Tommy Franks said this morning we have Saddam's DNA and we will use all forensic techniques available in testing the places he may have been killed by our bombs. Interviewed today, DNA lawyer and expert Barry Scheck said:

With DNA analysis capability, even the tiniest fragment of human remains can be identified, said Barry Scheck, an attorney who specializes in DNA testing.

DNA analysis can greatly simplify the identification process, Scheck said by telephone Sunday.

"It allows them to check blood stains, skin cells, sweat, saliva, pieces of clothing they find, to determine whether or not what they recover at a scene of destruction is Saddam Hussein's DNA," said Scheck. He is currently co-director of the Innocence Project, a legal clinic at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, which seeks DNA tests to clear people wrongly convicted of crimes.

A hair can yield DNA and is particularly helpful if it contains the root, Scheck said. Tests to determine a match take as little as a day or two, he said.

CNN has some early coverage of the release of POWS.

Army Spc. Shoshana Johnson is escorted by U.S. soldiers to a waiting C-130 transport plane at an air base in Iraq, Sunday

All seven pows have now been released from the military hospital in Kuwait City, only three required medical treatment. That is great news.

Wolf Blitzer is interviewing Tommy Franks live now:

No confirmed weapons of mass destruction but they have found materials they are testing and will be looking for more.

The Iraqi army has been destroyed
There is no Iraqi regime control or command in place

Forensic teams are performing tests of places that were bombed where Saddam may have been. He said we have Saddam's DNA and we will do all available tests. He won't consider Saddam dead until we have confirmation.

Can't declare total victory yet because there are still pockets of people fighting--including mercenaries and small group hit squads and suicide bombers paid by Iraqis. He said many are coming from Syria. They have found a lot of recruiting material. He would not say the recruiting effort was endorsed by any other government, including Syria.

Franks will be going to Baghdad in the next few days but there will be no victory parade in Baghdad.

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We are very happy that the POWs were freed. They all walked under their own power to the waiting transport. Five are described in good condition, two not so good. They may have gunshot wounds. CNN reported the release was at the instance of the Iraqi's who were holding them --they wanted to surrender. Someone tipped a marine.

pdate: CNN has this report on the Franks interview. Our report was typed watching the interview live.

Psychologists for Social Responsibility, opposed the war in Iraq before it began. Now that it is about to conclude, they make these observations:

Now that the Bush administration has implemented this so-called preemptive strike on Iraq, PsySR has reviewed the situation and still considers the war unjust and provocative. While military action appears to have liberated the Iraqis from Saddam's rule, it was done at a tremendous cost without exploring nonviolent strategies for accomplishing the same ends with less damaging means. It is falsely assumed that this was the only way. While military action in Iraq may be successful in the short run, it has the potential to reduce the security of the United States, erode our basic freedoms and civil rights, and ultimately hasten the decline of US influence for good in the world.

In considering what should be done in Post-War Iraq, they recommend the following:

Matthew Happold, a lecturer in Law at the University of Nottingham, writes in the Guardian today that it is illegal to hood Iraqi prisoners. While most of his comments are directed to Great Britain, he provides authority for extending the proposition to the U.S.:

There are no good reasons to hood detainees. It does not provide any extra protection to the detaining troops once the suspect is bound, nor is there any need for British troops to hide their identify from their captives. Hooding is a form of sensory deprivation. It is disorientating, frightening and possibly dangerous for those subject to it (particularly when their hands are also tied). Hooding also serves to dehumanise the person subjected to it, possibly leading to rougher treatment at the hands of his captors. Indeed, television footage of British troops escorting hooded suspects did not show them acting with much solicitude. Hooding has often been used as a "softening up" technique prior to interrogation. The fact that it is being practised by British troops does not give one confidence as to their behaviour once the cameras stop rolling and interrogation starts.

The last time British security forces hooded suspects was as one of the so-called "five techniques" used in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s. The four other techniques were wall-standing, subjection to white noise, and deprivation of sleep and of food and drink. These "five techniques" were found by the European court of human rights to constitute inhuman treatment, in breach of the UK's obligations under the European convention on human rights. British forces' present conduct similarly risks being in breach of our international obligations.

....The hooding of prisoners is one American habit we should not adopt. Their treatment of detainees - at Bagram air base, Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere - has been heavily criticised. The concern must be that having adopting one American practice, the UK will adopt others as well. The British army has a reputation for discipline and for treating prisoners well. The ministry of defence should order the end of the practice of hooding prisoners immediately."

Read the whole thing. Link via Paper Chase.

The International Red Cross Alert today says that the situation in Baghdad hospitals is dire as anarchy grips:

BAGHDAD (11 April) The ICRC in Baghdad is extremely concerned about the anarchy and general chaos prevalent in the city. Lawlessness continues to be rampant, with ambulances being stopped and looted by armed individuals. The ICRC fears that the hospitals in Baghdad are no longer functioning and have been largely deserted by staff and patients. Most Baghdadis are too terrified to leave their homes. The ICRC will carry out assessments at different hospitals in the city if and when the security situation permits.

[link via Paper Chase]

Steven Rosenfeld has a provacative article, Gulf War Syndrome, The Sequel, over at TomPaine.com. Rosenfeld says the Pentagon failed to follow a law requiring screening of soldiers bofore and after deployment and that some soldiers already are sick.

Soldiers now fighting in Iraq are being exposed to battlefield hazards that have been associated with the Gulf War Syndrome that afflicts a quarter-million veterans of the 1991 war, said a former Central Command Army officer in Operation Desert Storm.

Part of the threat today includes greater exposure to battlefield byproducts of depleted uranium munitions used in combat, said the former officer and other Desert Storm veterans trained in battlefield health and safety.

Complicating efforts to understand any potential health impacts is the Pentagon's failure, acknowleged in House hearings on March 25, to follow a 1997 law requiring baseline medical screening of troops before and after deployment.

"People are sick over there already," said Dr. Doug Rokke, former director of the Army's depleted uranium (DU)project. "It's not just uranium. You've got all the complex organics and inorganics [compounds] that are released in those fires and detonations. And they're sucking this in.... You've got the whole toxic wasteland."

Update: This gives us a sickening feeling. American military uniforms were found at an Iraqi prison, but no sign of our POWS.

There are still seven American POW's missing in Iraq. CNN just reported that the U.S. does not know their fate or whereabouts.

If you have access to a television, the live street scenes are a chance for a first-hand look at the Iraqi celebration in Baghdad. CNN is reporting the rest of the country is quiet.

Wolf Blitzer got hacked for a few seconds. He asked a question of someone of a different location and an unknown, young male voice speaking in a journalistic tone came on and said the Iraqi Minister is being replaced by Howard Stern. Wolf recovered quickly and went to someone else.

We wonder where Saddam will turn up. Ideas?

"An Army of One?" by Gen. Wesley Clark from the September, 2002 issue of Washington Monthly:

Bin Laden, War Criminal The Kosovo campaign suggests alternatives in waging and winning the struggle against terrorism: greater reliance on diplomacy and law and relatively less on the military alone. Soon after September 11, without surrendering our right of self defense, we should have helped the United Nations create an International Criminal Tribunal on International Terrorism. We could have taken advantage of the outpourings of shock, grief, and sympathy to forge a legal definition of terrorism and obtain the indictment of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban as war criminals charged with crimes against humanity. Had we done so, I believe we would have had greater legitimacy and won stronger support in the Islamic world. We could have used the increased legitimacy to raise pressure on Saudi Arabia and other Arab states to cut off fully the moral, religious, intellectual, and financial support to terrorism. We could have used such legitimacy to strengthen the international coalition against Saddam Hussein. Or to encourage our European allies and others to condemn more strongly the use of terror against Israel and bring peace to that region. Reliance on a compelling U.N. indictment might have given us the edge in legitimacy throughout much of the Islamic world that no amount of "strategic information" and spin control can provide.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has issued a statement criticizing both sides in the war for the death of journalists. They are also calling for an inquiry. You can read the statement here.

To date 12 reporters have died covering the war and two are missing.

MEDIA DEATHS IN IRAQ 8 April: Jose Couso (Telecinco, Spain)
8 April: Taras Protsyuk (Reuters, UK)
8 April: Tareq Ayoub (al-Jazeera, Qatar)
7 April: Christian Liebig (Focus, Germany)
7 April: Julio Anguita Parrado (El Mundo, Spain)
6 April: David Bloom (NBC, US)
6 April: Kamaran Abdurazaq Muhamed (BBC, UK)
4 April: Michael Kelly (Washington Post, US)
2 April: Kaveh Golestan (BBC, UK)
30 March: Gaby Rado (ITN, UK)
22 March: Paul Moran (ABC, Australia)
22 March: Terry Lloyd (ITN, UK)

The U.S. also comes under fire today from Reporters Without Borders , which has issued a statement accusing the US military of deliberately firing at journalists. Reporters Without Borders called today on US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld to provide evidence that the offices of the pan-Arab TV station Al-Jazeera and the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad were not deliberately fired at by US forces earlier in the day in attacks that killed three journalists.

"We are appalled at what happened because it was known that both places contained journalists," said the organisation's secretary-general Robert Ménard. "Film shot by the French TV station France 3 and descriptions by journalists show the neighbourhood was very quiet at that hour and that the US tank crew took their time, waiting for a couple of minutes and adjusting its gun before opening fire."

As of this morning, the state-run Bagdad television station has gone off the air. Baghdad radio is still broadcasting, but playing "only national music and songs in praise of Saddam." Iraq's international satellite station stopped broadcasting a few days ago.

The Guardian provides details on why it is likely Saddam was killed in yesterday's blast:

Accordings to the reports President Saddam and his sons Qusay and Uday were seen walking into a restaurant in the al-Mansour district of Baghdad early yesterday afternoon. The meeting, with up to 50 members of the top Ba'ath leadership is thought to have taken place in a bunker either below the restaurant or in an adjacent building. A voice sounding like President Saddam's had been overheard discussing escape routes out of the city. According to one report, his voice was intercepted because he was using an encrypted communication system sold to him by a British company in the 1980s, which British intelligence has since been able to decode. The belief that the Iraqi leader was at the meeting was reinforced by US intelligence sources within the Iraqi leadership. The intelligence was relayed almost immediately to central command headquarters in Qatar, who sent the co-ordinates to one of its B-1 stealth bombers, which are constantly patrolling the skies over Iraq in search of such targets of opportunity.