Saudi-born Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, 27, is the newest target of the FBI. They are searching all over for him. He is wanted on an immigration violation, but the FBI believes he has ties to Al Qaeda and is linked to "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla.

The information about El Shukrijumah does not come from Padilla, who still is neither talking nor cooperating.

Update: El Shukrijumah's family defends him, saying the FBI is looking for the wrong guy.

The Chicago Tribune says the FBI believes El Shukrijumah and Jose Padilla were partners.

The Miami Herald says Khalid Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks who was captured in Pakistan March 1 and taken to Bakram Air Base for interrogation, provided the information about El Shukrijumah that led to the world wide alert for him. Mohammed picked El Shukrijumah out of a photo lineup.

California Governor Gray Davis is shaking up the California judiciary. He is appointing a greater percentage of gays, women and minorities than any other governor in California history.

The U.S. has demanded that Iraq diplomats leave the U.S. by midnight tonight. On Wednesday, the diplomats were given 48 hours to leave the country.

When a diplomat is declared persona non-grata, he is expected to leave and take his family with him.

[State Dept. Spokesman Louis] Fintor could not say where the Iraqi diplomats would go. Normally when diplomats are expelled they are expected to return to their country.

However, because of the war it would be difficult for the ousted Iraqi diplomats and their families to return home. They can, however, go to Algeria, which will be considered a host country because the Iraqi interest section is located at the Algerian Embassy. The diplomats could also seek asylum in a third country.

Yesterday, the U.S. asked 67 other countries to sever ties with Iraq and close Iraqi embassies. Only two, Australia and Romania, have indicated they intend to do so.

The UPI is reporting that the decapitation attempt on Saddam Hussein two nights ago was the result of a secret CIA operation in which Delta operatives compromised a fiberoptic communication center and intercepted calls among Iraqi leaders.

The article reports

A CIA source said Saddam it is believed "sustained two burst ear drums" during the attack on the three-building compound. Saddam "also sustained damage from concussion" and was "extremely disoriented...almost in a vegetative state" for a time.

Sources also advised UPI that it has highly credible reports Saddam's son Qusay was killed in the attack.

Zacarias Moussaoui has advised the federal court that he wants to call two top Al Qaeda captives as witnesses in his trial. They are Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind 9/11 and Mohamed al-Hawsawi, who allegedly shipped credit cards to the 19 hijackers in Florida for expenses.

We think the Court has to grant Moussaoui's request, particularly as to Mohammed, if reports are true that after his capture, he told the Government that Moussaoui was never a part of 9/11, but was going to be used in a different attack. That testimony is exculpatory as to Moussaoui, and he has a right to know about it and call witnesses to bring it before the jury. An agent can't testify to it instead of Mohammed because that would be hearsay. Since Mohammed's statement to the agent was made after the charged conspiracy ended, it is not a statement in furtherance of the charged conspiracy and therefore is not subject to the coconspirator exception to the hearsay rule.

However, Moussaoui may get himself in deeper trouble by insisting on calling Mohammed--if the Court grants the request, it may be the final straw for the Government in deciding to dismiss Moussaoui's federal case in favor of a trial by military tribunal. Moussaoui will have far fewer rights in such a proceeding, and his fate will not be determined by jurors but by military officials.

The Judge has previously ruled that Moussaoui could have access to captured Al Qaeda member Ramzi Binalshibh. Binalshibh allegedly wired money to the hijackers and his name appears throughout Moussaoui's Indictment. The Government is appealing that ruling to the 4th Circuit.

According to the CNN article, Government sources have reported that Binalshibh, in statements made after his capture, has told the Government that Moussaoui was never intended to be part of 9/11--absent a last minute emergency. Moussaoui says the Government is torturing Binalshibh to say things that aren't true. It's not clear whether Binalshibh is claiming Moussaoui knew he could be called upon to help the 9/11 operation if needed.

Mohammed and al-Hawsawi were captured together in Pakistan on February 28, and are reprotedly being held at Bakram Air Base in Afganistan.

One other captive that Moussaoui wants to have testify at his trial is Abu Zubaydah, alleged to be a top associate of bin Laden who was captured in March, 2002. In a handwritten motion, Moussaoui told the Court, ""Abu Zubaydah must talk to the world about September 11."

Action alert received today from the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (NCADP) on the upcoming execution of Larry Moon set for March 25:

The state of Georgia is scheduled to execute Larry Moon March 25 for the 1984 robbery and murder of Ricky Callahan in Catoosa County. Moon, a white man, allegedly shot Callahan twice in the head and stole his car before fleeing to Tennessee. He received his death sentence in 1988, but only after a trial plagued by prosecutorial misconduct. Through all the procedural flaws in Moon’s case, one critical possibility now stands out as the obvious reason to halt this pending execution: Moon may very well be innocent.

The action alert lays out all the facts and has the addresses of those to contact.

Two U.S. legal groups are maintaining that the U.S. Invasion of Iraq is Illegal.

The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq violates the basic rules of the United Nations Charter requiring countries to exhaust all peaceful means of maintaining global security before taking military action, and permitting the use of force in self-defense only in response to actual or imminent attack, two U.S. legal groups said Thursday.

The U.N. Security Council's refusal to approve a resolution proposed by the United States, Britain and Spain clarified that the weapons inspection process initiated by Security Council Resolution 1441 last November should have been permitted to continue before military action could be authorized, added The Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy (LCNP) and the Western States Legal Foundation (WSLF).

The two groups, the U.S. affiliates of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA), supported an open letter signed by 31 Canadian international law professors released Wednesday that called a U.S. attack against Iraq "a fundamental breach of international law (that) would seriously threaten the integrity of the international legal order that has been in place since the end of the Second World War."

The National Institute of Standards has just completed a study for the Government on the accuracy of facial recognition systems. Here are the major findings:

The systems recognize men more easily than women.

Younger people are harder to recognize than older people.

Recognition from video imagery is not much better than from still images.

Even topflight software is not sensitive to typical indoor lighting changes.

The technology has improved substantially over the past two years. How accurate are the systems?

The three top-rated systems verified identities correctly 87 percent to 90 percent of the time with a false-alarm rate of 1 percent. When NIST specified a false-alarm rate of 0.1 percent, the success rate dropped to between 79 percent and 82 percent. When checking facial images against a watch list of 25 images at a false-alarm rate of 1 percent, the top three systems were accurate about 80 percent of the time. The success rate fell to below 60 percent when NIST expanded the watch list to 3,000 images at the same false-alarm rate.

[link via PatriotWatch]

The ACLU has posted a new and shorter version of its original 19 page analysis of Patriot Act II, describing How “Patriot Act 2” Would Further Erode the Basic Checks on Government Power That Keep America Safe and Free.

Iraq Body Count provides a worldwide update of civilian casualties in the war on Iraq. Check out their database. If you want, you can download a counter for your site as we've done. It is the work of Marc Herold, Ph.D, Departments of Economics and Women's Studies at the University of New Hampshire.

The IRAQ BODY COUNT Database

This is a Human Security project to establish an independent and comprehensive public database of civilian deaths in Iraq resulting directly from military actions by the USA and its allies in 2003. Results and totals are continually updated and made immediately available on this page and on various IBC counters which may be freely displayed on any website, where they will be automatically updated without further intervention. Casualty figures are derived from a comprehensive survey of online media reports. Where these sources report differing figures, the range (a minimum and a maximum) are given. All results are independently reviewed and error-checked by at least three members of the Iraq Body Count project team before publication.

The project takes as its starting point and builds upon the earlier work of Professor Marc Herold who has produced the most comprehensive tabulation of civilian deaths in the war on Afghanistan from October 2001 to the present, and the methodology has been designed in close consultation with him.

Professor Herold commented: “I strongly support this initiative. The counting of civilian dead looms ever more importantly for at least two reasons: military sources and their corporate mainstream media backers seek to portray the advent of precision guided weaponry as inflicting at most, minor, incidental civilian casualties when, in truth, such is is not the case; and the major source of opposition to these modern ‘wars’ remains an informed, articulate general public which retains a commitment to the international humanitarian covenants of war at a time when most organized bodies and so-called ‘experts’ have walked away from them”.

ABC News has an article today on the possible cost of the war and the added strain to the U.S. economy.

The Administration hasn't said what it will cost yet, estimates are between $40 billion and $100 billion. Not a penny of it was included in Bush's recent deficit budget. Here are some other estimates:

How expensive the fighting part of the war is depends on the intensity of battle and how long it lasts. The estimates range from $18 billion for a one-month war to $85 billion for a six-month war. Sound expensive? It's probably the cheap part.

The real cost could be in the post-war occupation of Iraq.

Already the Pentagon has authorized $900-million for post-war rebuilding in Iraq, including the rebuilding of roads and bridges, the building of schools, hospitals and homes, and the repairing of the electrical grid and other utilities. "We're talking about as much as $50 billion a year for 10 years," adds Meyer. "Well, you can see that gets very expensive and dwarfs dramatically the cost of the combat phase."

For those of you trolling TalkLeft, please be aware we will do an instant deletion and ip banning so you can't come back, as soon as we become aware of it. Thanks to Patrick A. who just advised us of one such attempt on our Shock and Awe Post--the troller was upset he couldn't leave his messages at Atrios.

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The newest version of MT (2.63) allows us to close the comments to a particular post at any time, while choosing to delete or leave previous comments. We are vigorously making use of this feature.

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