of the militant Islamic group Jemaah Islamiah (JI). Police say he led them to an oil-palm plantation where a cache of chemicals was buried, including an unspecified amount of sodium azide, a powder that can be used to make poison gas. "When mixed with water, acid or metal, it changes rapidly to a highly toxic gas," says a Malaysian-government chemist. "The gas can be fatal...
Cooking isn’t hard. Even ramen noodle packages—a generally economical source of lots of sodium and not much else that fits neatly into the collegiate and post-collegiate budget—can be redeemed in her mind. “Steam some vegetables and add them to the ramen base,” Katzen advises, offering easily the most half-hearted yet kind cooking tip for newly-dining-hall-free graduates...