The Washington Post has the details about "Mohammed," the Iraqi lawyer who risked his and his family's life to save Private Jessica Lynch, whom he had seen being beaten in the Iraqi hospital.

At one point the Iraqis were going to amputate her damaged leg, and he convinced the Iraqi doctor not to do it. He also assured Private Lynch she would be fine, and walked six miles looking for marines. Then, amidst bombs falling around the city, the marines sent him back to the hospital to gather more information.

"Mohammed," his wife and daughter have been sent to a refugee center in the southern port city of Umm Qasr. Read the whole article, it really provides a glimpse into the human side of war.

Human Rights Watch has an excellent informational page on the international laws pertaining to torture, providing answers to these questions, and more:

What is torture?

What laws prohibit torture?

Do non-citizens in the U.S. have the same right not to be tortured as U.S. citizens?

Can a person be compelled to provide evidence?

Can limited physical force be used during interrogations?

Is the use of "truth serums" permitted?

Are there any situations in which torture is permitted?

Shouldn't torture be permitted if its use will save lives?

Does the U.S. lose valuable information if torture is prohibited?

May the U.S. send detainees to other countries to be questioned?

What are the remedies against torture?

You can read the full text of the 1949 Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War here.

Are there extra or different protections for women? Law Professor and Findlaw Columnist Anita Ramasastry addresses this timely topic in What Happens When GI Jane is Captured?

Al Jazeera is ceasing its live coverage in Iraq due to the expulsion of one of its reporters.

"Regretting this decision, Al-Jazeera has decided to suspend its live broadcast from Iraq and will only broadcast recorded items received from Iraq," the station announced."

Update: Freed Newsday journalist Matthew McAllester will be on CNN's Larry King Live tonight, 9pm EST. More news on the journalists here and here.

The freed Newsday journalists described their week in Abu Ghraib, an Iraqi prison today.

McAllester and Saman both described a nightmarish week in the prison, the largest in the Arab world. They said they were interrogated separately several times by up to 12 Iraqi intelligence officials at once who suspected they were American spies, despite their adamant denials.

"I was accused of being dishonest and my future depended on my becoming honest," McAllester said. The authorities wanted him to "come up with more information spontaneously without being asked."

The two said they were never mistreated or abused physically, although conditions in the prison were harsh. They often heard and felt bombs exploding in and around Baghdad. "At times it was extremely close," Saman said. "The cells would kind of rumble."

Inside the prison was an anti-aircraft battery that frequently was fired. The pair said they could barely sleep. Adding to the tension, they said, was that they often heard the screams of other prisoners being tortured and saw some with their eyes and faces bloodied and swollen. "There were beatings and torture going on outside our cells, in the corridor, literally," McAllester said. Other inmates hobbled around, apparently because the soles of their feet had been burned or otherwise injured.

The two journalists were given meager rations of bananas, boiled eggs, bread and chicken soup. They were issued two blankets each, along with prison uniforms and slippers. They stayed in small, separate cells, unable to talk to each other, in a block that housed suspected spies and U.S. sympathizers.

The pair also described how they were taken into custody.

McAllester and Saman said their odyssey began about 1:30 a.m. March 24. McAllester was about to file a story, and Saman was near the top of the Palestine Hotel taking photographs as U.S. airplanes bombed the capital. When Saman came back down to the room the two Newsday staffers were sharing, two Iraqi intelligence agents were sitting on one of the beds.

"Right away I figured there was something wrong," Saman said.

The two staffers were handcuffed and initially told they were being taken to Syria. Instead, they were taken to the prison, where the interrogations soon started. McAllester said that at one point the authorities wanted him to sign a statement in Arabic, which he refused to do. Instead, he wrote one out in English saying in part that "I was not sent here by the CIA or the Pentagon and I'm not from any mission."

Saman said he was questioned about his job, what he was doing in Iraq, what kind of photos he was taking and if he had any connection with the CIA or the Pentagon. One agent also asked him if he was Jewish. "The main guy was convinced I was Israeli," Saman said. "I had to tell him, 'No, I'm not.'"

Saman was born in Peru, grew up in Spain and moved to the United States when he was 18. One of his grandfathers is Palestinian, and some of Saman's relatives still living in the West Bank also appealed to the Palestinian Authority to intervene on his behalf, Abington and Newsday editors said.

After the initial interrogations, the authorities left the two journalists alone for a few days, they said. Meanwhile, Abington was making contact with Arafat.

Here's more, including the statement by a Palestinian lawmaker that Yasser Arafat helped win the release of the two Newsday journalists through his contacts in Iraq. Newsday provides this account of the many groups who joined forces to win the pair's release.

Assistance came together from sources as wide-ranging as the Palestinian Authority, Roman Catholic Church, Iraqi diplomats and the Red Cross to win the release of two Newsday journalists from a Baghdad prison, the newspaper said yesterday.

The newspaper itself expended huge efforts towards gaining their release. A great job by all.

Skye News has an interview with an Iraqi pharmacist who treated rescued POW Jessica Lynch at the hospital.

During her stay in the hospital she tearfully kept asking about her boyfriend and family, an Iraqi pharmacist who treated her in hospital said.

"She kept saying she wanted to go home", the pharmacist added.

US media reports said she was found with two broken legs, a broken arm and gunshot wounds when she was rescued in a raid by US special forces on the Saddam Hussein Hospital near Nasiriyah.

The pharmacist who treated Private Lynch at the hospital told Sky News reporter Ross Appleyard that Private Lynch had often been seen crying. She asked about her family and kept asking when the war would finish, the pharmacist added.

He said that no soldiers had visited her and she had been treated well. She was regarded as a patient and not as a prisoner of war, the pharmacist added. He said Private Lynch was "very healthy" and had been treated for an injury to her leg only.

Of course, we don't know if the Iraq pharmacist is on the up and up--or if he's covering for Iraqis. We'd like to believe him, but we're still troubled by reports that the hospital was being used as a headquarters for Iraqi soldiers, that 11 other bodies, including those of two U.S. soldiers, have been recovered, that at least one bloodied female U.S. uniform was found with the American flag and name patch torn off and that a battery charger found inside the hospital may have been used as a torture device. Also, we suspect that if Jessica had been treated well at the hospital, the Pentagon would have said so instead of clamming up on the topic. The Skye article also provides this description of the rescue mission:

The Ba'ath Party headquarters and the building housing Saddam Hussein's loyal Fedayeen fighters were attacked in a diversionary strike, he said.

While the gunfight raged, special forces troops went in and rescued Private Lynch from the hospital.

Appleyard said: "Flares lit up the sky and we heard a great deal of gunfire and explosions. There was a huge gunfight - but it was all a diversionary tactic so special forces could go in and rescue Private Lynch."

We read elsewhere that Jessica's parents will be flying to Germany to meet her since she is being brought there before being flown home. That's good.

Update: Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, a U.S. Central Command spokesman: Ammunition, mortars, maps and a terrain model were found at the hospital, along with "other things that made it very clear it was being used as a military command post."

On the other 11 bodies:

"We have reason to believe some of them were Americans," said Navy Capt. Frank Thorp, another U.S. Central Command spokesman. He said the military has not confirmed whether they were members of Lynch's unit, the 507th Maintenance Company. "We don't yet know the identity of those people," Thorp said. "And forensics will determine that." Two of the bodies were in a morgue in the hospital, while the nine others were buried outside the building, Brooks said. He said U.S. forces were led to the graves by someone who had been taken into custody.

Here is a photo of interior of hospital where Jessica was kept.

Update: AP reports Pfc. Jessica Lynch arrived at a U.S. air base in southwestern Germany on a C-17 transport plane late Wednesday for treatment at a U.S. military medical center. Her condition was not disclosed, but U.S. officials in Kuwait said she was believed to have broken legs, a broken arm and at least one gunshot wound.

This opinion article by Pat Rabitte, leader of the Irish Labour Party, published in the March 31 Irish Times (available on lexis. com) is too good not to print in its entirety. While others have written on the same theory, we find this article especially easy to follow, and quite compelling. In a nutshell, Rabitte says that the real purpose of the war in Iraq is "American global leadership," a concept with an imperial agenda and two very dangerous ideas that have been pursued by senior officials in the Bush Administration (I and II) for more than five years.

We can see the suffering and fear on television nightly. The war in Iraq has already caused untold human damage and will do a lot more before it's over. But before the final toll of physical casualties can be counted, we can already see others.

The multilateral global system has been severely damaged. The United Nations has been seriously (in the eyes of some fatally) undermined. Europe is bitterly divided. Economic development throughout the world has been compromised. And it has all happened in the name of two new concepts in international relations, concepts that most of us had never heard of until a couple of months ago.

I certainly would never have predicted that democratic countries, including one with a social democratic leadership, would go to war to secure "regime change". And I would never have predicted that the entire world would be caught up in a "pre-emptive war".

Where did these concepts come from? Have these new directions in global policy just sprung from the perceived threat of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction?

No. In fact, a small group of US policy-makers have been developing these dangerous ideas for several years. The brutal dictator Saddam Hussein is a good target and September 11th was the tragic catalyst they needed to put their policy into action.

These men are intent on world domination or, as they put it themselves, "American global leadership". They have an imperial agenda, which they have been pursuing for more than five years.

If these were cranks or conspiracy theorists, it would be possible to dismiss them, perhaps. But they include seven or eight people who occupy extremely senior positions at the heart of US government, and their philosophy dominates American policy.

They include Vice-president Dick Cheney, Secretary for Defence Donald Rumsfeld, and a host of senior appointees and advisers - names like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliot Abrams, Paula Dobriansky, and others.

Their agenda first surfaced in 1992 with the document known as the Defence Planning Guidance, co-authored by Mr Wolfowitz, then an under-secretary in the Department of Defence. The agenda goes under various names such as the Wolfowitz Doctrine and the Project for the New American Century.

Last week, MSNBC's Kerry Sanders reported from outside a hospital U.S. Marines had taken over in An Nasiriyah. An Nasiriyah is the town where the five soldiers on a supply run were taken into custody by the Iraqis. It's also where Jessica Lynch and another soldier disappeared.

Sanders said marines showed him at least one bloody shredded female U.S. uniform found in one room of the hospital, and in another room, a large battery charger, from which it was speculated that the g.i.'s had been tortured. On March 28, on the Brian Williams Show, Sanders said:

The hospital, if that's what it ever was, is now under full control of U.S. forces. The 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines, making a disturbing discovery here.

In a back room, the uniform of at least one U.S. service woman. It was cut up and covered in blood, the name patch and American flag torn off.

STAFF SGT. RICK ST. JOHN, U.S. MARINE CORPS: Originally, when we did the breach on the room, we saw the battery laying next to the bed, and we assumed it may have been a torture chamber, some sort of torture device.

SANDERS (on camera): While hospitals worldwide all have areas to hold unruly patients, in this hospital U.S. Marines suspect this part may have been used to detain American prisoners of war..... [transcript, Lexis.Com]

On March 29, Sanders said, "US military intelligence officers say they suspect the hospital was used by Iraqi soldiers as a headquarters."

The tv news tonight reports that Jessica had some gunshot wounds. CNN just reported she had "been through quite an ordeal."

Hopefully, if one of the bloodied uniforms was Jessica's, the blood was from a gunshot wound, not from being tortured. However, MSNBC also is reporting that the gunshot wounds occurred during Jessica's rescue, and that she had been held in the hospital since March 23 when she disappeared. The Pentagon is being very close-mouthed about the details of Jessica's rescue and her captivity. We hope she wasn't tortured and wish her a speedy recovery.

Update from Reuters on the "daring midnight raid."

She was said to be doing well, but CNN reported that Lynch had suffered had suffered multiple gunshot wounds at some point during her ordeal in Iraq that made it hard to move her. ....Military officials would not discuss the fate of the other captives, but CNN reported that Lynch's rescue team also brought out the bodies of up to 11 people believed to be U.S. soldiers."

The missing Newsdayjournalists are alive and well in Jordan. The reporter and his cameraman, as well as two others, Molly Bingham from Kentucky and a Danish reporter, phoned in today. Next stop for the group: Amman.

Two other journalists from Britain's Independent Television News remain missing.

Update: Democracy Now! features an interview with Israeli reporter Dan Scemama, who was among four foreign journalists detained by the U.S. Military last week.

There are 37,000 non-citizen, green card holders in the military. A major incentive for them to join is that they receive a shortcut to citizenship.

Citing the war on terrorism, Bush in July issued an order permitting green card holders who are on active duty to immediately apply for citizenship, waiving the usual three-year waiting time. The government also created a team to quickly process citizenship applications from the military. Such requests have since quadrupled, from about 300 a month to more than 1,300 a month.

California produces the lion's share of these enlistees. Half of the first 10 Californians killed in the War on Iraq have not been citizens. Is it fair?

Critics say the government is playing off the desire for citizenship to exploit these mostly poor immigrants — from Latin America, Asia and the Caribbean — for the war effort. "Especially at a time when the doors for citizenship are closing, this may be one of few routes left," said Connie Rice, a civil rights attorney. "It's a tough but well-worn path. Is it fair? No."

We agree. It's true that many, if not most of the enlistees, have true patiriotic feelings for America. But why should citizenship be so hard for them to obtain--why should they have to risk death to get it? For example, take Los Angeles City College student Winston Leiva. He is

motivated by loyalty and respect. He came to Los Angeles at 14, joining family members who were escaping political oppression and economic hardship in Guatemala. Out of gratitude to America, the 29-year-old Koreatown resident said, he signed up for the Marines and is prepared to go to war.

After living here for 15 years, shouldn't Leiva be able to obtain citizenship any time he wanted, regardless of whether he served in the military? Apparently not, because "Some have spent years and thousands of dollars seeking citizenship through attorneys and immigration consultants, recruiters say."

We think demanding service in the military as a quid pro quo for faster citizenship is too high a price to extract from these green card holders. What good will citizenship do for them if they die on the battlefield before they have a chance to enjoy it?

The Washington Post is reporting that an official has told reporters the U.S. is prepared for some very high casualties :

U.S. Prepared to Pay 'Very High Price' Monday, Mar 31, 2003; 4:04 PM

DOHA, Qatar, March 31 -- Though U.S. troops have suffered "fairly light casualties" so far, a senior official at U.S. Central Command official warned there "may come a time when things are much more shocking."

"We're prepared to pay a very high price because we’re not going to do anything other than ensure this regime goes away," the official told reporters. "And if that means there’s going to be a lot of casualties, there’s going to be a lot of casualties."

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.