Britain's Daily Mirror has hired fired NBC jounalist Peter Arnett.

Britain's Daily Mirror said on Tuesday it had hired veteran U.S reporter Peter Arnett, sacked by American TV network NBC after he told Iraqi television the U.S, war plan against Saddam Hussein had failed. "I report the truth of what is happening in Baghdad and will not apologize for it," he told the tabloid newspaper, one of the most prominent opponents of Britain's involvement in the war.

Update: Walter Cronkite writes about Arnett in Tuesday's New York Times.

Iraq has not yet allowed the International Red Cross to visit American POWs in Iraq. The Red Cross has visited Iraqi prisoners of war held by US-led forces in the south of the country. Here is today's IRC press release.

In other news, Geraldo Rivera is denying reports that he has been asked to leave Iraq for disclosing too many tactical details of the war.

Reporting on the Fox News Channel, Rivera said he's actually further inside Iraq than he'd been before. He was standing alongside U.S. troops in a building he identified as Iraq's ruling party headquarters in a city south of Baghdad.

Rivera said it sounds like the rumors that he'd been kicked out were spread by people he described as "rats" at NBC, where he used to work. He said his rivals "can't compete fair and square on the battlefield" — so they try to stab him in the back. But in the end, he insists, "quality journalism wins out."

Rivera said he has a "great relationship" with the troops in the 101st Airborne — and that he plans to "march into Baghdad alongside them." Sources at U.S. Central Command have said that Rivera was asked to leave because he revealed tactical information.

From the BBC: The Pentagon says there are more than 300,000 coalition troops in the Gulf area, more than 100,000 inside Iraq. The UK says US led forces are holding 8,000 POWS. And Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf says Iraqi forces killed 43 US and UK soldiers in past 36 hours and destroyed 13 coalition tanks.

Al Jazeera, the Arab television network, is defending their coverage of the war, including showing "images of bombed Baghdad buildings, bloodied and screaming Iraqi children and slain or captured U.S. and British troops."

While U.S. and Britain want the war portrayed as one to liberate Iraqis, Al Jazeera insists that its coverage, intended to "show the war in all its horrors," is not ideologically based but fact based.

Al Jazeera also complains that the U.S. and Britain are not allowing their journalists enough access. Only one of its reporters is "embedded."

Al Jazeera's English website is here, but AOL seems to be blocking our access to it. We get an error message saying we are not authorized to view the site, followed by "HTTP 401.3 - Access denied by ACL on resource Internet Information Services." Is anyone else getting through?

Update: Thanks to a commenter, we learn that Al Jazeera in English is now available here. It works for us as of now.

Correction: The aljazeerah info site is not related to Al Jazeera tv. The website itself states, "This website (aljazeerah.info) is not related by any means to the Arabic TV network, "Aljazeera."

The site's being hacked is old news, but from emails we received, we thought it was back up. Guess not.

From Free Mike Hawash:

On Thursday, March 20, 2003, our friend and colleague Maher (Mike) Hawash was arrested ("detained") as a "material witness" by the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force in the parking lot of Intel Corp's Hawthorne Farms parking lot. Simultaneously, FBI agents in bulletproof vests and carrying assault rifles awoke Mike's wife Lisa and their three children in the home, which they proceeded to search. Since then, Mike has been held in the Federal Prison at Sheridan, OR.

Here are some facts:

Mike is not charged with any crime, and it has not been suggested that he will be;

Mike is a U.S. citizen of middle-eastern descent;

The warrants and subpoenas in Mike's case are all secret, sealed by the court at the U.S. government's request;

The U.S. has held other middle-eastern men for as long as 15 months without charge as "material witnesses";

Historically, "material witness" arrests were solely for grand-jury or trial witnesses who were either a "flight risk" or represented a "danger" to the community. Mike has a job, a home, a family, and deep roots in his community.

What you can do

Write your Congressmen! Write to your U.S. Senators and representative. Most have webmail forms on their congressional websites, and all have their postal addresses on their sites.  Here is one letter that has been sent.

Go to www.senate.gov to find your Senators, and www.house.gov to find your U.S. Representatives.  If you live in Oregon, your Senators are Senator Wyden and Senator Smith.

Your U.S. Represenative may be one of: Earl Blumenauer, Peter DeFazio, Darlene Hooley, Gregory Walden and David Wu.

The host of the site is a former Intel Corp. Vice President and was Mike's boss at Intel during much of the 1990s. Thanks to Atrios and Jim Capozzola at Rittenhouse Review for the link.

We wonder whether this arrest is a result of information obtained from a cooperating defendant in the federal terrorism case pending in Oregon against six suspects. Ziska has more links to the case, which the LA Times suggested may be more of a case of bumbling holy warriors than terrorism. Via Cursor, here's more.

This just in from Kyle O'Dowd, Legislative Director for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers ( NACDL):

On March 27, the House of Representatives approved an amendment to child abduction legislation that would significantly impair judicial discretion to depart downward under the Sentencing Guidelines. The amendment, described below, was filed the evening before the floor vote on the unrelated bill. While this is not the first legislative attempt to limit downward departures, it is by far the most sweeping. And the bills provisions have never been considered by the House or Senate Judiciary Committees. A procedural maneuver will allow the bill to go to conference with the Senate immediately.

Offered by Rep. Feeney (R-FL) with the full support of Chairman Sensenbrenner (R-WI), the legislation would, among other things:

(1) Prohibit downward departures based on factors that are not specifically enumerated in the Sentencing Guidelines;
(2) prohibit certain types of departures, such as those based on youth, aberrant behavior, family responsibilities, military service, and a combination of factors;
(3) strictly regulate "fast track" departures in illegal reentry cases and limit such departures to 4 levels;
(4) prohibit departures based on diminished capacity in cases involving obscenity and sex offenses;
(5) require de novo appellate review of departure decisions, effectively repealing Koon v. United States;
(6) require a government motion before a judge can award the additional one-level reduction for extraordinary acceptance of responsibility; and
(7) require that the Attorney General report downward departures not based on substantial assistance to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, including the identity of the judge, the facts of the case, and other information.

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers ( NACDL) and other organizations sent the following letter in opposition. Plans are being made to move the opposition to the Senate. We will update as soon as there is more news on this.

The other organizations opposing the measure are:

Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
National Legal Aid and Defender Association
Families Against Mandatory Minimums
American Civil Liberties Union

NBC fired journalist Peter Arnett on Monday, "saying it was wrong for him to give an interview with state-run Iraqi TV in which he said the American-led coalition's initial plan for the war had failed because of Iraq's resistance."

On Sunday, NBC defended Arnett. Arnett has apologized for his comments, referring to his Iraqi TV interview as a "misjudgment." He is making plans to leave Iraq.

We appreciated Arnett's reporting and will miss it.

What's the real reason we are invading Iraq? According to the Administration, it is to disarm and remove Saddam, establish "regime change," eliminate his weapons of mass destruction and prevent him from blackmailing his neighbors and aiding terrorist groups. According to others, invading Iraq is just the beginning, and the real plan is to reshape the entire region, and then the world.

Robert Dreyfuss has an excellent article, Just the Beginning, in the new issue of American Prospect in which he says the war on Iraq may be just the opening salvo. Dreyfuss quotes several military, national security and other experts who say the war cannot be confined to Iraq. It will spread all over the Middle East. Already, Dreyfuss says, Bush and the neoconservatives in his Administration have formed plans to reshape the entire region, and possibly the world.

But the Bush administration's hawks, especially the neoconservatives who provide the driving force for war, see the conflict with Iraq as much more than that. It is a signal event, designed to create cataclysmic shock waves throughout the region and around the world, ushering in a new era of American imperial power. It is also likely to bring the United States into conflict with several states in the Middle East. Those who think that U.S. armed forces can complete a tidy war in Iraq, without the battle spreading beyond Iraq's borders, are likely to be mistaken. ....In the Middle East, impending "regime change" in Iraq is just the first step in a wholesale reordering of the entire region, according to neoconservatives -- who've begun almost gleefully referring to themselves as a "cabal." Like dominoes, the regimes in the region -- first Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia, then Lebanon and the PLO, and finally Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia -- are slated to capitulate, collapse or face U.S. military action. To those states, says cabal ringleader Richard Perle, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and chairman of the Defense Policy Board, an influential Pentagon advisory committee, "We could deliver a short message, a two-word message: 'You're next.'" In the aftermath, several of those states, including Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia, may end up as dismantled, unstable shards in the form of mini-states that resemble Yugoslavia's piecemeal wreckage. And despite the Wilsonian rhetoric from the president and his advisers about bringing democracy to the Middle East, at bottom it's clear that their version of democracy might have to be imposed by force of arms.

After the Middle East, the U.S. plans to move on to the Philippines, Korea and even Latin America.

Three thousand U.S. soldiers are slated to arrive in the Philippines, opening yet another new front in the war on terrorism, and North Korea is finally in the administration's sights. On the horizon could be Latin America, where the Bush administration endorsed a failed regime change in Venezuela last year, and where new left-leaning challenges are emerging in Brazil, Ecuador and elsewhere.

The experts see the plan as folly and madness. The U.S. is the "bully in the playpen." We have to agree.

TalkLeft is moving to a new server to accomodate our increased traffic. We were down Sunday and hope to be operational today, although there could be a glitch or two from the move. Thanks for your patience. CrimeLynx is moving to the new server as well.

Also, thanks to those of you who chipped in through our Paypal and Amazon links on the left. If you haven't yet, and would like to, all contributions, even small ones, are welcome and much appreciated. Amazon donations are anonymous, Paypal lets us know your name and email address.

The New York Times reports that the anti-war effort is now emphasizing civility over confrontation. At Win Without War, they are encouraging those with anti-war views to send an email of support to the troops.

Operation Dear Abby offers a way to send messages of support to men and women deployed in the Gulf region. Servicemembers may reply to your message, offering an opportunity for genuine dialogue. It is recommended that you remain positive in your correspondences with the troops. While no one should feel discouraged from expressing their views, it is important to have in mind the welfare of the soldiers you correspond with. Let them know how much you support their safe return."

Veterans for Common Sense has additional ways those who oppose the war can support the troops, from sending or funding care packages to adopting a platoon or a penpal.

A new poll shows that only 34% of Americans think the war is going well.

Popular belief that the United States is coasting to victory in Iraq has fallen sharply, a new U.S. opinion poll showed on Friday, as Washington struggled in the image battle at home and abroad.

The Gallup survey for CNN and USA Today said public support for the war remained steady at around 70 percent...However, the number of Americans who thought the conflict was going "very well" shot down after news reports from the front lines of U.S. military setbacks and cautions from President Bush against any talk of a quick victory.

Gallup said just 34 percent of Americans surveyed on Monday and Tuesday thought the war was going very well.

That was down from 44 percent on Sunday, the day Iraqi television broadcast graphic images of killed and captured American soldiers, and from 62 percent on Saturday."

In a new CBS poll, 55 percent of those responding believed the United States had underestimated the Iraqi army. In an ABC News/Washington Post survey, 57 percent of now expected fighting to last months rather than weeks.

It's clear to us that the Bush Administration was not forthright about the details of the war before it started. Realistic estimates of the war's cost, its length, expected strength of Iraqi resistance and the number of expected casualties all should have been shared with the American people.

Last night we viewed a network report that the Administration had told the American people what to expect--as proof, they played a two sentence clip from a Bush speech last October!

We expect support for this war to erode further as more U.S. and British troops are killed or taken prisoner, particlularly thosed killed by trickery--as were the four marines killed last night by a suicide bomber posing as a taxi driver. What a needless waste of life.

The best way to support our troops is to bring them home now.

Update: Iraq's Vice President says suicide bombings will now be "routine military policy."

The people of this town in Iowa have far too much time on their hands. Maybe they could volunteer some of it a constructive way, rather than coming up with hare-brained ideas like passing a law to make lying a crime. [link via Arthur Silber at Light of Reason]:

MOUNT STERLING, Iowa - Lying could be perceived as more than just a character flaw in this southeast Iowa town. It could become a crime.

Four City Council members have proposed an ordinance against fibbing.

Acting Mayor Jo Hamlet said he's tired of the exaggerating that comes with stories in the town of 40 residents famous for its hunting and fishing.

"We wanted to slow down on this lying," Hamlet said this week. "Plus, I'm bored. ... It's been a long winter."

Hamlet said the ordinance has a chance of passing.

"We're going to beat it around," he said. "You never know with the City Council around here what's going to happen."

INDICT has been collecting information about Iraqi war crimes since 1996. To date the organization has targeted twelve members of the Iraqi regime for prosecution. INDICT has released for the first time some of the evidence it has gathered implicating senior members of the Iraqi regime in horrific abuses of human rights. Here is an online summary (in pdf) of first hand accounts of the brutality. The full statements are downloadable.

Who is INDICT?