Up until now, most of the details of prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay have come from the detainees. Now, an American soldier has come forward to corrorborate the existence of treatment that violates the Geneva Conventions.

Erik Saar, an Arabic speaker who was a translator in interrogation sessions, has produced a searing first-hand account of working at Guantánamo. It will prove a damaging blow to a White House still struggling to recover from the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.

In an exclusive interview, Saar told The Observer that prisoners were physically assaulted by 'snatch squads' and subjected to sexual interrogation techniques and that the Geneva Conventions were deliberately ignored by the US military. Saar paints a picture of a base where interrogations of often innocent prisoners have spiralled out of control, doing massive damage to America's image in the Muslim world.

Saar was a Bush supporter in 2000. He says Guantanamo changed his outlook.

Two more links: The allegations by Omar Deghayes that he was blinded in one eye and tortured at Guantanamo, and this report (pdf) by the Center for Constitutional Rights, consisting of the statements of detainees Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed, is a must-read.

The Columbia Journalism Review reports that "evangelical Christians are creating an alternative universe of faith-based news." Their instrument is the National Religious Broadcasters, whose tag line is "Christian Communicators Impacting the World." The court flap is at the top of their agenda right now. [Via Avedon Carol at Sideshow, who will be a guest blogger at Atrios this week, while he's on the road.

Also guest blogging at the Big A this week are Echidne the Goddess of Echidne of the Snakes and Atta Throat Warbler Mangrove Turk of Rising Hegemon.

Amidst much fanfare last week, President Bush announced the capture of Abu Faraj al-Libbi, supposedly a very senior al Qaeda leader in Pakistan who might lead us to Osama. The BBC picked it up here.

Now it turns out, the capture may have been just another Emily Littella moment. The Sunday Times of London reports that European counter-terrorism experts believe Bush and Rice got it wrong, and confused al-Libbi with another much more senior al Qaeda leader named Anas al-Liby, who is thought to be a mastermind of the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa. al-Liby has not been captured.

When The Sunday Times contacted a senior FBI counter-terrorism official for information about the importance of the detained man, he sent material on al-Liby, the wrong man.

“Al-Libbi is just a ‘middle-level’ leader,” said Jean-Charles Brisard, a French intelligence investigator and leading expert on terrorism finance. “Pakistan and US authorities have completely overestimated his role and importance. He was never more than a regional facilitator between Al-Qaeda and local Pakistani Islamic groups.”

I'm taking the day off from blogging to make lunch for my mother and my sister. The only people missing are the TL kid, who's in New York, and my father, who passed away a few years ago, but they will be with us in spirit. Happy Mother's Day to all of our readers, and here's an open thread for those of you who are online.

Order Your's Today

This is the first "Informed Citizen Guide" published by William, James & Co. It's called Untidy: The Blogs on Rumsfeld, and it tells the story of Donald Rumsfeld through the eyes of his blogging critics. The posts were collected by editor and former teacher Tom Sumner.

THE INFORMED CITIZEN SERIES looks at American issues through the viewpoint of political bloggers, the Internet’s informed—and informing—citizens.

There are some interesting art stories in the news.

In Paris, Fernando Botero, Latin America's "best known artist," known mostly for his pastoral scenes of small town life, has created an Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse collection:

Frank Rich writes today about Laura Bush, MSM, bloggers and the Runaway Bride. He begins,

AS we commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Drudge Report and the second anniversary of the Jayson Blair scandal, American journalists are in a race with the runaway bride for public enemy No. 1. Newspaper circulation is on the skids, the big three network anchor thrones are as precarious as King Lear's, bloggers are on the rampage, and the government is embracing fake reporters and threatening to jail real ones. A Pew Research Center poll shows that Americans now trust the press less than every other major institution, from government to medicine to banks. We can only be grateful that the matchups didn't include pornographers or Major League Baseball.

Then - just when you think things couldn't get any worse - along comes the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales spoke at a graduation ceremony in Texas yesterday. He didn't address torture or the treatment of prisoners in his speech. But, afterwards, in an interview at the office of the U.S. Attorney, he said the U.S. has not engaged in torture of prisoners.

Gonzales... said many of the widely publicized incidents of abuse by the military and civilian contractors cannot be prosecuted as torture. "Torture, as a matter of prosecution, is defined by Congress as the intentional infliction of severe physical and mental pain or suffering."

"Congress intended a very high bar here in order to be prosecuted for engaging in torture," he said. "There may be conduct that you may find offensive that falls far short of torture."

So, according to Gonzales, these photos do not depict severe physical and mental pain and suffering:

If you had any doubt that evangelical leader James Dobson's grand plan is to for the radical right fringe to assume the leadership of this country, here's your final clue. In a radio address about the filibuster and nuclear option,

James C. Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, described the fight as the tipping point of the Bush presidency. "Nothing good took place last November, only the potential for something good," Dr. Dobson said.

Via Suburban Guerilla who got a great looking bloglift (y.w.c.t.p.) when she migrated to Wordpress and a new home, so update your bookmarks.

Bystanders, protesters and neighbors sued the federal government for being tear-gassed during immigration agents' Miami raid five years ago on the home of Elian Gonzales' relatives. The case proceeded to a non-jury trial. The court has ruled for the Government.

In a 19-page decision U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore said the demonstrators and bystanders failed to show enough credible evidence that federal officers' use of force was "unreasonable under the circumstances."

The 13 people sued the government for $3.25 million , claiming they had lingering injuries after being sprayed at close range on their own property or behind barricades. Three neighbors testified that an agent gassed them without warning from 2 to 4 feet (about 1 meter) away as they stood alone in their fenced front yards.

by TChris

Gratitude is owed to the AP for its careful analysis of death penalty cases in Ohio. Here's the result in summation:

Ohio's death penalty has been inconsistently applied since it was enacted in 1981, according to a first-ever analysis by The Associated Press. Race, the extensive use of plea bargains and even where a crime has been committed all play a role in who is sentenced to death.

Race of the victim seems to play a huge role in the administration of the death penalty in Ohio.