The FBI reports it has interviewed 5,000 Iraqis in the U.S. since last month. The FBI says the interviews are voluntary. 30 interviewees have been arrested and detained afterwards, although none have been charged with a crime.

Although the FBI says it is not using the interviews to arrest large numbers of Iraqis, two law enforcement officials speaking on condition of anonymity said about 30 have been detained on immigration charges since the program began last week.

Late last month, Attorney General John Ashcroft gave the FBI and U.S. marshals authority to arrest people on immigration charges.

Some of those held are people the FBI had under surveillance and decided to apprehend when hostilities with Iraq began, the officials said. None had been charged with any terrorist plot, espionage or any other criminal offenses, the officials said.

Here are the reasons that many civil liberties and immigration groups object to the singling out of Iraqis for these interviews.

Al Jazeera now has an English website. [link via Seeing the Forest]

The Washington Post has a continually updated Latest News in Iraq blog-type feed here.

As Iraq's top Olympic official, Uday Hussein is accused of the torture and murder of athletes who fail to win.

THE BUTCHER'S BOY , as he is sometimes called, is reputed to be the most brutal member of Iraq's notorious ruling family. As an infant he reportedly played with disarmed grenades. By 10 he was accompanying his father to the torture chamber at Qasr-al-Nihayyah (the Palace of the End, where many political enemies, including deposed King Faisal II, were killed) to watch Saddam deal with dissidents. By 16 he bragged of committing his first murder, telling classmates he had killed a teacher who had upbraided him in front of a girlfriend.

For nearly 20 years Uday Hussein has been the most powerful force in Iraq's athletic hierarchy. In 1984, when Uday was 20, Saddam handed his son the reins of both the country's Olympic committee and its soccer federation, hoping Uday could help rebuild the spirit of the nation's youth while also proving himself a worthy successor to his father. ...Uday's penchant for violence has long been an open secret among international athletic officials. ...

"Two stories about Uday leap to mind," the State Department official told SI. "The first is the caning of the feet -- called falaka -- of the soccer team. That form of torture is well known to be used by Saddam's forces as well. They beat the soles of the feet, which breaks a lot of the smaller bones, causes massive swelling and leaves victims unable to walk for a while. There were also reports that after a loss Uday forced the volleyball team, which was made up of taller athletes, to remain in a room he had constructed with a five-foot-high ceiling. He built the room so small that not all of them could sit at the same time. The only way they could fit was by having half of them standing and leaning over while the other half were sitting with their knees in their chests. He considered this a motivational technique. There was always a psychological element to the kind of torture Uday employed.

A human rights group has lodged a complaint with the International Olympics Committee, backed up by several affidavits of tortured athletes. There has been no investigation or action to date.

IOC president Jacques Rogge acknowledged last week that his organization received the complaint and says it is in the hands of the ethics committee. But IOC member Richard Pound says that it is "important to remember these are just allegations, and you have to make sure this is not all tied to the Iraq-U.S. dispute, that we are not being used for propaganda. You just never know."

This is disgusting, and we hope other rights groups join the effort to hold this son of Saddam accountable, assuming he wasn't killed last week. He belongs in the International Criminal Court. The court Bush refused to allow America to join. At least we can't think of any way Bush and Rumsfeld could intervene to stop any such proceedings brought against Uday.

The Nation has collected dispatches from people around the globe reporting on reaction to the Invasion of Iraq. The reports come from cities as diverse as Hanoi, Lagos, Cairo, Paris, Beijing, London and Jerusalem.

Also check out our new "warblog" blogroll on the right. These sites are updated continuously, particularly Sean-Pauls' the Agonist. Others are by Chris Allbritton, a non-embedded freelance reporter in Bagdad and Salam Pax, a resident of Bagdad who is still there.

The U.S. Supreme Court has handed Ashcroft another victory. The Court refused to allow the ACLU, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers ( NACDL) and other groups to intervene and appeal the FISA Review Court decision allowing expanded secret searches of mail, email and conversations and the unprecedented sharing of the seized information between intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

The Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of the case, so the issue likely be back before the Court at some point.

The Bush administration has argued the surveillance, and a special court that oversees sensitive domestic espionage tactics, are indispensable tools in the war on terror. The ACLU used an unusual maneuver to get the case to the Supreme Court, filing an appeal on behalf of people who don't even know they're being monitored. The justices would have had to give special permission to allow it. They refused, without comment. The action was not a ruling on the merits of the ACLU's challenge, and the issue is expected to return to the high court later.

Civil liberties watchdogs are concerned about the expanded use of FISA for secret surveillance and searches because there is "little or no" oversight by the courts or outide parties over the process. Further, the target of the surveillance never has to be informed that the government has obtained his personal records or put him under surveillance, and those who turn over records are effectively gagged from disclosing they received an order and complied with it.

Our summary of the case that was decided today is here. Our detailed coverage of the case, the arguments against the ruling and the FISA and Patriot Act provisions that underlie Ashcroft's justification for the expanded surveillance, can be found here.

The Washington Post reports today on Ashcroft's significant expansion of the number of wiretaps and other searches since the ruling by the FISA Review Court.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Justice Department and FBI have dramatically increased the use of two little-known powers that allow authorities to tap telephones, seize bank and telephone records and obtain other information in counterterrorism investigations with no immediate court oversight, according to officials and newly disclosed documents.

The FBI, for example, has issued scores of "national security letters" that require businesses to turn over electronic records about finances, telephone calls, e-mail and other personal information, according to officials and documents. The letters, a type of administrative subpoena, may be issued independently by FBI field offices and are not subject to judicial review unless a case comes to court, officials said.

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft has also personally signed more than 170 "emergency foreign intelligence warrants," three times the number authorized in the preceding 23 years, according to recent congressional testimony.

Update: You can read the opinion here.

"A second of six Yemeni-American men accused of training at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan months before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks pleaded guilty today to charges he supported al Qaeda."

"Shafal Mosed, 24, entered the plea to a charge of knowingly and unlawfully providing and attempting to provide material resources to a foreign terrorist organization, namely al Qaeda.
Authorities indicated they would seek an eight-year prison term."

Phyllis Bennis, author of Understanding the U.S.-Iraq Crisis: A Primer, and John Cavanagh, director of the Institute of Policy Studies, have prepared these Talking Points on the U.S.-Iraq Crisis. From the introduction:

This preventive war (it isn't even preemptive because there is no imminent threat to preempt) is among the most dangerous and reckless actions ever taken by a U.S. president. It isn't the first time the U.S. has launched an unjustified illegal war. But it is the first time such a war has been justified through a "doctrine" of preemptive war that abandons all understandings that war, with all its horrors, can be used only as the last possible resort when a nation's security and survival are threatened.

Some of the points:

The war at home

This war threatens Americans. We are now at greater risk. This war will increase anti-American sentiments around the world, and will serve as a recruiting poster for al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations....This is an illegitimate war, and stands in violation of the UN Charter and international law. We hold the U.S. accountable for this illegal war.

The War Abroad

This war will be devastating for Iraq and Iraqis. The Pentagon's plan of "shock and awe" to open the main air attack against Baghdad will send 3,000 cruise missiles and precision-guided bombs into a crowded city of 6 million people. That is ten times the number of such bombs used in the entire Gulf War in 1991.
The humanitarian consequences will be severe.

What we should do

We should demand that Congress refuse to pay for waging an illegal war. We should also be clear that the U.S. is accountable for paying the costs of rehabilitating Iraq's war-shattered infrastructure as well as the emergency costs of refugees, food aid, etc. That money should be channelled through the UN humanitarian agencies, not paid to U.S. corporations, especially those (like Halliburton - already offered a $1 billion + contract) with direct links to the Bush administration.

We should urge the General Assembly to convene in emergency session under the terms of the Uniting for Peace precedent at the UN. That allows the Assembly to take up issues ordinarily reserved for the Security Council - such as war in Iraq -- when the Council is paralyzed because of disagreements among the five veto-wielding permanent members. A General Assembly resolution (where there is not veto) could condemn the U.S. war (important for delegitimating future such wars), demand an immediate halt to the war, request an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on the legality of the war, or more.

The Judge in the Michigan terror trial now underway in federal court has refused to adjourn the trial because of the preducial effect on the jury of the War on Iraq. The men on trial are charged with providing material aid to terrorists --the Government alleges they were in a sleeper cell. Our most recent, detailed explanation of the case is here.

Former Senator Eugene McCarthy on the War in Iraq:

"I'm not clear as to what a pre-emptive strike means," McCarthy said. "I don't think we should call it a war. It's kind of a police action."

Update: U.S. says the speech may be an old one.

This from Reuters.... Hussein Makes Televised Speech

Monday, Mar 24, 2003; 3:21 AM

BAGHDAD, March 24 (Reuters) - Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, dressed in a military uniform, appeared on state television on Monday and hailed the Iraqi military on the fifth day of a U.S.-led invasion to overthrow him.

"We made a lot of sacrifices to avert war," Saddam said, praising the "valiant" contribution of the Iraqi military in resisting a U.S. and British war against Iraq that began on Thursday.

He said the invasion forces were "trapped" by heroic Iraqi resistance.

Reuters correspondents in Baghdad and elsewhere in the Middle East said they were confident that the man appearing on live television was Hussein. The Iraqi leader has a handful of lookalikes who sometimes stand in for him.

Speculation has abounded about Hussein's fate since the war started with air strikes on Baghdad intended to kill him. Some reports said he was dead, others that he was so badly wounded he had to receive a blood transfusion.

Within three hours of the first U.S.-led attack on Baghdad on Thursday, a tired-looking Hussein appeared on television, in a military uniform, urging his people to fight. But the CIA says it could have been pre-recorded -- even though he referred in the address to the start of the raid at dawn.

Update: Here is the text of Michael Moore's acceptance speech:

Michael Moore: Whoa. On behalf of our producers Kathleen Glynn and Michael Donovan from Canada, I'd like to thank the Academy for this. I have invited my fellow documentary nominees on the stage with us, and we would like to — they're here in solidarity with me because we like nonfiction. We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it's the fictition of duct tape or fictition of orange alerts we are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you. And any time you got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up. Thank you very much.

Michael Moore rocked the Academy Awards tonight with his acceptance speech following the Best Documentary Award for Bowling for Columbine. At first there were a few cheers but they quickly turned to jeers when he said "Shame on President Bush" whom he called a fictitious president running a fictitious war. By the time he was done, there were loud boos. Moore was laughing, he knew his remarks were over the top, but he clearly intended to shock, and the boos were his confirmation that he succeeded.

We weren't offended by his remarks. But we think he wasted a good opportunity and instead accomplished just what we were afraid of: turning millions of people off. Not by his beliefs, but in the way he chose to express them. It's his right of course, but he certainly didn't help the anti-war movement, in our opinion.

After Moore, host Steve Martin came back and got a laugh with his line, "As you might expect, things are going great backstage. The Teamsters just loaded Michael Moore into the trunk of his limo."

Update: Contrast Moore with Adrian Brody who got cheers and a standing ovation for his heartfelt plea that the war end soon.

Smythe's World: "For all the reaction that [it] caused, I have yet to hear anyone say that a single word of what Michael Moore said last night was false. Sometimes it's tacky to tell the truth. "

Lisa English of Ruminate This is really angry at Bush at the fate of the detainees:

If one follicle is touched on the head of any American service personnel in captivity, we can blame the new war policies of our terrorist president, George Bush. It's really not a hard one to figure out, and so one begins to wonder about the collective sanity of this administration. Is it mental illness or just another case of stunning neoconservative hubris? You decide. Since when is this Administration so damn concerned about adhering to the tenets of the Geneva Convention?

We've written about the U.S. and torture of Al Qaeda captives several times--take a look at of there's our prior post, Torture Lite. Or these, about torture and homicides at Bagram Air Base which is under U.S. military control.

Yes, we know the difference according to the Administration between enemy combatants and prisoners of war. The Administration argues that Al Qaeda members don't qualify because they don't have these qualifications: (1) being under a responsible command; (2) having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance; (3) carrying arms openly; and (4) conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war. At times they have included the qualification of wearing a military uniform. Back last February, Bush said the Taliban and Al Qaeda were enemy combatants. After a lot of heat, he revised his position to recognize that Taliban soldiers were entitled to POW protections but not Al Qaeda. This Administration has been making up the rules as it goes along and refuses to concede that enemy combatants are entitled to judicial review of its decision.

"Article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention states that if there is "any doubt" as to whether captured combatants should be recognized as POWs, "such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal." In other words, if doubt exists, the status of each detainee must be determined individually, not by a blanket decision of the President."

"Even if not technically prisoners of war, al Qaeda and Taliban captives still qualify for "humane treatment" under the Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment, a resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1988."

We believe in treating all prisoners as human beings and with dignity. As we said here, "If we treat the citizens of other countries this way, why won't these other countries retaliate with similar or harsher treatment when they capture members of our military?" Don't we reap what we sow?