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.

Initially we thought our comments took too long to register, and people were just clicking more than once thinking their comment hadn't gone through. But it's clear to us there is also some trolling going on.

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.

We're getting upwards of 150 comments and emails a day, just on talkleft (we also get that amount on our work email), so we may miss some. Please send us an email if you spot one we've missed.

We know emotions run high on the war, and there are conservatives who read and post here. All are welcome to engage is dialogue here, even heated debate. But foul language, gratuitous slams, anti-semitism and trolling is not tolerated. So fair warning.

Also, while we're on the topic of comments, please put any url's in html format or we will delete them because they skew the comment box and sometimes the whole site. Instructions are available in the comment box itself.

And for readers who are also writers, please don't put the entire text of long articles in the comments. We can't afford the bandwith and they discourage readers from scrolling down to later comments. Thanks.

We just don't like the sound of "Operation Liberty Sweep" one bit. Here's how it works:

The sweep, a joint operation between the FBI and Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is aimed at Iraqis whom federal agents have identified as living in the country illegally and who "might pose a threat to the safety and security of the American people," according to a statement announcing the operations in Colorado as well as dozens of similar ones throughout the country.

Federal law enforcement officials said they could not release the total number of Iraqis who would be detained nationwide but emphasized they would be arrested on immigration-law violations rather than charges directly connected to security or terrorism.

The arrests are part of a larger mobilization of federal law enforcement that began Monday ....Known as "Operation Liberty Shield," the immigration sweep will include voluntary interviews with as many as 11,000 Iraqis across the country in an effort to glean intelligence and prevent terrorist attacks in the United States.

Here in Colorado, the feds plan to "interview" approximately 150 Iraqis. Most of them came here in the late 80's to early 90's, seeking political asylum. Most of them already oppose the Iraqi regime, that's why they came here in the first place. So why are we arresting them as threats when all they've done is overstay a visa?

When the U.S. did this to Iranian students back in the 70's, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed it, finding it was not a discriminatory application of the immigration laws.

Nonetheless, these are round-ups of people who have not committed a crime. They are being selectively targeted because of their national origin. While the U.S. may have every legal right to deport them, it should not single them out solely because we are at war with their home country. Whether here legally or not, once here, they are also entititled to equal protection and due process under the law. This is racial, ethnic and religious profiling at its worst.

Lisa English of Ruminate This is all over Richard Perle, Bush's "Svengali" and his comment expressing relief that the U.N. is "dead."

Who is Richard Perle? Well, he's chairman of the Defense Policy Board, an advisory panel that reports to the Pentagon, and he's a member of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) - the same outfit that drew up that blueprint for US world domination. But more importantly, Richard Perle is among a handful of neoconservatives who are guiding George Bush through the twists and turns of an Iraqi campaign that some believe could fairly be called an exercise in international war crimes. Perle doesn't care about all that blather. He has little regard for the international community, anyway.

Not to mention, Lisa says, he's a "loose cannon." Just what we need right now.

For those waiting for "Shock and Awe," it is now underway as the U.S. unleashed a blitz on Baghdad Friday night.

U.S.-led forces unleashed a devastating blitz on Baghdad on Friday night, triggering giant fireballs, deafening explosions and huge mushroom clouds above the city center. Missiles slammed into palaces of President Saddam Hussein, and key government buildings, in an onslaught that far exceeded strikes that launched the war on Thursday, Reuters correspondents said. "The earth is literally shaking in Baghdad," Reuters correspondent Khaled Oweis said.

Sean-Paul over at the Agonist has all the latest--he's been providing almost round the clock coverage.

Daily Kos reports that Iraqi resistance is greater than we've been told and Reuters is getting it right.

An ethics panel has issued a six page opinion finding that Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose may not profit from his planned memoir on the Sniper killings.

The panel, which reviews outside employment for all county employees, said Chief Moose had not met the standards for an exemption to a county law that bars employees from using the prestige of their office for private gain.

"Accepting remuneration for services directly and immediately related to an employee's governmental activities violates the prestige-of-office prohibition because, to paraphrase the state ethics commission, those services `go with the job,' " the commissioners wrote.

The commission ruled that the county's best interests would not be served by granting a waiver and that Chief Moose's importance to the county did not "outweigh any potential harm from a conflict of interest."

The Montgomery County Executive, Douglas Duncan, was disappointed with the ruling, saying, ""I continue to feel strongly that the chief should have the opportunity to tell not only the story of his life's work in law enforcement, but also his story of the tragic events of last October."

Fine, but how about waiting until the trial is over so he doesn't prejudice the jury pool.

Update: Chief Moose says he finds himself under such personal attack that he is considering leaving the force.