WASHINGTON - An entire division of the Iraqi army, numbering 8,000 soldiers, surrendered to coalition forces in southern Iraq Friday, Pentagon officials said.
Iraq's 51st Infantry Division surrendered as coalition forces advanced toward Basra, Iraq's second largest city. The mechanized division had about 200 tanks before the war, according to independent analysts and U.S. officials.
The 51st was one of the better equipped and trained in Iraq's regular army forces and was the key division protecting Basra, a major transportation and oil shipment hub on the Shatt al-Arab waterway that leads to the Persian Gulf.
The division also was important to Saddam Hussein's government for keeping Shiite Muslims — the majority in southern Iraq — from rebelling against Saddam's largely Sunni government.
The division was the largest single unit to surrender en masse on Friday, a day that saw hordes of Iraqi troops give themselves up — in some cases, to journalists accompanying U.S. units. U.S. forces advancing across southern Iraq often found Iraqi tanks and other weapons abandoned in the desert.
Many of the surrendering Iraqis were demoralized and poorly equipped, with some wearing T-shirts and carrying worn Kalashnikov rifles.
"I kind of felt sorry for them," said one U.S. military official in southern Iraq, speaking on condition of anonymity. "A lot of them looked hungry. They haven't been fed in a while."
The surrender of the 51st removed a major obstacle to the U.S. and British goal of securing all of southern Iraq so forces could focus on the push to Baghdad. U.S. forces also secured the port city of Umm Qasr on Friday.
New York Post
By BOB GRAHAM, NILES LATHEM and GERSH KUNTZMAN
March 24, 2003 -- Five American prisoners of war and at least eight dead GIs - three of whom had apparently been executed - were put on display for Iraqi TV cameras in sickening images broadcast around the world by an Arab news network yesterday.
American officials immediately blasted the broadcast as a violation of the Geneva Convention rules against the mistreatment and exploitation of captives.
The terrified prisoners, including one woman, belonged to the 507th Maintenance unit, which was apparently captured near the southern city of Nasiriyah after making a wrong turn.
U.S. officials confirmed that 12 soldiers were missing, adding that the troops might have been lured into a trap by Iraqi troops pretending to surrender.
The POWs were questioned on Iraqi television in footage that also included gruesome shots of the dead soldiers - and one Iraqi grinning ghoulishly over the GIs.
At least three have point-blank gunshot wounds right between the eyes - "like an execution," a Pentagon source said.
In the first part of yesterday's broadcast, the Iraqi cameraman pans across the garish sight of eight mutilated corpses. The bodies were in pools of blood. A smiling Iraqi uncovered the bodies for the cameras. Later, the prisoners are interviewed. All of the soldiers appear frightened and their eyes dart nervously.
In the first interview, a nervous soldier in glasses said he was from Kansas. When asked why he had come to Iraq, he replied, "I come to fix broke stuff."
He said he was "told to shoot only if I'm shot at. I don't want to kill anybody."
The second prisoner said he was in Iraq because "I follow orders."
A third man was lying down on a red rug, but was pulled into a sitting position to answer questions. The fourth prisoner said he was 31 years old and from New Jersey. He appears to be in shock, as his head turns from side to side.
The female prisoner, who had a bandaged ankle, said she was 30. She sat hunched over with her arms folded in front of her.
All five gave their names - but the Pentagon asked media outlets to withhold their identities until families could be notified.
But the mother of one of the soldiers, Joseph Hudson, broke the media blackout.
The footage was broadcast by Qatar-based Al-Jazeera. American networks did not air it.
"Those pictures are a violation of the Geneva Convention," Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told CBS News. He called the tape "obviously part of Iraqi propaganda."
Iraqi Defense Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmed said that his country would abide by the treaty.
"Iraq will not harm the captured prisoners of war," Ahmed told a news conference. "We have signed [the Geneva Convention] and we will abide by it. These are our principles, our values and our religion. They will be treated properly."
But Ahmed later laughed when he said that the prisoners would be housed at the Sheraton Hotel in central Baghdad - a city now under constant air attack.
Iraq immediately exploited the propaganda value of the American POWs. Scores of cheering Iraqis crowded around TV sets.
"We have captured your boys and girls, Mr. Bush," said one man at the Palestine Hotel.
The footage may be Iraq's way of testing America's resolve. Televised images of dead American soldiers being dragged through the streets of Somalia in 1993 played a role in the eventual pullout of U.S. troops there.
Gen. John Abizaid of the U.S. Central Command condemned Al-Jazeera.
"The pictures were disgusting," the three-star general said.
Veterans groups agreed.
"It's absolutely deplorable and detestable," said Lee Harris of the American Legion.
FACTBOX-Geneva Convention on treatment of war prisoners.
LONDON, March 23 (Reuters) - The current Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war was adopted on August 12, 1949, at a conference in Geneva on the protection of war victims and entered into force on October 21, 1950.
A series of international treaties concluded in Geneva on ameliorating the effects of war on soldiers and civilians date back to 1864 and have been closely associated with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
The ICRC, which avows strict neutrality, said on Sunday Iraqi television pictures purporting to show American prisoners of war would be a violation of the Geneva Convention, if true.
Iraqi Defence Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmad subsequently told a Baghdad news conference Iraq would treat prisoners of war in accordance with the Geneva Convention.
The relevant sections of the convention read:
ARTICLE 13: Prisoners of war must at all times be humanely treated. Any unlawful act or omission by the Detaining Power causing death or seriously endangering the health of a prisoner of war in its custody is prohibited, and will be regarded as a serious breach of the present Convention. In particular, no prisoner of war may be subjected to physical mutilation or to medical or scientific experiments of any kind which are not justified by the medical, dental or hospital treatment of the prisoners concerned and carried out in his interest.
Likewise, prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity.
Measures of reprisal against prisoners of war are prohibited.
ARTICLE 14: Prisoners of war are entitled in all circumstances to respect for the persons and their honour. Women shall be treated with all the regard due to their sex and shall in all cases benefit by treatment as favourable as that granted to men. Prisoners of war shall retain the full civil capacity which they enjoyed at the time of their capture, The Detaining Power may not restrict the exercise, either within or without its own territory, of the rights such capacity confers except in so far as the captivity requires.
The full text of the Convention may be found on the Web at: http:/193.194.138.190/html/menu3/b/91.htm
DOHA, Qatar - The Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera aired footage from Iraqi television Sunday of interviews with what the station identified as captured American prisoners, and also showed bodies in uniform in an Iraqi morgue that it said were Americans.
There was no confirmation that the prisoners were U.S. troops, or if they were, what unit they were attached to. The U.S. Central Command had no comment.
On CBS's "Face the Nation," Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said that if those are indeed coalition soldiers being shown on the Al-Jazeera TV footage, "those pictures are a violation of the Geneva Convention."
Four bodies could be seen lying on the floor of the room.
The station said the prisoners were captured around Nasiriyah, a major crossing point over the Euphrates northwest of Basra.
At least five prisoners, speaking American-accented English, were interviewed. Two were bandaged. Those interviewed included one woman.
Two of the prisoners identified their unit only as the 507th Maintenance.
One of the men, sitting up, was being interviewed by an unseen person holding a microphone labeled "Iraqi TV." The soldier spoke in English and at one point said: "I'm sorry. I don't understand you."
The narrator provided an Arabic translation, but it was possible to hear some of the comments in English.
"I come to shoot only if I am shot at," said one prisoner, who said he was from Kansas. Asked why he was fighting Iraqis, he replied: "They don't bother me; I don't bother them."
Another prisoner, who said he was from Texas, said only: "I follow orders."
A voice off-camera asked "how many officers" were in his unit.
"I don't know sir," the soldier replied.
One of the prisoners was shown lying on his back on a bed, with apparent wounds to both arms and hands and marks on his forehead. He had a bandage on one hand and what appeared to be dried blood on his shirt, arms and face.
Al Jazeera later showed additional footage of what appeared to be a fuel or water carrier parked along side a highway and a body in uniform with full gear and still wearing a helmet lying behind the carrier.
The U.S. Army's 507th Maintenance Company is based in Fort Bliss, Texas. The unit is part of the Army's 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, which includes Patriot missile batteries.
Han har sår i ansiktet, bandage på armarna och grimaserar av smärta när han sätter sig upp för att svara på frågorna: Vad heter du? – Jag heter Edgar. Var kommer du ifrån? – USA. Vilken stad? – Texas.
Shauna, 30, är den enda kvinnan i gruppen av fångar. Hon håller armarna i kors, tätt intill kroppen, och ger korta svar : Vad heter du? – Shauna. Var kommer du ifrån? – Texas. Vilket förband? – 507:e underhållskompaniet.
Joseph Hudson ser lugnast ut av de fem fångarna. Han till och med ler ett ögonblick när han svarar på frågorna: Vad heter du? – Joseph Hudson, 585650287. Var kommer du ifrån? – Jag kommer från El Paso, Texas. Varför kom du hit? – Jag lydde order. Hur många officerare var med? – Jag vet inte.
Menige Miller och hans fyra kollegor fångades utanför Nasiriyah, 32 mil sydöst om Bagdad: Vad heter du? – Miller, menige Miller. Vilken stad kommer du ifrån? – Kansas. Varför kom du hit? – För att laga trasiga saker. För att jag fick order om det. Jag lydde bara order. Kom du för att skjuta irakier? – Jag fick order att bara skjuta om jag blev beskjuten, och de sköt på mig först så jag sköt tillbaka. – Jag vill inte döda någon. – De stör inte mig, så jag stör inte dem.
Marines Overcome Fierce Firefight to Secure Bridges in Nasiriya.
NYT.com ^
By MICHAEL WILSON
ASIRIYA, Iraq, March 23 - What looked to be a benign ride into this city to quietly secure its major bridges turned into a firefight as Iraqi tanks, soldiers and secret police darted through the streets, turning their mortars, artillery cannons, rockets and rifles at advancing marines.
The Americans managed to gain control of the bridges, but not without ``significant casualties,'' Reuters quoted an officer as saying.
The tanks of Task Force Tarawa's light armor reconnaissance unit crept forward a hundred yards at a time against pockets of Iraqi infantry and secret police, nicknamed the ``black pajamas'' for their attire. The battle continued throughout the afternoon. The marine artillery unit, attempting to provide cover fire for the tanks, spent frustrated hours unable to shoot into the city for fear of hitting fellow marines.
The artillery unit's forward observer approached the city with the infantry and reported back to the marines at the unit's 18 cannons several miles south. His radio call name is Mustang, and he shouted grid coordinates all day at the top of his voice.
``Every time we move one click, tanks keep popping up,'' Mustang shouted over the radio to the command center.
The battle began shortly after dawn today when the infantry unit, codenamed Timber Wolf, approached the southern edge of the city. Several miles south, Col. Glenn Starnes, commanding officer of the artillery battalion, listened on a radio. Minutes before 7 a.m., he shouted, ``Timber Wolf is taking fire.''
But the cannons were caught off guard, scrambling into position in lines of six in the sand. Iraqi mortar fire sounded in the distance, and the colonel winced and cursed. Twenty-three minutes later, the first battery reported itself ready to fire, or, in the language of battle, ``fully in the fight.''
Radar detected the location of the mortar fire, and the cannons shot back, but with no marines yet present in the city to watch, it was impossible to tell what was hit. Mortar, while difficult to fire accurately, can be a difficult weapon to counterattack, especially in a city, where the shooter can drag it back into a home and shut the door in seconds.
``You've got to remember,'' Maj. Phillip Boggs said, ``you can hide a mortar in nothing.''
The command center is code named Nightmare. On its maps, it appeared that besides mortar, up to four tanks were shooting from behind a building.
``Waste it,'' an officer said under his breath. But that would have been too dangerous with so little information about the target. There is a line that appears on no map, between what an artillery unit believes it can safely do and what the ground troops fear falling on their heads, and with every ``denied'' spoken over the artillery radios, curses followed.
``Let's not get gun happy here,'' Major Boggs cautioned the officers under the tarp that was the command center, quickly heating under the midmorning sun. ``We are running amok. We're suppressing him, probably, but we're not killing him.''
Reports came in of a platoon-sized group of 30 or 40 black pajamas, and smaller squads of soldiers apparently from the 11th Iraqi Infantry Division. The leadership of the division reportedly surrendered to Army units the day before, but marines approaching the city found machine-gun nests in outlying dwellings, Colonel Starnes said.
They also found four Army soldiers, injured in a ditch, and called in an evacuation team. The soldiers were part of a group of about 20 that made a wrong turn in the dark before dawn, intending to skirt the city, only to be ambushed, Colonel Starnes said.
There was a puzzle. The Iraqi mortar and artillery fire missed by such large distances that the marines wondered about another motivation behind the rounds. ``I'm afraid he's trying to unmask me,'' Colonel Starnes said, worrying that his return fire could give away his position. ``I'm afraid he's trying to find out where we're at.'' But Iraqis are not believed to have the radar for that ploy. Another officer, simply guessing, suggested they might be firing on civilians.
``It would be really nice to have some forward observer out there to tell us `left' or `right' or whatever, and what we hit,'' said Lt. Michael Slawsky.
After being pinned down most of the morning, the infantry unit and the artillery forward observer advanced shortly before noon, meeting machine-gun fire. Nasiriya straddles the Euphrates River, and its bridges are crucial to troops behind Task Force Tarawa heading further north, toward Baghdad. Army units passing quickly through the city on Saturday encountered little resistance, leaving the marines little clue of what was in store.
Afternoon brought news both good and horrible. By afternoon, Timber Wolf, the infantry unit, had captured the bridges and advanced north of the city. The artillery batteries, finally granted permission to fire, lobbed rounds of powerful explosives at the black circles that had been on their laminated maps for hours.
``The bridge is considered secured,'' Major Boggs said when the second of the two was captured.
``It is,'' Colonel Starnes replied, ``but I wouldn't want to drive on it.''
Then, the artillery battalion received notice that it would accept the injured and perhaps dead marines from the Nasiriya fight. Both are considered casualties. Medical trucks and doctors hurried to the square of desert, past the ring of perimeter guards.
The fight did not let up. Cobra helicopters flew low, barely above the oversized balloons regularly launched by an artillery unit to test the wind. More than a dozen marines shouted orders and scribbled down coordinates, hunched over lunchbox-sized portable telephones, often struggling to be heard above the din.
The phone boxes go silent for no apparent reason, all the time. Officers wiggled the cables or clicked the button on the handset, or picked up the box and slammed it up and down on the table until it worked again.
With the heat comes flies. The voices on the other end of the radio sounded frantic, shouting above machine-gun fire in the background. Tensions rise quickly in Nightmare; the men under the tarp snap and swear at one another. At one point, one marine berating a communications officer, asking him how he would feel if he were being shot at in the streets and could not reach the artillery batteries.
About 30 Iraqi troops, including a general, surrendered today to US forces of the 3rd Infantry Division as they overtook huge installation apparently used to produce chemical weapons in An Najaf, some 250 kilometers south of Baghdad.
One soldier was lightly wounded when a booby-trapped explosive went off as he was clearing the sheet metal-lined facility, which resembles the eery images of scientific facilities in World War II concentration camps.
The huge 100-acre complex, which is surrounded by a electrical fence, is perhaps the first illegal chemical plant to be uncovered by US troops in their current mission in Iraq. The surrounding barracks resemble an abandoned slum.
It wasn't immediately clear exactly which chemicals were being produced here, but clearly the Iraqis tried to camouflage the facility so it could not be photographed aerially, by swathing it in sand-cast walls to make it look like the surrounding desert.
Within minutes of our entry into the camp on Sunday afternoon, at least 30 Iraqi soldiers and their commanding officer of the rank of General, obeyed the instructions of US soldiers who called out from our jeep in loudspeakers for them to lie down on the ground, and put their hands above their heads to surrender.
Today's operation is the third engagement with Iraqi forces by the First Brigade of the US army's 3rd Infantry Division, since Saturday afternoon.
So far in the campaign, the brigade has suffered no losses. But two were wounded Saturday night in an ambush on the outskirts of As-Samwah in southern Iraq.
Financial Times
By Charles Clover in Camp Pennsylvania
Published: March 23 2003 12:14 | Last Updated: March 23 2003 12:14
A US soldier was taken into custody after a grenade attack Sunday morning that killed one fellow soldier and wounded 12 from the US 101st Airborne Division stationed in the Kuwaiti desert.
At about 2am a series of explosions ripped through Camp Pennsylvania, after three grenades were thrown into three separate tents occupied by senior officers of the 101st 1st brigade. At least two exploded, while the third may have been a dud, according to officers.
After the grenade blasts, a hail of small arms fire rang out. Soldiers said the assailant appears to have fired on the soldiers as they staggered out of their tents following the blasts. All 13 casualties had grenade shrapnel wounds, and 2 had gunshot wounds. It could not be confirmed what types of injury had caused the death of one soldier.
Initially, the scene was chaos as soldiers thought they were under incoming artillery fire and rushed into concrete bunkers, donning gas masks. Several were injured, screaming for medical aid. Medics raced from bunker to bunker, putting compress bandages and tape on wounds.
"The first thought I had was that these were mortar rounds," said Spc Benjamin Gunn of the 101st, who had just come off guard duty. "I heard three loud bangs. I yelled at the rest of the tent to get their gear on. I thought we were facing at least a squad size element."
After a few minutes, a group of sergeants rushed over and shouted to those in the bunkers to get back inside the tent perimeter, which is surrounded by concrete obstacles, saying they were under terrorist attack.
For many of the soldiers in the brigade headquarters unit, this was their first combat action. "That's when the training kicks in," said one sergeant. "Army training is repetitive but its that way for a reason. Everyone performed superbly."
Major Werner Kiernan, in one of the tents that was hit, said he heard the first of three loud bangs in the adjacent tent. As he rushed towards the front of the tent, to get his boots on, he caught sight of a figure in the doorway. "I couldn't pick him out of a line-up," he said. "But he was clearly dressed in a US uniform."
The figure said: "We are under attack sir!" according to Mr Kiernan, and then a grenade rolled into the tent. Major Kiernan thinks the grenade thrower must have been the same individual who spoke to him.
Soldiers and journalists with the unit helped carry wounded into ambulances as patrols criss-crossed the camp looking for the intruder or intruders. Blood stained the sand and concrete where the victims were placed before being evacuated by truck.
One officer, with a piece of shrapnel lodged in his bloody leg, sat dazed on a concrete bench saying "this is crazy". The military has asked press covering the incident to refrain from referring to names on the people affected by it.
Soldiers had initially seized two Kuwaiti translators, who had just recently been hired, as suspects. They were seated facing the concrete walls at gunpoint, as soldiers tried to piece together what happened.
"They were in the tents," said an officer about the translators, with no further comment.
Later, suspicion settled on a soldier from the brigade's second battalion, who had been guarding the night before stocks of grenades and ammunition. These had just been issued to soldiers the day before in anticipation of going into combat in Iraq. He was missing, as were four grenades from his store, said an officer, and a manhunt began.
A sergeant found the suspect hiding in a concrete bunker, with a leg wound that appeared to be from shrapnel. A grenade was found in his gas mask case. A team of soldiers placed him on the ground and secured his arms. Army officials have asked that the suspect's name not be released.
"[Individual's name] How did you get injured?" the sergeant shouted. The soldier did not respond.
"[Individual's name] Did you conduct this?" asked a major, approaching him. The soldier, obviously in shock, appeared to answer positively. After this, he was read his rights and taken into interrogation.
In addition, soldiers were looking for a man in civilian clothes - cargo pants and a white tee shirt - and this reporter saw them frisk a third soldier and handcuff him, although details of the investigation and further suspects have not been released.
Later in the day, the two Kuwaiti translators were released. "We were just sleeping, heard a loud bang. Then everything filled with smoke."
They both said they have no hard feelings against the military for suspecting them, though they both asked to be transferred to a different unit. "The only hard feelings we have are for the wounded," said one.
The possibility that one of their own could have purposefully set out to murder the top officers in the Brigade left the soldiers dumbfounded and in shock on Sunday. "It's a feeling of disbelief that you come over here and you expect contact is going to be with the enemy, instead, its one of your own," said Major Kiernan.
Clashes at Key River Crossing Bring Heaviest Day of American Casualties.
16 May Be Dead, Five Others Are Taken Prisoner
By Susan B. Glasser and Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 24, 2003; Page A01
KUWAIT CITY, March 23 -- Iraqi forces ambushed U.S. troops today at a key Euphrates River crossing on the march toward Baghdad, killing an estimated 16 Americans and capturing at least five in two clashes that resulted in the largest number of U.S. casualties of the four-day-old campaign to take down President Saddam Hussein's government.
Iraqi television broadcast graphic images from a morgue showing uniformed bodies that U.S. officials tentatively concluded were among those of seven American soldiers believed killed in one of the encounters. The images, retransmitted by television networks around the world, also showed brief interviews with five other U.S. soldiers, apparently members of an Army maintenance company taken prisoner in the same clash.
U.S. officials expressed belief that the killed and captured soldiers seen on the videotape were 12 members of a supply convoy who were missing after they made a wrong turn outside the town of Nasiriyah, 100 miles northwest of the Kuwaiti border, and were fired upon by Iraqi militiamen.
Inside the city, as many as nine U.S. Marines also were killed after an Iraqi surrender turned out to be a "ruse," Army Lt. Gen. John Abizaid said at a briefing. The Marines died after a small group of soldiers who had indicated they wanted to give themselves up instead fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the Marines' amphibious assault vehicle, witnesses told journalists traveling with the Marine unit. Abizaid called the clash "the sharpest engagement of the war so far."
The casualties -- along with the disturbing images of bodies and captured U.S. troops, and a surge in resistance by Iraqi defenders in the south -- suddenly undercut the impression of irresistible U.S. might that had accompanied the invasion of Iraq for its first three days and led U.S. leaders to reinforce warnings that a difficult conflict could lie ahead.
[Hussein delivered a rambling and defiant speech Monday on Iraqi television, vowing that "victory will be ours soon." Dressed in a military uniform, he read from a prepared text without the glasses he wore during a speech televised Thursday after the first U.S. airstrike.
[Hussein made reference to "the war that started today," according to a simultaneous translation on CNN, leaving it unclear whether the speech was being broadcast live or had been recorded earlier. Senior U.S. and foreign officials have suggested Hussein may have been wounded and perhaps incapacitated in the first strike (Details, Page A15).]
The battles in Nasiriyah occurred as U.S. forces started a full-fledged deployment in northern Iraq's Kurdish-controlled area and the Army's 3rd Infantry Division closed to within 100 miles of Baghdad, passing by the sacred city of Najaf and nearing the front lines of elite troops arrayed to defend the capital. The pounding of Baghdad continued, meanwhile, as U.S. missiles and bombs hit intermittently with thunderous blasts aimed at government buildings and military installations.
[Early Monday, several squadrons of the U.S. Army's premier combat helicopter, the AH-64 Apache Longbow, attacked Republican Guard positions in Baghdad's southern suburbs. The attack force, which drew heavy fire from the Iraqi forces, destroyed four or five armored vehicles and several light vehicles, said Col. Bill Wolf, commander of the 11th Aviation Regiment, which carried out the strike.
["It was pretty fierce out there," said Wolf, who said complete damage assessment was still being carried out. One Apache returned to its base in west central Iraq with visibly heavy damage, and another crashed on takeoff but its crew was uninjured.]
But in the south, where the invasion began, U.S. and British forces struggled to wrest control of the port city of Basra and to pacify other areas they had previously seized and left in their wake, finding greater staying power than anticipated in Iraqi regular army troops and irregular security forces.
Fierce fighting was reported in Umm Qasr, a port on the Kuwaiti border where Iraqi defenders fought street clashes with Marines. A tank and artillery battle raged on the outskirts of Basra, a city of more than 1 million people on the Shatt al Arab waterway, at the head of the Persian Gulf. Iraqi officials said U.S. and British airstrikes on the city killed 77 people and wounded 366.
The resistance in Umm Qasr should be an "example" to the invading force, said Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf, the Iraqi information minister. "The fighters, the resistance, our heroes in Umm Qasr are teaching them a lesson."
In the first known friendly fire incident of the war, a U.S. Patriot missile battery shot down a British Royal Air Force Tornado GR4 warplane, killing two crew members, U.S. and British military spokesmen announced. The shoot-down occurred just outside Camp New Jersey in northern Kuwait around 2 a.m., when witnesses heard the roar of the launch followed shortly by another explosion.
British officials said they had not determined whether American error was responsible. They said the Tornado may have failed to emit an encrypted signal that would have informed U.S. forces that it was an allied aircraft.
[Early Monday, two British soldiers were reported missing when their vehicle was attacked in southern Iraq, according to news services. Officials with the British Defense Ministry declined to give details of which unit the soldiers belonged to and would not elaborate on where the attack happened.]
The attacks on U.S. forces in the Nasiriyah area and, in particular, the continued resistance in Basra and other parts of southern Iraq suggested that Iraqi troops and paramilitary units were mounting a stronger defense than anticipated, U.S. officials conceded.
"Clearly they are not a beaten force," Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on ABC's "This Week" program. "And those who think this is going to go on for some time are right. The hardest part is yet to come."
U.S. commanders had expected Hussein to adopt a scorched-earth strategy in response to an American invasion, perhaps using chemical weapons and sabotaging the country's vast southern oil fields. Some U.S. officials and analysts also predicted that large numbers of Iraqi soldiers would quickly surrender, that civilians would welcome U.S. troops as liberators and that a display of overwhelming force would trigger anti-government revolts, particularly in southern Iraq, which is dominated by Shiite Muslims who have little love for Hussein's Sunni-dominated government.
Those assumptions shaped American war plans. Instead of making a slow, deliberate push into the country, U.S. commanders focused on securing key installations and moving as quickly as possible toward Baghdad and other strategic targets, leaving difficult situations in the south for later resolution.
But four days into the war, fighters loyal to Hussein have not given up or faded away as thoroughly as commanders had hoped. Instead, some are doing what Iraqi officials have long promised: mounting guerrilla attacks and pulling back into cities in an effort to use civilians as shields and draw coalition forces into urban combat.
The Iraqi strategy has also resulted in U.S. troops facing threats not just in front but also in the middle and rear of their armored columns moving toward Baghdad. Nasiriyah, bypassed on Saturday by advance elements of the 3rd Infantry Division, was a bloody example.
Sahhaf, the information minister, said the United States and Britain would face a "quagmire" if they continued their advance on Baghdad. "We have drawn them into the swamp and they will never get out of it," he said.
Abizaid, deputy commander of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf region, told reporters at Central Command regional headquarters in Doha, Qatar, that today was "the toughest day of resistance that we've had thus far." But he said it was "also a day in which we've continued the attack in almost every area. We understand that there may be other tough days ahead of us, but the outcome is still certain."
He said U.S. forces remained "on track" and would "arrive in the vicinity of Baghdad soon."
According to Abizaid, the United States has taken about 2,000 Iraqi soldiers prisoner -- far fewer than the tens of thousands who turned themselves in to U.S.-led forces during the Persian Gulf War advance into occupied Kuwait.
"The main reason that there haven't been a lot of mass surrenders on the same scale as in 1991 is that the Iraqi forces were really trapped in Kuwait. They were far away from home. They had nowhere to melt back to," Abizaid said. "Here, in the areas that we've been encountering regular Iraqi forces, by far the majority of units have just melted away."
In the most dramatic ground advance, the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division traversed about 230 miles in 40 hours, racing day and night across the desert to take up positions roughly 100 miles from Baghdad. At one point, the soldiers ran into 100 Iraqi militiamen who had pickup trucks armed with machine guns. The unit killed almost all of the Iraqis, according to journalists traveling with the soldiers.
The dead U.S. soldiers and five prisoners of war shown on Iraqi television were reported to be members of the Army's 507th Maintenance Company, based at Fort Bliss, Tex. The unit had been driving toward Baghdad to support the 3rd Infantry's rapid advance. The soldiers were traveling down a route that had been secured, but mistakenly took a wrong turn into an area with no U.S. combat forces.
"It was probably like many other tragic incidents in war, when a young officer leading his convoy made a wrong turn and went somewhere where he wasn't supposed to," Abizaid said.
The gruesome Iraqi television footage provided lingering, close-up images of the dead soldiers lying on the floor. Two of them appeared to have been shot in the head, one directly between his eyes and one in the forehead. An announcer for al-Jazeera, the pan-Arab satellite network that diffused the footage, said the video of the men's bodies was made in a morgue in Nasiriyah.
The footage also included brief and apparently spontaneous interviews with four men and a woman who identified themselves as American soldiers. All the prisoners appeared nervous and two appeared to be injured. A man was pictured lying on a cot, groaning and grimacing; his arms were bandaged and his face was bloody. A woman was shown sitting on a sofa, clutching her arms over her chest; she was barefoot and her left ankle was bandaged.
The Marines' Task Force Tarawa pulled into Nasiriyah today to take control from the Army as 3rd Division units moved north. Marine units set out quickly to secure two bridges traversing the Euphrates on the eastern side of town. But they were met by Iraqi army units armed with tanks, artillery and mortars on a two-mile stretch of road between the bridges. Separate paramilitary squadrons dressed in black also sniped at the U.S. troops with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, U.S. officers reported.
In addition to the Marines killed in the grenade attack on their vehicle, about 50 others were reported injured in the fighting, U.S. military officials said.
Many of the casualties occurred after the Marines approached Iraqis who appeared to be surrendering but instead opened fire, Abizaid said. In one instance, Iraqi soldiers dressed in civilian clothes seemed to welcome U.S. troops and then shot at them. In another, Abizaid said, Iraqis raised a flag of surrender, then opened fire with artillery.
The six-hour battle ended only after the Marines called in air support from F/A-18 Hornets, AV-8 Harriers, A-10 Thunderbolt tank killers and AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters. The Marines reported destroying 10 Soviet-era T-55 tanks as well as an artillery battery and an antiaircraft gun. Marine officers made no estimate of Iraqi casualties.
With the 3rd Infantry's speedy march toward Baghdad, the ground war was building to what senior U.S. officials expect will be a climactic battle with Republican Guard forces, perhaps in the Karbala region about 50 miles north of Najaf.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said in Washington that some Republican Guard forces have continued to follow a pattern evident over the last few weeks of moving toward Baghdad and Hussein's home town, Tikrit. But Myers said the force's two main divisions west of Baghdad -- the Nebuchadnezzar and the Hammurabi -- are still essentially in their same positions and U.S. warplanes are trying to contain them.
"Since the first day of the air campaign, we have been working on the Republican Guard divisions to prohibit them from, the best we can, from withdrawing back in closer to Baghdad," Myers said.
Air Force F-16s, B-52s and other aircraft have in the past two days battered Republican Guard units. Weather permitting -- a storm system is forecast this week -- AH-64 Apache attack helicopters from the 101st Airborne Division will concentrate on Iraqi armor and mechanized units shielding Baghdad.
British troops outside Basra have discovered cruise missiles and warheads hidden inside fortified bunkers as part of a massive arsenal abandoned by Saddam Hussein's disintegrating southern army.
Cases of rockets, giant anti-shipping mines and other ammunition are piled from floor to ceiling in dozens of bunkers at what is marked on maps as the Az Zubaya Heliport.
The most disturbing find was two Russian-made Al-Harith anti-shipping cruise missiles, each 6m long and 1m in diameter, and nine warheads, hidden in two enormous reinforced concrete bunkers.
Another missile, as yet unidentified, was found still crated up at the rear of one of the bunkers.
Some of the boxes are clearly marked with the names of British manufacturers.
The scale and possible implications of the weapons find took British forces by surprise and raised fresh questions about the extent of the Iraqi war machine and the ability of weapons inspectors to cope with the task of scouring such a vast country for prohibited ordinance.
The discovery of the missiles - date-marked 2002 - came as British troops from the Black Watch Regiment fought to secure the area around Iraqi's second city, Basra, in preparation for the capture of the city.
The vast complex, surrounded by chainlink fence and barbed wire, stands to the southwest of the town, defended by a network of earth works and with tanks and other armoured vehicles dug in to the surrounding area.
But the defenders have fled after coming under attack from coalition forces.
Outside the perimeter fence are about 40 bunkers packed with a mixture of RPGs and other ammunition. Inside, 22 larger fortified bunkers contain larger weaponry including the Al-Harith missiles.
The missiles, with Al-Harith 2002 stencilled in red paint on the side, and covered with cyrillic writing, were housed in 20-m-long concrete bunkers, 8m high, buried under earth and protected by sliding steel double doors 30cm thick.
Painted grey, the missiles have two wings, each about 60cm in span and three tail fins of a similar size. There was no indication of the nature of the warheads fitted and experts have been called in to examine the find.
Also housed inside the reinforced bunkers were what appeared to be large anti-shipping mines, 1m in diameter, and a host of other munitions.
On one box, written in English, were the words: "Contract AS Navy. 5/1980 Iran."
Corporal Steven Airzee said: "The initial sight was a shock. We were trying to figure out what they were. You have to wonder whether the weapons inspectors have been there because they looked pretty big."
The entrance to the heliport is decorated with a picture of Saddam Hussein in military uniform.
The area is surrounded by wrecked vehicles and abandoned sandbagged fox holes, some flying white flags, and is overlooked by a network of watch towers.
There are fears that weapons may have been taken from some of the bunkers which lie open outside the perimeter fence.
Lieutenant Angus Watson said they found the haul when they arrived last night.
"The complex is massive and we were surprised to find a lot of the kit intact, easily enough for a whole brigade," he said.
They also discovered hundreds of leaflets lying on the floor, dropped by coalition planes, urging the defenders to surrender. The leaflets, and evidence of an aerial or artillery attack, appear to have persuaded the defenders to abandon their posts without a fight.
The Associated Press
By Calvin Woodward
March 24, 2003
IRAQIS have used ambushes and even fake surrenders to kill and capture US troops, American officials have said.
Up to nine Marines died and a dozen US soldiers were taken prisoner in surprise engagements with Iraqis at the southern city of Nasiriyah.
"Clearly they are not a beaten force," said General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "This is going to get a lot harder."
Allied soldiers had come under attack in a series of ruses, US officials said.
One group of Iraqis was said to have waved the white flag of surrender, then opened up with artillery fire.
Another group appeared to welcome coalition troops, but then attacked them.
Lt. Gen. John Abizaid, of US Central Command, said a faked surrender near Nasiriyah, a crossing point over the Euphrates River northwest of Basra, set off the "sharpest engagement of the war thus far".
Up to nine Marines died before the Americans prevailed, he said.
Twelve US soldiers were missing and presumed captured by Iraqis in an ambush on an army supply convoy near the city.
"We, of course, will be much more cautious in the way that we view the battlefield as a result of some of these incidents," Abizaid said.
Arab television showed what it said were four American dead in an Iraqi morgue and at least five other Americans identified as captured soldiers.
"I come to shoot only if I am shot at," said one prisoner, who said he was from Kansas.
Asked why he was fighting Iraqis, he replied: "They don't bother me; I don't bother them."
US President George W. Bush demanded that US prisoners of war be treated humanely, but kept his eye on the big prize - the removal of Saddam Hussein's government and Iraq's eventual disarmament.
"I know that Saddam Hussein is losing control of his country," Bush said upon his return to the White House from the Camp David retreat in Maryland.
"We are slowly but surely achieving our objective."
With allies closing in, Iraqi leaders appealed for a united Arab front to condemn the invasion, but knew they would not get it. "There is no hope in these rulers," Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said.
But Russian and Chinese foreign ministers reasserted their view that the invasion had no legal basis and asked for an immediate halt.
Meanwhile, a British warplane was shot down in a friendly-fire attack by US Patriot missiles, killing its crew of two, and a grenade attack in an Army base in Kuwait left a captain dead and a US soldier as the suspect.
In the most notable gain for the coalition, soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade moved 230 miles in 40 hours, killing scores of Iraqi militiamen who engaged them with machine guns, to take positions less than a day's journey from Baghdad.
The brigade raced day and night across rugged desert in more than 70 tanks and 60 Bradley fighting vehicles. No American injuries were reported in that battle.
Iraqi Defence Minister Lt. Gen. Sultan Hashim Ahmed expressed confidence his troops could hold the capital.
"If they want to take Baghdad they will have to pay a heavy price," he said.
Several other allied units engaged in intensive gunbattles. In southern Iraq, a soldier from the 3rd Infantry Division died in a vehicle accident.
Efforts intensified to assemble forces in northern Iraq, where air strikes have gone after radicals linked to the al-Qaeda terrorist network, but prospects for ground assaults have been limited because neighbouring Turkey balked on becoming a staging ground. Mohammad Haji Mahmoud, leader of the Kurdistan Social Democratic Party, said the Americans were welcome in the north. "We're not going to say no to anything the Americans want," he said.
Iraqi television reported that Saddam Hussein's home town, Tikrit, had been bombed several times.
And, near the Persian Gulf, Marines seized an Iraqi naval base at Az Zubayr. In the command centre, Marines found half-eaten bowls of rice and other still-warm food.
Near Basra in the south, Marines saw hundreds of Iraqi men - apparently soldiers who had taken off their uniforms - walking along a highway with bundles on their backs past burned-out Iraqi tanks.
Allied forces have captured Basra's airport and a bridge. But commanders say they were in no rush to storm the city, hoping instead that Iraqi defenders decide to give up.
Tri-Valley Herald - NY Times ^ | 3-24-03 | By Michael R. Gordon, New York Times
Coalition forces beginning first attacks on Republican Guard.
V CORPS ASSAULT COMMAND POST, near Najaf, Iraq -- American forces on Sunday night began the battle for the "Red Zone," the area around Baghdad that is defended by Iraq's Republican Guard and one of the most treacherous regions of the country for the invading allied forces.
The strikes Sunday night by Army attack helicopters and Army ATAMCS surface-surface missiles represent the first American ground attacks on Iraq's Republican Guards. The aim was to soften up the Medina division, one of the three Republican Guard divisions that guard the approaches to Baghdad. The American firepower was intense but the U.S. forces did not emerge unscathed. One pilot was wounded by small arms fire but managed to fly back.
The assault underscored the risks of a war that began with lightning speed and which is now approaching its most critical phase. Optimistic statements may have created expectations in Washington and elsewhere that this war would be swift and relatively casualty free. Certainly, American forces have covered considerable ground and thrust deep into Iraq. But now that the military has raced toward central Iraq, American forces are girding for real battle.
"This is going to be a fight, not a one-day campaign," a senior military officer said. "Air is central but it did not break his back inside of Baghdad."
Dangers to the rear.
And now there are dangers to the rear too. American forces have been attacked by the fedayeen, militia that are under the command of Saddam Hussein's son Uday, which have begun attacks in the south to harass and try to slow the advancing American troops and supply columns.
The first few days were intense, but perhaps the easiest part of a complex war. Many of the Iraqi soldiers the allies confronted were ill-motivated and ill-trained. Some surrendered and many simply vanished. Even so, some of the celebrated capitulations have turned out to be less than advertised. U.S. officials were quick to announce the surrender of the commander of the 51st Division. On Sunday, they discovered that the "commander" was actually a junior officer masquerading as a higher-up in an attempt to win better treatment.
The thunderous airstrikes in Baghdad have no doubt taken a toll on the Iraqi military, but they have not destroyed its ability to direct its forces, according to senior American military officials. Before these latest attacks, the three Republican Guard divisions surrounding the capital were close to full strength.
The command and control of the Special Republican Guard, who are charged with defending the interior of the capital, is still intact, according to U.S. military officials.
They have not collapsed but are defending key sites in the city, including command centers and Baghdad's airport. To shield themselves from air strikes they are taking refuge in schools, mosques and other structures off limits to air attack.
Iraq still retains the ability to fire and guide mobile surface-to-air missiles, according to Air Force officials. Much of the anti-aircraft artillery is still active.
Despite all the Pentagon's boasts about its ability to use air power to shock its adversary and perhaps encourage surrender, the air defenses in and around Baghdad are still functional, though diminished.
Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, the land war commander, helicoptered deep in Iraq to confer over the upcoming assault on the Republican Guard with Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace, the commander of the Army's V Corps and the general who will lead the Army attack on Baghdad. This reporter accompanied McKiernan on the trip.
As McKiernan flew into Iraq, long convoys of trucks, armored vehicles and Humvees could be seen from the air. The columns kicked up a swirl of dust as the American forces pushed north past the palm groves, irrigation canals, barren desert and small towns that are characteristic of southern Iraq.
Troops have occasionally been snarled in traffic jams that can stop traffic for hours as the supplies for the final assault on Baghdad are pushed north.
Moving fast.
The American forces have been moving so fast that it took a bit of doing to find Wallace's command post, a tracked C-2 command vehicle filled with electronic gear. After the helicopter touched down, the two American commanders huddled in the cramped vehicle to plot the initial assaults on the Republican Guard.
There are six Republican Guard divisions in and around Baghdad. Early today, American planes focused on the Medina, attacking their command posts, armor and artillery. American commanders want to stop the Republican Guard forces from moving inside Baghdad, where they could engage in urban warfare or from moving south toward American troops.
Attacks on artillery were a high priority, in part, because they can used to fire the chemical shells that Iraq is still believed to possess.
The initial assault on the Medina division was carried out by several squadrons of Apache attack helicopters from the U.S. Army's 11th Attack Helicopter Regiment. More than 31 ATACMS, a surface-to-surface missile that is one of the Army's most devastating weapons, were also unleashed.
"We have to shape the fight," Wallace said, his voice so hoarse it was barely audible, before the attack began.
American commanders call this "shaping fires," an effort to weaken the enemy so he can be destroyed in follow-on attacks. It was just the first step of a combined arms offensive intended to deal the unit a decisive defeat. The hope is that a firm blow against the Medina will help persuade other Republican Guard units not to resist.
The attack served another purpose as well. American officials are trying to regain the initiative during a day in which they were surprised by attacks by the fedayeen militia who have been advancing troops and supply columns.
About 1,000 fedayeen milita, fighters who wear black uniforms or civilian clothes, are now in the southern zone, according to American estimates, and produced the largest American casualties so far. Their fervor and determination to fight outside Baghdad caught American forces by surprise and appeared to be part of a calculated effort to attack vulnerable American supply convoys as they head north.
There was no disguising the fact that the attacks by the fedayeen were a setback and a surprise. Wallace said he had expected to run across the militia in the cities, but had not anticipated that they would venture out of towns to take on American forces.
Not all of the military in the south may be fedayeen. Some may also be hard-core members of Hussein's Baath party or security officers who were deployed in Iraqi divisions to stop them from surrendering and who have taken up arms now that their units have dissipated.
American officials say they are driving SUVs or trucks and are armed with machine guns, anti-tank weapons and rocket-propelled grenades. They have reportedly been using taxi cabs and have been seen in one small town handing out small arms.
The American strategy has been to bypass Basra and other cities as they drive toward Baghdad. But some of the bridges the Americans need to head north are close to cities.
As the Americans have pushed north the fedayeen and other security forces have sought to hamper their advance by coming out to ambush the invading forces. Instead of fighting American armored formations in the open desert, the fedayeen seem to be positioning themselves to attack more vulnerable columns and supply trucks as they roll north. Instead of a head-to-head confrontation, the fedayeen are raising the specter of guerrilla war.
One encounter with the fedayeen occurred when Task Force Tawara encountered a group of Iraqis that pretended to be surrendering only to turn on the Marines near An Nasariyah. Six marines were killed and at least 14 wounded marines were evacuated. Some reports put the number of wounded at 82.
Muslim-American soldier detained in Kuwait attack (I KNEW it!)
WorldNetDaily ^ | March 22, 2003 | WND
Muslim-American soldier detained in Kuwait attack 16 troops injured in grenade assault described by Pentagon as 'inside job'
A U.S. soldier being described as a Muslim is now in custody for alleged complicity in the grenade and small-arms attack on members of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division encamped in Northern Kuwait, which injured 16 soldiers, 11 seriously.
In addition, two Kuwaitis who had served a translators are being held for questioning, according to CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann, who is imbedded with the 101st.
Strassmann reported that the grenades were rolled into two commanders' tents. When officers ran from their tents, they were hit by small arms fire, he said.
George Heath, 101st spokesman at home base Fort Campbell, said: "From our reports it appears that a terrorist penetrated Camp Pennsylvania, one or more terrorists threw two hand grenades into a tent."
Calling it a criminal matter and an "inside job," the Pentagon says the U.S. soldier had been missing on base. The soldier implicated was reportedly in charge of grenades, according to MSNBC.
None of the injuries are being called life threatening, and some of the casualties have been air-lifted out of the camp.
Strassmann also reported that an Iraqi rocket fired at U.S. forces in Kuwait was downed by Patriot missiles launched from nearby Camp New Jersey.
Time reporter Jim Lacey told ABC News that he talked to an eyewitness at the rear base camp who said that grenades were rolled into a tents that housed the leaders of the brigadier unit. A terrorist, the witness told Lacey, shot the first two people who exited the tent. Sky News reports that a third grendade was rolled into a third tent housing officers, but that it did not explode.
Camp Pennsylvania was named to honor of the victims of plane that crashed in Pennsylvania during the Sept. 11 attacks. The camp, located approximately 20-30 miles south of the Iraqi border, is surrounded by large berms and guarded by armed soldiers, with others in observation posts watching the desert. The camp is also home to Patriot missile batteries.
The U.S. soldier is currently being questioned, and U.S. authorities are tight-lipped about characterizing his possible involvement.
Stuart Ramsay, a reporter with Sky News, says the Muslim soldier had become a concern to his commanding officers.
"In recent days they were concerned about his behavior and were not going to send him up to the front when the soldiers were going to be deployed," Ramsay said.
It is not clear whether the soldier, who Ramsay said would have been in the Gulf for some weeks, had planned the attack before being deployed.
"Talking to other soldiers, it could be that he was disgruntled," Ramsay said. "They said he had been acting 'weird' for days."
They’re called the Dirty Nine. All are members of Saddam’s murderers’ club marked for certain prosecution if they survive the war for Baghdad.
By Christopher Dickey and Donatella Lorch
NEWSWEEK
March 31 issue — Saddam Hussein’s inner circle is a special kind of club. Only murderers need apply. “All the members were tested by Saddam in one way or another,” explains an Arab intelligence chief who’s dealt directly with several of the top thugs. “They would not last if they were not brutal enough to satisfy Saddam, and when you meet with them they brag about this. They don’t hide it. The more people they’ve killed, the more ‘credible’ they are.”
THE SLAUGHTER THEY carried out has been vast, like the genocidal killing of Kurds in 1988 that used both conventional means and chemical weapons. And it has been terribly intimate: murdering fellow members of the Baath Party, or even relatives. Yet the list of those formally considered “irredeemable,” as one Bush administration official put it, is remarkably short: not even a dirty dozen, but a “Dirty Nine,” including Saddam and his sons, Uday and Qusay. Only these few, according to administration officials, are certain to be prosecuted for war crimes and crimes against humanity—if they live that long. “Others that are implicated in past crimes would be subject to immediate detention,” says this official, “and then we’d figure out what would happen to them.”
There’s no shortage of evidence already on the books. As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said last week, “This is not a benign regime. This is a regime that has killed hundreds of thousands of human beings.” The brutal 1990-91 occupation of Kuwait was documented in excruciating detail by the Department of Defense, as was the savage treatment of the handful of American POWs captured during the last gulf war. Almost 18 tons of damning documents and videos were taken to Washington after the Kurds first seized control of northern Iraq in 1991. In the wake of the tanks now rolling toward Baghdad, investigators will be hunting for more documents, and also for mass graves that may hold tens of thousands of victims. Yet one of the greatest challenges may be finding the legal and political framework for trying the band of butchers who’ve run Iraq for the past 35 years.
PROBLEMS OF PROOF.
As wanton as the regime has been, there are enormous problems in gathering evidence to prosecute individuals in courts of law. After Kuwait’s liberation in 1991, the U.S. judge advocate general’s office investigated the atrocities Saddam’s minions committed there and came up with 1,226 war-crime files implicating more than 500 Iraqis by name. Yet not one of the suspects was—found among the 69,822 enemy prisoners of war taken by coalition forces. A recently declassified report from the JAG concludes “the most significant reason” was that “few Iraqi prisoners of war provided their real names, ranks, or other vital information.” The war was over so quickly, and the pressure to repatriate the prisoners afterward was so great, that serious investigations were not possible. Now, according to Iraqi opposition sources, Saddam has been issuing new identity documents under different names to thousands of his people since the middle of last year.
The controversial detention at Guantanamo naval base of alleged Taliban and Qaeda fighters from the Afghan war, and the interrogation techniques (including sleep and sensory deprivation) that have been used on the top terrorist detainees, will be difficult or impossible to justify in Iraq. Uniformed soldiers taken as POWs will have to be treated as such, in full compliance with the Geneva Conventions. “It’s a completely different situation,” says Michael Scharf, director of the War Crimes Research Office at Case Western Reserve University. “If we’re going to treat them as POWs, we have to give them a whole panoply of rights.” Among them: “No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever.” That means it will be difficult for the United States to extract information about, say, Iraq’s WMD stockpiles.
If and when individuals accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity are caught and identified, where would the trial be held, and under what laws? For the past nine months the State Department has been looking at ways to create a “transitional justice” system in Iraq, focusing on how justice could be meted out to the government and its supporters. But the administration is in a bit of a bind here. It opposes the new International Criminal Court and doesn’t like the ad hoc international tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Besides, the ICC does not have jurisdiction on crimes committed before it was created last year. A military tribunal, allowed by the Fourth Geneva Convention, could be established only for crimes of war committed during this particular conflict against U.S. troops.
A ‘VICTOR’S JUSTICE’?
For other crimes, the most obvious option would be the kind of hybrid tribunal set up in Sierra Leone and Cambodia, essentially a special court established within the country’s existing legal system. It could include both national and international jurists, giving it credibility both inside and outside Iraq. The more members who come from Muslim nations, “the less the Islamic world would blame America,” says Scharf. “There are lots of good reasons to internationalize it.” But Bush has already shown a preference for going it alone. In any case, warns Richard Dicker of Human Rights Watch, the legal process should not be perceived as “victor’s justice.”
Administration officials insist that almost everything depends on the course of the war. Will there be a coup? Will some of the leading suspects be killed during the combat? How much of the existing administration, Army and bureaucracy can be kept in place, and how much will have to be purged? “There is going to be an enormous amount of case-by-case, especially early on,” says one senior administration official. During a “transition period” that is “hopefully shorter rather than longer,” the aim is “to keep the water flowing and electricity running, and make sure that people are fed, and leave these difficult judgments about prosecutions and forgiveness, and who’s entitled to work, to some competent Iraqi authorities.”
Human-rights groups talk about a process known as “lustration,” drawing up lists that could contain tens of thousands of names intended to make sure criminals from the ancient regime don’t wind up as police, or judges, or in other positions of authority in the new one. “When it comes to things like the intelligence services,” says the same senior administration official, “they’re just going to be razed to the ground as fast as we can. [But] the military is a tricky one. We want to disarm the weapons of mass destruction. We don’t want to disarm [the Iraqis], leave them naked to their enemies, and there are an awful lot of people who just are innocent prisoners of the system.” The U.S. official adds, “Our bias will be toward forgiving as much of the past as possible.”
Does that mean only a tiny handful of the worst of the worst will actually be prosecuted? Dicker and other human-rights activists suggest that would be “obscene.” But as the United States tries to foster a coup or a quick surrender by the people around Saddam, it’s practical. Hence the mixed signals coming out of the Pentagon and the White House as the military campaign rolled into high gear. The shooting started with American forces bombing a building in Baghdad where they thought Saddam and his cronies were holed up, in obvious hope of killing them. Then presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer said, “We continue to hope that Saddam Hussein will leave Iraq,” and secret negotiations were reported that might send him to Mauritania or another safe haven—along with his money. “The list is short to convince people they don’t have to die for Saddam,” says a Jordanian official who knows many members of the Iraqi hierarchy.
Who are these lifetime members of Saddam’s hellfire club? The most detailed picture of the criminals at the heart of the regime, how they think, and the way they commit their crimes came after the defections to Jordan in 1995 of Hussein Kamel and Saddam Kamel, two brothers who turned against Saddam after being such trusted members of the inner circle that they were married to the dictator’s daughters.
CRUEL AND UNUSUAL.
According to a Jordanian official who met with the Kamel brothers often, the standards for cruelty were set at the top, with Saddam himself. When one of his Republican Guard in charge of supplies at the presidential palaces was caught stealing soaps in the early 1990s, a court sentenced the guard to a few months in prison. That wasn’t enough for the dictator. “Who steals from Saddam will betray Saddam,” he declared, and had the man killed. He forced the guard’s brother, another close aide, to attend the execution and to smile as it happened. An Iraqi doctor who attended an informal dinner party with Jordanian intelligence officials, among others, was summoned back to Baghdad under suspicion of treason. Jordanian officials later confirmed that Saddam fed the man to starving dogs on one of Saddam’s farms.
Uday Hussein, the elder of Saddam’s sons, “should have been committed to an asylum long ago,” says another senior Jordanian official who knew him in the 1990s. A sadistic playboy, Uday was notorious for raping any woman he coveted, and in one horrific incident bludgeoned one of his father’s trusted aides to death. Crippled in a 1996 assassination attempt, Uday has since lost his status as heir apparent to younger brother Qusay, who is now effectively his father’s second in command, charged with overseeing the entire security apparatus and, now, the defense of Baghdad.
When the Kamel brothers were “in a good mood,” remembers a Jordanian official who met with them often, they traded atrocity stories. Hussein Kamel had overseen the program to build weapons of mass destruction and liked to style himself “the father of the Iraqi atomic bomb,” which, fortunately, was never finally built. When Jordan’s King Hussein asked Hussein Kamel what had happened to the missing chemical and biological weapons, Kamel said they’d been destroyed but wouldn’t want to say just where, because the site also held mass graves. “They were completely nuts,” says the Jordanian official.
BRAGGING AND BRUTALITY.
Hussein Kamel boasted about the punishment he meted out to an aide who failed to carry out a task he’d been given in the assigned time. “Hussein Kamel forced him to drink a bottle of gasoline and then got an incendiary bullet and shot him in the stomach.” Perhaps embroidering the tale, and amid gales of laughter, the brothers claimed the man exploded. Saddam Kamel was proud of the time he beat a member of the Republican Guard “until his brain came out of his ear.” But both agreed that another relative, Saddam’s paternal cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, “was the hero,” the Jordanian says. “He was the one who killed the most.” Known as “Ali Chemical” for his role in gassing Kurds in northern Iraq, al-Majid was also the savage governor of Kuwait after the invasion, and played a leading role in slaughtering rebellious Iraqi Shiites in 1991. In 1996 the Kamel brothers, who’d failed to win support for overthrowing Saddam, made the mistake of going back to Iraq. And Ali Chemical killed them, too. He’s now one of the Dirty Nine.
Another is Abid Hammoud al-Tikriti, a distant cousin and longtime bodyguard who is sometimes described as Saddam’s personal secretary. “He is probably the only one who knows where Saddam is at any time,” says a Jordanian source who’s dealt with him. “He is the closest to Saddam’s inner, inner circle.” So close, in fact, that on occasion he’s even stood up to Uday, contradicting the son’s ravings. The head of the special security organization charged with hiding weapons of mass destruction, Hani al-Latif Tulfah, obviously will be a major prize for the coalition if he’s captured.
Along with al-Majid, Aziz Salih Numan, the second governor of occupied Kuwait, tops the list for crimes committed there. Under his rule, torture was at its height, hundreds of Kuwaitis were “disappeared” and the oilfields were burned for pure vengeance.
Mohammed hamza al-Zubaidi is notorious for his role in crushing the Shiite uprisings. So is the vice chairman of the Baath Party’s Revolution Command Council, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, who savagely suppressed the rebellion in An Nasiriya. But Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, who led the columns blasting their way into the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, damaging some of the most sacred shrines of Islam, is for some reason not included on the hit list. Nor is Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi Christian whose erudite English has made him one of the most familiar spokesmen for the regime on the international scene. Obviously it does them no good in Saddam’s eyes to be exempted, and that may have been done intentionally as a U.S. ploy to divide the regime.
Because, at the end of the day, Saddam’s inner circle is not just united by criminal complicity and family ties, it’s held together with fear. Unlike Osama bin Laden, whose support is built around his example and his teachings, however misguided, Saddam terrorizes everyone around him into obedience. When Saddam took absolute control of the country in 1979, one of his first acts was to execute rivals in his party. At a videotaped meeting, the names of dozens were read aloud. They were led away to be killed immediately as Saddam shouted, “Get out! Get out!” Sitting in the front row of that meeting were Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, Taha Yassin Ramadan and Tariq Aziz. When Saddam said the list was finished, they broke into tears.
At some moment soon, when Saddam’s ability to terrorize comes to an end, it’s doubtful anyone will defend him. Unlike bin Laden, even in his own country he will discover he can run but he can’t hide, and his subjects, even some of his cronies, will want him dead, not alive.
U.S. forces officially announce arrival in N. Iraq.
By Sebastian Alison
SALAHUDDIN, Iraq, March 24 (Reuters) - U.S. forces formally announced their arrival in Kurdish-run northern Iraq on Monday, but declined to say if they were there to open a northern front in the war against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
After days of speculation over how many U.S. special forces had already arrived in the north, U.S. Marine Corps Major General Pete Osman made a brief statement to reporters but did not take any questions.
Osman is the commander of a Military Coordination and Liaison Command (MCLC), and said he and his troops had arrived in northern Iraq on Sunday for a largely humanitarian role. He did not say how many troops were under his command.
Kurdish-run northern Iraq, which has been self-ruled since 1991 under the protection of a U.S.- and British-patrolled no-fly zone, has long been expected to be used to launch a northern front in the war to oust Saddam.
But prolonged debate in neighbouring Turkey ended with Ankara agreeing only to overflight rights for U.S. aircraft and not permission for U.S. troops to enter Iraq through Turkey.
Northern plans have also been complicated by Turkey's stated aim of sending its own troops into northern Iraq, drawing a U.S. response that this would not be in U.S. interests.
Turkey says it wants to prevent a flood of refugees and to protect the local Turkmen minority, linguistically and ethnically close to Turks, but Kurds have warned they will resist with force what they see as Turkish military occupation.
Kurdish officials in the area have said small numbers of U.S. special forces were already in the region. But Osman's briefing was believed to be the first official acknowledgement of their presence.
HUMANITARIAN ROLE
Osman said his command had been established "to coordinate with military and humanitarian organisations both in South East Turkey and Northern Iraq," and he defined three goals.
These were to assist in what he called "deconfliction of military activities" -- a phrase on which he did not elaborate; to synchronise humanitarian assistance and military operations; and to assist in relief operations in northern Iraq.
Osman said that on Sunday he had met Turkish military leaders in Ankara and Silopi, a Turkish town near the Iraqi border, and Kurdish military leaders in Dohuk, a Kurdish-held Iraqi town close to the Turkish border.
Immediately before Osman made his statement, another U.S. officer, Colonel Keith Lawless, told the briefing that the MCLC would coordinate between "all the various factions in the north, including the Turks if in fact Turkish forces cross."
KDP officials have already said Kurdish forces would come under U.S. command, following an agreement reached in Ankara last week, if U.S. forces enter northern Iraq.
Lawless said the U.S. troops arrived around 24 hours earlier and would be based in northern Iraq, without saying where.
Smoke rises from a building in downtown Baghdad Thursday night, March 20, 2003, as U.S.-led attacks continued in this image from television. (March 20, 2003) Photo Credit: Associated Press
A government building burns during heavy bombardement of Baghdad, Iraq, by U.S.-led forces Friday evening, March 21, 2003. (March 21, 2003) Photo Credit: Associated Press
President Bush stands in the White House Cross Hall after addressing the nation on his ultimatum to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. (March 17, 2003) Photo Credit: Associated Press
8) A British soldier is killed in combat near Az Zubayr, the first British combat death since the war began.
7) U.S. helicopters begin attacking Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard forces arrayed around Baghdad. The city is pounded by the strongest airstrikes since the first day of "shock and awe." One large explosion shakes a Ministry of Planning building within the Old Palace.
6) U.S. troops find a suspected chemical weapons factory near the Shiite holy city of Najaf. A mobile lab is called in to search for evidence that it is a so-called dual use site. Outside the city, U.S. soldiers skirmish with Iraqi forces before dawn; the Iraqis shoot rockets and anti-aircraft guns at the Americans.
5) An Iraqi missile is intercepted by a Patriot battery during an attack on coalition forces in Kuwait.
4) The Army's 3rd Infantry Division advances to Karbala, about 50 miles form Baghdad. Meanwhile, Iraqi television shows footage of what Iraqi officials say is a U.S. Apache Longbow attack helicopter shot down by peasants in a field near the city. The Pentagon confirms that one Apache is missing. Tape of two men alleged to be the captured pilots is aired by the Iraqis later in the day.
3) A U.S. missile hits a passenger bus carrying Syrian workers fleeing Iraq, killing five and injuring 10, according to Syria's official news agency. A U.S. general expresses regret for the incident, saying the bomb was aimed at a bridge 100 miles from the Syrian border and the bus came into view too late to stop the hit.
2) A day after bloody battles in an Nasiriyah, a convoy of hundreds of coalition vehicles and thousands of Marines occupies the road leading to a pontoon bridge across the Euphrates River. Because of the stiff resistance troops have met here, military officials might sidestep the city rather than capture it - or they may decide to send a message by doing just the opposite. Troops search house-to-house to flush out resistance.
1) Coalition forces skirmish with Iraqi forces before dawn in the area around Basra. Troops have remained outside the city, not attempting to move through it because of pockets of resistance from irregular units. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan says "urgent measures" are needed to restore the city's electricity and water supply.
Day Four
- Approximately 50 Marines are killed or wounded in fighting around an-Nasiriya. They defeat a highly-trained Iraqi militia group called the Sedaveen in an eight-hour battle for control of two strategic bridges in the city. A U.S. general says 12 U.S. troops are reported missing from battle.
- Iraq captures several prisoners of war in the south, and parades some of them on television.
- CBS News has learned that Special Operations troops have deployed near Baghdad, as Iraqi troops appear to be drawing back toward the capital city. More explosions rock Baghdad as the rolling air campaign continues.
- A British Royal Air Force fighter aircraft is mistakenly shot down by a Patriot missile battery near the Iraqi border with Kuwait, killing two British fliers.
- An American soldier from the 3rd Infantry Division is killed in a vehicle accident as the division's 2nd Brigade rolls to within 100 miles of Baghdad. One hundred Iraqi soldiers die in clashes with the troops and 20 others are taken as POWs.
- British troops sit on the outskirts of Basra, hoping Iraqi troops will surrender rather than fight in the streets.
- U.S.-British invasion forces face street fighting from guerrilla soldiers in Umm Qasr. The city has been secured by the coalition despite these pockets of resistance.
Day Three
- Grenades are thrown into three tents at a 101st Airborne command center in Kuwait, killing one American serviceman and wounding 13 others. A U.S. soldier is detained as a suspect in the attack.
- The Army's 3rd Infantry Division defeats the Iraqi 11th Division to capture the city of an-Nasiriya as well as two bridges that cross the Euphrates, opening the road to Baghdad.
- Four F/A-18 Hornets from the USS Kitty Hawk's Golden Dragons squadron report dropping seven laser-guided bombs on artillery pieces at Al-Qurnah, north of Basra, in support of the advancing 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.
- An American Navy officer and six Britons die in a mid-air collision of two British navy helicopters over the Persian Gulf.
- U.S. forces fire Tomahawk cruise missiles at suspected positions of the Ansar al Islam guerrillas, a group the United States accuses of ties to al Qaeda terrorists.
- Pentagon officials confirm three U.S. missiles may have gone astray in Iran.
- Marines capture Basra's airport after a gunbattle with Iraqi troops. U.S. aircraft bomb Iraqi tanks protecting bridges as coalition troops move on this strategic city. Iraqi forces respond with artillery fire.
- The air war on Baghdad resumes with a massive explosion that shakes the center of the city just before dawn. The attacks continue into daylight, with plans to hit 1,000 targets using 600 cruise missiles and virtually every type of warplane in the American arsenal, including the B-2 stealth bomber.
Day Two
- Iraq's entire 51st Infantry Division - numbering about 8,000 soldiers and including about 200 tanks -- surrenders as coalition forces advance toward Basra, Pentagon officials say.
- Coinciding with the bombardment of Baghdad, air strikes hammer target in Mosul, Kirkuk, Basra and an-Nasiriya.
- Enormous explosions rock Baghdad as the U.S. aerial campaign begins. The attack includes large numbers of Tomahawk cruise missiles. The Iraqis respond with anti-aircraft shots. Many buildings in the heart of the capital are set ablaze, including three major fires at the Old Palace compound. As the fires rage, aircraft are heard over Baghdad for the first time.
- A U.S. Marine from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force dies while fighting enemy Iraqi forces near Umm Qasr.
- U.S. Marines gain full control of the strategic port of Umm Qasr, according to British military officials.
- American forces seize the airfields known as H-2 and H-3 in far western Iraq. Iraqi troops offer little resistance.
- A U.S. Marine from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force dies in the advance on the Rumeila oil field.
- Iraq fires a missile into Kuwait, but it is destroyed by a Patriot interceptor.
- Advancing through the deserts of Southern Iraq, U.S. Marines run into mortar fire as they take the main highway leading to the key southern Iraqi port city of Basra.
- British troops move on the strategic al-Faw peninsula, Iraq's access point to the Persian Gulf and the site of major oil facilities.
- Some 200 Iraqi soldiers surrender to the U.S. 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit just over an hour after it crosses the border from northern Kuwait. American and British troops encounter both hostile fire and white flags in their race across the desert.
- Eight British and four American soldiers die in a CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter crash, about 9 miles south of the Iraqi border town of Umm Qasr. A British military spokesman says it was an accident.
Day One
- The initial salvos against Baghdad consisted of 40 Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from Navy ships in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, as well as precision-guided 2,000-pound bombs dropped from two F-117A Nighthawk stealth jets.
- Iraq retaliated Thursday by launching missiles at U.S. troop positions in Kuwait. Troops donned gas masks several times. The Kuwaiti Defense Ministry said six missiles were fired, two of them Scuds, which Iraq is prohibited from having.
- During the day, U.S. forces in northern Kuwait opened a thundering barrage of artillery across the desert border, along with volleys of rockets. The U.S. 3rd Infantry Division attacked Iraqi troops with howitzers and multiple launch rocket systems, firing more than 100 shells.
- Under the shelter of night, and with the support of heavy bombing, the 1st Marine Division entered Iraq at around 9 p.m. local time.
- As the Marines entered Iraq, they could see burning oil wells that sent a black cloud into the night sky under a nearly full moon.
- The Marines also had some skirmishes with Iraqi troops. They opened fire with machine guns on an Iraqi T-55 tank and finally destroyed it with a Javelin, a portable anti-missile.
- Soon after the incursions were reported, sea-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles hit Baghdad. They almost simultaneously hit the main presidential palace near the Tigris and the Ministry of Planning, which was in flames.
- Explosions are reported in the northern city of Mosul.
US FORCES were closing in on Saddam Hussein’s powerbase in Baghdad last night, as the Republican Guard defences surrounding the Iraqi capital were attacked.
As the Iraqi dictator went on television to broadcast a rallying call to his people, United States and British generals were preparing for the most decisive battle of the war so far.
Tony Blair told MPs at Westminster that the military assault to topple Saddam’s regime was rapidly approaching its "crucial moment". The Prime Minister is expected to attend a war summit with George Bush, the US president, at Camp David tomorrow.
Meanwhile, the US army’s 3rd Infantry Division was at the Shi’ite holy city of Karbala, only 50 miles south-west of Baghdad, and US marines units were reported to be approaching Al Kut to push into the capital from the south-eastern flank along the Tigris river.
Hundreds of air sorties immediately to the south of the city were striking three brigades of the Republican Guard lying in front of the coalition force and cutting off their retreat to Baghdad.
Meanwhile, more than 30 Apache helicopter gunships from the US army’s V Corps attacked the Iraqi forces, targeting tanks and armoured vehicles in towns and villages south of Baghdad.
US commanders were bringing up the 1st Marine Division from the Basra region, along the northern bank of the Euphrates river, in two large columns to join the assault.
The US army’s 101st Airborne Division is thought to have been dropped into central Iraq to play a key role in the forthcoming battle, making up a combined force that will be able to strike all three Republican Guard brigades at once.
Military analysts say the scene is being set for a simultaneous "all-or-nothing" land and air attack on the Baghdad leadership and its Republican Guard defenders.
Last night, air-raid sirens sounded over Baghdad for the sixth consecutive night. Coalition air forces flew 1,000 sorties yesterday, with 800 of them striking targets in the Baghdad area.
Near Karbala, US officials admitted one Apache helicopter was forced to land under heavy fire and that an attempt to rescue its crew had been abandoned. Pictures of the crew of an Apache helicopter were broadcast on Iraqi television last night.
In the south of the country, allied forces attempting to safeguard Iraqi cities continued to face fierce guerrilla-style ambushes, one of which claimed the life of the first British soldier to die in combat in the campaign.
The serviceman was killed at Az Zubayr, close to Basra, where it was reported that the British 7th Armoured Brigade, the Desert Rats, had made a tactical withdrawal.
A tank unit was pulled back from a road leading to Iraq’s second city as the region was terrorised by roving irregular militia units.
US troops made rapid advances towards Baghdad after air strikes wiped out an Iraqi armoured column which appeared intent on charging them.
The progress of the allied force, made up of columns of thousands of tanks and other vehicles, was eventually slowed by sandstorms around Karbala. One column was able to cross the Euphrates farther south at An Nasiriyah without any resistance.
It was in An Nasiriyah that two bloody ambushes were staged on Sunday, leaving up to ten US marines dead and at least 12 US soldiers missing, presumed captured.
In northern Iraq, US navy jets dropped bombs and fired laser-guided missiles on the cities of Tikrit, Kirkuk and Mosul as it emerged that a force of US marines was in the region ready to open a new front in the war.
Across Iraq, British and US forces continued to come across pockets of resistance led by fanatical elements of the Saddam Fedayeen, an irregular militia loyal to the Iraqi dictator, which is also known as the "brigade of martyrs".
Small groups roamed around Basra with machine-guns mounted on the backs of pick-up trucks, terrorising local people and launching lightning strikes on British forces.
British soldiers have reported coming under attack from Iraqi forces dressed as civilians who had apparently been preparing to surrender.
The Pentagon claims that Iraqi soldiers have attempted to pose as journalists to mount surprise attacks on coalition forces.
The United Nations’ secretary general, Kofi Annan, led warnings yesterday of a humanitarian crisis in Basra and stressed that aid supplies were needed in the region urgently.
Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, said emergency aid supplies would remain stuck at sea while the Royal Navy swept for mines on the approaches to Iraq’s only sea port of Umm Qasr, an operation which could take days.
Royal Marines and Commando-trained Royal Engineers have been sent to Umm Qasr to finish off the 100-strong Iraqi force still in place in the town.
The commander of 3 Commando Brigade, Brigadier Jim Dutton, said: "In general, I am very pleased with the progress the troops under my command have made so far.
"It was inevitable that we would be slightly slower in some areas than we originally expected, and faster in others, which has been the case."
Shares tumbled on both sides of the Atlantic yesterday. Prices fell at the stock markets in London, New York, Frankfurt and Paris.
Drive Through - A British Warrior combat vehicle destroys a picture of Saddam Hussein in the city of Basra. Photo: Sky News
Warm Welcome - Iraqis [Shia Muslims] wave as a convoy of the US Marine Expeditionary Unit passes them as it makes its way from the port of Umm Qasar. Photo: Sky News
25 marca. Brytyjski oddzia³ "Szczurów pustyni" z Kompanii Zulu wynosi portret Saddama Husaina z zajêtych budynków partii Baas w miejscowoœci Basra
MARK RICHARDS AP
This is K-Dog, the coalition forces' most surprising weapon against Iraq.
With a camera strapped to his fin, the bottle-nose dolphin is one of about 100 dolphins and sea lions helping to clear shipping lanes in the Gulf to ensure a safe passage for vessels, including those which will provide humanitarian relief.
K-Dog and his handler Sgt Andrew Garrett are part of a multinational team, CTU-55.4.3, consisting of Naval Special Clearance Team One, Britain's Fleet Diving Unit Three, Australia's Clearance Dive Team, and two Explosive Ordnance Disposal units.
A Pentagon spokesman said: "The team works in both deep and shallow waters, looking for mines and marking them. Dolphins have been used like this by the US Navy for more than 30 years, and have proved themselves more reliable than robots."
He said that unlike robots, the dolphins did not run out of power, nor did they go missing or have problems communicating from the sea bed.
This message has been edited by TsarSamuil from IP address 212.181.9.227 on Apr 1, 2003 1:15 PM
Fierce sandstorms are holding up US-led forces in their advance towards the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
BBC correspondents travelling with coalition troops say units have been halted, with visibility reduced to just a few metres.
The chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, General Richard Myers, acknowledged the bad weather was slowing down the advance, but vowed that it would not be stopped.
In a short speech at the Pentagon, President George W Bush said troops were making a "steady advance".
Mr Bush said he did not know how long the war would last, but he knew its outcome: "The Iraqi regime will be disarmed. The Iraqi regime will be ended."
He confirmed that he had asked Congress for an additional $74.7bn to cover the war effort, humanitarian aid and post-war reconstruction of Iraq.
Mr Bush was speaking as Baghdad's southern outskirts continued to be hit by what appeared to be B-52 bombers, despite the sandstorms.
They have been targeting Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guard, in what correspondents say is a sign that the critical battle for the city is about to begin.
Major-General Victor Renuart of US Central Command said 1,400 air sorties against the Iraqi Republican Guard were scheduled for Tuesday.
Iraq's Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf said 16 people had been killed and 95 wounded in Baghdad in the previous 24 hours.
Activity 'continuing'
The BBC's Gavin Hewitt - who is about 100 miles (160 kilometres) south of Baghdad - says all operations have ceased as a result of the storm.
Rivulets of sand are flowing across the desert floor and everybody is hunkering down, he says.
This was unexpected and undoubtedly will slow the push forward to confront the Republican Guard units, our correspondent adds.
Correspondents in Baghdad say day was turned into a night-like darkness and this could affect the bombing campaign.
However, at a news conference at coalition headquarters in Doha, Qatar, a US spokesman said military activity was continuing with all-weather precision weapons.
In Washington, General Myers vowed to press on, regardless of the weather.
In fighting elsewhere:
Thousands of US troops advance through the town of Nasiriya, about 370 km (230 miles) south-east of Baghdad, following protracted clashes with Iraqi forces
The British military say Iraq's second largest city, Basra, has been designated a military objective in order to get humanitarian aid to its inhabitants
British Royal Marines move into positions along the Iraqi border with Iran, amid worries that Iran might try to exploit the chaos caused by the war
UK military sources say the southern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr is now "safe and open" after several days of Iraqi resistance Tough battle
Coalition troops are now in Karbala, about 80 km (50 miles) south of Baghdad, facing the Republican Guard's formidable Medina division, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair says.
General Myers said the coalition anticipated that "as we get closer to Baghdad, the resistance will get tougher".
"That's where their best units are, the so-called Republican Guard units. They're the best trained, best equipped and reportedly the most loyal to the regime, so we think the toughest fighting is ahead of us... and we're preparing for that," General Myers told ABC television.
Seven Iraqi Government ministers have taken to the airwaves on Tuesday, looking astonishingly confident, says the BBC's Paul Wood in Baghdad.
The message from the Iraqi leadership is that they are still very much in control and able to cause considerable difficulties for the advancing American and British troops, our correspondent says.
The approaches to Baghdad are flat, but there are also villages, small towns, orchards and crops, which could provide plenty of cover for the Iraqi troops to disperse into.
Iraqi authorities say the US-led forces will be in for a surprise when they reach cities.
Other key developments.
Iraqi TV broadcasts a message, allegedly from Saddam Hussein, to tribal chiefs urging them to "escalate and enhance" their fighting against the "aggressors"
The US Fifth Fleet raises its state of readiness because of the risk of suicide attacks by Iraqi naval speedboats loaded with explosives - following the first reported Iraqi suicide attack at the al-Faw peninsula.
The Iraqis are hiding equipment from coalition forces, including concealing a fighter jet in a cemetery, the US has claimed.
At a news briefing Brigadier General Vincent Brooks showed a satellite picture of a MIG 23 fighter jet hidden in the corner of a graveyard near Balad Airfield, 42 miles north of Baghdad.
"This is a sign of the regime's intentions. We are finding equipment located in places we think it should not be located," he said.
"This plane is some 4,000 metres from the airfield, where we would expect to find aircraft."
Brooks also showed video footage of coalition paratroopers dropping into Iraq on a mission.
"Our coalition special operations forces do indeed continue to conduct a full array of missions including last night's assault in the hours of darkness to seize a desert landing strip," he said.
He said Iraq was continuing to try to lay mines in the northern Gulf, which the allies are hoping to use to ship in humanitarian supplies.
"Coalition maritime forces continued to counter ongoing regime efforts to mine the north Arabian Gulf waters clandestinely," he said.
The United States is preparing to establish immediate sole control of postwar Iraq, initially without recourse to the United Nations, with a civilian administration under the direct command of the military, according to senior administration officials.
Even before American troops reach Baghdad, administration officials are assembling a team of civilian officials, largely retired American diplomats, to run Iraq as soon as the fighting is over.
The administration has decided that helping the country and its people recover after the war will require a civilian corps in place working with the military as it tries to establish security throughout the country.
European and Asian diplomats, while offering to help rebuild Iraq, raised questions last week about American plans to administer postwar Iraq without a central role for the United Nations.
While the issue is debated at the United Nations and the European Union, the administration is going ahead with its plans for a civil peacekeeping operation under the direction of Jay Garner, the retired general who directs the Pentagon's new Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.
Mr. Garner arrived in Kuwait last week. He is overseeing the intense recruitment of his staff and preparing to administer Iraq under plans drawn up over the last two months.
"People who got called on Monday or Tuesday last week got deployed on Sunday," said a retired diplomat who has been asked to serve in Iraq. "They want me to get out of here by Sunday."
Senior officials are quick to say this arrangement is only temporary — lasting, they hope, no more than a few months — until an interim Iraqi government is in place. They also said they were still debating how to work with the United Nations when the time comes for that.
"The model could be an interim Iraqi government working with the U.N. — we just don't know yet," said a senior administration official.
Bypassing the United Nations and setting up an American civilian peacekeeping administration under the military, however temporary, is a huge break from recent tradition and a denial of one of the United Nations' central roles since the end of the cold war.
But the United States may have no choice for the moment. Under international law, the United Nations may be unable to work under a military occupation force. While the United Nations can offer emergency relief for refugees, children, food distribution and humanitarian coordination, international officials say that the Geneva Convention would forbid long-term cooperation without approval from the Security Council.
"On the humanitarian side, we want to save lives no matter what," said Mark Malloch Brown, director of the United Nations Development Program. "When it comes to reconstruction, that's crossing a different Rubicon. We can't be authorized by a subcontract of the U.S. government. We have to be authorized by the Security Council."
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said on Thursday that he was consulting with the United Nations to try to resolve some of these questions and devise a way to "put in place broad Security Council authority to help the people of Iraq."
The goal, according to an administration official, is to avoid a "bloated, inefficient civilian U.N. peacekeeping force," yet still encourage United Nations participation in postwar Iraq under the American administration.
The United States has contributed $105 million to international organizations, including the United Nations, to operate humanitarian programs in postwar Iraq.
Richard H. Solomon, president of the U.S. Institute of Peace, has worked with the administration on the postwar Iraq plans and said that officials were caught between two goals.
"This Pentagon doesn't want the military to get bogged down in extensive peacekeeping operations, but at the same time they don't want to make the classic American goof of winning a war and losing the peace," he said.
Mr. Garner's team is organized along the lines of a slimmed-down United Nations peacekeeping operation, with Mr. Garner taking the role normally played by powerful United Nations administrators, like Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations special representative in Afghanistan.
His team includes three regional coordinators and coordinators for reconstruction, civil administration and humanitarian assistance. They will oversee everything from emergency relief and refugees to long-term planning for roads, rail and waterways as well as economic development and weeding out senior officials of the ruling Baath Party of Saddam Hussein.
A group of Iraqi expatriates will serve on an advisory council, according to the Pentagon.
The administration has sought retired diplomats with a history in the area.
Barbara Bodine, who was ambassador to Yemen in 2000 when the destroyer Cole was attacked, will serve in central Iraq.
George Ward, the former ambassador to Namibia, will oversee humanitarian aid.
Others who have tentatively agreed to serve under Mr. Garner include Kenton Keith, the former ambassador to Qatar and director of the Coalition Information Center in Islamabad, Pakistan, during the Afghanistan war; Robin Raphel, the former ambassador to Morocco, and Timothy M. Carney, former ambassador to the Sudan.
March 26, 2003 -- U.S. troops killed hundreds of Iraqi soldiers near the southern city of An Najaf last night - without suffering a single loss.
In the largest ground engagement since the war began, up to 300 Iraqi troops were slain after they used the cover of a howling sand storm to attack the 7th Cavalry Regiment 95 miles south of Baghdad.
The Iraqi soldiers, linked to Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard defending Baghdad, opened fire with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms, defense officials said.
The attacks suggested the location of Iraqi strongholds in the area, and the U.S. troops used thermal-imaging equipment to kill a large number of the enemy, the officials said.
The U.S. soldiers battled the Iraqi forces until about 1 a.m. today while pressing their advance toward Baghdad and even crossed the Euphrates River during the fighting, they said.
The Iraqis - who attacked on foot - damaged two MIAI Abrams tanks and an M2 Bradley armored vehicle, but no U.S. casualties were reported.
The battle flared as thousands of Shiite Muslims in the southern city of Basra rose up against Saddam Hussein's regime, rampaging through the streets and setting dozens of buildings ablaze.
In turn, Iraqi troops fired mortars at the rebels, and British forces massed outside the city fired missiles at them.
Richard Gaisford, a reporter traveling with the British forces, said they were planning to enter the city to support the rebels.
"We will be very keen to capitalize" on the uprising, said Gen. Peter Wall, the British chief of staff.
"We have a duty to reinforce that, but we've got to make sure we do that in a sensible way and don't do anything hotheaded that we might come to regret."
Basra took up arms against Saddam during the 1991 Gulf War, but his forces crushed the rebellion, killing thousands of Shiites.
In the air war, U.S. jets bombed cities in northern Iraq and thunderous explosions continued to rock Iraq.
President Bush, who holds talks with British Prime Minister Tony Blair at Camp David today and tomorrow, was confident of victory.
"We cannot know the duration of this war, yet we know its outcome: We will prevail," Bush said after getting an update at the Pentagon.
"The Iraqi regime will be disarmed. The Iraqi regime will be ended. The Iraqi people will be free. And our world will be more secure and peaceful."
In other developments:
* Coalition airstrikes knocked Iraqi TV off the air today. The station had briefly gone off the air last night but returned with a weaker signal. CBS News reported that the first outage occurred because the Air Force struck it with an "E-bomb," an experimental device that issues a brief pulse of powerful microwaves.
* U.S. Marines seized a hospital in Nasiriyah that was being used as a military staging area and captured 170 Iraqi solders wearing civilian clothes.
The Marines also confiscated more than 200 weapons, stockpiles of ammunition and more than 3,000 chemical suits with masks, as well as military uniforms. The soldiers had been fired on from the hospital.
* Also in Nasiriyah, U.S. troops holding a vast Iraqi air base sealed 36 bunkers, earmarking them as possible sites of weapons of mass destruction.
*As president Bush urged Congress to swiftly approve his $74.7 billion request to pay initial war costs, the Senate slashed more than half his proposal to reduce taxes by $726 billion over the next decade.
* U.S. forces destroyed six satellite-jamming devices, which Iraq was using to try to thwart American precision guided weapons. Russia repeated denials that it is selling jamming devices, anti-tank guided missiles and night-vision goggles to Iraq.
* In a yet a third friendly-fire incident, two British soldiers were killed near Basra when their Challenger tank was mistakenly targeted by another Challenger crew.
On Monday, an American F-16 fired on a U.S. Patriot missile battery in Iraq after the battery's radar locked on the jet. There were no U.S. casualties. On Sunday, a U.S. Patriot missile battery shot down a Royal Air Force Tornado near the Kuwaiti border, killing the two crew members.
* Saudi Arabia said it had made a proposal to end the war and was awaiting a response. But State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, "We are not aware of any peace proposal from Saudi Arabia."
* The Navy plans to use a team of specially trained bottlenose dolphins to seek out mines in the Umm Qasr harbor.
When the war began, the military hoped Basra would welcome the invading forces. But resistance by paramilitary and other units kept the British from securing the city and allowing relief operations to begin.
Before the rebellion in the city began, British troops battled 1,000 Iraqi militiamen outside the city, capturing a high official in a raid on a Ba'ath Party headquarters and killing 20 of his armed guards.
In the ground war, U.S. forces punched through Nasiriyah after three days of intense fighting with Fedayeen paramilitaries.
Despite a crippling sandstorm, they crossed a bridge over the Euphrates River and resumed their march along the Basra-Baghdad highway.
The storm forced many soldiers to take refuge inside their Bradley fighting vehicles. The sand knocked out several of the vehicles, forcing the soldiers who repaired them to don goggles, helmets and scarves to protest themselves from the 50 mph gusts.
Some helicopters were grounded by the weather, and combat aircraft taking off from the USS Harry Truman returned a few hours later without dropping bombs.
So far, the U.S. has taken 4,000 prisoners in the campaign, and Secretary of State Colin Powell issued a new warning about the possible use of chemical weapons by Iraqi troops.
Speaking on French TV, Powell cited speculation that "there is a box around Baghdad, that if we penetrate that box," Saddam would unleash a chemical attack.
"If he did," the secretary said, "it would not stop the U.S. assault."
In the air war, witnesses said Saddam's intelligence headquarters as well as a sprawling defense complex were also hit by allied strikes.
But the Butcher of Baghdad remained defiant.
State television carried a message from him to tribal and clan leaders, saying, "Consider this to be the command of faith and jihad, and fight them."
By Thanassis Cambanis and Bryan Bender, Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent, 3/26/2003
KUWAIT CITY -- US Marines yesterday uncovered 3,000 chemical weapon suits and a stockpile of gas masks in a hospital in the city of Nasiriyah, providing the strongest suggestion yet that the Iraqi regime has been preparing for chemical warfare.
Hidden in the hospital, which was marked with a red crescent signifying its status as a medical facility, were a T-55 tank, 200 guns, and other military supplies, US officials said.
Discovery of the chemical gear came after another day of street fighting in Nasiriyah, a city of half a million people, as US forces continued to face surprising pockets of resistance from Iraqi fighters behind the advancing columns of coalition of soldiers. The smell of burnt flesh filled the air, attesting to the ferocity of the attacks, according to reporters in the area.
The intense clashes in Nasiriyah, about 230 miles southeast of Baghdad, foreshadowed the potential for far bloodier urban warfare in the days and weeks ahead as allied forces prepare for the expected assault on Baghdad, a bigger and more complex military objective than any so far encountered.
The battle for Nasiriyah, a key crossing point over the Euphrates River, has proved to be the toughest test yet for American forces. Nine Marines died and 12 Army soldiers were missing or captured Sunday after being deceived by members of the militant Fedayeen Saddam unit, who posed as civilians trying to surrender. At least 100 Iraqi bodies lined the road north of town yesterday after elements of the First Marine Division fought their way through to secure a bridge over the Euphrates and keep supply lines open. They were believed to be Iraqi soldiers.
The hospital proved to be yet another case of a civilian building being used for military purposes, US officials said. In addition to the tank and the chemical suits were piles of ammunition and Iraqi military uniforms, US spokesman Major David Andersen said. Once the facility was secured, 170 enemy fighters, dressed mostly in civilian clothes but wearing parts of military uniforms, were taken by US forces as prisoners of war.
''It is believed that enemy soldiers dressed in civilian attire were being bused into the city and were drawing weapons and ammunition from the hospital in order to fight in the city,'' said Colonel Ron Johnson, operations officer for Task Force Tarawa, the unit of the Second Battalion of the Eighth Marines that raided the hospital yesterday.
Using loudspeakers, Task Force Tarawa instructed any civilians in the hospital to leave before soldiers entered the building. No one was injured in the raid, officials said.
Since the battle of Mogadishu in Somalia a decade ago, when 18 US soldiers were killed in a day-long battle against guerrillas interspersed with the local population, US military commanders have thought long and hard about how to train for urban fighting and how to avoid it if possible. Many of the Army and Marine units in Iraq went through urban warfare training in the United States before being deployed to the region.
Any hope that coalition soldiers in Iraq could avoid combat in cities has faded. In Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, British Royal Marines yesterday encountered pockets of resistance from Iraqi Army troops as well as the irregulars of the Fedayeen Saddam, a group of soldiers intensely loyal to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. ''Our intent is to attempt to return security to the city as rapidly as we can and root out those forces that would fight in the city and use the residents of the city as shields and try to create targets,'' Major General Victor E. Renuart said at a news briefing yesterday at Central Command headquarters in Qatar.
Fighting over the weekend in the southern port city of Umm Qasr gave coalition forces their first taste of urban conflict. Military officials said yesterday the town is firmly in allied hands.
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that firefights in other Iraqi cities will not be easily avoided. ''Some of these dead-enders will be down there shooting people'' until the Iraqi regime is toppled, Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news conference. US and British ground forces originally planned to bypass Iraq's southern population centers. Fearing high numbers of allied and civilian casualties -- combined with the desire to press toward Baghdad as quickly as possible -- they took a calculated risk that by skirting towns and cities they could bring the fight to the elite Republican Guard divisions around the capital and put a quick end to the regime.
But they quickly found themselves engaged in street battles.
''This is likely to be the first real urban battle the Army has taken on since the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War,'' said Loren Thompson, a military specialist at the libertarian Lexington Institute in Washington. ''Every American military expert has been saying that is what scared us most. So of course, Saddam is going to try and draw us into the city. The military is prepared. The question is whether the public is prepared. Saddam is willing to sacrifice civilians to break our will.''
And the worst of it may be yet to come. As coalition bombs rained down on the Republican Guard divisions ringing Baghdad, one specialist warned that if the allies have to enter the city by foot the battle could get even uglier.
''Even though we can win in Baghdad, there will be the cost of hundreds or thousands of US and coalition casualties, and tens of thousands of Iraqis,'' said Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution in Washington. ''The hope is you can destroy the forces outside Baghdad,'' he said.
UMM QASR, Iraq - The first sizable relief convoy rolled into Iraq in a sandstorm Wednesday as allied forces struggled to clear the way for more aid shipments, using dolphins to remove mines from waterways and trying to subdue Iraqi fighters in the city of Basra.
Three days after President Bush promised "massive amounts" of humanitarian aid, seven large, battered tractor-trailers entered Umm Qasr carrying food and water donated by Kuwaitis. The convoy was escorted by U.S. soldiers.
"We planned for 30 trucks but we only got seven loaded because of the severe sandstorm," said E.J. Russell of the Humanitarian Operations Center, a joint U.S.-Kuwaiti agency. The storm cut visibility to about 100 yards.
Hundreds of cases of water were stacked on three of the semis. The rest carried boxes of tuna, crackers, sweets and other food.
As the trucks lumbered past blasted buildings on the Iraq-Kuwait border, an Iraqi boy about 10 pointed to his mouth and shouted "Eat, eat!"
After days of fierce fighting that shut down the city of Umm Qasr, Iraqi youths cheered and swarmed British troops as they handed out yellow meal packets and bottles of water Wednesday. The troops, already in the city, were not part of the aid convoy.
"Umm Qasr is now secure - as a port and as a town," said Brig. Jim Dutton of the Royal Marines.
The town's deepwater port is needed for any relief effort.
Plans to bring supplies to Iraqi civilians had been on hold for days because of fighting across southern Iraq. On Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that the United States is legally responsible for providing relief aid.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer blamed Saddam Hussein's regime for slowing the flow of $105 million in U.S. aid by placing mines in the port of Umm Qasr.
U.S. Navy helicopters flew two dolphins - Makai and Tacoma - into Umm Qasr, where they were to begin ferreting out mines Wednesday ahead of ships carrying relief supplies.
A British ship, the Sir Galahad, moved into the Khor Abdallah river Tuesday night with 211 tons of food and 101 tons of bottled water. It was to head up to Umm Qasr on Wednesday.
Iraqis have about five weeks of food left, according to estimates by the World Food Program. About 13 million people - 60 percent of Iraq's 22 million - are completely dependent on food handouts,
The World Food Program, a U.N. agency, said it would make its biggest single request for cash in its history - more than $1 billion to help feed the war-stricken nation for about six months.
"This could well turn into the largest humanitarian operation in history," said agency spokesman Trevor Rowe.
Conditions in Basra, where British troops shelled Iraqi fighters on Tuesday, seemed especially severe. Annan called for "urgent measures" to avert a major crisis there.
Electricity and water supplies have been cut off in Basra, and many of the million-plus residents are drinking contaminated water and face the threat of diarrhea and cholera.
The U.N. Children's Fund estimated that up to 100,000 Basra children under age 5 were at immediate risk.
On Wednesday, Al Jazeera television showed residents lining up to buy water at one of the city's few working wells.
Before the war, Iraqis depended on government rations distributed under the U.N.'s oil-for-food program. The 7-year-old program allows Iraq to sell unlimited quantities of oil to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian goods. The proceeds from oil sales are deposited in a U.N.-controlled escrow account.
The war has thrown the future of that program in doubt.
Because the United States and Britain failed to get U.N. backing for the war, Russia, France, Germany and China want to ensure that the immediate humanitarian costs of the war are paid by the United States - and not the United Nations.
Annan wants to revive the U.N. aid program as quickly as possible. A resolution giving him authority to run the program for 45 days is stalled because Russia, Syria and others are insisting the United Nations must not sanction the war or give the United States control over the U.N.-controlled account, which holds billions of dollars.
War Could Last Months, Some Military Officers Say.
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 26, 2003; 8:42 PM
Despite the rapid advance of Army and Marine forces across Iraq over the past week, some senior U.S. military officers are now convinced that the war is likely to last months and will require considerably more combat power than is now on hand there and in Kuwait, senior defense officials said today.
The combination of wretched weather, long and insecure supply lines, and an enemy that has refused to be supine in the face of American combat power has led to a broad reassessment by some top generals of U.S. military expectations and timelines. Some of them see even the potential threat of a drawn-out fight that sucks in more and more U.S. forces. Both on the battlefield in Iraq and in Pentagon conference rooms, military commanders were talking today about a longer, harder war than had been expected just a week ago, the officials said.
"Tell me how this ends," one senior officer said today.
While some top planners favor continuing to press north, most Army commanders believe that the pause in Army ground operations that began today is critical. A relatively small force is stretched thin over 300 miles, and much of the Army's killing power, in more than 100 AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, has been grounded by persistently foul weather or by battle damage from an unsuccessful pre-dawn raid on Monday. To the east, the Marine Corps advance on the city of Kut was also hampered by skirmishing along its supply line and fuel shortages at the front.
More forces are coming, including the Army's 4th Infantry Division, which has begun pushing equipment from 35 ships into Kuwait after Turkey refused to allow a second front into northern Iraq. But it will probably take the better part of a month for that tank-heavy division to get into position and provide combat power. Other forces heading to this region, including the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, at Fort Carson, Colo., and the 1st Cavalry Division, at Fort Hood, Tex., will require months to move their tanks and other armor from their bases into combat, the defense officials said.
Pentagon spokesmen rejected that pessimistic assessment today and insisted that the war is still going according to plan. "The plan has moved almost exactly with expectations," Army Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal said at the briefing. "Fast where we expected it to be fast, gathering strength where we expected to do that. So the answer is, it's right on the mark."
But Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who maintains close ties to some senior Army generals, seemed to break with part of that assessment, saying in an interview with National Public Radio broadcast today that it is becoming evident that the war "may take a little bit longer, don't know how long." He added that, "The point is we have had a good battle plan, and it's a battle plan that will succeed."
In the short term, the Army plans to secure its strained supply lines with a portion of the 82nd Airborne Division, now positioned near Kuwait City, and troops from the 101st Airborne Division, which is gathering at a forward operating base deep inside Iraq, Army sources said.
The degree to which the supply lines have been stretched can be seen in the fact that the Third Division this week was alarmingly low on water and was also in danger of running short of food, the sources said. Heroic efforts have been made by truck companies and other logisticians, but a certain amount of chaos has developed, exacerbated by sniping and immense traffic backlogs from the Kuwaiti border. That traffic jam also has undermined Bush administration plans to quickly follow the U.S. military advance with tons of food and other humanitarian relief to win support among Iraqis. "There's tremendous fog out there," an officer said, referring to the confusion of wartime operations, with logistical commanders struggling to figure out where various supply items are in a system that at times resembles "just a bunch of guys out there driving around."
Commanders would like to have a 10-day supply of food, water, ammunition, fuel and other basic supplies before launching a concerted offensive, but equally critical are items such as batteries and vehicle parts.
Also, Army commanders have differing views about how vigorously the war must be prosecuted in Iraqi cities and towns. "How bad do you want to do it? We have the capability to surround a city, cut off the water, cut off the electricity. We don't want to do that," said one general. "It's all about having military success, not about attacking the civilian population. But you have to break his will, to make him understand that he will not win."
But another officer noted that rooting out militiamen and other irregulars fighting in southern Iraqi cities would enormously complicate the U.S. military effort, requiring more troops and far more supplies. "Let's say you throttle An Najaf," he said. "Then you've got 600,000 people in the city and surrounding region you're responsible for providing food, water and medical care." Each additional combat unit sent to Iraq also will add to the logistical strain, he said.
Overhanging all developments in the war this week is the unsettling realization that thousands of Iraqis are willing to fight vigorously. During planning for the invasion of Iraq, worst-case scenarios sometimes predicated stiff resistance, but "no one took that very seriously," an officer said.
"The whole linchpin of this operation was the reaction of the Iraqi people and the Iraqi ground force," said retired Army Col. Robert Killebrew, a specialist in war planning. "If they don't turn, and so far they haven't, we have a very different strategic problem facing us than when we went in."
When Army combat operations resume, major adjustments are likely in strategic goals and targets. The sources said that some of the major assumptions underpinning the U.S. approach to Iraq are being discarded. The planned blitzkrieg to Baghdad has stalled. Airpower has delivered less than expected, and Saddam Hussein and those around him still appear to have a firm grip on the Iraqi military and people. In an extremely unusual battlefield action, two Army M1 Abrams tanks were badly damaged in combat Tuesday.
An Army general and others said that rather than slice through Republican Guard defenders and drive straight for Baghdad, the Army and Marines both are likely to be forced to focus on wiping out most of the Guard divisions facing them south of Baghdad.
"I think you need to defeat them in detail," said the general, using the military term for utterly destroying a unit. U.S. military intelligence analysts believe that, in contrast to the heavily armored and well-equipped Medina, the Baghdad division has only 58 aging Soviet-era T-62 tanks. "I think you should 'Pac Man' the ring around Baghdad," he said, referring to the 1980s computer game in which a big dot gobbled up smaller ones.
Retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey said the Army and Marine forces converging on the Republican Guard south of Baghdad really will have no choice but to continue to attack those Iraqi defenders. "We've got no option, we're committed," he said. But, he added, "I wouldn't go into Baghdad before I had another armored division come up into my rear."
The question is whether the Third Infantry Division will be able to continue to fight the Republican Guard without reinforcements. "I think the Third ID is going to run out of steam pretty soon, both people and machines," said Killebrew, the retired Army planner.
But McCaffrey, who during the 1991 Persian Gulf War commanded what is now called the Third Infantry Division, said he thought the unit capable of taking on all three Iraqi Republican guard divisions in the so-called "red zone" that marks the capital's defensive perimeter.
Another key variable is how effective U.S. warplanes will be in aiding the Army and Marines by hitting Iraqi military forces moving in the heavily populated, well vegetated Euphrates River valley. That is a far different proposition from striking Iraqi armor in the flat open desert, which was the major task of U.S. airpower in the 1991 Gulf War. Over the past two days U.S. airstrikes have been curtailed by the huge sandstorms that have howled through central Iraq.
Military intelligence indicated that elements of the Medina Division of the Republican Guard -- somewhere between a battalion and a brigade, which is as much as a third of the division -- were taking advantage of the cover provided by the tail end of the storms to move toward the "Karbala Gap," a narrow strait between a large lake, Lake Razzaza, and the Euphrates, a military official said today.
Some Pentagon officials were practically gleeful at the development, with one saying the column would be "like shooting fish in a barrel" or like "a turkey shoot."
But others were less sanguine. The column is moving from fighting position to fighting position, from revetment to revetment, always taking protective cover. "This is their turf," one official said. "They've probably done exercises there their whole life. The defense of Baghdad is all they've trained for."
Finally, the resilience of the Medina division will be a major indicator of whether the Third Infantry Division can do the job by itself or will have to dig in and wait for help sometime in April from the Fourth Infantry Division.
Unless Saddam Hussein's government collapses after part of the Republican Guard is destroyed, an attack on the capital is likely to be postponed until that division arrives, some defense officials and other experts predicted.
"We're not going to rush headlong into the city, absolutely fruitless to do so and suicidal at best," one Pentagon official said. "The goal is to encircle the city and take it on our terms."
Retired Army Col. Benjamin W. Covington, an expert in tank warfare, agreed, saying that, "Everything on the ground depends on the arrival of the Fourth Infantry Division. I expect the final battle for Baghdad will occur when they are in the fray."
Some Pentagon insiders and defense experts vigorously contested these pessimistic assessments.
"This is not a crisis," said former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R.-Ga.) who is a friend of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and of Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the U.S. commander in the war. "The plan is going surprisingly well so far."
Gingrich, who also is a member of the Defense Policy Board, a top Pentagon advisory group, said that the key fact to keep in mind is that U.S. forces drove to within 50 miles of the capital in just six days without being engaged by regular Iraqi forces. "If they come out and fight us, they will be annihilated," he said.
Retired Army Lt. Col. Andrew Krepinevich agreed with Gingrich's view, saying that "despite the best efforts of the Iraqi military, they have not been able to stop a fantastic rate of advance, one of the greatest advances in military history, and they have not been able to do more than ding the coalition juggernaut."
One senior general at the Pentagon listening to both sides of the argument said he thinks that in short term the pessimists will look right, but will be disproven by mid-April. "There are some tough days ahead," he said. "I think this whole thing is at the culminating point. Within the next week to 10 days, we will find out about the mettle of the Republican Guard." But, he concluded, "Once we smash the Medina and Baghdad divisions, it's game over, and I think Baghdad will fall."
Correspondent Rick Atkinson in central Iraq and staff reporters Jonathan Weisman and Vernon Loeb in Washington contributed to this report.
The Associated Press IN SOUTHCENTRAL IRAQ -- A 1,000-vehicle convoy of Iraq's Republican Guard headed south Wednesday toward central Iraq, site of the heaviest fighting of the war. In Baghdad, Iraqi officials said two cruise missiles hit a residential area, killing 14 people.
In the far south, British forces were fighting on the fringes of the beleaguered city of Basra, and the first substantial relief ships reached the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr from Kuwait.
Blinding sandstorms swept across Iraq for a second day, grounding coalition helicopters and significantly reducing the number of flights off carriers in the Gulf and eastern Mediterranean.
The U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division was 80 kilometers from Baghdad, within striking distance, said Colonel Michael Linnington of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division's 3rd Brigade, but was held back by the unrelenting sandstorms.
"We are one tank of fuel from Baghdad," the commander said. "The 101st is grounded and we're not doing what we do best, which is air assault operations and attacks. So we're waiting for a weather break."
In Baghdad, Iraqi officials said a coalition missile attack on a residential area killed 14 people and injured 30 others at midday Wednesday.
Associated Press Television News video showed a large crater in the middle of a street and bodies wrapped in plastic sheeting in the back of a pickup truck. Hundreds of people stood in front of a damaged building shaking their fists and shouting.
U.S. military officials denied targeting the residential area and said the incident illustrates how little President Saddam Hussein's regime cares about the lives of civilians.
During a briefing at the Pentagon, Major General Stanley McChrystal said U.S. forces did not specifically aim at the neighborhood, "nor were any bombs and missiles fired" there. But he could not say whether the missiles that did land there were Iraqi weapons, or U.S. missiles that missed their targets.
Later Wednesday, more huge blasts shook Baghdad.
Hoping to cripple the Iraqi government's communications, coalition troops attacked the state-run television headquarters in Baghdad before dawn Wednesday, knocking the station's international satellite signal off the air for a few hours. Iraq's information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, accused the U.S.-British coalition of striking civilian areas in several cities, notably An Nasiriyah, where he said 500 people were injured and 200 homes destroyed.
Intelligence officers with the U.S. military's 1st Marine Expeditionary Force said 3,000 Republican Guard troops were headed from Baghdad southeast to Al Kut on Highway 7, a route that avoids U.S. Army forces but leads directly to Marines who have been fighting around An Nasiriyah. Another 2,000 Iraqi troops were spotted south of Al Kut. An Iraqi military spokesman said a Republican Guard special forces unit attacked coalition troops in southcentral Iraq, destroying six armored vehicles and inflicting an unspecified number of casualties. At a refueling station in southern Iraq, helicopters brought in the wounded, three U.S. Marines, six Iraqi prisoners and five Iraqi civilians. Most other aircraft were grounded by the sandstorms.
Around Basra, British forces poised to seize the key southern city were fighting on its perimeter against more than 1,000 Iraqi militiamen. The militiamen reportedly also faced some sort of insurrection Tuesday by Shiite Muslim civilians opposed to Hussein.
"Truthfully, the reports are confused, but we believe there was some limited form of uprising," British Prime Minister Tony Blair told Parliament on Wednesday. "Once people know that Saddam's grip on power is being weakened, then there is no doubt at all that they wish to opt for freedom rather than repression."
Iraqi officials have denied there was any uprising Tuesday in Basra.
Al-Jazeera television showed video of two men it identified as being British prisoners being held in Az Zubayr, a Basra suburb, although they were not dressed in military uniforms. Two bloodied bodies of dead soldiers in uniform also were shown, but were not identified.
Basra's trapped civilian population of 1.3 million is believed to be fast running out of food and in danger of outbreaks of disease from contaminated water.
At the U.S. Central Command in Qatar, Brigadier General Vincent Brooks accused the Iraqi government of using its own civilians as human shields for some of its military units fighting against U.S. and British troops.
In London, Amnesty International said both sides may have committed war crimes, including coalition missile attacks on Iraqi TV. The human rights group accused Iraqi forces of deliberately shelling civilians in Basra and placing military objectives close to civilians.
President George W. Bush tried to rally U.S. troops and an anxious American public Wednesday while also lowering expectations for a quick end to the war. "I can assure you there will be a day of reckoning for Iraq, and that day is drawing near," Bush told hundreds of cheering American forces and their family members in a packed hangar before heading to Camp David for talks with Blair. "Our military is making good progress in Iraq, yet this war is far from over" he said, making a last-minute change of wording that dropped a reference to the U.S. military being "ahead of schedule."
For the first time since the U.S.-led war against Iraq began last week, the divided UN Security Council is holding an open meeting where any of the 191 UN member states can express their views on the war. Arab and nonaligned nations demanding an end to the war and the immediate withdrawal of the invasion force asked for Wednesday's meeting, which was likely to continue Thursday and attract at least 50 speakers.
Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma said Wednesday that the war will prove his country did not sell sophisticated radar systems to Baghdad, contrary to Washington's claims. "This war is a terrible thing ... but it will provide answers to many unanswered questions," Kuchma said. "I know one thing for certain, Ukraine did not sell Kolchuhas to Iraq."
The U.S. Embassy said it had no information about whether U.S. troops had found any Kolchuhas in Iraq, saying the issue remains open.
thisislondon.co.uk
By Sam Kiley in Arvil, northern Iraq and Hugh Dougherty in Central Command, Qatar.
More than 1,000 US paratroops have parachuted into northern Iraq to open up a new front in the war against Saddam Hussein.
Men of the 173rd Airborne Brigade took control of an airfield at Bashur, 30 miles from the Turkish border.
The operation, involving 15 giant transport planes, was one of the largest of its kind in decades and the first under cover of darkness since Vietnam.
It was followed by an airlift of troops from the US 1st Infantry Division, equipped with tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles. The troops will prepare airstrips for transport aircraft to bring in more men and equipment.
The strategic switch to the north came as allied troops engaged the Iraqis in a series of key battles. The Desert Rats scored a significant victory in the battle for Basra today when they took on an Iraqi armoured column attempting a breakout from the besieged city.
Allied commanders say they believe they were on their way to attack British positions.
At Nasiriyah, 20 US Marines were injured by shrapnel after a surprise Iraqi attack. Even British soldiers delivering aid were in the line of fire. Troops attempting to deliver aid to the town of Zubayr, south of Basra, came under sniper and mortar attack.
Two mortar bombs landed 200 yards from where soldiers were handing out aid to locals.
Around 30,000 more US troops are now heading for the Gulf, including the 4th Mechanised Infantry Division. Equipment is being transferred from bases at Mardin in southern Turkey.
The operation by the 173rd Airborne was completed without resistance from Saddam's forces. Paratroopers jumped from C-17 Globemaster planes at an altitude of just 500 feet.
A handful of the troops suffered broken legs and twisted ankles.
As the paratroops landed, Kurdish fighters opposed to Saddam closed off a highway and roads near the airstrip.
Hundreds of British and US special forces have been in the area for some time alongside Kurdish peshmerga guerrillas, but this was the first major deployment of coalition forces there.
Many of the 1,000 troops sent into the airfield last night are elite Rangers. They will work with American special forces in preparation for an attack on the northern front.
Allied strategists hailed it as significant development.
The brigade's commander, Colonel William Mayville, said: "I think our presence will act as a stabiliser. Our presence changes the dynamics of the environment."
Another official said more heavy armour is on the way but paratroopers will cope in the meantime. He added: "They have enough food, water and supplies to survive for several days. They're used to dropping in and fighting."
In the US, defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the move ratchets up the pressure on Iraq's government. He added: "We are increasing the number of forces in the country every day. We're increasing them in the north, we're increasing them in the south and we're increasing them in the west."
Troops in the north have been set a series of key tasks. They must secure oilfields around the northern cities of Mosul and Kirkuk.
But another major target is Tikrit, Saddam's hometown and the tribal centre for most of his inner circle. Most of the Adnan Division of the Republican Guard moved from the Mosul area to the Tikrit area shortly before the war began.
Another task could be to keep order in northern Iraq, which is controlled by two semi-autonomous Kurdish factions but also includes several splinter groups.
It is also believed to be a base for the al Qaeda-linked terror group Ansar al-Islam. Turkey has threatened to send more troops into northern Iraq to prevent refugees from moving north, despite warnings from the US that it should not do so.
The coalition has faced criticism for launching an invasion of Iraq with inadequate supplies of men and equipment.
One US military source told the Evening Standard that allied forces are spread too thinly and their lines of communication are overstretched.
"The marines who are leading much of the assault do not have enough mechanised force behind them," he said, adding that the coalition is now " playing catch-up".
Amid the intense fighting, the diplomatic battle continued. Tony Blair and George Bush were meeting in Washington today for a war briefing. The Prime Minister voiced his "horror" at the pictures of British prisoners, captured and killed, being screened on Arab television.
US commanders also challenged reports that coalition bombs hit a market in Baghdad yesterday, killing 15 people. They said initial inquiries proved "inconclusive".
Some experts said the nature of the explosions meant that they could have been caused by mis-directed Iraqi surface to air missiles.
BASHUR, Iraq (CNN) -- The U.S. military began building its northern front in Iraq Thursday, dropping 1,000 paratroopers into the region to secure a key airfield in the country's Kurdish-controlled zone.
Meanwhile, a top U.S. military official accused Iraqi forces of committing war crimes by executing prisoners of war, using civilians as human shields and hiding command posts in hospitals.
"They have executed prisoners of war," said Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in an interview with CNN's Larry King Live. "To do it so blatantly, so early -- not only is it a surprise, but to me, it's disgusting."
In northern Iraq, the paratroopers from the U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade parachuted under cover of darkness in the Kurdish-controlled region, military officials said.
The officials characterized the region where the drop occurred as "semi-permissive," meaning it was not hostile.
An airlift of elements of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division, equipped with Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, followed the airborne drop and was in progress.
Iraqi troop movements
Meanwhile, in central Iraq, there were conflicting reports about whether large numbers of Iraqi Republican Guard troops were moving out of Baghdad toward the lead elements of the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division.
Top U.S. military officials in Washington and at Central Command headquarters in Qatar said field reports seemed to be based on inaccurate intelligence and that officials could find no evidence of such an operation.
CNN Correspondent Walter Rodgers, accompanying the 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry -- the 3rd Infantry Division's reconnaissance unit -- said officers told him a column of up to 1,000 Iraqi vehicles was probably heading south to try to retake a key bridge over the Euphrates River. The bridge was taken by U.S. forces in an intense battle early Tuesday.
Farther south Wednesday, a column of up to 120 Iraqi armored vehicles poured out of the city of Basra, British reporters told CNN. British artillery and U.S. warplanes were attacking the Iraqis as they moved southeast toward the Al Faw Peninsula.
Market bombing dispute.
In Washington, British Prime Minister Tony Blair arrived for talks with President Bush at Camp David.
Earlier, Bush warned that while the war "is far from over," the "day of reckoning for the Iraqi regime ... is drawing near."
"As they approach Baghdad, our fighting units are facing the most desperate elements of a doomed regime," Bush told troops in a speech at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida -- home of U.S. Central Command.
At the United Nations, Iraq's U.N. ambassador, Mohammed Aldouri, told the Security Council "the Iraqi people are being subjected to a criminal and barbaric American-British military invasion" that has led to "thousands of casualties, among them women, children, and the elderly."
From Baghdad, Iraqi Information Ministry officials said U.S. munitions killed 15 Iraqi civilians Wednesday at a popular market.
Photographers from international news agencies confirmed seeing an undetermined number of dead and injured people, apparently civilians, and burned vehicles in the capital city.
More than 350 Iraqis have been killed in the war so far, according to Iraqi health minister Umid Midhat Mubarak, and there have been more than 4,000 civilian casualties. CNN could not independently confirm those figures.
At the Pentagon, Maj. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal denied coalition forces targeted the marketplace, but he could not say whether the destruction there was the result of Iraqi weapons or U.S. missiles that went astray. He suggested the Iraqis firing at allied aircraft could be responsible for the casualties.
"Another explanation could be the triple-A fire [anti-aircraft artillery] or surface-to-air missiles that missed their targets and fell back into the marketplace area," he said.
Other developments
• Two Patriot missiles Thursday successfully intercepted the latest Iraqi missile aimed toward Kuwait. The Iraqi missile was launched at 11:35 a.m. (3:35 a.m. ET), according to a Kuwaiti military spokesman.
• British Marines found a large cache of hand grenades, rocket-propelled grenades and Iraqi military uniforms stored in three classrooms of a school in the southern Iraqi port city of Umm Qasr, a British pool reporter said Wednesday. The uniforms may indicate the estimated 120 Iraqi troops there discarded their military clothes and "melted away into the civilian population," the reporter said.
• A survey by the Pew Research Center found that 72 percent of Americans believe that using military force in Iraq was the right thing to do. The poll was conducted March 20-24, and it found that support for the war has remained fairly steady, even though the percentage of people who said the war was going "very well" dropped from 71 percent Friday and Saturday to 38 percent Monday. Researchers interviewed 1,495 people for the survey, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
• A British ship carrying humanitarian aid that was to arrive Thursday at the southern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr has been delayed a day because of concerns that there still may be mines in the waterway.
• Coalition forces have made significant progress toward securing Iraqi oil fields and extinguishing wellhead fires ignited there by Iraqi forces, according to the British press officer at U.S. Central Command Headquarters in Qatar.
• Forty-seven U.S. and British military personnel have been confirmed killed since the conflict began.
March 27, 2003 -- WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday vowed that America won’t turn over control of Iraq to the United Nations - and a French veto - after Saddam Hussein is ousted.
"We didn’t take on this huge burden with our coalition partners not to be able to have a significant dominating control over how it unfolds in the future," Powell told a House subcommittee.
"We would not support . . . essentially handing everything over the U.N. for someone designated by the U.N. to suddenly become in charge of the whole operation," Powell added.
Powell’s tough talk signaled that the Bush administration is ready to take a hard line with the United Nations after it failed to get tough with Saddam or enforce 17 resolutions demanding he disarm.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who last night began a quickie summit with President Bush at Camp David, also signaled that he doesn’t foresee any quick turnover of Iraq to any kind of U.N. administration.
France has been angling for U.N. control of Iraq’s reconstruction giving the French a veto through the Security Council and thus a greater chance to line up contracts for French companies and reduce America’s influence.
Bush had vowed to give the world body a chance to find "its legs" in rebuilding Iraq but he’s also said the United Nations failed to live up to its responsibilities in confronting Saddam, meaning it’s more or less on probation now.
Meanwhile, Bush yesterday rallied U.S. troops by vowing that America "will be relentless in our pursuit of victory" - but changed his speech at the last minute to drop a claim that the Iraq war is "ahead of schedule."
Bush also seemed to confirm that Saddam Hussein survived a "decapitation strike" when the war began March 19, but said the dictator "is losing his grip on Iraq" - the country he’s ruled for decades.
The commander-in-chief was greeted rock-star style with cheers, whoops and whistles by troops at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., where Central Command - which is running the war - is based.
Bush has often pulled on a military-style jacket when speaking to troops but this time, perhaps to reflect the solemnity that this is real wartime, the commander-in-chief wore a jacket and tie with a crisp white shirt.
The French have faced some serious charges in the past few months. They've been called traitorous, lazy and odious. But now, it seems that those charges haven't gone nearly far enough: It appears that the French have engaged in espionage against the United States and coalition forces in the Middle East.
The other day, I received a letter from a U.S. Air Force officer stationed on a base in Saudi Arabia. He wrote that coalition commanders expelled French soldiers from his base late last week. The French had apparently been caught hacking into the U.S. secret computer system. Their rooms had been evacuated, and British and American troops were allowed to move their own belongings into the plush surroundings the French had previously enjoyed. The officer reported that the information was 60-70 percent reliable, as a couple of semi-reliable sources had corroborated the story.
This story has been kept under tight wrap by the governments involved -- perhaps because the information is false. But if the French troops were indeed removed from the base for spying on the U.S. military, relations between our countries will have reached a new low.
This latest breach of international relations would be the logical culmination of a pattern of deceit and treachery. After stifling a United Nations vote on any resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq, France has frustrated U.S. goals as much as humanly possible. On March 24, the French refused the United States' request that France expel Iraqi diplomats and freeze the French-held funds of the Saddam Hussein regime.
French President Jacques Chirac pledged to oppose any U.S.-led effort to gain an "after-the-fact" U.N. resolution condoning our campaign to disarm Iraq. In a letter to fellow peacenik Pope John Paul II, Chirac reiterated his commitment to "defend the primacy of law, justice and dialogue between peoples." Chirac's commitment to law and justice ends where physical force begins; Chirac said that he "deeply (regrets) the start of armed operations." Despite France's opposition to the war, the French maintain that any post-war mess must be cleaned up with the help of the United Nations, aided by -- you
guessed it -- France.
The French government has also made untiring efforts to paint Saddam Hussein and his gang of brutal thugs as victims of imperialist aggression. Over the weekend, the Iraqi military allegedly murdered some American POWs and taped interrogations of several others, a few of whom were wounded at the time. Al-Jazeera, the Qatari television channel, broadcast the footage of the interrogations that was distributed by the Iraqi government. While the video made clear the brutality of the Iraqi regime, the French did not react with shock or horror at the prospect of American POWs being killed, wounded or forced to undergo severe humiliation in violation of the Geneva Convention. Instead, the Higher Audiovisual Council (CSA), the French broadcast watchdog, chastised Al-Jazeera head Michael Kik for putting the tape on television and revealing Iraqi war crimes.
Now, the French military has allegedly been expelled from a coalition base in Saudi Arabia for spying on the uncultured Americans. Can the French sink any lower?
The sad truth is that they can. Jacques Chirac's approval ratings are sky high; anything anti-American goes over like gangbusters with the French public. And that anti-American sentiment is likely to become more and more severe with the growth of the militant Muslim population in France. France currently has 5 million Muslims, totaling somewhere between 5 percent and 10 percent of its population. The highly polarized Muslim community has gained enormous prominence in France, especially because other ethnic groups are reproducing at relatively low rates while Muslims are having many children. At some point in the future, if demographic trends hold, France could become a majority Muslim state -- and a dangerous foe to the United States.
The French government has nuclear weapons. What will happen if an extremist Muslim government rises to power in France, with control of full-fledged nuclear weapons? This is a problem that cannot be solved in the short term, with people like Jacques Chirac in charge of foreign policy. But over the long term, France must be given some sort of economic incentive or disincentive to disarm, before it is too late. If France is willing to spy on United States forces in the Persian Gulf now, can we expect any better if the electoral majority in France is militantly Islamist?
SADDAM Hussein has executed 60 army officers and replaced them with some of his most fanatical supporters to dissuade soldiers from deserting in the face of allied attack, according to an exiled Iraqi general.
Mohammed Nafee, who was a commander in Saddam’s forces in the Iran-Iraq war, claims the purge of the army higher ranks took place at the weekend. He has contacted Iraqi military sources in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, who passed on news of the mass executions.
Mr Nafee said the commanding officers of army units considered most likely to surrender were ordered to be removed from their posts and killed. The officers were colonels and captains in Saddam’s regular army. Some were replaced with members of the Saddam Fedayeen militia, otherwise known as Saddam’s Commandos, or his "brigade of martyrs".
Fedayeen militiamen have been paraded as suicide fighters through Baghdad in recent weeks, dressed entirely in white, the colour of self-sacrifice in Islam.
Led by Saddam’s elder son, Uday, they are among the most feared elements of the dictator’s machinery of government.
Mr Nafee, who fled Iraq five years ago and has settled with his family in Edinburgh, said: "The soldiers in the army are very frightened. I am told that more than 60 army officers were executed to cull deserters.
"The regular army has been told that if they don’t fight, they will be shot. More than 1,000 members of Saddam Fedayeen have been attached to army units to prevent them surrendering. The soldiers can’t do anything until they are sure they will be safe because they remember from 1991, when the uprising against Saddam resulted in the deaths of thousands of Iraqi people. They can’t test the situation because it is too dangerous if they get it wrong."
Mr Nafee said members of the Fedayeen had no option but to fight because they were too closely associated with the Iraqi dictator.
"These people are given great benefits in terms of money and power. They can do what they like in Iraq and get away with it," Mr Nafee added. "They know that when Saddam goes, they have no future in Iraq so they must fight to save his regime."
Militias ordered to kill Iraqis refusing to fight Americans.
Iraq Press News Agency ^ | 03/26/2003
Arbil, Iraq Press, March 26, 2003 ? Members of the dreaded militia force known as Saddam Fedayeen now have orders to kill any Iraqi on the spot if he refuses to fight the advancing U.S. and British forces.
The commando force is the most dreaded in Iraq and its powers and privileges even exceed those of the elite forces of the Republican Guard.
They are present in major cities and operate in small groups. Their tasks include maintaining order in residential areas and using maximum force to quell any sign of dissent.
They are also equipped with rocket propelled grenades, anti-tank weapons and modern vehicles mounted with machine guns.
Observers believe the presence of these paramilitary troops with unwavering loyalty to Saddam is one of the reasons, which have prevented ordinary Iraqis to rise against the regime so far.
There have been unconfirmed reports of a civilian uprising in the beleaguered city of Basra where U.S. and British forces are reportedly standing by to enter.
Saddam commandos are reputed for their brutality and ruthlessness across the country. They beheaded scores of women in public on allegation of adultery and amputated tongues of several Iraqis for slandering Saddam.
They will not hesitate to use their weapons against residents who would join a revolt against Saddam.
Saddam's elder son, Uday, leads the force. The Iraqi strongman is reported to be relying on the paramilitary commandos to prevent major cities from falling to the U.S. and British troops.
As a sign of the special importance Saddam attaches to the Fedayeen, Iraqi war communiqués now include a special section on their " valor " in disrupting enemy lines of supply and mounting hit-and-run attacks on their rear and front lines.
This message has been edited by TsarSamuil from IP address 212.181.9.227 on Mar 27, 2003 1:54 PM
Fighters from Kurdish-controlled land in northern Iraq occupied a checkpoint abandoned by Iraqi troops near Kirkuk yesterday. The action came hours after American paratroopers jumped into friendly Kurdish territory.
BANI MAQAN, Iraq, March 27 — The first crack in Saddam Hussein's once formidable northern defense line appeared here today at this Iraqi checkpoint on the main highway into Kirkuk, a city rich in oil and strained by ethnic tensions.
This post, formerly bristling with soldiers and Iraqi border guards who exacted bribes from travelers passing through the militarized zone, was unexpectedly abandoned this afternoon by Iraqi soldiers.
The soldiers had defended it since the first gulf war in 1991, when the Kurds set up an independent enclave to the north. The Iraqis left quietly, loading onto trucks and slipping quickly away.
The action came just hours after more than 1,000 American paratroopers jumped into friendly Kurdish territory in advance of the opening of a northern front. But those soldiers played no role in the Iraqi move, which occurred without a shot being fired.
The Iraqis' departure opened the road from the Kurdish-controlled zone into Kirkuk, and Kurdish civilians and fighters streamed in behind them, beginning what appeared to be an advance on a city of roughly 600,000 that is one of the war's ultimate political and economic prizes.
The withdrawal appeared to stop a few miles short of Kirkuk's outskirts, and for Kurds the day became both festive and ominous.
The departure provided the first tangible signs of weakness along a front where Mr. Hussein's troops have outnumbered Kurdish fighters to a degree that had almost seemed absurd. It sparked a joyous celebration outside the nearby Kurdish town of Chamchamal.
As Kurds sensed their enemy had begun to buckle under the pressure of American bombs, some men fired rifles into the sky. Others whooped. Civilians on bicycles pedaled past silent guard shacks, heading into territory claimed from an enemy they readily admit they hate.
"Saddam Hussein is a son of a dog," declared Rakout Hamed Karim Shafi, a young smuggler. Mr. Shafi was walking along the road with a newly acquired possession, a rocket-propelled grenade he had lifted from a vacated Iraqi bunker.
But by nightfall, as Mr. Shafi displayed his weapon, there were worrisome signs that the jubilation might give way to mob rule on a front where significant numbers of American soldiers have yet to appear and civil order may be difficult to establish and maintain.
"Kirkuk is a disaster waiting to happen," said Hania Mufti, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, an independent group, which has warned that a coordinated plan is needed for Kirkuk to avoid interethnic violence and reprisal killings against Iraqi officials.
There were flashes today of disarray. As Kurdish commanders and officials said they had advanced more than seven miles into Iraqi-controlled territory, and had taken positions about four miles from withdrawing Iraqi soldiers, there were signs of looting.
Rostam Homed Rahim, the local Kurdish commander, was warning his fighters, known as pesh merga, to restrict journalists from reaching this point in the lines, saying the looting that was beginning might embarrass the Kurdish government.
It was of little use. Journalists slipped through, encountering soldiers and civilians returning to Chamchamal laden with war booty, even as others were heading in, driving empty cars or pushing empty carts.
It seemed as if anything and everything had been deemed worth stealing, even from the meager assortment of junk the Iraqis left behind.
Some items had military utility, including a heavy machine gun, binoculars, a kerosene lantern, and crates of ammunition or sacks of plastic water jugs.
But other items spoke of almost gleeful grabbing of whatever could be lugged or rolled away, including furniture, ratty clothing and a newly claimed motorcycle with two flat tires. Two civilian men rolled an empty water barrel down the road, amiably chatting, businesslike, as they headed toward their village.
Many spoke quickly, almost babbling, men who seemed to be riding an adrenaline surge.
CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, Qatar (AP) -- Iraqi paramilitary forces in Basra fired mortars and machine gunfire Friday on a "couple of thousand" Iraqi civilians trying to flee city, British military officials said.
Members of Britain's 7th Armored Brigade were trying to neutralize the fire, evacuate the civilians and treat the wounded, said Lt. Col. Ronnie McCourt, a spokesman for British forces in the Gulf.
He said a "couple of thousand" Iraqi civilians had tried to break out of the besieged city in the north and west, but came under fire from Iraqi paramilitary forces inside.
"We are trying to save the people, return fire and rescue civilians," he said.
He said a "couple of thousand" Iraqi civilians had tried to break out of the besieged city in the north and west, but came under fire from Iraqi paramilitary forces inside.
"We are trying to save the people, return fire and rescue civilians," he said.
British forces have ringed the southern city - which at a population of 1.3 million is Iraq's second-largest - in hopes of eliminating units still loyal to Saddam Hussein and getting in badly needed humanitarian aid.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has warned of a humanitarian catastrophe if aid doesn't reach the city.
On at least three separate occasions, British units and coalition aircraft have fired on enemy Iraqi tanks and other armored vehicles that have streamed out of the city.
On Thursday, at least 14 T-55 tanks heading south out of Basra toward the al-Faw peninsula were destroyed by coalition airpower and groundfire, British officials said.
This story below about forcing kids into war is typical behavior of 3rd world countries. As is child labor and other gruesome things too..
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SADDAM FORCES KIDS INTO WAR.
New York Post
By ALY SUJO
A reluctant Marine has no choice but to search this girl for weapons at An Najaf yesterday. - Scott Nelson/Getty Images
March 28, 2003 -- A U.S. general accused Iraq yesterday of pressing children to fight invasion forces on pain of death to their families.
"Iraqi regime forces are seizing children from their homes, telling their families that the males must fight for the regime or they will all face execution," said Gen. Vincent Brooks of the U.S. Central Command.
He said kids had been dragooned near An Najaf in south central Iraq.
U.S. and British officials said Iraqi paramilitary forces have already begun using kids in battles against allied troops. And coalition forces now find themselves forced to search youngsters they encounter.
And some youngsters have been so thoroughly indoctrinated by Saddam's minions, they're spoiling to join the fight - and no threats to their families were necessary.
Military experts told The Post that several thousand child combatants known as Ashbal Saddam or "Saddam's Lion Cubs" could be used in the upcoming battle for Baghdad.
"The Lion Cubs are cohesive and well-trained," said Peter Singer, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution. "They've trained up to 40 hours a week, and the concern is that they've become true believers - and that they will fight.
"My guess is that we will see them follow the model of the Hitler Youth in '45," he said.
"On the battlefield, some of the Youth gave up their weapons, but others fought to the death. In the battle for Baghdad, Saddam would deploy these units."
Singer said allied troops may be unprepared for the horror of facing down armed children.
"Some forces will be shocked and surprised to see this. It will be unexpected," he said.
"If these children are pressed into action, they [allied forces] will face a tough dilemma. You're facing an adversary you'd rather not do any harm to. But on the other hand, they can kill you.
"A bullet from the gun of a 14-year-old can kill just as well as one from a 40-year-old," Singer said.
He said the use of child warriors would be hailed by the Arab press.
"The U.S. should expect that these children would be portrayed in the Muslim press as heroic martyrs defending their homes against the American Goliath," he said.
Meanwhile, reporters traveling with U.S. Marines from Camp Lejeune in Durham, N.C., said yesterday that children armed by Iraqi fighters had shot at allied troops during house-to-house fighting in Nasiriyah.
Several Marines were wounded, said Keith Garvin, a reporter for the North Carolina station WTVD-TV.
"Unfortunately, some of the children have been firing at our Marines, and our Marines have been forced to defend themselves," Garvin said.
The use of children in war is common, with 75 percent of the world's armies routinely using underage combatants, Singer said. The first American to die in the Afghanistan war was killed by a 14-year-old, he said.
Children's-rights groups said Saddam had laid the groundwork for the use of child soldiers over the past decade.
Child fighters were pressed into service at the end of the Iran-Iraq war in the mid-'80s, and the Lion Cubs - estimated to be 8,000 strong in Baghdad alone - were formed after the 1991 Gulf War.
Children's brigades now include the 23,000-strong "Raad" and "Al Anfal," who are taught to rappel from helicopters, take part in hand-to-hand combat and learn infantry tactics and small-arms use.
The U.S. State Department reported that children were also urged to join a children's unit of the Fedayeen Saddam (Saddam's Martyrs), said to contain over 20,000 young fighters.
Tony Blair has warned the war in Iraq will be "tough and difficult" but has claimed the allied forces have made significant progress.
The Prime Minister landed in London this morning after his two-day war council with President George W Bush at Camp David.
Speaking on the eighth day of the war, Mr Blair acknowledged it would take time to loosen Saddam Hussein's grip on Iraq.
"I've always known that it was likely to have tough and difficult moments and I do point out again we're a week into this and an awful lot has been achieved," he told the BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"But you're not going to prise the grip of Saddam off the country when it's been there for over 20 years."
Mr Blair said the Iraqi president had made the majority of his people - around 60 per cent - dependent on food aid, which gave him control over who received what.
He said: "They have to get their food from various distribution points or they don't get fed at all.
"When you've had a whole series of security services repressing the local people, it was never going to be a situation these people were simply going to give up power and go away."
During his time in America, the Prime Minister appeared at a joint press conference with President Bush where he promised the Iraqi people: "We will liberate you. The day of your freedom draws near."
Mr Blair told the Today programme that the future of Iraq should be governed by Iraqis and not the Americans or the British.
He said: "Now what we need to do is to try and make sure that we have as representative a system of government as possible and that's something we need to work out with the UN.
"That is why we agreed - myself and President Bush, Prime Minister Aznar at the summit that we had in the Azores - that not just the humanitarian element but also the civil administration in Iraq should be governed by UN resolution."
Mr Blair claimed there were "real" links between terrorist groups such as al-Qa'eda and rogue states in possession of weapons of mass destruction.
It was these links that convinced the Prime Minister that his decision to join the US-led assault on Iraq was right.
Mr Blair suggested that the British public had still not recognised the true threat to its safety in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
Speaking on the programme before leaving America, Mr Blair said: "I believe that there is this new security threat and I think that we really haven't opened our eyes to it.
"But the security threat is real. The link between these rogue aggressive states with weapons of mass destruction and terrorist groups - those links are real."
Mr Blair held talks with Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, in New York last night, after which he expressed confidence that the UN Security Council will pass a resolution to revive its oil-for-food programme.
The aid mission was suspended 10 days ago when Mr Annan ordered UN workers out of Iraq following Britain and America's failure to obtain explicit Security Council backing for the war.
U.S. Marines shield their ears from the roar of a 155-millimeter howitzer firing on Iraqi positions south of Baghdad. (Rick Loomis / LAT)
A supply convoy from an Army infantry division pauses Thursday in south Iraq on its trip toward Baghdad. (AFP)
Artillery rounds, one with "Bombs Over Baghdad" written on it, from the 1st battalion, 11th Marines, Alpha battery on display in southern Iraq. (Rick Loomis / LAT)
Mechanics work on an Apache Attack Delta helicopter's main rotor blades. They were being replaced after being heavily damaged by small arms fire. The crew could not work on the helicopter during recent sandstorms. (Kevin P. Casey / LAT)
This 30mm artillery was one of two large bullets jammed in the barrel of a Apache Longbow Delta model's gun as the sand proves to be an enemy for the operations. The Apaches were on their way to a forward areqa in Iraq when they cam under heavy small arms fire and were forced to land in an unfamiliar landing area. One pilot was wounded in the neck and few Apaches were hit with enemy artillary. This compromised the objective and with sandstorms moving through the region flight operations grinded to a halt. This will be the first time the Longbow model will be used in war. (Kevin P. Casey / LAT)
Military puzzled and worried about Saddam's invisible air force.
No score for this post
March 28 2003, 1:25 PM
Military puzzled and worried about Saddam's invisible air force.
The Scotsman
DAN MCDOUGALL
THE precise location of Saddam Hussein’s air force remains a key issue for coalition forces as military commanders yesterday expressed concerns that the Iraqis may be holding back their planes for a defiant attack involving chemical weapons.
The theory appeared to be confirmed last night by the UK commander of the British Harrier force in the Gulf, who warned that the Baghdad military regime may use their air force to launch a surprise chemical attack on coalition forces.
Group Captain Mike Harwood, 43, claimed that the decision by the Iraqi air force not to fly a single aggressive mission since hostilities began was an ominous sign, given their involvement in a number of small mid-air battles during the last Gulf war.
Although admitting the lack of activity could be proof that the well-educated and often internationally-trained pilots had not "swallowed Saddam’s propaganda", Grp Capt Harwood claimed the Baghdad regime could be hiding aircraft away for a last-minute shock.
He said: "We haven’t shot anyone down because we haven’t got anyone to shoot at, so the theory we are contemplating is whether or not Saddam Hussein is holding them as a bluff.
"At the moment, his planes are staying on the ground and are posing no threat whatsoever. But it also means he can use them later. That is the problem with weapons of mass destruction; it only needs one man in one aeroplane and you have the potential to wipe out an awful lot of people, and that is what is so difficult."
He added: "We are bending over backwards to cause as little damage as possible, and that includes the air force. But if the Iraqi air force moves a muscle and look like it is going to become aggressive, we will hit it and hit it hard.
"We know they have the potential to strike as they have Russian and French planes, the Mirage F1s, which are pretty old, and MiG 23s and 25s. They don’t fly them very much but their pilots are still very much of an elite, and, considering what they have got, they do very well.
"All I know is the air force are not fighting us and we rule the skies. I hope it is because they will not fight for this regime, but it might not be. It is true they are very well educated, the cream of the crop, and they are bright enough not to follow Saddam’s propaganda.
"I have met many Iraqi pilots and I believe there are some in that horrible position of hating themselves as much as hating the regime, because just to survive they must be seen to support him."
At the coalition Central Command in Qatar, Brigadier General Vince Brooks yesterday revealed video footage of targets, including Iraqi air force jets, being destroyed by precision-guided missiles. The Russian- built MiGs, which had been hidden in undergrowth, were targeted despite Iraqi attempts to prevent such an attack by hiding them next to a cemetery.
Brigadier Brooks said the hunt for what was left of Saddam’s airforce was a key task.
He said: "Planes have been hidden in various places and we are doing our utmost to take them out in case the Iraqis mobilise their them."
Military experts have long claimed that while the US-led coalition will have the advantage over Iraqi forces on the ground, there will be no contest in the air at all.
The Iraqi air force, sent to Iran before the last Gulf war to avoid destruction by the US, is now largely incorporated into the Iranian airforce, leaving Saddam with a handful of ageing MiGs.
Analysts believe Iraq’s air force now consists of about 90 fighters. According to one MoD insider, allied troops on the ground are doing all they can to destroy what remains of Saddam’s airforce to prevent chemical weapons attacks from the air.
The insider said: "Saddam’s air force is always a concern but the might of our own capability in the air will always make it difficult for the Iraqis to take to the air. We are actively searching for stores of Iraqi weapons on the ground, but our main concern includes the hunt for hidden tanks and planes.
"We know his air force could be activated at short notice and it is our job to deny him that option, particularly as MiGs can be fitted to deploy chemical weapons."
GLOBAL JIHAD - Arafat's suicide squads dispatched to Baghdad.
WorldNetDaily.com ^ | March 30, 2003
Fatah movement sends Saddam hundreds of 'human bombs' to attack allied forces
One of the top commanders of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, the largest faction of the PLO, says hundreds of Palestinians living in Lebanon have been sent to Iraq to carry out suicide attacks against American and British soldiers, according to a report in the Jerusalem Post.
Col. Munir Maqdah told the Nazareth-based as Sennarah weekly that Fatah has decided to ''strike at American interests all over the world.'' He added: ''Resisting the American aggression on Iraq supports the Palestinian people and the intifada. What is happening in Iraq is the battle of the Palestinian people first and the Arab and Muslim nation second.''
Maqdah said his men were already in Baghdad, prepared to launch suicide attacks, and that another group of Fatah suicide bombers is due there shortly. Palestinian sources said the Fatah volunteers entered Iraq through Syria.
Fatah, which is the first Palestinian group to recruit women for suicide missions, has several thousand militiamen in Lebanon's Palestinian refugee camps, and is headed by Arafat, who also holds the title of chairman of the Palestinian Authority. Most of the Fatah gunmen continue to receive their salaries from the PLO.
Fatah is responsible for a number of suicide attacks against Israel over the past 30 months. Palestinians say some of the attacks were carried out on the personal instructions of Maqdah, according to the Post.
Last week, Israeli security forces announced the capture of a Fatah teenager sent with a suitcase filled with explosives to blow up a home for 180 orphans and homeless children in Jerusalem.
Leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad have repeatedly urged Iraqis to endorse the suicide attacks as an effective weapon against the Americans and British troops.
On Friday, tens of thousands of Palestinians, chanting, ''Oh beloved Saddam, bomb Tel Aviv'' and ''Death to America,'' rallied in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in their biggest show of support ever for Iraq. They burned effigies of President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
During "Gulf War I," Arafat – virtually alone among even Arab leaders – threw his lot in publicly with Saddam Hussein.
"We will enter Jerusalem victoriously and raise our flag on its walls. ... We will fight you [the Israelis] with stones, rifles, and 'El-Abed' [the Iraqi missile)]," Arafat said at the start of that war, according to a March 29, 1990, Associated Press report.
A few days later, on April 2, Saddam responded publicly to Arafat's expression of loyalty, saying, "In the name of Allah, we shall cause fire to devour half of Israel," according to the Iraqi News Agency. The next day, Arafat replied, "We say to the brother and leader Saddam Hussein – go forward with Allah's blessing."
Though Iraqi Scud missiles assaulted Israel during that brief war, the Jewish state did not respond militarily, at the urging of the U.S. However, Sharon has made plain that such restraint on Israel's part would not be forthcoming in the event of an Iraqi attack on Israel in the current conflict.
In recent weeks, the Bush administration has explained repeatedly that, after deposing Saddam and ending his support for terrorism, the U.S. president's No. 1 priority in the region will be to facilitate the creation of an independent Palestinian state. Repeated polls show a large majority of Palestinians today favor terrorism as a means of attaining political goals.
Danny Clayton is a senior firefighter for Boots & Coots International Well Control - a US firm given the task of putting out burning Iraqi oil wells. He told the BBC about his expectations for the job.
We deal with all kinds of oil well problems worldwide. If you are comparing Iraq with the wells in Kuwait, the difference is it is in a more remote area, it is different terrain - there are mountains - and you may have lack of water.
Also, the wells are higher pressure and higher volume and there are more of them. We hear different numbers hourly for how many wells are on fire. I know that our crew in southern Iraq looked at nine wells.
The fires are not a problem - as long as the well's burning, we feel safe. I know that sounds strange to someone not in the business but picture it this way - if you see a fire, you're not going to walk into the fire.
When we extinguish a fire then it becomes very touchy because we have live oil and gas all around us. One spark and the well catches fire and then it becomes a big problem.
Kuwait Oil Company is also working in a firefighting role. Company officials told the Reuters news agency about its work. Only three oil wells are now alight in South Rumaila. It will now take three to seven days to put them out.
We have received news that three wells have extinguished themselves because of the dust and weather conditions. Today [Wednesday] the weather is worse, but we are making preparations for Thursday to work.
The area where we are working is under British control. We hear news of problems, but we don't see anything. We even hear the Kuwaiti firefighting team was taken hostage, but we are alive and well.
Syria's Assad: 'We will not wait' to be next U.S. target.
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Friday, March 28, 2003
NICOSIA — Syria, alarmed by the impending collapse of its neighbor and ally, has called for suicide missions against U.S. forces in Iraq.
Syrian President Bashar Assad also called on Arab regimes to oppose the U.S.-led war against Iraq. He warned that Syria could be the next target of Washington.
Assad said in an interview with the Beirut-based A-Safir daily that Damascus would not wait until the United States attacks Syria, Middle East Newsline reported. He did not elaborate.
"We will not wait until we become the next target," Assad said.
The mufti of Syria, appointed by the regime, called on Muslims to launch suicide attacks on coalition forces in Iraq. The statement came amid concern expressed by the Syrian regime over the U.S. advance on Baghdad.
"I call on Muslims to use all means possible to thwart the aggression, including martyr operations against the hostile invaders," Sheik Ahmad Kaftaro, the mufti, said in a statement on Thursday. "This is the obligation of all Muslims."
Kaftaro said the obligation to fight coalition forces begins with Muslims in Iraq. He also called on Westerners to protest the participation of their governments in the war against Iraq.
Western intelligence sources said Syria has increased preparations of its military amid the war in Iraq. They said Assad has ordered accelerated production of the medium-range Scud C and D missiles, which have a range of 550 and 700 kilometers, respectively.
Assad said he expected an Israeli attack. He said Syria would remain under threat as long as Israel exists.
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 31, 2003
In strong and accusatory language, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell called on Syria and Iran last night to stop supporting terrorists. He warned that Syria's leadership "faces a critical choice" and will be held responsible for help it gives to the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Powell became the second Cabinet secretary in three days to warn the two countries, which the United States considers state sponsors of terrorism. On Friday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld charged that Syria is shipping military supplies across its border to Iraq, calling the move a hostile act.
"Syria can continue direct support for terrorist groups and the dying regime of Saddam Hussein, or it can embark on a different and more hopeful course," Powell said in an address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. "Either way, Syria bears responsibility for its choices and for the consequences."
While President Bush named Iran to his "axis of evil" last year, Powell called on other countries that have closer relations with the country to pressure Tehran to withdraw its sponsorship of such groups as Hezbollah, a principal foe of Israel.
"It is now time that the entire community step up and insist that Iran end its support for terrorists," Powell told AIPAC, the country's most influential pro-Israel lobby.
Drawing a distinction favored by Bush between the Iranian leadership and activist citizens, he said the administration would "continue to support the aspirations of the Iranian people to improve their lives and live in peace and security with their neighbors."
The more aggressive language Powell and Rumsfeld used suggests a greater determination by the administration to play a role in the Middle East beyond Iraq, whose government Bush has pledged to remove by force. Powell's comments drew a standing ovation from his audience, but are likely to worry Arabs in the region already nervous about U.S. assertiveness.
Powell, who was twice greeted with cascading cheers before he began to speak, drew another standing ovation when he said terrorism against Israel must end. He heard a far less enthusiastic response when he discussed his expectation that Israel must make significant concessions to the Palestinians.
Some in the audience applauded and others booed when he quoted Bush's statement that "settlement activity in the occupied territories must end." Scattered hisses rose from general silence when Powell said the Jewish state "must take steps to ease the suffering of Palestinians and diminish the daily humiliation of life under occupation."
Powell said the administration will soon release a road map of reciprocal steps designed to move the Israelis and Palestinians away from armed stalemate toward meaningful negotiations. He said the road map "is not an edict," but a "statement of the broad steps we believe Israel and the Palestinians must take."
Syria drew a warning from Rumsfeld after U.S. authorities said they traced a shipment of night-vision goggles through Syria to Iraq. In recent months, munitions and other material valuable to the Iraqi war have also crossed their shared border, U.S. officials have said despite Syrian denials.
For years, Syria has also provided a haven and support to terrorist organizations. Iran drew a warning from Rumsfeld on Friday for backing the Badr Brigade, a force of anti-Hussein Shiite Muslim Iraqi exiles, some of whose members have crossed into northern Iraq.
Iraqi Kurdish journalists criticize Arab satellite channels' coverage of war.
Kurdistan Satellite TV in Sorani Kurdish ^ | 03/29/2003 | Translated 03/30/2003
With a view to highlighting the negative role of some Arab satellite channels in their coverage of the Iraq liberation war, a group of university professors and the Kurdistan Journalists Union released a statement which said: In addition to their obvious bias in favour of the Iraqi regime, it is regrettable that most of the Arab satellite deliberately obscure and distort facts. It would be more worthy of them to report facts in a neutral way and without obvious bias.
Furthermore, instead of revealing the suffering of the Iraqi people at the hands of the Iraqi regime's authorities, these satellite channels dismiss some cultured Arab figures and resort to others who are known for their support for the Iraqi regime and fabricate facts as they please. They also suppress the voices of the true victims of injustice and the oppressed in order to maintain the stances that are hostile to the aspirations of the Iraqi peoples in the minds of individuals. The statement pointed out the positive role of the State of Kuwait satellite TV, which, unlike other Arab satellite channels, attempts hard to report to the public opinion the facts and the suffering of the Iraqi people.
These views are not uncommon in the streets in Iraqi Kurdistan. Citizens in Duhok Governorate have expressed their disappointment and regret at the attitude of the satellite channels, which attempt in various ways to distort most facts and ignore others, while most people expect media channels to provide them with facts as they are. One of the citizens said that this hypocrisy shows a reality that cannot be easily changed, and a clear demonstration of the failure of these channels to exercise freedom of expression and respect the views of others.
BY PETER SMOLOWITZ AND STEVEN THOMMA
Knight Ridder Newspapers
DOHA, Qatar - (KRT) - Allied forces battled closer to Baghdad on Monday after another night of heavy coalition bombing.
Trading fire with Iraqis hidden behind brick walls and hedges, U.S. Army forces spearheading the drive battled their way into Hindiyah, 50 miles from the capital, the closest battle to Baghdad city yet.
At least 20 Iraqi troops were reported killed and dozens captured. The prisoners told the Americans they belonged to the guard's Nebuchadnezzar Brigade, based in Saddam's home area of Tikrit, and they had the guard's triangular insignia. Farther south, the Army encircled the Shiite holy city of Najaf and said it killed about 100 paramilitary fighters and captured about 50 Iraqis.
U.S. and British warplanes struck fuel depots, a train believed to be carrying Iraqi tanks and a presidential palace used by Saddam Hussein. And top U.S. officials again raised the prospect that Saddam may be dead or disabled, the possible victim of a U.S. strike on the war's first day.
Not all news Sunday was good for the coalition: A man in civilian clothes drove a pickup truck into a line of U.S. soldiers in Kuwait, injuring 15. And the U.S. death toll grew to 43 with the deaths of five Marines in three separate incidents.
Facing reporters at his headquarters in Qatar, U.S. Army General Tommy Franks brushed aside questions about the progress of the war or disagreements inside the Pentagon. The war is proceeding well, he said, and the Iraqi government is doomed, with or without Saddam.
"The regime is in trouble," said Franks, overall commander of the war, "and they know it."
American and British pilots continued to enjoy command of the skies, bombing military targets in and around the capital.
They struck the Abu Garayb Presidential Palace, the Karada Intelligence Complex, two surface-to-air missile complexes, a paramilitary training center and telephone exchanges, all in Baghdad, according to the U.S. Central Command. They also struck a train and fuel storage depots near Karbala, where the Republican Guard is dug in to stop the expected assault on Baghdad by the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division.
Allied forces also attacked the suspected Khurmal terrorist camp north of Baghdad in northeast Iraq - identified by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in a pre-war speech to the United Nations - killing an undetermined number of presumed terrorists in the process, U.S. officials said. British media reported that 120 were killed.
Franks called the facility used by the militant group Ansar al-Islam "massive" and said ground forces were searching it Sunday. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said it comprised dozens of sites, including tunnels and bunkers.
"We have destroyed a major portion of it. We've killed a large number of terrorists," Rumsfeld said on the Fox New Sunday program.
"We know that ... they were developing toxins and poisons in that area. We know that al-Qaida was connected to it ...We're not certain what we'll find, but we should know more in the next three days, three or four days."
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on CNN that he believed the camp was used to develop a biological toxin, ricin, traces of which were discovered earlier this year in London.
At Hindiyah, an armored unit of the 3rd Infantry Division rolled into the town of 80,000 at dawn and was met quickly by small arms fire and rocket propelled grenades from Iraqis hiding behind hedges and brick walls.
On the southeast side of a 200-yard concrete and steel bridge across the dark-green Euphrates, the U.S. soldiers took up positions in abandoned bunkers and sandbags and traded fire with Iraqis on the other side.
As the Americans began to cross the bridge, Iraqi troops tried to block it with civilian cars. A dark blue car attempted to race across the bridge toward U.S. forces but was hit with heavy machine gun fire, which stopped it in the middle.
Iraqi forces in civilian clothes with blue or red kaffiyahs wrapped around their heads and faces scrambled between buildings, trying to sneak up on U.S. troops. Americans in tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles fired back with heavy machine guns and 25mm cannon.
At Najaf -- a city of 300,000, 100 miles south of Baghdad -- U.S. military leaders were faced with a difficult decision.
It was unclear whether the U.S. strategy was to take Najaf or simply to cordon off the city. There are too many Iraqi fighters to bypass them or leave them unattended; they are a danger to supply lines on the way to Baghdad.
The U.S. Central Command said 100 "terror squad members'' were killed Sunday at Najaf and another town in fighting with the 82nd Airborne Division. It did not further identify the "terror squads'' or give other details about the captured Iraqis.
The 101st Airborne Division surrounded Najaf, preparing for a possible house-to-house battle to root out Saddam's fighters -- but leery of damaging some of the faith's most sacred shrines. The prophet Muhammad's son-in-law Ali is buried in Najaf at an elaborate shrine, its gold dome and twin minarets gleaming for miles. It is surrounded by low buildings and narrow streets, a nightmare of an urban battleground.
In the besieged southern Iraqi city of Basra, British Royal Marine commandos killed a Republican Guard colonel whom they suspect was sent to Basra to invigorate pro-Saddam forces there, according to British Group Capt. Al Lockwood.
Initially, the British military reported that it also had captured an Iraqi general in Basra, but later Sunday British military spokesman Will MacKinlay told BBC television that the report was wrong, attributing the mistake to "the fog of war."
Elsewhere, Britain's 16th Air Assault Brigade captured the Baath Party's number two official for the Rumaila region.
Three U.S. Marines were killed Sunday when their UH-1 Huey helicopter crashed at a forward supply and refueling site in Southern Iraq. Two others also were killed Sunday, one struck by a Humvee during a firefight, the other drowned when his Humvee rolled into a canal.
At Camp Udari in Kuwait, a man in civilian clothes driving a stolen white pickup truck plowed through throngs of soldiers as they waited in line at a post store, injuring 15. He was shot and critically wounded when he ignored orders from military police to stop.
The driver was identified only as a third-party national, meaning he is neither American nor Kuwaiti.
"We heard his engine revving and he veered to the left and luckily I went right," said Maj. Lora Elliott, an historian with the 101st Airborne Division. "He was fishtailing, he accelerated so hard."
The incident came just a day after a suicide bomber killed himself and four Americans in Iraq, and amid threats of a wave of such attacks in Iraq and in the United States.
Sunday night the Defense Department identified the four U.S. soldiers killed in the Saturday suicide bomb attack as:
_ Pfc. Michael Russell Creighton Weldon, 20, of Conyers, Ga.
_ Spc. Michael Edward Curtin, 23, of South Plains, N.J.
_ Pfc. Diego Fernando Rincon, 19, of Conyers, Ga.
_ Sgt. Eugene Williams, 24, of Highland, N.Y.
All four were assigned to the 2-7th Infantry, 3rd Infantry Division, Fort Stewart, Ga.
In addition, later Sunday night, the Defense Department announced the identity of an Army soldier killed Friday when a Bradley Fighting Vehicle rolled off a cliff in a non-hostile accident in Iraq:
_ Sgt. Roderic A. Solomon, 32, from Fayetteville, N.C., was assigned to the 2-7th Infantry, 3rd Infantry Division, out of Fort Stewart, Ga. The accident is under investigation.
Iraqi television reported that Saddam posthumously honored the Saturday bomber and that his family has been awarded $34,000. "This is just the beginning," said Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan. "The day will come when a single martyrdom operation will kill 5,000 enemies."
U.S. officials again raised the possibility that Saddam Hussein was killed or seriously injured on the first day of the war.
"We have not seen Saddam Hussein or his sons live anywhere or heard any reports live," Rumsfeld said, adding that videotapes of Saddam could have come from a previously recorded bank of tapes. He said the tapes "do not look legitimate to me."
American officials noted with interest a recent photograph showing one of Saddam's personal bodyguards guarding someone else, Rumsfeld said. "It may be an indication that Saddam Hussein is not moving around much," he said.
Elsewhere, there were signs that Iraqi hostility might be easing, at least in the port city of Umm Qasr.
Franks noted that two brothers sent to launch suicide attacks surrendered instead. "They chose to fight for the future of Iraq," Franks said, "rather than fight for this dying regime."
Also, British Royal Marines patrolling the port felt safe enough there to switch from helmets to berets to look less belligerent to locals.
Still, Franks said, allied forces would stiffen their guard in most parts of Iraq. Among the added precautions: Allied soldiers will increase the "standoff" distance between themselves and civilian vehicles.
The U.S. Marines Sunday also signaled a new approach to stopping the harassment of their lines by pro-Saddam forces who dress in civilian clothes and mingle with the populations of towns along the Marine supply routes.
The Marines said Sunday they have detained 300 civilians, a change in the Pentagon's Rules of Engagement. Some of those being held could be shipped to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the United States is interrogating suspected terrorists captured in Afghanistan and other places.
The decision to detain suspicious civilians came after Marines began noticing young, well-fed civilians with military boots, short haircuts and nice watches dawdling in unusual places.
And with allied forces facing more difficulty than expected, Franks and Rumsfeld disputed media accounts that Franks had argued unsuccessfully for a larger force before starting the war.
"I did not request additional troops before the beginning of what you refer to as the ground war," Franks said in Qatar. "There are very few people who know the truth of how this plan was put together."
"Every thing they've requested has in fact happened," Rumsfeld said of the military commanders.
---
(Smolowitz reported from U.S. Central Command Headquarters in Qatar; Thomma anchored from Washington. Knight Ridder Newspapers correspondents Jessica Guynn at the Pentagon, John Sullivan at Camp Udari in Kuwait, Juan O. Tamayo at Marine Headquarters in Iraq, Jeff Wilkinson in Kuwait, and the Associated Press contributed to this report.)
WITH THE THIRD INFANTRY DIVISION, in central Iraq, March 30 — A crude sign now stands at the checkpoint here where four Americans died when a bomb in a taxi exploded on Saturday. "Roadblock ahead," it reads, in Arabic. "Leave the area or we will fire."
Only a day ago, the road was open to anyone who did not appear to be a threat to the American forces arrayed in the flat scrub desert of central Iraq. Today, it was closed to everyone.
So were other roads leading into Najaf, a city on the Euphrates River now encircled by soldiers from the Third Infantry Division and the 101st Airborne Division. The blockade was the most visible response today to the bombing, described by both Iraqi and American officials as a suicide attack, the first against American forces since the war in Iraq began.
Restrictions on reporters traveling with American forces prohibit descriptions of "rules of engagement," the tactics used when American soldiers encounter enemy forces. But Lt. Col. Scott E. Rutter, commander of the Second Battalion, Seventh Infantry, whose soldiers died in the attack, characterized the new rules in a blunt and unclassified way.
"Five seconds," he said today, his voice still laced with anger. "They have five seconds to turn around and get out of here. If they're there in five seconds, they're dead."
The new restrictions effectively blockaded Najaf, a holy city for Shiites from Iraq and beyond, which American commanders had hoped would be a breeding ground for popular dissent against Saddam Hussein's rule.
Now Iraqis inside the encirclement, still controlled by security troops and militiamen loyal to Mr. Hussein, have lost their way in or out.
Maj. Gen. Buford C. Blount III, commander of the Third Division, said that tighter security measures were an unfortunate but necessary step to ensure the safety of his troops.
Nevertheless, he acknowledged that the greater vigilance would increase hardships for Iraqi civilians.
"We went into this hoping to keep collateral damage and civilian casualties to a minimum," he said in an interview at the checkpoint today. "They've not let us do that."
The bombing came six days after units of the Third Division arrived at the broad, flat desert beyond the escarpment near Najaf — only to see their rapid advance stalled by skirmishing around the city that they had hoped to simply pass by. The delay has angered and frustrated soldiers who feared becoming bogged down in clashes and attacks like the one on Saturday. Today, three Iraqi missiles landed near the division, heightening anxieties, although they did no damage.
The division's Second Brigade became the first to move northward, preparing for what is expected to be a final assault on Baghdad itself. As they pressed ahead, the brigade clashed with a battalion-sized force of Iraqi soldiers, killing, wounding or capturing as many as 200, according to initial, unconfirmed reports.
"We just want to maintain the initiative," the division's spokesman, Maj. Michael G. Birmingham, said. "We don't want to dig in our heels here."
After days of clashes with Iraqi fighters, the bombing exposed a seething anger among soldiers that seemed to strain efforts to portray the war as one against the Hussein government, not the Iraqi people.
"We really are trying to maintain our professionalism," said Capt. James K. Lee, the commander of the soldiers' company. "We don't want to discriminate against the Iraqi people. If we do that, we lose the war for the hearts and minds of these people."
At the checkpoint, the consequences of the new restrictions were nonetheless evident. American bulldozers uprooted palm and eucalyptus trees along the road and leveled a two-story home to clear fields of fire for troops on guard.
A few hundred yards up the road was the burned-out shell of a car that had failed to heed the new sign. A second car, with a man and a woman, also tried to bolt through the checkpoint early today. Soldiers opened fire and killed the man.
"His wife watched him die," Colonel Rutter said.
At the time of the bombing, on Saturday morning, the checkpoint was not bustling exactly, but fairly crowded, according to the soldiers who were there.
A minivan full of passengers had just been turned around and was waiting on the shoulder while troops debated whether to send them back north, where they came from. A man in a white pickup had also been stopped, but he refused to leave, sitting in the median between the northbound and southbound lanes and claiming his leg was injured. A man on a bicycle was peddling by.
It was then that the taxi approached. The driver was in his 40's or 50's, with dark skin and a moustache, dressed in civilian clothes. The four soldiers who died surrounded the car and ordered him out for a search of the car. The taxi exploded when the man followed orders to open the trunk.
Staff Sgt. Chad J. Urquhart, the squad leader, had just left the four soldiers to radio in a report about the man who refused to leave. "They said they had a handle on it," he said.
He released the radio when "a huge white blast" knocked him off balance. When the smoke cleared, he found two of his soldiers, gravely wounded and gasping for breath. One had a wound in his neck. "I just put my hand over it and stayed with him until he died," he said.
"I have a 3-year-old daughter back home, but right now these guys are closer to me than anyone else," he said. "I just lost four of my brothers."
The soldiers' families have not yet been notified of their deaths and, according to military policy, neither they nor their company or platoon can be identified at this time.
The force of the blast pressed a crater in the asphalt highway, which was littered today with debris.
The taxi landed 15 feet down the road, a blackened wreck. In addition to the driver, the blast killed the man on the bicycle. A bulldozer pushed a mound of sand over him, creating a grave. Soldiers placed a cardboard sign on it, saying "Deceased Iraqi" and giving the longitude and latitude.
The blast shattered the windows on the minivan. The passengers disappeared in the confusion. So did the "injured" man.
While Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan of Iraq said on Saturday that the bombing was conducted by an Iraqi soldier, Ali Hammadi al-Namani, and was a precursor of many suicide attacks to come, the demeanor of the driver raised some doubts that this was a suicide attack. He was calm and cooperative, Sergeant Urquhart said. While he and others presume he was a suicide bomber, they acknowledged the possibility that he might not have known a bomb was rigged in his trunk.
"The driver — whether he was witting or unwitting — we don't know," said Col. William F. Grimsley, commander of the Third Division's First Brigade.
Not that it mattered much to the soldiers.
Sgt. Rohan A. Green, a medic, was inside an armored ambulance when the bomb exploded. There was nothing he could do for the soldiers. He said death evoked different reactions, depending on how close one was to it.
For his part, he said simply: "Everyone wants to go home. They want to go home alive."
Associated Press - Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the Central Command chief, reporting on the war's progress at a news conference Sunday in Doha, Qatar.
'Operational Pause' Denied by Franks.
New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
KUWAIT, March 30 — For an American military on the offensive, there may be no more distasteful term than "operational pause." The military prides itself on seizing the initiative and applying relentless pressure to defeat its foe.
So it was not surprising that Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the chief of the United States Central Command, insisted today that the United States military was pressing ahead with its campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Reports from commanders in the field that they have been ordered to pause for a few days, General Franks insisted, are "simply not the case."
The situation, in fact, does not appear to be that simple. The unanticipated resistance from guerrilla forces in the south and the limited size of the American force in the region has slowed the tempo of the war plan.
Faced with threats in the rear, the need to guard supply lines, the imperative to consolidate logistics and the prospect of urban warfare in Baghdad, the allied forces are finding themselves confronting a multitude of tasks. The American military no longer has the luxury of concentrating on the Baghdad fight. Most military experts agree that the allies would be in a stronger position to advance on Baghdad had the Bush administration sent more troops.
In one sign today that troop transport to the area was being accelerated, a contingent of the Second Armored Calvary was told to fly directly to the gulf region.
It is not the case, though, that combat operations have ground to a halt. In fact, American land forces have begun a new phase of their campaign by resuming their attacks on the Republican Guard. These are limited attacks, but still a continuation of the offensive and a prelude for the decisive Baghdad battle to come. The goal is to force Iraqi troops out of their holes and revetments so they will be easier targets for the Air Force and to generally soften up the Republican Guard units that are defending Baghdad.
In recent days, for example, Army forces have attacked the Medina Division, the Republican Guard force guarding the southern approach to Baghdad. Apache helicopters from the 101st Airborne Division struck at Medina armor positions near the city of Karbala on Friday night.
The Third Infantry Division, for its part, has advanced 10 more miles. The Marines have also joined the attack on the Republican Guards. The Marines' Third Air Wing has bombed the Baghdad Division, an infantry unit that is stationed southeast of the city, and the Al Nida Division.
The Iraqis have responded to the attack by rushing more forces to the battlefields. As the Medina Division has been pounded from the air, Iraqi ground forces have been moving south to fill the gaps in the division's position.
The Adnan Division, a Republican Guard unit that was moved from Mosul to Tikrit, Mr. Hussein's hometown north of Baghdad, has moved again. Most of the division has now taken up positions close to Baghdad to strengthen the defense of the capital, while a small element is still in Tikrit.
A central issue before American commanders is whether to begin a major, all-out attack on the Republican Guards defending Baghdad with the current force or to wait for reinforcements to arrive. Eager to portray the American campaign in Iraq as an unqualified success, General Franks insisted that American forces were flowing to the region on a previously determined schedule and that he had made no requests for additional troops.
"The plan you see is the plan we have been on," General Franks said.
That is generally the case, but it is not the entire story. The Pentagon has planned to send the force in stages. The several divisions that are to be sent in the next several weeks or months were intended primarily to help stabilize Iraq after Mr. Hussein is toppled. But it was also recognized that the troops being sent were an insurance force that could be used in the invasion of Iraq if the opposition was unexpectedly stiff.
By putting off the main attack on Baghdad, General Franks could, in effect, build up the invasion force. But the Pentagon would be able to say that it was simply sticking to an earlier plan for placement of the troops and not making an emergency request for additional forces, a move that would be politically damaging and that would imply that American officials had not planned properly for the war.
Such a move could give the allies more forces to take on the Republican Guard, gain control of the cities in the south and stifle resistance from paramilitary units there and guard supply lines.
Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, left the door open for this possibility today. "We have the power to be patient in this, and we're not going to do anything before we are ready," he said. " We'll just continue to draw the noose tighter and tighter."
An easy way to beef up the force, for example, is to wait for the Fourth Infantry Division. The Pentagon had kept the division off the coast of Turkey while it sought to win Turkey's approval for the American plan to open a second front from Turkish soil.
After weeks of fruitless waiting, the Bush administration finally ordered the ships carrying the division's weapons and equipment to steam for Kuwait. The Pentagon was so confident that it would quickly prevail that it started the war without the division, but now it may be needed for the fight in and around Baghdad.
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Alan Sipress
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 31, 2003; Page A01
KUWAIT CITY, March 30 -- Laying the groundwork for an advance on Republican Guard divisions ringing Baghdad, U.S. troops clashed with Iraqi soldiers and militiamen at flash points along a 150-mile slice of central and southern Iraq today in an effort to protect supply lines, soften defenses and eliminate rear-guard resistance before heading for the capital.
U.S. warplanes and cruise missiles again bombarded Baghdad, striking a presidential palace, an intelligence complex and a training center for paramilitary forces. As the air attacks rattled the capital another day, the ground troops mounted operations in and around four key cities to the south -- Nasiriyah, Samawah, Najaf and Karbala -- to suppress Iraqi army and paramilitary units threatening U.S. troops moving north. The American attacks led to gun battles, artillery exchanges, and helicopter assaults and airstrikes by U.S. and British jets flying close-air support.
At the U.S. Central Command's field headquarters in Doha, Qatar, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the overall commander of U.S. and British forces, declared that the war is progressing on schedule, vigorously responding to criticism that the military campaign seems stalled after an initial swift advance. "We are in fact on plan," Franks said at a news conference. "Where we stand today is not only acceptable in my view, it is truly remarkable."
In particular, Franks disputed suggestions that the advance on Baghdad has moved into an "operational pause," saying: "It's simply not the case. There is a continuity of operations in this plan. That continuity has been seen. It will be seen in the days ahead, and it will be manifested on the battlefield in Iraq at points and times of our choosing."
Many front-line troops, who have sped to within 50 miles of the Iraqi capital, have spent the past few days resting and getting resupplied. Some of their generals have suggested that tough resistance means more troops should be thrown into the fight before an all-out assault on Baghdad. But today's activities indicated the U.S. forces have been far from static even as debate rages about what to do next.
Lead units of the 3rd Infantry Division, at the tip of the U.S. spear aimed at Baghdad, pushed to Hilla, just southeast of Karbala, after overnight airstrikes scattered three Iraqi army mechanized and tank units guarding the city. Militiamen armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers tried to stop the advance, but they were beaten back by a barrage of artillery and rockets, allowing additional elements of the 3rd Infantry to move within striking distance of the Republican Guard's Medina Division arrayed north of Karbala.
[Early Monday, the Associated Press reported that elements of the 4th Battalion of the 64th Armored Regiment entered the town of Hindiyah, 50 miles south of Baghdad, where they captured several dozen Iraqis who identified themselves as members of the Republican Guard. At least 15 Iraqi troops were killed in the fighting.]
In Najaf, along the Euphrates River about 100 miles south of Baghdad, troops from the 1st Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division used artillery and called in airstrikes to target militiamen who have been responsible for repeated attacks on U.S. military supply lines. The 101st also secured an airfield near the city, although some of the division's AH-64 Apache attack helicopters were forced to abandon their missions after coming under Iraqi fire.
In Samawah, also along the Euphrates but 50 miles farther south, two battalions from the 82nd Airborne Division engaged in often intense fighting as they pursued an estimated 1,000 paramilitary fighters holed up in the city. And a Marine raid secured buildings held by Iraq's 11th Infantry Division in Nasiriyah, a riverfront city another 50 miles to the south that has been the scene of fierce fighting over the last week.
The Central Command reported that in one building, Marines found more than 300 chemical suits and masks, injectors for the nerve agent antidote atropine, two decontamination vehicles and other decontamination devices. In another, they discovered more than 800 rocket-propelled grenades, along with mines, mortar and artillery rounds and rifle bullets. Earlier, Marines found chemical suits and masks, weapons and ammunition inside a hospital in Nasiriyah that U.S. officials said was being used as a staging area for paramilitary forces.
In the southern port city of Basra, British troops reported finding a cache of training equipment for chemical warfare, including a Geiger counter, nerve gas simulators, gas masks and protective suits.
Although the discoveries suggested that Iraqi forces were prepared for chemical warfare, it was unclear when the equipment was deployed; U.S. forces have found no chemical or biological weapons since the invasion of Iraq began with airstrikes March 20.
British troops on the southern and western edges of Basra exchanged artillery fire with Iraqi forces, but they have refrained from a full-scale invasion of the city because of fears it could lead to bloody urban combat. At the same time, the troops began what one British defense official called "aggressive patrolling" inside the city.
Group Capt. Al Lockwood, a spokesman for British forces in the Persian Gulf region, said Royal Marine commando units staged raids to target militiamen and soldiers who continue to control the city. The operation was called "James," after the fictional spy James Bond.
The first to be nabbed, British defense officials said, were five Iraqi military officers. The commandos also killed a Republican Guard colonel who British officials believe was sent to Basra to "try and strengthen the resolve among the Baath Party militia and the paramilitaries that are operating in the area," Lockwood said.
An Iraqi official in Baghdad denied both claims.
British and U.S. officials said their troops have received increasing assistance from Iraqi civilians in identifying Baath leaders and other loyalists of the president, Saddam Hussein. "As we win the trust of the Iraqi people," said British Maj. Gen. Albert Whitley, "they're pointing these people out, and either we're targeting them or we're detaining them."
In Kuwait, meanwhile, an Egyptian electrician drove a pickup truck into a group of U.S. soldiers standing outside a store at Camp Udairi, an American military base in the Kuwaiti desert, wounding 15. U.S. officials would not say whether the incident, which is under investigation, was accidental or deliberate. But a Kuwaiti law enforcement official said the man, who was working at the camp, appeared to have targeted soldiers in response to the invasion of Iraq.
Fourteen of the injured were treated at the scene for minor injuries; officials expected one soldier to be flown to Germany for treatment of a knee injury.
U.S. and British soldiers manning vehicle checkpoints in Iraq, or otherwise interacting with civilians, were in a heightened state of alert today after a suicide attack Saturday that killed four U.S. soldiers. "We'll have to shut roads down," said Maj. Gen. Buford C. Blount III, the 3rd Infantry's commander. "That's unfortunate, but it's going to be necessary to ensure the safety of our soldiers."
The Pentagon has identified 43 U.S. military personnel killed or missing in action, with more than 100 wounded. But the military's counts, as they churn through bureaucracy and await notification of families, have often lagged behind battlefield reports. Three more Marines were killed accidentally today, bringing the total to more than a dozen, when a UH-1 Huey helicopter taking off after refueling crashed, officers said.
Lt. Gen. Hazem Rawi, a senior Iraqi defense official, said in Baghdad that Saturday's bombing marked "the beginning of a long path of jihad for Iraqis and Arabs against the invaders." He said more than 4,000 volunteers have come from other Arab countries to participate in suicide attacks.
The airstrikes on Baghdad targeted military facilities at the Abu Garayb presidential palace, the Karrada military intelligence complex and the barracks of a paramilitary training center, according to Central Command. Several telephone exchanges in the city and a train carrying Republican Guard tanks also were struck, U.S. officials said.
[Early Monday, a cruise missile hit the roof of the Information Ministry, smashing glass panels and damaging satellite dishes. It was the second attack in three days to target the ministry.]
Although punishing airstrikes in recent days have destroyed much of Baghdad's air defenses, they have done less to damage Republican Guard units defending the capital, according to a U.S. military assessment.
Nightly bombing in the capital has smashed missile batteries, antiaircraft guns, radar and other installations used to target aircraft, giving U.S. pilots far greater latitude in where, when and how high they can fly without risk. Iraqi forces have stopped turning on what remains of their radar for fear of it being destroyed, U.S. officers said, leaving them to shoot almost blind.
So far, however, the air campaign has yet to inflict the level of damage on Republican Guard defenses that ground commanders want to see. Analysts say they believe Iraq has been able to reinforce the divisions around Baghdad to compensate for losses caused by U.S. warplanes, sending in armor or artillery to take the place of equipment blown up by precision-guided bombs.
Three Republican Guard divisions defend the approaches to Baghdad: the Medina Division to the south, the Al Nida Division to the east and the Baghdad Division farther east around the city of Kut. The U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division has massed on the southern reaches of Baghdad, while the 1st Marine Division is approaching from the southeast.
Speaking to reporters for the third time since the war began, Franks sought to reassure skeptics about the progress of the campaign, which has encountered stiffer Iraqi resistance than some U.S. commanders had anticipated. He opened by listing several objectives that have been achieved: the swift advance of U.S. ground forces, the capture of Iraq's southern oil fields, the ability of aircraft to fly missions over the entire country with little resistance from antiaircraft defenses, the basing of some air operations within Iraq and the destruction of what he called a "massive terrorist facility" in northern Iraq used by a radical Islamic group called Ansar al-Islam.
"The regime is in trouble and they know it," Franks said.
Franks played down a number of published reports that have suggested disagreement between military commanders and civilian officials about war planning. Franks denied one report that he had asked the Pentagon to delay the attack after Turkey's government rejected a U.S. request to base troops there. He also disputed a New Yorker magazine article to be published Monday saying he was overruled by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld about the size of the invasion force and schedule of the attack.
"There are very few people who know the truth of how this plan was put together. In fact, no one has driven the timing of this operation except the operational commander," Franks said, referring to himself.
He said he decided to launch the war on Iraq with a ground offensive in southeastern Iraq because he saw an opportunity to capture the Rumaila oil fields before they were destroyed by Hussein's government. Franks said he had several options for starting the military campaign but the threat to the oil fields determined when and how the U.S.-led invasion began.
"We sensed that we had an opportunity to get these oil fields," Franks said. "Since we had a plan that enabled us to either do air operations first or ground operations first, or perhaps special operations first, we simply put the mosaic together in a way which you have seen unfold."
Sipress reported from Qatar. Correspondents Rick Atkinson, Peter Baker, William Branigin and Monte Reel with U.S. forces in Iraq contributed to this report.
A German architect who helped design an underground shelter for the Iraqi leader in Baghdad says it is capable of withstanding giant US "bunker-buster" bombs. The refuge lies beneath one of Saddam Hussein's presidential palaces in Baghdad and "can only be cracked by ground troops or a tactical nuclear bomb", said Karl Esser.
"Ground troops could get in by taking out the doors with bazookas and explosives", he said. The underground complex - with a steel-reinforced roof and three-ton steel doors - is believed to have been built near the Tigris river in the early 1980s at a cost of about $60m. It was designed to withstand a nuclear blast as powerful as the one used on the Japanese city of Hiroshima 200 metres (165 ft) away, and also to survive temperatures of 300 C (570 F).
However it is not known whether the Iraqi leader - who assumed power in 1979 - is using the bunker, which is said to be about 30 metres (yards) below ground level. Correspondents say Saddam Hussein has feared attempts to kill him for years and has hidden bunkers and underground tunnels scattered throughout Iraq.
Escape routes.
Construction began in 1982 and Mr Esser said he planned most of the bunker, arranging delivery of equipment such as the air and power supply systems and the doors.
Mr Esser, who had been designing secure shelters for civil defence projects in Munich when he was approached about the Iraqi bunker, said he did not supervise the actual construction and never saw the finished shelter. However he did go to Baghdad in 1984 to brief officials on technical aspects, and during his visit met Saddam Hussein.
The underground complex's facilities are said to include children's rooms, guards' quarters and a kitchen with 12 months' supply of freeze-dried food, as well as luxury extras reportedly including gold light switches and a spa bath. The contract came at a time when western firms were legally supplying Iraq with arms and equipment.
The US attempted to kill the Iraqi leader on the first night of the war, by bombing a compound in southern Baghdad where he was believed to be. Since then, Saddam Hussein has appeared several times on television.
US officials said "bunker-busters" - GBU-28 bombs weighing 2,086kg (4,600lbs) - were used for the first time in Baghdad on Friday, targeting a communications centre in the city centre. The bombs, which are air-launched and laser-guided, were developed for the 1991 Gulf War to penetrate hardened Iraqi command centres.
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Elevation of a bunker built by Yugoslav engineers for Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. ABCNEWS paid one of the Yugoslav engineers for access to the design drawings he produced for the project.
A- Conference center.
B- Protective concrete shell.
C- Bunker (surrounded by shock absorbers).
D- Steel and concrete anchors.
U.S.-Led Forces Continue to Strike Iraqis Guarding Baghdad.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:00 a.m. ET
American-led forces launched missiles today toward Baghdad and the holy Shiite Muslim city of Karbala to the southwest, and circling warplanes bombed targets in the area. Buildings in the capital shuddered in some of the strongest blasts since the air war began March 20. Smoke billowed from the capital's Old Palace presidential compound.
Among the targets, U.S. officials said, was a complex that serves as the office of the Iraqi National Olympic Committee, where Iraqi dissidents say Saddam's son Odai ran a torture center.
The coalition has relentlessly targeted Republican Guard positions in and around Baghdad in preparation for the war's likely decisive battle. U.S. forces battled some of these fighters Monday in the Euphrates River town of Hindiyah, about 50 miles south of the capital.
To the south, Marines said they captured some Republican Guard officers and killed dozens of Iraqi fighters Tuesday during a lengthy battle on the outskirts of the town of Diwaniyah. Other units fought to isolate the holy Shiite city of Najaf in an ongoing effort to protect U.S. supply lines. A series of ruse attacks by militants in civilian clothes -- including a deadly suicide bombing that killed four soldiers over the weekend -- have made the trek north increasingly dangerous for coalition troops.
U.S.-led troops moving north toward Baghdad have focused much of their energy on rooting out fighters with the ruling Baath Party militia and the Fedayeen -- Saddam's most trusted paramilitary militia. But they have also distributed rations to civilians, and they say winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people is a priority.
Near the town of Diwaniyah, about 80 miles southeast of Baghdad, Marines battled Iraqi Republican Guardsmen and other fighters who fired on them from fortified bunkers and positions in buildings and behind vehicles. The Iraqis, armed with rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns and small arms, were outmatched, but kept fighting for about 10 hours, Lt. Col. B.P. McCoy said.
At least 75 Iraqi fighters were killed and 44 were taken prisoner, including two Republican Guard officers, he said. The Marines, who provoked the fight by going into an area where they had been fired on before, used 155mm artillery to clear mortar nests and destroy Iraqi tanks.
Meanwhile, Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf claimed Tuesday that coalition warplanes had bombed two buses carrying ``human shields,'' including Americans and Europeans, near the Jordanian border. Central Command said it was unaware of the incident. Peace groups in Jordan said they had heard nothing about such an attack.
Iraq also publicly denied a report that Saddam's family had fled the country. A statement on Iraqi TV called the report ``a rumor circulated by the U.S. Defense Department.''
Iraqi TV aired footage Monday of Saddam and his sons Odai and Qusai, but there was no way of determining when it was shot. U.S. intelligence has not confirmed Saddam survived an attack early in the war.
President Bush warned that Saddam ``may try to bring terror to our shores.'' The United States is acting to prevent such threats, he said, while offering assurances that the war remains on track. ``Day by day we are moving closer to victory,'' he said.
In northern Iraq, commanders said forces searching the recently captured compound of Muslim extremist group Ansar al-Islam found documents, computer discs and other material belonging to Arab fighters -- including lists of suspected militants living in the United States. The Bush administration has long claimed Ansar is linked to the al-Qaida terrorist network, but there has been no indication it has ties to Saddam's regime.
Near the southern port of Basra, warplanes from the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk dropped bombs on an Iraqi presidential yacht and another ship, Navy officials said Tuesday. Brooks, the Central Command spokesman, said British forces in Basra had destroyed a number of Iraqi tanks and personnel carriers, rescued two Kenyan truck drivers who had been held by Iraqis since last week and captured an Iraqi general who had provide information about battlefield tactics. He gave no other details about the general.
Elsewhere, an Iraqi prisoner was shot to death after he reached for a Marine's weapon while being questioned, Central Command spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Charles Owen said Tuesday.
Also Tuesday, the coalition lost an S-3B Viking plane when it veered off the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Constellation and slipped into the Persian Gulf. Both pilots aboard were rescued, and suffered only minor injuries.
In Kuwait, where 5,000 of an expected force of 30,000 troops from the Fort Hood, Texas-based 4th Infantry Division have arrived, Brig. Gen. Stephen Speakes said the troops could be on the battlefield ``in a matter of weeks.'' The first ships bearing tanks, helicopters and other equipment for the division are being unloaded, and 30 more are expected at a Kuwaiti port.
A Gruesome Scene on Highway 9 - 10 Dead After Vehicle Shelled at Checkpoint.
By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 1, 2003
NEAR KARBALA, Iraq, March 31 -- As an unidentified four-wheel-drive vehicle came barreling toward an intersection held by troops of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, Capt. Ronny Johnson grew increasingly alarmed. From his position at the intersection, he was heard radioing to one of his forward platoons of M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles to alert it to what he described as a potential threat.
"Fire a warning shot," he ordered as the vehicle kept coming. Then, with increasing urgency, he told the platoon to shoot a 7.62mm machine-gun round into its radiator. "Stop [messing] around!" Johnson yelled into the company radio network when he still saw no action being taken. Finally, he shouted at the top of his voice, "Stop him, Red 1, stop him!"
That order was immediately followed by the loud reports of 25mm cannon fire from one or more of the platoon's Bradleys. About half a dozen shots were heard in all.
"Cease fire!" Johnson yelled over the radio. Then, as he peered into his binoculars from the intersection on Highway 9, he roared at the platoon leader, "You just [expletive] killed a family because you didn't fire a warning shot soon enough!"
So it was that on a warm, hazy day in central Iraq, the fog of war descended on Bravo Company.
Fifteen Iraqi civilians were packed inside the Toyota, officers said, along with as many of their possessions as the jammed vehicle could hold. Ten of them, including five children who appeared to be under 5 years old, were killed on the spot when the high-explosive rounds slammed into their target, Johnson's company reported. Of the five others, one man was so severely injured that medics said he was not expected to live.
"It was the most horrible thing I've ever seen, and I hope I never see it again," Sgt. Mario Manzano, 26, an Army medic with Bravo Company of the division's 3rd Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, said later in an interview. He said one of the wounded women sat in the vehicle holding the mangled bodies of two of her children. "She didn't want to get out of the car," he said.
The tragedy cast a pall over the company as it sat in positions it had occupied Sunday on this key stretch of Highway 9 at the intersection of a road leading to the town of Hilla, about 14 miles to the east, near the Euphrates River. The Toyota was coming from that direction when it was fired on.
Dealing with the gruesome scene was a new experience for many of the U.S. soldiers deployed here, and they debated how the tragedy could have been avoided. Several said they accepted the platoon leader's explanation to Johnson on the military radio that he had, in fact, fired two warning shots, but that the driver failed to stop. And everybody was edgy, they realized, since four U.S. soldiers were blown up by a suicide bomber Saturday at a checkpoint much like theirs, only 20 miles to the south.
On a day of sporadic fighting on the roads and in the farms and wooded areas around the intersection, the soldiers of Bravo Company had their own reasons to be edgy. The Bradley of the 3rd Battalion's operations officer, Maj. Roger Shuck, was fired on with a rocket-propelled grenade a couple of miles south of Karbala. No one in the vehicle was seriously injured, but Shuck had difficulty breathing afterward and had to be treated with oxygen, medics said.
That happened after a column of M1 Abrams tanks headed north to Karbala in the early afternoon and returned a couple of hours later. Throughout the day, Iraqis lobbed periodic mortar volleys at the U.S. troops, and Iraqi militiamen and soldiers tried to penetrate the U.S. lines. Later, U.S. multiple-launcher vehicles fired rockets to try to take out the mortar batteries as AH-64 Apache helicopters swooped low over the arid terrain in search of other enemy gun emplacements.
It was in the late afternoon, after this day defending their positions, that the men of Bravo Company saw the blue Toyota coming down the road and reacted. After the shooting, U.S. medics evacuated survivors to U.S. lines south of here. One woman escaped without a scratch. Another, who had superficial head wounds, was flown by helicopter to a field hospital when it was learned she was pregnant.
Johnson said afterward that he initially suspected the driver might have been a suicide bomber, because he did not behave like others who approached the intersection.
"All the other vehicles stopped and turned around when they saw us," he said. "But this one kept on coming." Two days earlier, four 3rd Infantry Division soldiers were killed when a suicide bomber detonated explosives in his car at a checkpoint.
Lt. Col. Stephen Twitty, the 3rd Battalion commander, gave permission for three of the survivors to return to the vehicle and recover the bodies of their loved ones. Medics gave the group 10 body bags. U.S. officials offered an unspecified amount of money to compensate them.
"They wanted to bury them before the dogs got to them," said Cpl. Brian Truenow, 28, of Townsend, Mass.
[In Washington, the Pentagon issued a statement saying the vehicle was fired on after the driver ignored shouted orders and warning shots. The shooting, it said, is under investigation. According to the Pentagon account, the vehicle was a van carrying 13 women and children. Seven were killed, two were injured and four were unharmed, it said, without mentioning any men.]
To try to prevent a recurrence, Johnson ordered that signs be posted in Arabic to warn people to stop well short of the Bradleys guarding the eastern approach to the intersection. Before they could be erected, 10 people carrying white flags walked down the same road. They were seven children, an old man, a woman and a boy in his teens.
"Tell them to go away," Johnson ordered. But he reconsidered when told that the family said their house had been blown up and that they were trying to reach the home of relatives in a safer area.
"They look like they pose no threat at this time," one of the Bradley platoons radioed.
Johnson, a former Army Ranger who parachuted into Panama in 1989, fought in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and rose through the ranks, relented. He ordered his troops to tell the old man that the group could walk around the Bradleys.
Coalition aircraft have bombed a complex that serves as the office of the Iraqi National Olympic Committee. It also houses, according to critics of the Iraqi president, a torture centre run by Saddam Hussein's eldest son Uday. "Coalition aircraft used precision-guided munitions to target a regime office complex in eastern Baghdad," a US Central Command statement said.
Cosy chat ... beaming Galloway visits Saddam in plush bunker in 2002.
TREACHEROUS MP George Galloway was branded an enemy of the state last night after he urged the Arab world to rise up and kill British troops in Iraq.
The slimy Saddam supporter also called on brave British soldiers to DISOBEY what he called “illegal orders”.
And he claimed the Allies had attacked Iraq like “wolves”.
In words which could have been uttered by Osama bin Laden, he said: “Iraq is fighting for all the Arabs. Where are the Arab armies?”
Labour MP Galloway - nicknamed the Member for Baghdad Central - also CONDEMNED the rulers of Arab nations like Kuwait and Qatar for aiding the Coalition war effort.
And he called on Gulf states to CRIPPLE the West by cutting off oil supplies.
Handover ... he gives Palestinian pennant to Saddam in 1994.
The Glasgow Kelvin MP’s rant, made in an interview for Abu Dhabi TV, threatens to inflame anti-British anger across the Islamic world.
He said: “Even if it is not realistic to ask a non-Iraqi army to come to defend Iraq, we see Arab regimes pumping oil for the countries who are attacking it.
“We wonder when the Arab leaders will wake up. When are they going to stand by the Iraqi people?”
The interview - broadcast on Friday as Coalition troops died in the desert - was denounced last night by Armed Forces minister Adam Ingram.
He said: “There is a world of difference between being anti-war and inciting war against British troops.
“Are there no depths to which George Galloway will not sink? I am sure such disgraceful comments will be rightly condemned the length and breadth of this country.”
Galloway also accused Mr Bush and Mr Blair of lying about the expected duration of the war. He said:
They have lied to the British Air Force and Navy when they said the battle of Iraq would be very quick and easy.
They attacked Iraq like wolves. They attacked civilians. They encountered resistance from Iraqi forces and Iraqi people who are defending their dignity, religion and country.
According to Tony Blair’s lie machine, they said the war would only last for six days.
The war will continue. I don’t believe these wolves will be able to enter Baghdad and occupy Iraq.
They must know this is the beginning of a long war of liberation to be staged by the Iraqis against the occupying forces.
They must understand they are in the Iraqi quagmire and it will not be easy for them to get out.
He added: “It is better for Blair and Bush to stop this crime. It is time for them to return to the UN Security Council and give diplomacy a chance to settle this chaos.”
Galloway tore into Arab rulers who have allowed Coalition forces to use their land.
He raged: “God curse them for their crimes. They will be tried by their peoples.”
Last night, the MP stood by his comments, saying: “The wolves are Bush and Blair, not the soldiers. The soldiers are lions led by donkeys.
“As for being a traitor, the people who have betrayed this country are those who have been the miserable surrogates of a bigger power for reasons few can understand.”
He added: “Given that I believe this invasion is illegal, the best thing British troops can do is to refuse to obey illegal orders.”
The fawning MP, whose political career has been dogged by sex scandals, recently paid Saddam a visit in his bunker.
And in 1994 he presented the dictator with a pennant from Palestinian youths.
YOU can tell George Galloway what you think of his treachery by emailing him at gallowayg@parliament.uk. You can also phone him on 020 7219 4084 or write to his constituency office at 8a Parkgrove Terrace, Glasgow G3 7ST.
Hero: Buster with his handler Sergeant Danny Morgan.
A Dog of War was hailed the hero of a daring British Army swoop on an Iraqi stronghold.
Explosives sniffer dog Buster unearthed a huge hidden cache of arms from an enemy camp in a dawn raid on five suspect properties.
The specially trained Springer Spaniel's find was followed by the arrest of 16 dangerous Saddam Hussein fanatics terrorising the southern village of Safwan.
And tension eased so much after the raid that British soldiers discarded their helmets and patrolled the area in berets for the first time yesterday.
Lovable brown-eyed Buster, five, was in the spearhead of a raid launched by 200 troops from the Duke of Wellington Regiment, the RAF Regiment and the Queen Dragoon Guards.
His handler, Sergeant Danny Morgan, 37, of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps said: "The soldiers had found nothing so I unleashed Buster and sent him in.
"The rule is that the dog always goes first in case there are booby traps and I was obviously concerned for him as he started his search.
"Within minutes he became excited in a particular area and I knew he'd discovered something.
"The Iraqis we spoke to had denied having any weapons.
"But Buster found their arms even though they'd hidden them in a wall cavity, covered it with a sheet of tin then pushed a wardrobe in front of it.
"We'd never have found the weapons without him and they would still be a threat to our troops and the local population.
"I'm very proud of him."
Buster's haul included AK47 assault rifles, a pistol, six grenades with fuses, 10 more grenade fuses, 160 rounds of ammunition in magazines and another 79 loose bullets plus bomb-making equipment.
Suitcases full of cash, a suspected stash of heroin and crack cocaine and pro-Saddam Hussein Ba'ath Party literature were also discovered in the buildings used by the mafia-style gangs.
Sergeant Morgan of keeps Buster at his home in Aldershot, Hants where he doubles as a family pet for his five-year-old daughter Emma and wife Nicki, a 32-year-old nurse.
The handler said yesterday: "Dogs like Buster are recruited when they're aged one-to-three from unwanted pets centres like Battersea Dogs Home.
"I trained him by teaching him to fetch weapons like guns and ammunition instead of sticks and balls.
"He loves his job simply because he thinks it's a game and obviously has no idea he's going into dangerous situations.
"I end up doing all the worrying because he's not only doing a job out here - he's my best friend.
"Buster is the only arms and explosives search dog working in Iraq right now and has been worth his weight in gold today.
"But my daughter Emma is missing him terribly - even more than she misses me!
"She was upset when I went off to war but wept buckets when she was saying goodbye to Buster.
"And she's been sending him more treats than me since we arrived."
Buster is so valuable to the army that he has even been given his own protective gear in case of chemical or biological attack.
When Scud or gas attack warning sound, he leaps into a special sealed pen equipped with an electric motor that pumps air through a gas mask filter.
The panting pooch - sweltering in 85 degree heat after the raid - spent is already practising for his next mission by playfully fetching assault rifle magazines.
Report by Nick Parker of The Sun, in southern Iraq.
Division of Republican Guard Is Destroyed, Central Command Says.
New York Times
By JOHN M. BRODER
CAMP SAYLIYA, Qatar, April 2 — American forces, which crossed the Tigris River in the drive toward the Iraqi capital, destroyed the Baghdad Division of Iraq's Republican Guard, the United States Central Command here said today.
The elimination of the division as an effective force leaves one avenue open to Baghdad for the First Marine Expeditionary Force, which engaged the division on the ground and from the air.
Reporters traveling with the unit say it is now within 40 miles of the city, an assessment not disputed by Central Command officials.
American forces are pointing a "dagger" at Baghdad and are active to the west, east and south of Karbala, Brig. Gen. Vince Brooks said at a news briefing here today.
"We will approach Baghdad," he said. "The dagger is clearly pointed at the heart of the regime and will remain pointed at it until the regime is gone," he said.
"The dagger remains firmly in our grasp and under good control. When it's time to be applied further, it will be applied further."
In Baghdad, the Iraqi Information Minister, Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf, denied that American forces had crossed the Tigris River.
"They lie every day," he said of coalition forces. "Therefore what they say or allege about success and advances in Najaf and Kerbala are illusions. They also said they crossed the Tigris, which is another lie. As is what they said about Kut."
General Brooks said United States forces seized the strategic town of Kut after routing the Republican Guard's Baghdad Division.
Two other Republican Guard divisions had been engaged around the city of Karbala and coalition forces had seized control of a dam on Lake al-Milh, he said. Up to 15,000 American troops are reported massed around Kerbala and are moving toward the nearby Euphrates river, the last major natural obstacle standing between them and Baghdad.
"They're in serious trouble, and they remain in contact now with the most powerful force on Earth," General Brooks said of the other Republican Guard units.
In Najaf, about 50 miles south of Karbala, the Central Command said American forces were being fired on from the Ali Mosque, one of the most important Shiite Muslim sites.
General Brooks, who said coalition forces were trying to prevent damage to religious sites to avoid angering Muslims, said troops near the mosque "were disciplined," adding that they "chose not to return fire against this mosque to keep it protected."
The general described the takeover of the mosque by Iraqi troops as "a detestable example of putting historical sites in danger."
Videotape was shown at the briefing of Iraqi troops positioning two tanks on transporters next to another mosque.
General Brooks said a third truck carried a container that exploded, but that there were no American warplanes or other weapons in the area that could have caused the blast.
U.S. Forces Continue Approach to Baghdad - One Division of Iraqi Republican Guard 'Destroyed,' Officials Say.
By Thomas W. Lippman and Alan Sipress
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 2, 2003; 11:00 AM
Kyodo News via Associated Press - Near Karbala early on Tuesday, a mobile artillery piece from the Army’s Third Division fired toward Iraqi troops.
Driving toward Baghdad against dwindling Iraqi resistance, U.S. forces have crossed the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, seized an important bridge on the route to the capital, and eliminated one division of the elite Iraqi military units known as the Republican Guard, military officials and field reports said today.
Some reports said advance units of U.S. ground forces were less than 20 miles from Baghdad after overnight breakthroughs all across the capital's southern defensive perimeter.
The atmospherics of the war appeared to be transformed by a sudden string of successes after a week dominated by second-guessing and accusations as some U.S. and British units appeared bogged down or stalled by unexpectedly stiff resistance.
Buoyed by the dramatic rescue last night of Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch, snatched from her Iraqi captors in a helicopter-borne raid on a hospital in Nasiriyah when she had been held prisoner since the first weekend of the war, commanders described a string of military breakthroughs that suddenly propelled U.S. troops into what was portrayed as the decisive phase of the war.
The conflict is far from over and not all the news was good. Journalists in Baghdad said air strikes hit a maternity hospital operated by the Red Crescent, the Muslim equivalent of the Red Cross, causing heavy casualties and extensive damage. In the Shiite Muslim holy city of Najaf, Iraqi defenders holed up in the shrine of Imam Ali, a center of Shiite devotion, which U.S. troops are reluctant to attack. And in the town of Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, news agencies reported that as many as 280 people were wounded in what Iraqi officials said was a helicopter raid by U.S. forces.
Nevertheless, the battle for Baghdad has begun, military commanders said, and U.S. forces are now engaging well-armed defensive units that remain dug in south of Baghdad, pounded by relentless air strikes. With every mile U.S. forces advance toward the capital, military officials said, their fear rises that desperate defenders will resort to chemical weapons in a last-ditch effort to save the government of President Saddam Hussein. Some officers also expressed fear that the Iraqis are deliberately retreating back toward the capital, hoping to lure U.S. forces into urban street battles and house-to-house fighting.
"This is certainly a decisive engagement in which we are now just starting with the Republican Guard," said Air Marshal Brian Burridge, commander of the British forces in Iraq. "The point I would make, though, is that decisive phases often take time. I wouldn't want to give you the impression that within a day or two this is going to be finished," the Associated Press reported.
At the daily U.S. military briefing at Central Command field headquarters in Doha, Qatar, U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks said the Republican Guard's Baghdad Division had been "destroyed" by the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in fighting near the town of Kut, southeast of Baghdad. He said that means it is "no longer effective conducting combat operations as a cohesive force," its leadership has ceased to function and most of the troops have been killed or wounded or have retreated toward Baghdad.
In the most upbeat briefing since the start of the war, the normally cautious Brooks said all divisions of the Republican Guard "are in trouble. They are under serious attack right now." The overall effect of the day's combat, he said, is that "we have the regime on the run."
To the west, the U.S. Army's V Corps has attacked a combination of the Republican Guard's Medina Division and elements of the Nebuchadnezzar Division, which have been redeployed from north of Baghdad to the front lines in recent days, Brooks said.
"Their attacks are effective and action continues in this case near Karbala along the Euphrates River," he said. He added, "The efforts continue to the west of Karbala, to the south of Karbala, to the east of Karbala."
As U.S. aircraft have continued a ferocious bombing campaign against Republican Guard units in recent days, some of these Iraqi forces have moved to terrain they prefer to defend, according to Brooks.
He said the pounding of the Republican Guards is proof that U.S. forces had not undertaken an "operational pause," as was reported during the last week by some U.S. officers in the field. "While some believed there was a pause, the Republican Guard recognizes there was no pause," Brooks said.
Summing up the condition of these Iraqi divisions, Brooks said, "First, they're in trouble. Two, they're under serious attack right now and those attacks will continue until we're finished with the task at hand. The attacks will continue over the next few days."
With each passing day, he said, advancing U.S. troops are getting more help from Iraqi civilians who recognize that the regime of Saddam Hussein will no longer be in power. "The water is being drained from the swamp," he said.
The Reuters news agency reported that the 3d Infantry crossed the Euphrates some hours after the Marines crossed the Tigris; the two main components of the U.S. ground campaign are expected to join forces for the final assault on Baghad. "The dagger is clearly pointed at the heart of the regime right now," said Brooks, recounting advances by the Marines and the 3d Infantry Division, which broke through Iraqi defenses near Karbala, 45 miles south of Baghdad.
The Marines' next objective is likely to be the Republican Guard's Al Nida Division, which is expected to be a more formidable obstacle than was the Baghdad Division, Washington Post correspondent Peter Baker reported from Marine field headquarters. Ever since the start of the war two weeks ago, U.S. and British military officials have been saying that the entire campaign so far has been a preparation for the engagement with the Republican Guard around Baghdad, whose troops are better trained and better equipped than the regular army and considered deeply loyal to Saddam Hussein.
Because Baghdad is the focus, Brooks said, it is not necessary for U.S. troops to clean out the Iraqi irregulars in the Shiite shrine in Najaf, 80 miles south of Baghdad, which is otherwise under U.S. control. "We can fire back" if the defenders shoot at U.S. troops, he said, but "we choose not to fire back" out of respect for the site's religious significance -- a concern he said was not shared by the Iraqi government. He called the defenders' use of the shrine "a detestable example of putting historical sites in danger."
Meanwhile, the U.S. military campaign escalated in northern Iraq. U.S. B-52 bombers hit Iraqi troop concentrations between the cities of Dohuk and Mosul, news agencies reported. Reuters correspondents reported observing air strikes all along the demarcation line between the Kurdish autonomous zone and Baghdad-controlled territory north of the key oil city of Kirkuk.
In Baghdad, for the second day in a row, Iraqi television reported a statement attributed to Saddam Hussein, who has not been seen in public or on live television since the start of the war. The statement declared that "victory is at hand" and urged Iraqis to fight on in defense of their towns.
A separate decree, also attributed to Saddam, offered cash rewards to anyone who helps uncover spies assisting the U.S.-led coalition.
Hussein did not appear in person, and there was no way to verify if any of the statements actually came from the Iraqi leader. The statements were issued as Baghdad again took intense bombardment Wednesday, with telephone exchanges among the targets hit.
The bombing of the capital's telephone exchanges in recent days has left the city's 5 million residents in near isolation. At least six exchanges have so far been hit, some more than once, and most of the city's lines are now down.
Other targets in and around the capital were bombed throughout the day, as more and more of the capital's military installations and communications infrastructure is dismantled.
The maternity hospital was struck as U.S. planes fired missiles into a neighborhood called Mansour, hitting Baghdad's international trade center and two labor union buildings, Reuters reported. The news agency quoted witnesses saying several people in the hospital were killed, along with motorists whose cars were struck as they drove through the area.
Brooks said he had no information about the reported strike on the hospital.
Reconstruction Planners Worry, Wait and Reevaluate.
By Susan B. Glasser and Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, April 2, 2003
KUWAIT CITY, April 1 -- This was the scenario: Baghdad has fallen after several days of urban combat. Corpses litter the streets and homes are damaged by bombing. Electricity and water are scarce. There are "pockets of resistance," and parts of Baghdad are still in flames when retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay M. Garner and his team arrive to start running the country.
The future of postwar Iraq is being planned in closed sessions like this one held a few days ago at a cream-colored beachfront villa in Kuwait by a Pentagon group headed by Garner. Participants in the session -- a "rock drill," in military terms -- ran through schemes for collecting garbage, restarting power plants and "what do we do with corpses that are found."
The actual war in Iraq has left the country's government-in-waiting still in rehearsal. The Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, with a Kuwait-based staff already numbering in "the low hundreds," had expected to move quickly into Iraq after a swift war that toppled President Saddam Hussein and won over Iraqis grateful to the United States for liberating them from more than three decades of authoritarian rule.
But with military commanders warning of a longer and more difficult war, Garner's team also has been reevaluating its strategy. Plans to send a large number of U.S. civilians into Iraq are being postponed, given concerns about security even in areas of southern Iraq nominally under U.S. control.
"We all thought we were going to be in there by now," said one official familiar with the Garner group's work. "Instead of throwing things together in a week, we've had a lot more time to think about it."
The additional time has fueled additional worries. Instead of being welcomed as a liberation force, some in the group fear, a U.S.-led transitional government will be greeted with deep suspicion, perhaps even resistance. The group is devoting meetings to discussion of "what is going to happen when the hostilities end," according to the official.
In Washington, meanwhile, disagreement over control of the program surfaced as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld vetoed the State Department's selection of eight current and former diplomats to join Garner's team. Some officials here complain that the Pentagon is seeking to dominate every aspect of Iraq's postwar reconstruction.
Garner's mandate is to provide humanitarian assistance, reconstruct damaged infrastructure and set the country on the road to a representative self-government before authority is fully handed over to Iraqis. Not since the period after World War II has the United States embarked on such an ambitious transformation project -- seizing control of a large country to refashion its political system and rebuild its economy.
Garner constantly lectures his staff, several officials said, on the limited nature of their mission, telling them they must be prepared to "work their way out of a job" within 90 days. On his first visit to the southern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr today, Garner made that point publicly.
"We're here to do the job of liberating them, of providing them with a form of government that represents the freely elected will of the people. We'll do it as fast as we can, and once we've done it, we'll turn everything over to them. We'll begin turning things over right away, and we'll make this a better place for everybody," he said.
But some officials doubt that three months is a realistic period in which to put the country on its feet. "This is a very short-term project -- 90 days. Basically we can get people back to work, we can get kids back to school, we can make some high-profile infrastructure fixes," said one official. "What comes after that 90 days, we don't know."
Many of the most difficult policy issues that would face this government-in-waiting are unresolved. The group is discussing how much power the interim Iraqi government would have compared with U.S. overseers, how to root out apparatchiks from Hussein's ruling Baath Party while keeping government functioning, and how to drastically restructure and reduce the size of the Iraqi army while providing for future national security.
Some of those involved in the discussions say they believe the United States would retain power over important government functions even after the formation of an Iraqi authority. Others privately concede the task could stretch on for many more months.
"Some of us came out here thinking it would be a three- or four-month operation," one member of Garner's team said. "Now it's clear that we're going to be here, and eventually in Baghdad, for a lot longer than we expected."
One participant in a recent planning session questioned whether the group fully recognizes the complexity and chaos that officials are likely to encounter in a postwar Iraq.
"The presentation was full of charts and reporting lines and discussions about whether there should be a dotted line or a straight line," he said. "It was like a Boston Consulting Group presentation to IBM. It was so different than what the situation really is in Iraq. That is going to be a big, big shock to them."
Garner's team is made up almost exclusively of Americans, many of them former or current officials. Aides come from the Pentagon, the State Department and other departments and agencies, including Treasury, Justice, the Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Army Corps of Engineers. The only non-Americans are a handful of British and Australian diplomats, and a small group of Iraqi exiles. The United Nations is expected to "play some part in the equation," an official said, but U.S. officials have made clear it will be a subordinate role.
Three officials have been named to administer areas of Iraq: Bruce Moore, a retired general, in the north; Barbara Bodine, the former U.S. ambassador to Yemen who served in Baghdad in the 1980s, for the central region, including Baghdad; and Buck Walters, another retired general, in the south. Three other Garner deputies are in charge of broad areas -- humanitarian assistance coordinated by George Ward, a former U.S. Marine and ambassador to Namibia; reconstruction by Lewis Lucke, a veteran of USAID; and civil administration by Michael Mobbs, a Reagan-era arms negotiator and Pentagon legal adviser.
Differences between the Pentagon and State Department over the team's composition have affected officials who were on their way to the region. It is not known whether the dispute will further slow the group's work.
Here at the beach, Garner's transitional government-in-waiting has begun to shape that agenda with military precision -- day-by-day timetables for restarting key government functions, checklists for taking over ministries. The official mantra is secrecy. "It'll get rolled out when it gets rolled out," one official said.
Yet the process of reinventing Iraq is also happening in plain view of the press corps gathered at the same hotel. As scenes of destruction in Iraq blare on television sets, Garner's postwar planners tote Filofaxes along with their military-issue gas masks. British Gurkhas, tapped to provide security for the team, walked across the sand one recent morning in civilian clothes. Each morning at 7:30, the military officers in the group gather near a swimming pool to get their marching orders for the day.
Participants are developing plans for taking over Iraq's 23 government ministries, with a key U.S. adviser supervising work along with Iraqi exiles. Experts from Treasury are deciding how best to scrap the Iraqi currency -- featuring likenesses of Hussein -- and replace it, at least temporarily, with the U.S. dollar. At another hotel up the road, a group of Iraqi exiles working with Garner has formed the "indigenous media group" to reinvent Iraqi television, radio and newspapers.
Although Garner's team is assembling a list of Iraqi exiles with expertise in specific areas of governance -- finance, agriculture, health and so forth -- U.S. officials acknowledge that they have little idea of what they will find in each ministry.
"When they are reopened, who will show up for work?" one participant said. "How do we find the technocrats?"
Lack of on-the-ground knowledge is a key impediment for Garner's group. A handful of State Department officials involved in the process have had experience in Iraq, but none after 1990, when the United States severed diplomatic relations with Hussein's government.
The experiment may get its first test in southern Iraq, in areas near Kuwait already under U.S. and British control. Sources familiar with the discussions here said it is possible that Garner's group may move into southern Iraq even as the fight rages farther north.
British Maj. Gen. Albert Whitley, serving as a deputy to the U.S. commander of land forces in Iraq, said military planners envision a "gradual transfer" of responsibility to Garner for humanitarian assistance once they can "provide a secure environment" in which civilian aid groups can operate.
There is much more uncertainty about how to restart a functioning government without the all-pervasive Baath Party, and Whitley, who is in charge of postwar planning for the land forces here, made clear that many of those decisions would fall to the Garner team. For example, British forces are currently detaining dozens of local Baath Party officials and paramilitary forces with the expectation that they will be subject eventually to "some judicial process," Whitley said. "But who that judge and jury will be, I don't know," he added.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. military's top two officials sharply denounced public criticism of the Iraq invasion plan Tuesday. In private, the war's top general sharply rebuked a senior battlefield commander for telling reporters that Pentagon planners failed to anticipate the fierce level of Iraqi resistance.
In a sometimes testy Pentagon news conference Tuesday, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, dismissed critical comments from front-line U.S. commanders in Iraq as a "soda straw" view of the overall invasion plan. With evident anger, Myers also complained that punditry by retired generals on TV was "not helpful ... when we've got troops in combat."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters that published reports that he cut the size of the invasion force in half against advice from senior military officers were "just not true."
The comments by Myers and Rumsfeld came after days of growing criticism by active and retired military officers that Rumsfeld's plan for the invasion was inadequate. Critics have said Rumsfeld failed to foresee stiff Iraqi resistance and began the invasion with too light a force.
Rumsfeld's and Myers' public declarations Tuesday — that the war is going well, that critics don't understand the plan, that total victory for the coalition is inevitable — were the visible signs of a long-running internal debate that has pitted the flinty and combative Defense secretary against current and former Army officers who question his views on modern war fighting. The dissension is touching sensitive nerves in the Army, whose senior officers fought in Vietnam and have vowed never to sugarcoat their views of a battle.
While U.S. forces in Iraq reported significant gains Tuesday, there were signs of tension up and down the chain of command.
Army Gen. Tommy Franks, the overall commander, rebuked Lt. Gen. William Wallace, commander of the main Army ground force in Iraq, in a telephone conference last week, according to two military officers and a senior Defense official who asked not to be identified. Wallace had been quoted in major newspapers as saying, "The enemy we're fighting against is different from the one we'd war-gamed against."
Wallace's comment was interpreted as criticism of both Myers' Joint Staff, which oversees war gaming, and of Central Command, the military headquarters headed by Franks, which is responsible for military operations in the Persian Gulf region.
Franks "ripped Wallace" in the phone conversation, one of the military officers said. The senior Defense official called it a "one-way conversation" in which Franks "expressed his displeasure" with what Wallace had said.
Word of the dressing down spread rapidly through the Army ranks in Iraq. Some military officers called Wallace to offer support, a senior military official said. They said the three-star general was speaking honestly and had a duty to air concerns.
At Tuesday's news conference, Myers said senior officers "would be shirking their duty" if they failed to tell higher-ups their honest views about a military situation. The problem, it seems, is doing so publicly.
Since Wallace's comments last week, other officers under his command have been quoted in media accounts as suggesting that the Pentagon sent too small a force to conquer Iraq. Myers said their views of the battle are too narrow or uninformed to be accurate.
"My view of those reports," Myers said, "is that they're bogus. I don't know how they get started, and I don't know how they've been perpetuated. But it's not been by responsible members of the team that put this all together."
Myers sought to isolate the retired generals who have been criticizing the war plan on cable television networks and in newspaper accounts.
"It is not helpful to have those kind of comments come out when we've got troops in combat," Myers said.
When reminded that some of the criticism has also come from those very troops, Myers' tone softened.
"I don't think the perceptions coming from the field are necessarily wrong," Myers said. But overall, he said, "those people probably weren't aware of what we were trying to do early on."
One of the TV pundits, retired Army general Barry McCaffrey, made clear Tuesday that he has no intention of submitting to a Pentagon gag order.
"The war is way too important to be left unilaterally to Secretary Rumsfeld," McCaffrey said. "And probably, I know a lot more about fighting Iraqis than he does." He called it "ludicrous" to suggest that former senior officers were unaware of the war planning. "It looked to me as if the secretary is scared."
The debate over the size of the Iraqi invasion force went public last week when rapid ground gains by coalition forces bogged down in stubborn fighting by Iraqi irregular forces and Republican Guard troops at key strong points on the main routes from Kuwait to Baghdad. It is a debate that could intensify if coalition forces continue to struggle — or quickly fade if the U.S.-led invasion gathers momentum again.
Part of the debate involves Army doctrine. Former officers such as McCaffrey argue that for a battle this size, one armored division was simply not enough. McCaffrey also said the coalition forces lacked troops to guard the 300-mile supply line.
A second element of the debate stems from circumstance, not doctrine.
The initial Pentagon plan called for a much larger force, an additional 62,000 troops that were to be based in Turkey and move toward Baghdad from the north. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said repeatedly that the northern front would shorten the war and save lives.
Turkey, however, refused to let U.S. forces launch an attack from its soil, and President Bush, in a decision that has drawn sharp criticism from retired Army officers, decided to launch the invasion anyway, weeks before those troops and their armored vehicles could be repositioned to Kuwait. As a result, the combined Army and Marine force massing south of Baghdad is about 40,000. Had a full-sized northern front been established, an additional division, about 15,000 troops, would be in the fray.
As the invasion plan has come under increasing criticism, Rumsfeld has taken to referring to it as "Tommy Franks' plan." Rumsfeld took pains Tuesday to say he was complimenting Franks, not shifting the blame to the general.
But senior military commanders recall that in the planning stages, Rumsfeld personally reviewed deployment orders for virtually every military unit they requested, including small units of fewer than 100 troops. Senior Army officers told USA TODAY that the Defense secretary questioned the necessity of deploying dozens of the units and slowed down the deployment process. A senior Air Force officer with direct knowledge of the deployment schedule confirmed the Army officers' account.
Rumsfeld said the first plan he and Franks considered was "really ancient, years old" and failed to account for lessons from the war in Afghanistan and the role of precision weaponry. Top Pentagon officials, military and civilian, agreed a new plan was needed. After months of discussion, Rumsfeld said, President Bush met his commanders via secure teleconference.
"He said, 'Do you have everything you need?' " Rumsfeld quoted Bush as asking. "Simple question. These are adults. They're all four-stars. And they sat there, and they looked at the president in the eye and said, 'Absolutely, we've got everything we need.' "
US troops reached Baghdad's main airport today in the march to the capital as Republican Guard units moved to reinforce the city's southern defences.
The American soldiers were outside Baghdad's Saddam International Airport, 12 miles southwest of the capital, and were preparing to mount an assault, a senior US military spokesman said today.
Central Command said that US Special Forces infiltrated some Iraqi command posts including a presidential palace during the night and prevented Iraqi troops blowing up several bridges and a dam.
Two palaces are located near the airport. The Radwaniyah Palace Complex is on its southeast edge and Presidential Palace North is on the northeast side.
Captain Frank Thorp, a US military spokesman, said that the path to Baghdad was becoming clearer as more Republican Guards were defeated and the feared last stand by Saddam’s most loyal troops was not materialising.
"We are getting closer and closer to Baghdad. When we decide to go into Baghdad, we will be in Baghdad within a matter of hours from when we decide to go," he said.
Iraq’s information minister denied the reports. “They are nowhere near Baghdad,” Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf told a news conference, adding that the suggestion was “silly”.
In the first prong of the assault, US Army vehicles travelling from Karbala are crossing a dual carriageway bridge over the Euphrates River after a "fierce fight" to seize the bridge from Iraqi forces, a BBC reporter with advancing US forces said.
US troops were pouring over the captured dual carriageway bridge over the Euphrates by the thousand, according the BBC.
Road maps indicate the only dual carriageway bridge over the Euphrates to the southwest is at Musayib, 30 miles (50 km) from the outskirts of the capital.
Fox News reporter Greg Kelly, who was travelling towards Baghdad with an allied convoy of tanks, described how he watched an American armoured vehicle catch fire after being hit.
Smoke bellowed out of one side of the tank, which had pulled to the side of the road, he said. "There’s a tank on fire on our 12.00. It’s an M1 tank."
Kelly said that no soldiers could be seen emerging from the tank. Coming under fire from resistance forces, the US tanks were engaged "pretty heavily" in holding off the attack, Kelly said. "We’re being told to get down a little bit," he added.
"When you’re up close the resistance seems heavy. It’s heavy but it’s more what the second brigade has seen all along." He said that the convoy was vulnerable despite the fact that resistance appeared "outgunned".
In the second prong, US Marines were pushing towards Baghdad from the southeast, supported by renewed air attacks on Iraqi defences at al-Kut.
An AFP reporter travelling with the Marines said they appeared to be by-passing al-Kut, which is around 90 miles (150km) southeast of the Iraqi capital.
Two US soldiers were killed earlier today in an "apparent" Iraqi rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) attack west of the Euphrates River near Baghdad, said a US general.
Seven soldiers were also killed when Iraqi forces shot down a US Black Hawk helicopter near the city of Karbala, the Pentagon said. The US Air Force also had its first fighter jet shot down by Iraqi forces. A rescue team was launched for the pilot.
The rapid advances brought thousands of troops within the so-called red zone – an imaginary line on the map near the capital where Iraqi use of weapons of mass destruction is most feared. Troops in some of the most advanced units donned chemical protection suits.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter crashed south of Baghdad Wednesday, but Pentagon officials do not believe the cause was enemy fire.
"We had a Black Hawk helicopter that went down during operations yesterday," Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said Brooks said at a military briefing this morning.
Brooks said the number of casualities, first reported to be 7 killed and 4 wounded, is also under investigation.
"We had a Black Hawk helicopter that went down during operations yesterday," Brooks said.
"The investigation into that is ongoing," Brooks said. "We do have some casualties as a result of that -- we don't think as a result of hostile fire."
The U.S. military is also investigating the downing of a U.S. Navy F/A-18C Hornet fighter jet over Iraq, Brooks said today.
The Black Hawk was the second U.S. helicopter to go down in combat. An Army Apache assault helicopter went down March 24 during an assault on Republican Guard forces; its two pilots were captured by Iraqis.
There was some initial confusion about the downing Wednesday night. U.S. Central Command headquarters in Qatar issued an initial statement saying six were believed to have been aboard and ``casualties have not been confirmed at this point.''
But Pentagon officials said their initial reports showed seven soldiers aboard the helicopter were killed and four were wounded and rescued.
The UH-60 Black Hawk is one of the Army's main utility and troop transport helicopters. Each is flown by a crew of four and can carry up to 11 soldiers.
The helicopters are equipped with advanced avionics and electronics, such as global positioning systems and night-vision equipment.
A Black Hawk crashed in a remote, wooded area of Fort Drum, N.Y., during a training exercise last month, killing 11 of the 13 soldiers aboard.
In February, a Black Hawk crashed during night training in the Kuwaiti desert, killing all four crew members. The Kuwaiti military said sandstorms were reported in the area at the time the chopper went down.
In January, an MH-60, an adapted version of the Black Hawk, crashed during training near Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, killing four members of an elite aviation regiment.
Despite Call to Battle, City Looks Little Prepared - With Invaders on Outskirts, Mood Is Calm.
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, April 3, 2003
BAGHDAD, April 2 -- With U.S. forces 30 miles from the outskirts of Baghdad -- once the destination of invading armies of Arabs, Mongols, Ottoman Turks and the British -- the ancient capital hardly projects the air of a fortress.
The four- and six-lane highways that radiate to the south and west are more burdened with pickups carrying onions and garlic than transports ferrying troops to the front. A scattering of checkpoints, pillboxes and sandbags mark the city's entrances -- a barren landscape interspersed with factories and groves of date palms and apricots. The sentries go largely unnoticed by children playing soccer in dirt fields and women in black chadors selling tomatoes and eggplant on straw mats along the street.
On the strategic road from Karbala, a concrete arch bears the inscription, "Baghdad welcomes you."
But with the swagger of confidence or delusion, the government of President Saddam Hussein has publicly relished the coming battle for Baghdad. Officials boast that the country's most vaunted units are primed to repel an assault for which they have planned for years.
In public statements, officials have predicted prolonged battles on the city's outskirts, where troops have deployed under the canopies of palm trees in farms watered by the Tigris River. As those forces fall back, the government has said it will revert to tactics employed with some success in southern cities -- bands of loyal militiamen holed up in poor, crowded neighborhoods harrying U.S. forces as they rumble down Baghdad's wide-open highways.
The strategy suggests that U.S. forces may enter Baghdad, and even claim victory in the heart of the city, long before resistance ends.
"There's nothing that prevents the enemy from doing anything in Baghdad, so be it," the defense minister, Sultan Hashem Ahmad, said last week of airstrikes that have struck the city night and day. "But the enemy must come inside Baghdad and that will be its grave."
Added Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz: "Stay in Baghdad and watch what will happen."
Iraqi officials contend they can neutralize their adversaries' dominance of the skies using block-by-block guerrilla warfare, with civilians caught in between. Iraqi forces can venture far closer to U.S. troops in the confines of the city -- perhaps to carry out the suicide attacks officials have promised. The Iraqis can also exploit their formidable ability at logistics, tapping the resources of the Baath Party, which has been in power for three decades, and fighting on terrain that it has kept under blanket surveillance.
"Our strategy is based on a long war, and I believe we've so far succeeded in defeating the enemy's strategy," Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said this week. "Every day that is added to the duration of the battle is in Iraq's interest."
There are many intangibles in that scenario, not least those contained in Baghdad's geography and urban landscape.
In its medieval heyday, under the centuries-long rule of the Abbassids, the city was shielded by towering brick walls with gates facing the ends of its domains -- China to the east and Spain to the west. Just one remains -- Bab al-Wastani. Today, the city's south and west, the likely approaches of U.S. forces, are linked to the rest of the country by smooth freeways laid across the remarkably flat, flood plain spreading out from a U-shaped bend in the Tigris River.
From the center of Baghdad to the west, the road stretches through Mansour and Kindi -- two of Baghdad's wealthiest neighborhoods -- and past the ruins of the Salaam Palace, with its four busts of Hussein in medieval Arab headdress, and the rubble of the Maamoun telephone exchange. At the city's edge, it opens into a six-lane highway, with a tangle of overpasses that inspire comparisons to Los Angeles.
To the south, two roads diverge to the cities of Kut and Karbala, through some of Baghdad's grittiest, most crowded neighborhoods.
As elsewhere in the capital, there are hardly any fortifications on the road to Kut. On its way out of the city, the road runs through middle-class areas like New Baghdad, past the military's sprawling Rashid Camp in Rustamiya and the Military College. It crosses the Diyala River, suffused with the stench of sewage, and past a modest, metal sign that reads, "Baghdad bids you farewell."
Beyond a checkpoint manned by the Republican Guards, the road opens into an industrial wasteland of shuttered workshops and abandoned car plants with signs for Volkswagen, Fiat and Volvo dusted from a searing sandstorm. A lone woman, in a flowing black abaya, herded goats along a moonscape of dirt clods and patches of grass.
The road to Karbala stretches through middle-class Christian and Sunni Muslim neighborhoods, then into the grinding poverty of Abu Chir, a Shiite Muslim suburb that houses a sprawling market for vegetables destined for Baghdad. From there, the outskirts open into more industrial sprawl of food processing plants, ice makers, cement and workshops, before reverting to groves of apricots and palm trees shadowing verdant, irrigated fields.
Other than checkpoints manned by Republican Guard troops and a handful of sandbags and pillboxes, the entrances are most remarkable for how much they resemble the outskirts of most Arab capitals, with a mix of dilapidated factories and the hovels of rural migrants.
The most visible preparations for an invasion are the towering black plumes of smoke from oil fires -- some spaced just 100 yards apart -- that have cast a black film over eucalyptus trees along the street medians and the once-tan facades of nearby apartment buildings.
It is a different story closer to the center of Baghdad, which has little of the legendary grandeur its name still evokes in the Arab world. Much of old Baghdad -- its mud-brick homes and narrow alleys -- has made way for two-story cement housing and low-slung commercial areas. In those neighborhoods, as well as impoverished Shiite areas like Zaafraniya, the Baath Party has imposed grid-like control, stationing cadres at every intersection, road and alley.
In some places, five and as many as 10 militiamen are stationed behind sandbags, some of them emblazoned with signs that read, "God is great and to us victory" or "Long live the leader." Pickup trucks, smeared in mud for camouflage, are parked in front of mud-brick homes. Along some canals, soldiers and militiamen are digging trenches, apparently to shield them from bombing.
"It's best not to fight them in the desert but to lure them into the cities and towns and to populated areas, the areas where planes can't work with great competence," Aziz said in an interview Tuesday with the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp.
Aziz and others have drawn on Iraqi history to prove their point, and to celebrate a national reputation for toughness. Iraqi lore includes the oft-repeated adage of a 7th-century Muslim conqueror who, angered by a restive population, proclaimed, "I see heads ripe for cutting and I am the man to do it."
As the story goes, he did.
In a prediction for U.S. forces that has become a refrain at news conferences, officials point to the wretched experience of British troops in Iraq in World War I and soon after. In 1916, beaten down by flies and mosquitoes and hampered by swamps, 13,000 diseased and demoralized men surrendered to Turkish troops, though another force entered Baghdad the following year. In 1920, an uprising left hundreds of British soldiers dead, serving as an early symbol of an emerging Iraqi nationalism.
"They are most welcome here," Information Minister Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf said of U.S. troops at a news conference today.
Like others, Sahhaf has dismissed as "trivial" the impact of around-the-clock bombing that pulverized the expansive Baghdad International Trade Fair, damaged a Red Crescent maternity hospital and wrecked two more telephone exchanges today.
He delivered a similar assessment of bombing that, for more than a week, has relentlessly targeted Republican Guard units deployed in farms and under the canopy of palm groves to the south, west and north of the capital. In a response to reports that U.S. attacks had destroyed the Baghdad division, a spokesman from the force appeared on Iraqi television tonight, insisting that only 17 soldiers were killed. He said the division was in excellent shape and will teach U.S. forces "lessons in the art of fighting."
The prediction last week by Sultan, the defense minister, that Baghdad would be encircled within 10 days has proved uncannily accurate. And today, perhaps more than any other time since the war began, an element of anxiety was visible within the government.
In a message to Kurdish leaders read today on television, Hussein warned them against "rushing and doing something you'll regret." Iraqi officials appeared only once today, down from the two and even three news conferences they have held since the start of the war. And television broadcast a warning that all Iraqis with satellite phones should surrender them so that the government could identity "infiltrating" transmissions. Those who don't, it said, would be treated as spies.
It was difficult to gauge the depth of unease in a government that, at one time, said it was deliberating what religious rites should be guaranteed for the corpses of U.S. and British soldiers and whether they should be buried in mass pits or individual graves. In more understated moments, Ramadan, the vice president, and other officials have said they intend to prolong the war, but offer little assessment of how it will end. Today, Ramadan suggested that giving U.S. forces a good fight might be a victory in itself.
U.S. Marines' Gangle Says U.K. Basra Attack a Model for Baghdad.
Washington, April 3 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. siege of Baghdad will likely resemble the tactics of British forces now attacking Basra, according to retired Marine Corps. Col. Randolph Gangle, executive director of the Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities in Quantico, Virginia. U.K. and U.S. forces secured the oil fields around Basra shortly after the war began two weeks ago. For the past 13 days, U.K. forces have been on the city's outskirts, taking control of suburbs and making periodic raids on the infrastructure of the regime and Ba'ath Party enforcers. Gangle's comments came in a telephone interview.
``I suspect we will see Basra replicated at a much larger scale when we get to Baghdad,'' Gangle said. Baghdad's population exceeds 5 million; Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, has about 1 million people.
``We will set up patrolling, divide the city up into smaller sectors, develop nodes and sectors. We will be developing human intelligence from the local populations, to tell us who's bad so we can go get them.
``You isolate them so they can't get reinforced and then you slowly build your intelligence picture.
``The British are gaining the confidence of people in Basra to where they are getting information on where the Fedayeen and Ba'athists are. It's slow at first. But then as it expands it will grow exponentially as people gain confidence they can tell us where to go and we'll go take care of it.
``I'm not seeing anything the Iraqis are doing that the Chechens didn't do to the Russians,'' Gangle said. ``They've taken military and paramilitary out of uniform and broken them down to smaller teams of 8, 10 or 12 men, equipped them with rocket grenades and said `Go out and attack the Americans and British.
``It makes it very difficult for us, because your foe is not easily identified. He's retreated into the city. He's mingled with civilian population so you can't bring your superior firepower to bear.''
UK forces are trying to win over the Umm Qasr population.
The tugboat crew at Umm Qasr is back at work. Though they now answer to British officers, not the Baath Party, these Iraqis are still reluctant to talk about Saddam Hussein for fear of bloody reprisals. One man breaks his silence for BBC News Online.
Much has changed in Umm Qasr in one week. The dusty streets around the town's two ports are no longer deserted. Nor is it just children hoping for a handout of sweets who now wave and smile at passing British soldiers. Adults too seem cheerful at the occupation of their town.
"We love you," cries one young man, as a convoy passes. While the locals are more willing to express affection for the town's new rulers, it seems they may also be tentatively passing judgement on the old. The mosaic portraits of Saddam Hussein which greet those entering Umm Qasr have all been defaced with bold strokes of red paint.
The Royal Marines running the town said they have neither the time nor the inclination to attack the town's many monuments to the Iraqi leader. "If the local people want to do it, that's up to them," said Major Ray Tonner last week. So have the people openly turned against their president?
One of the Iraqis returning to work on one of the port's two tugs said he did not want to talk about Saddam Hussein while he was still in power. "The people who spoke out at Safwan to the television cameras, those who dared to talk about Saddam, the ones who celebrated the arrival of the Americans, they are now dead," he said.
The tugboat is operational again.
When the war began, many in the invading US-led force expected to be greeted as the liberators of the Iraqi people. The muted response (even occasional open hostility) from ordinary Iraqis has shocked some soldiers. The tugboat crewman says agents of the government in Baghdad may still roam even occupied areas and Iraqis fear being seen to side with the invaders.
'I fear TV cameras'
"You never can tell who is in Saddam's intelligence service," he said.
"If I can't tell, how can the British find them? They can come into your home and kill you, even for just coming back to work at the port." Despite these fears, one of the crew is willing to talk anonymously about his feelings towards the US-led invasion and the end of Saddam's rule in the town of Umm Qasr.
He spoke to BBC News Online:
I am 90% certain the Americans will win the war, but the Iraqi people will still be afraid until Saddam Hussein is dead. Some of my family live outside Umm Qasr. I cannot contact them and I am very nervous. I cannot talk openly to television cameras because I fear for them.
I have come back to work under the British, so I can look after my ship. It has been taking in water and I wanted to save her. But some others say they don't want to come back to work. They are afraid to be seen in the port, afraid that the war will not be won and that then Saddam will come back to get them.
I was only 17 when the people here rose up against Saddam in 1991. I didn't understand what was going on and didn't join in with my friends. I thought everything was sunshine in Iraq, but now I know it was really darkness. When the Americans didn't come to help the rebels, my friends were killed or had to leave Iraq.
Many Iraqis have greeted the British.
If this war is a failure, I will have to flee Iraq because I came to work under the British. If you stand up against Saddam, you will be killed. I am very happy that Saddam is no longer in control here. The Baath Party people were scared and have left Umm Qasr, leaving only the ordinary, poor people.
I have a good job, but I have seen no rewards under Saddam. Nothing. I own not one centimetre of Iraqi land for my efforts. My home belonged to the government and they could have taken it from me at any time. I just want the freedom to live my life. Talking now about my feelings is freedom. Before the war, they would put up messages from Saddam on a notice board.
Freedom.
They would force us to repeat what he said as if it were the truth. If Saddam said something, the Iraqi people had to say the same thing.
When the Americans came, we stayed inside. We didn't want to be seen to help their army or the Iraqi army. The Americans broke down our doors and smashed our televisions. The British here now respect our things.
We help the British and they help us, as friends help each other. I do not know who painted on the portraits of Saddam. Maybe all Iraqis hate him. Any Iraqi who wanted a good job had to join the Baath Party, but in their hearts even these people hated him.
But if you ask Iraqis if they are happy with this war, they will not be able to tell you. If the Americans and British pick a leader from among the Iraqi people, the war will be a success. If they stay and take the things that belong to Iraq, then no Iraqi can agree with this war.
DOHA (Reuters) - Among the many surprises that awaited the invading forces in Iraq was their enemy's ability to knock out the U.S. Army's most advanced battle tank.
Defense analysts believe the three -- perhaps five -- M1-A2 Abrams tanks which have been disabled so far appear to have been hit by a weapon far more potent than the decades-old RPG-7 rocket propelled grenade.
Instead, it seems the Iraqis -- who say they have knocked out dozens of U.S. tanks -- may be using the Kornet-E, an export version of a Russian laser-guided missile which can destroy tanks fitted with explosive reactive armor.
"We're pretty sure they do have them," said Robert Hewson, editor of Jane's Air-Launched Weapons. "It is a nasty surprise (for U.S. forces) and they will have to adapt their tactics. But it won't be a showstopper and it is no cause for huge alarm."
Where Iraq might have procured the Kornet-E in the face of a U.N. ban on weapons sales to the country is not clear.
The Interfax news agency said on Tuesday the Ukrainian foreign ministry had denied reports that Ukrainian firms had supplied several hundred such anti-tank missiles to Iraq.
According to the Web Site www.army-technology.com, the tripod-launched Kornet-E system has been sold to the Syrian army.
Last week Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, serving a blunt warning to Damascus, said Washington had information that night vision goggles and other military equipment was crossing from Syria into Iraq.
DOUBLE WARHEAD
The U.S. Army fielded around 1,900 M1 Abrams in the 1991 Gulf War. Eighteen allied tanks were knocked out during that campaign, half by mines and half by "friendly fire."
The Abrams, developed 20 years ago, is not impenetrable. It weighs 70 tonnes thanks to heavy armor on its frontal arc but would be an impossible 100 tonnes if it was as well protected on its sides and rear.
But Hewson said RPG-7 grenades, with an effective range of 300 meters (yards), would bounce off "the queen of the battlefield."
The RPG-7 is one of the commonest anti-tank weapons in the world: it was widely used by the Soviet army and by both sides during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
The Kornet-E has a range of around five km (three miles).
The operator uses either optical or thermal sights to track a target, and the missile -- whose warhead first burrows a small hole in a tank and then goes whipping around inside the vehicle -- is guided by a laser beam.
Jane's Defense Weekly Land Forces Editor Christopher Foss said two people can carry this anti-tank missile and it can be mounted on the back of a jeep.
But unless the operating crews are well trained and know how to use the Kornet-E tactically it is of little use, he said.
The Kornet-E also comes with alternative warheads that produce a huge ball of fire and suck up oxygen, which can be used against bunkers, fortifications and exposed infantry.
The Washington Times ^ | April 4, 2003 | Oliver Poole
BAGHDAD — As thick black smoke hung over the outskirts of Baghdad last night, American troops stood stunned by the number of enemy forces they had killed.
Bodies dressed in the uniform of the Republican Guard and burned-out vehicles were strewn around the roadways. Buildings were riddled with bullet holes.
"I hope we don't experience anything like that again," said Sgt. Simon, 38, who gave only one name. "It is like [the 1991 Persian Gulf war]. When I see that many bodies, I just don't want to be here anymore."
As the unit regrouped on a stretch of open land, a soldier stood looking dazed.
"When do we know when it's over?" one Sgt. Scott said. "You could have sent two men in to kill Saddam Hussein. Why did we have to kill so many people? There were so many deaths today."
The forces from the Army's 3rd Infantry Division had fought their way from a bridgehead secured over the Euphrates River north of Karbala, encountering strong resistance from Republican Guard units stationed in the area. At the same time, the 1st U.S. Marine Division moved northwest from Kut.
In a day of often-brutal fighting, the troops destroyed Iraqi units equipped with T-72 tanks and infantry armed with rocket launchers and mortars. Not one American was reported killed.
From the back of an armored vehicle, the most vivid impression of the dash for Baghdad was the impassive faces of three soldiers as the shell cases cascaded down from the volleys of gunfire.
First Sgt. Jose Rosa stood half out of his hatch, loading grenades into a launcher and firing them at targets indicated by hand signals from the rest of the crew.
Staff Sgt. Trey Black sat at the 25 mm cannon, rotating as he sprayed bursts of rounds.
Even the medic in the van behind had a weapon at his shoulder, joining the cacophony of fire.
The air was thick with the smell of cordite.
Finally, there was a pause in the advance to call in an air strike on a foxhole ahead. News had just come in of the unit's first casualty: a scout with a leg wound.
By the end of the day, there had been five casualties in the unit, including an Abrams tank commander, Sgt. Gerald Pyle, whose vehicle was hit by three rockets fired from hand-held launchers. None of the injuries was considered life-threatening.
Around 3 p.m., the first units moved into the edge of the capital, and troops conducted house-to-house searches to ensure that no enemy forces were using them as cover. Abrams tanks adopted defensive formations at key intersections.
By dusk, machine-gun fire and the occasional exploding shell could be heard. At one point, sniper fire was directed close to the headquarters and supply area. Fires still burned where targets had been destroyed by artillery and air strikes earlier in the battle.
In a mosque, six Iraqi soldiers and two armed civilians were captured with a cache of weapons. A unit of engineers removed the weapons and destroyed them.
A few residents ventured onto the streets. Occasionally, an individual or small group walked past, holding white flags. Medics gave two injured Iraqis first aid.
Soldiers passed out leaflets to the owners of the homes they searched. The leaflets explained in Arabic that they had come to liberate the people. First Sgt. Rosa said he had received a warm welcome in one of the houses.
The owners offered him food and water, but a younger man, presumably their son, had appeared more hostile.
"He did not have good body language," he said.
After two weeks of fighting, an advance of hundreds of miles in which the troops had withstood mortar and sniper fire and sandstorms, felt constant fear of chemical attacks and overcome often ferocious pockets of resistance, the 3rd Infantry Division had finally reached its objective.
A tank gunner surveyed the mud-colored, two-story buildings at a dusty suburban junction and said: "I don't like the look of it much, but I guess we've arrived."
Final showdown looms as battle for Baghdad airport begins
From Richard Wallace, US Editor, In Washington DC
ALLIED troops entered the most crucial stage of the assault on Iraq last night as a leading Pentagon official warned: "This is where the war really begins."
The 3rd Infantry Division was fighting for control of Baghdad airport only 12 miles from the city centre after running battles on its advance left hundreds of Iraqi dead and hundreds of burned out vehicles.
ABC TV said the airport was captured. About 20 large explosions in rapid succession were heard from the area early this morning. Other forces were said to be only six miles from the centre. Iraq claimed 83 civilians and military died in a rocket attack on the village of Furat which lies between the airport and capital. More than 120 people were reportedly hurt.
As the vice tightened on Saddam Hussein, there was speculation what last desperate card he would play.
The military warned the chances of a chemical or biological attack were "very high". Baghdad was eerily quiet with the electricity supply cut for the first time. There were few signs of defence against the invasion.
Instead, a convoy of Iraqis in more than 60 coaches and buses drove out of the capital to surrender.
Elsewhere, the SAS spearheaded a manhunt for Saddam carrying out raids on three presidential palaces. A Pentagon official said: "We''ll peck away at him using specialist units."
Military planners are now faced with three choices - lay siege to Baghdad and wait for the regime to cave in, take the city street by street, or isolate the capital while starting to form a new national government.
The first could lead to huge civilian suffering as supplies of food and medicine are cut off.
The second could see up to 2,000 coalition casualties as the war degenerates into a bloody urban battle.
The third was outlined by President Bush's top military adviser, General Richard Myers, last night.
He said: "When Baghdad is isolated whatever remnants of the regime are left are not in charge of anything except their own defence."
A Pentagon official said: "This is when we have to be painstaking. This is where the war really begins."
With the pressure mounting, President Bush told 12,000 cheering marines at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina: "No crime of a dying regime will divert us from our mission.
"Having travelled hundreds of miles, we will now go the last 200 yards. We will accept nothing less than complete and final victory."
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in Washington there was "no chance" the US would halt the war and allow Saddam to survive.
He said: "For the senior leadership, there is no way out."
The 3rd Infantry Division reached Baghdad airport south of the city centre two weeks after leaving Kuwait.
They faced opposition from Iraqis dug in at the airport. Forward troops of the 3rd Infantry were also holding positions southeast and west of the airport, sources said.
Hundreds of burning vehicles were scattered along the road from the Euphrates to Baghdad after a running battle that stretched over six miles.
Gas masks found on Iraqi bodies for the first time indicated a chemical or biological attack may be likely.
Earlier, Iraq was reported to be moving elements of four Republican Guard divisions south to defend the city. But military chiefs said the Guards were in disarray.
Special Forces have already infiltrated Baghdad command posts and secured vital bridges and dams.
Jets continued to pound the city, taking out a huge ammunition store with 40 satellite-guided bombs.
Raids by B52 bombers included the use of controversial cluster bombs.
Saddam was shown on TV chairing a meeting, though it was impossible to say when the recording was made. But there was little sign of defence. A Reuters reporter said: "We expected flares, anti-aircraft artillery, rockets. There's nothing. It's very weird."
There was heavier opposition in the south east. In Kut, US Marines faced suicide attacks and grenade throwing Guards and paramilitaries.
Lieutenant Colonel McCoy, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines, said: "They came charging in a human wave, 10 or 15 guys with AK47s.We mowed them down." Thirty Iraqis were believed killed and three marines injured.
In the south, the 101st Airborne Division took control of Najaf. The noose around Samawah tightened.
British forces led by the 7th Armoured Brigade continued to bombard Basra and believe they have now broken the back of Iraqi resistance.
SAS and US special forces under orders to raid Saddam's likely bolt-holes blasted their way into Lake Tharthar Palace, 56 miles north of Baghdad. Wearing night-vision goggles they were dropped by helicopter and blew their way in with grenades.
They took away vital documents. Two other palaces near the airport, Presidential Palace North and Radwaniyah Palace, were also targeted.
A Pentagon official added: "There seems to be a view only Saddam is expert in guerrilla tactics. Think again."
An Iraqi spokesman claimed last night they were still in control of Basra and that Baghdad would "swallow whole" invading forces.
He said: "Its walls are mighty and filled with men, weapons and chivalry which will enable it to swallow whole the American men and reserves they have called up."
US Central Command said a leading Shi'ite leader in Najaf, who had been under house arrest, had issued a fatwa, telling Iraqis to co-operate with allied forces. They described it as "very significant".
Shi'ites in Umm Qasr performed a public ritual of self flagellation, a move they said would have meant death if Saddam was still in control.
The ritual at a funeral, was the first open sign of defiance of the Iraqi president by Shi'ites since the town was captured.
Looters strip luxury home of Chemical Ali. A British soldier (above) rests by the derelict swimming pool at Ali Hassan al-Majid's empty and wrecked palace on the outskirts of Basra.
April 04, 2003
Looters strip luxury home of Chemical Ali.
Times Online
By Paul Harris
IN A flat landscape of mud fields and flat-topped farmhouses, the palace of Chemical Ali stands out for miles. Its crenellated tower of yellowish stone rises above a stand of green date palms. It is a symbol of dominance and power.
Or at least it used to be. Ali doesn’t live here any more.
Only the name of Saddam Hussein himself strikes as much terror into the hearts of ordinary Iraqis as Ali Hassan al-Majid. After organising the gassing of the Kurds in 1986, he is better known as Chemical Ali. He is Saddam’s cousin and right-hand man. A man who has killed many and helped to terrorise a nation.
But for the looters of his mansion on the outskirts of Basra their need has overcome their fear. His palace has been comprehensively robbed. Even the fittings have gone from the walls. The light switches have been ripped out, the window panes gone. The air conditioning units have disappeared from the walls and there is not a scrap of furniture left.
Hassan stood with his beaten-up American Chevrolet car in the heat outside. Its boot was bulging with timber and glass from the palace on its mound above. He smiled and chuckled as he saw the squad of British soldiers approaching. “Ali Chemical! Ali Chemical!” he said pointing at the palace above him.
All around stretch the endless plains of southern Mesopotamia, dotted with poor tomato farmers who scratch a living from the drained marshes. But not so Ali’s house. The long, elegant drive passes two old military checkpoints, before curving into a compound surrounded by high wire fencing and sandy berms. The road then sweeps up a high mound and ends outside a two-storey building with a high tower on one corner.
Flowerbeds with exotic plants and shrubs lie in the shade of trees gently blowing in a soft breeze. It is an oasis of luxury in a land of dire need. But it is the swimming pool that best illustrates the luxury Ali enjoyed.
Water is in desperately short supply around Basra and what little there is is brackish and often undrinkable. But Ali’s cavernous swimming pool must be 20ft deep, surrounded by a patio of coloured tiles. It takes no leap of the imagination to imagine Ali and his cousin, Saddam Hussein, lounging by its sides sipping a cool drink.
The pool is empty now. In the 14 days since Ali fled it has dried out and begun to fill with dust. The harsh landscape of southern Iraq does not take long to reclaim its own.
Inside the house, the floors are covered with shattered glass. Much of it appears to come from broken chandeliers.
The doorway is choked with broken wood that once formed an elaborate and beautiful portico. There is a spiralling central staircase that heads up to a huge roof terrace. It too is empty now.
In one corner perches the tower. Ali must have stood here countless times, looking out on a land where everyone’s life depended on his whim. But Ali is now a wanted man.
The Americans want to try him for crimes against humanity — he is forever linked with the village of Halabja. It was Ali who ordered the killing of 5,000 Kurds there with a mixture of nerve and mustard gasses. To the name of Halabja should be added other villages too: Guptapa, Bota and Karadagh. All felt the wrath of Ali’s chemicals in the horror military operation known as al-Anfal.
Yet the Shia of southern Iraq had their own version of al-Anfal after their failed 1991 rebellion. Ali co-ordinated the crushing of their revolt. Dozens of Shia clerics were hung from the rafters of their own mosques. Just a month ago Ali was made commander of the military in the South. To make his mark, he personally shot dead an opposition supporter in the streets of Basra.
Despite the looting there are still signs of Ali in the palace. His personal notepaper lies scattered about. Ali’s name and rank are embossed in flowing Arabic on the bottom of the sheafs of quality foolscap. Along the top is a line from the Koran that reads: “Your victory is from God, No one will defeat you.”
It is no surprise that those who now loot his palace are still afraid of the name of Ali. Hassan covered his face as he loaded up his car and would not give his surname nor say where he was from.
“I don’t want to be seen here,” he said. “Ali is a powerful man.”
This is a pooled report for the British press from Paul Harris of The Guardian
STORA IRAKISKA FÖRLUSTER En brinnande Irakisk stridsvagn nära Bagdads flygplats. USA bekräftar att man under natten tagit kontroll över den internationella flygplatsen. Foto: AP
18 Die as U.S. Airstrike Mistakenly Hits Kurdish Force.
New York Times
By DAVID ROHDE
IBAGA, Iraq, April 6 — An American airstrike mistakenly hit a convoy of American and Kurdish soldiers, senior Kurdish commanders and journalists today in northern Iraq, killing 18 Kurds and wounding more than 45 others in the worst such incident yet reported in the war in Iraq.
The American plane bombed 8 to 10 sport utility vehicles and trucks that were parked at least a mile from the front line, witnesses said. At least five of the vehicles had blaze-orange markings on their roofs meant to warn American pilots.
Witnesses said the plane had circled the area at least two or three times before firing a missile.
"It is incredible he did it," said Ali Yaseen, a 26-year-old driver for the British Broadcasting Corporation who was wounded in the bombing. "I don't know how he did it."
The United States Central Command in Qatar listed one American as wounded and said the incident was under investigation.
At the site of the attack, trails of blood marked the spots where the wounded had been dragged away from burning trucks full of ammunition. A pair of scorched sneakers sat a few feet away from a contorted block of metal that was once a car. Part of a finger lay in the road.
Among the seriously wounded was a senior Kurdish official, Wajih Barzani, the younger brother of Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, one of the two parties that dominate Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. Kurdish officials said Mr. Barzani was in critical condition and had been flown to Germany for medical treatment. They also said Massoud Barzani's son Mansour had been slightly wounded.
Hoshyar Zebari, a senior Kurdistan Democratic Party official, described the incident as "regrettable," but added: "We understand really in such a high-tech war this incident could take place. This does not and will not undermine our resolve, our commitment to continue working with the U.S."
Kurdish soldiers who were wounded in the attack took the same attitude when interviewed in their hospital beds. "We thank America so much because they are liberating Iraq," said Fuwad Kadir Omar, a 27-year-old whose legs and right shoulder were broken by the force of the blast. "Nobody can blame the pilot."
Mr. Omar and other victims painted a picture of sudden, unexpected mayhem.
Mr. Yaseen, the BBC driver, said he watched as two low-flying planes slowly circled their position, a standard maneuver when a pilot tries to identify a potential target. He remembered seeing the plane fire a rocket and then found himself on the ground, wounded in the legs and deaf in his left ear.
"We just saw it shoot the rocket," he said. "We didn't have time to run."
The driver for Wajih Barzani, who has been handling liaison work with American Special Operations forces in the region, said he was standing outside a car as two bodyguards relaxed inside it.
The driver, Zubir Khoshary, said that after the explosion he looked at his leg and saw that "all the flesh was torn out." Then he looked at the car.
"When I saw my friends who lost their heads and body parts, I didn't care about my leg," he said. "It was a mistake, but it's O.K. Just get rid of this regime."
John Simpson, the BBC's world affairs editor, who was slightly wounded, reported that American soldiers immediately began treating the wounded.
They also made anguished apologies for the attack.
Kurdish commanders in the area said American and Kurdish forces had advanced several miles this morning toward high ground controlled by Iraqi forces. Kurdish soldiers said their goal was to cut a key road that connects the government-held cities of Kirkuk and Mosul.
The Americans and Kurds advanced a few miles, but as happened with other attacks on Mosul, Iraqi tanks counterattacked against lightly armed Kurdish forces. American Special Operations soldiers then requested close air support.
Mr. Omar said that 10 minutes before the attack the American and Kurdish commanders arrived at an intersection two to three miles from the Iraqi column.
Initially, Kurdish officials said the pilot appeared to have confused the two columns.
Mr. Yaseen said that along with the orange markings on the car's roof, the three white BBC vehicles had the letters "TV" spelled out in tape on their hoods, a step journalists often use to identify their cars from above. This afternoon, there was no trace of "TV" on the remains of one car. All of the tape had been burned off.
'Chemical Ali' Found Dead, British Officer Says
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 5:56 a.m. ET
BASRA, Iraq (AP) -- Ali Hassan al-Majid, one of the most brutal members of President Saddam Hussein's inner circle, was killed by an airstrike on his house in Basra, a British officer said Monday. He had been dubbed ``Chemical Ali'' by opponents for ordering a 1988 poison gas attack that killed thousands of Kurds.
Maj. Andrew Jackson of the 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment told The Associated Press that his superiors had confirmed the death of the man who was Saddam's first cousin, entrusted with defending southern Iraq against invading coalition forces.
Al-Majid apparently was killed on Saturday when two coalition aircraft used laser-guided munitions to attack his house in Basra. Jackson said the body was found along with that of his bodyguard and the head of Iraqi intelligence services in Basra.
Jackson said the discovery of al-Majid's body was one of the reasons the British decided to move infantry into Basra, because they hoped that resistance in the southern Iraqi city might crumble with the top leadership gone.
``(His death should show) that the regime is finished. It is over, and liberation is here,'' said Group Capt. Al Lockwood, spokesman for British forces in the Gulf. ``The leadership is now gone in southern Iraq.''
Believed to be in his fifties, al-Majid led a 1988 campaign against rebellious Kurds in northern Iraq in which whole villages were wiped out. An estimated 100,000 Kurds, mostly civilians, were killed.
Al-Majid also has been linked to the bloody crackdown on Shiites in southern Iraq after their uprising following the 1991 Gulf War. Prior to that, he served as governor of Kuwait during Iraq's seven-month occupation of its neighbor in 1990-1991 -- an invasion that led to the Gulf War.
Human rights groups had called for al-Majid's arrest on war crimes charges when he toured Arab capitals last January seeking to rally support against mounting U.S. pressure on Saddam's regime.
``Al-Majid is Saddam Hussein's hatchet man,'' Kenneth Roth, head of Human Rights Watch in New York, said at the time. ``He has been involved in some of Iraq's worst crimes, including genocide and crimes against humanity.''
Hazem al-Youssefi, Cairo representative of the opposition Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, described al-Majid as a standout in a regime of criminals.
Al-Majid was a warrant officer and motorcycle messenger in the army before Saddam's Baath party led a coup in 1968. He was promoted to general and served as defense minister from 1991-95, as well as a regional party leader.
In 1988, as the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war was winding down, he commanded a scorched-earth campaign to wipe out a Kurdish rebellion in northern Iraq. Later, he boasted about the attacks, including the March 16, 1988, poison gas strike on the village of Halabja, where an estimated 5,000 people died.
During April 1991 peace talks in Baghdad, the Kurdish delegation leader, Jalal Talabani, told al-Majid that more than 200,000 Kurds lost their lives in the Iraqi campaign. Al-Majid replied that the figure was exaggerated and the dead were not more than 100,000, according to Arab press reports.
After Iraq's 1991 Shiite Muslim uprising was crushed, Iraqi opposition groups released a video they said had been smuggled out of southern Iraq. In the video, which was shown on several Arab TV networks, al-Majid was seen executing captured rebels with pistol shots to the head and kicking others in the face as they sat on the ground.
He was no less brutal with his own family.
His nephew and Saddam's son-in-law, Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel, was in charge for many years of Iraq's clandestine weapons programs before defecting in 1995 to Jordan with his brother, Saddam Kamel, who was married to Saddam's other daughter.
Both brothers were lured back to Iraq in February 1996 and killed on their uncle's orders, together with several other family members.
Syria and Lebanon ignored international calls to arrest al-Majid when he visited in January. He dropped scheduled stops in Jordan and Egypt -- both U.S. allies. Egypt refused to receive him and the Jordanian government denied a visit was ever planned.
--------
Associated Press writer Maamoun Youssef contributed to this report from Cairo, Egypt.
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, April 7, 2003; 5:23 AM
BAGHDAD, April 7 (Monday) -- U.S. forces punched into the heart of Baghdad this morning and took up positions on the western bank of the Tigris River, storming at least two presidential palaces and seizing a wide swath of the capital in a bold daylight assault on the nucleus of Saddam Hussein's government.
Troops and tanks from the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division reached the center of the city and entered the grounds of the sprawling Republican Palace, Hussein's main office and security compound, as well as the smaller Sijood Palace.
Live television footage from the capital showed dramatic scenes of destruction at sites that have come to embody Hussein's three-decade-long grip on Iraq. Tanks were shown rumbling down the city's vast military parade ground, and soldiers toppled a large statue of Hussein astride a horse.
U.S. forces also took up positions around other government installations, including the Information Ministry, the Rashid Hotel and a downtown army base. At the same time, knots of Iraqi soldiers dotted the route to the ministry, some thrusting rocket-propelled grenades and rifles into the air. The streets were otherwise deserted, even of militiamen from Hussein's ruling Baath Party.
The 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division entered the city at 6 a.m. with 70 M1 Abrams tanks and 60 M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles under the cover of pilotless drones and A-10 Thunderbolt IIs, the tank-busting planes popularly known as "Warthogs." The brigade moved up Highway 8, fighting back moderate resistance from small groups of Hussein's loyalists armed with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades.
As the Army columns moved northeast toward the Republican Palace on the banks of the Tigris, Iraqi soldiers fled along the river, some jumping in the water. Journalists in the capital reported hearing mortar and machine-gun fire directed at the U.S. forces from Iraqi defensive positions on the eastern banks of the Tigris.
Through the morning, tank fire and machine-guns thundered from the Republican Palace compound. Smoke from burning equipment shrouded the river, and a dust storm had descended on the city by early afternoon.
Four or five Marines were killed this morning when their armored troop carrier took a direct hit from an artillery shell while attempting to cross a bridge over a canal on the outskirts of Baghdad, the Associated Press reported, quoting Lt. Col. B.P. McCoy of the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines. There were no other immediate reports of American or Iraqi casualties during the incursion.
It was unclear whether the American troops intended to stay in the palaces or to pull back to their staging areas outside the capital. U.S. military officials said the assault was not an effort to occupy the city. A column of U.S. tanks and armored personnel carriers rumbled through the city on Saturday and fought with Iraqi defenders but did not seize any territory.
Col. David Perkins of the 3rd Infantry's 2nd Brigade was quoted by the AP as telling his troops before the operation that the mission was intended to be "a dramatic show of force" to demonstrate that U.S. forces can enter Baghdad at any place and at any time. "I hope this makes it clear to the Iraqi people that this [government] is over and that they can now enjoy their new freedom," Perkins said.
Speaking from the roof of the Palestine Hotel, just across the Tigris from the Republican Palace, Iraq's information minister, Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf, insisted U.S. troops had not entered the city. "There is no presence of the American columns in the city of Baghdad at all," he said. Asked about the nearby presence of U.S. troops, Sahhaf asserted: "We besieged them and we killed most of them. We will slaughter them all."
Sahhaf called the incursion a tactic to divert attention from intense fighting near the southern suburb of Dora, a key entrance to Baghdad. As gunfire reverberated across the river, he insisted that U.S. troops were fleeing, with Iraqi troops in pursuit.
"The soldiers of Saddam Hussein gave them a great lesson that history will not forget," he taunted. "We encourage them to double such operations."
This morning's assault followed a day in which U.S. forces around Baghdad expanded northward on both flanks of the Iraqi capital and secured major roads leading from the city, tightening their hold on President Saddam Hussein's power base and probing his defenses.
The sweeps provoked several intense engagements but encountered no coordinated resistance. They were undertaken even as U.S. commanders rapidly reinforced their positions around the capital, laying groundwork for what officers had predicted would be a deliberate, step-by-step campaign to strangle Hussein's government holding out in the city center and demoralize the urban guerrilla forces pledged to defend him to the death.
Lengthy convoys of U.S. tanks, armored vehicles and supply trucks streamed into Baghdad's international airport Sunday, turning it into a forward base housing about 7,000 soldiers and growing fast. After night fell, two C-130 Hercules transport aircraft, flying without lights for fear of missile or antiaircraft fire, became the first planes to touch down at the airport -- officially Saddam International, but rebaptized Baghdad International by U.S. troops -- since it was captured by the 3rd Infantry on Friday.
In southern Iraq, British commanders on Sunday ended a two-week standoff in Basra in southern Iraq and sent almost 60 tanks and armored personnel carriers deep into the city, the country's second largest with 1.3 million inhabitants. British forces battled militiamen armed with rifles, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades and eventually seized control of the southern half of the city. By nightfall, the British had set up checkpoints inside Basra for the first time.
The Defense Ministry in London announced that the operation cost the lives of three British soldiers; there were no estimates of Iraqi casualties.
Meanwhile, in northern Iraq, two U.S. jets mistakenly bombed a convoy of Kurdish and U.S. troops, killing at least 21 Kurds and, according to Pentagon officials, apparently killing a U.S. Special Operations soldier. The bombing, near the village of Dibagah halfway between the major oil cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, was the worst known friendly fire incident of the war.
Ahmed Chalabi, an expatriate anti-government leader who has been in the Kurdish-controlled area of northern Iraq, was flown aboard a U.S. military transport along with several hundred militiamen to a base near Nasiriyah, a key crossroads along the Euphrates River about 100 miles north of the Kuwaiti border, a Pentagon official said. Chalabi, who heads the Iraqi National Congress, one of a number of U.S.-endorsed opposition groups, planned to help U.S. forces recruit support among the population, the official said.
In another apparent accident, five Russian diplomats were injured while evacuating Baghdad when their convoy was caught in a gun battle between U.S. and Iraqi troops west of the capital, witnesses said. A Russian journalist who was in the convoy said the vehicles were hit by U.S. forces, but the U.S. Central Command said at its regional headquarters in Doha, Qatar, that no U.S. or British forces were operating in the area at the time.
In Karbala, a city about 60 miles southwest of Baghdad that has been another militia stronghold, soldiers from the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division used a combination of airstrikes, artillery and small-arms fire to flush out hundreds of paramilitary fighters who have targeted American supply columns heading north. A U.S. brigade commander estimated that between 60 and 100 militiamen were killed and said the rest fled, prompting cheers and waves from thousands of residents. Hundreds of residents subsequently tore down a 25-foot bronze statue of Hussein.
Controlling the Highways.
U.S. military officials said the movement of American troops around Baghdad was designed to prevent Hussein's government from reinforcing troops inside the city or fleeing to areas of the country not under the control of U.S. and British forces. The Army and Marines swung around the city in different directions. Elements of the 1st Marine Division began from an intersection in Baghdad's southeastern fringe, about six miles from the city center, that has become their staging area. The Marines traveled to the north and then to the northwest in a counterclockwise arc around the city.
Meanwhile, units from the 3rd Infantry Division moved in a clockwise direction, progressing to the northeast from the division's beachhead at the airport 12 miles west of downtown.
"Look at it from this point of view -- 1st Brigade holds the airport and the west of Baghdad, the 2nd Brigade is securing the south, the 3rd Brigade is holding the northwest and the Marines are in the northeast," Col. William Grimsley of the 3rd Infantry Division told the Reuters news service.
Although American tanks have circumnavigated much of Baghdad, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, cautioned that U.S. troops do not control the city's entire perimeter. "To say that you have an impenetrable cordon around the city would be a misstatement," he said Sunday on ABC's "This Week" program.
The sky, he said, is a different matter. U.S. warplanes have started flying over Baghdad around the clock, coordinating precision strikes in advance of ground attacks. "It is certainly true that we have huge amounts of combat power around the city right now, and that we have over 1,000 planes in the air every day," he said. "So if it moves on the ground and it takes aggressive action, it's going to get killed."
The advance of U.S. troops on Baghdad and the movement of tanks around the city were not without resistance. Soldiers with grenade launchers and militiamen in white pickup trucks outfitted with machine guns fired on the American columns, drawing withering return fire from 25mm cannons mounted on M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles and 120mm shells lobbed by M1 Abrams tanks.
The streets of the capital were largely deserted during the day Sunday and almost totally empty after 6 p.m. -- when a newly instituted curfew took effect -- except for black-clad members of the Saddam's Fedayeen militia, the armed loyalists of the ruling Baath Party.
At his daily news conference in Baghdad, Information Minister Sahhaf argued that Iraqi troops had surrounded the Americans -- not the other way around. "The valiant Republican Guards are encircling the enemy near the airport," he said, asserting that Iraqi forces destroyed six U.S. tanks and killed 50 American soldiers.
As of Sunday, the Pentagon had identified 61 U.S. soldiers and Marines killed in action or missing in action since the war began March 20. Its count lags behind reports from the field, however, as the reporting works its way up the military bureaucracy and families are notified.
'Considerable' Destruction.
U.S. military officials estimated that 2,000 to 3,000 Iraqis were killed Saturday during a three-hour incursion by a column of U.S. tanks and armored personnel carriers into central Baghdad. But they acknowledged the estimate is based on the level of resistance and not a body count. Iraqi and foreign journalists in the capital have not seen such large numbers of bodies.
"We know it was a considerable amount of destruction," said Brig. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, a spokesman for the Central Command in Doha. "In virtually every engagement we have, it's very one-sided."
A spokesman for the International Committee for the Red Cross, meanwhile, said Baghdad hospitals were overwhelmed with civilian casualties from U.S. bombing, artillery barrages and other fighting.
In an effort to demonstrate that Hussein still is in control of his increasingly chaotic capital, Iraqi state television aired brief footage of the president meeting with his top aides. An announcer said the meeting occurred to-day, but there was no way to independently verify that. The announcer also said Hussein urged soldiers to separate from their regular units to join up with any unit they could find, an indirect acknowledgment of some disarray in Iraqi defenses, and promised that anyone who destroys a U.S. tank would receive a $5,000 reward.
U.S. forces probing around Baghdad continued to find evidence that the Republican Guard has suffered wholesale defections. A Marine light armored unit operating on the east side of the capital on Saturday night ran into 16 T-72 tanks and 29 armored vehicles in the area where the Al Nida Division had been based -- all of them empty. The T-72s are Iraq's most advanced tanks and their abandonment was regarded by U.S. officials as a stark example of the Guard's collapse.
"Where have these guys gone?" said Lt. Col. David Pere, the senior watch officer at Marine headquarters, which has been temporarily moved back to Kuwait in preparation for a jump closer to Baghdad. "The array of forces we thought we'd experience, we just haven't found."
Some Marine units were targeted Sunday by persistent artillery and rocket fire from inside Baghdad. Elsewhere, Iraqi defenders blew up two bridges along the Diyala River on the eastern side of Baghdad in an effort to block U.S. forces, the first time Iraq has destroyed any of its bridges to slow the American advance.
Fighting Non-Iraqi Arabs.
U.S. military officials said Sunday that some of the toughest combat that American forces have encountered in recent days has been with non-Iraqi Arabs who have come from other countries to fight. U.S. officers described the foreign Arab fighters as relatively small in number, lightly armed and mixed in with regular and Republican Guard units.
"What we've seen at times were 25 to 30 individuals trying to swarm a light armored vehicle and the light armored vehicle with its weapons was just mowing them down," said Lt. Col. George Smith, a top Marine staff officer. "Some of those that survived the fire would just get back up and continue to charge."
On Saturday night, elements of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force raided a site that may have been a training camp for non-Iraqi fighters near Salman Pak, a suburban town 15 miles southeast of downtown Baghdad, Brooks said. He said the camp was destroyed in the operation.
U.S. commanders began to breathe easier about the prospect of a chemical weapons attack. Now that their main forces are pressing into Baghdad right up against the remnants of Iraq's troops, U.S. strategists believe the chances of an attack with unconventional weapons have decreased, leading them to downgrade the odds from "likely" to only "possible." As a result, many Army and Marine units were allowed to take off their bulky, sweaty chemical protection suits and required only to keep their gas masks at their sides.
That did not keep U.S. forces from continuing to search for stashes of chemical weapons. The Marines Sunday were searching five sites around Baghdad. However, excavation at a school where the Marines had been told something suspicious had been buried turned up nothing, officers said.
While not finding unconventional weapons, U.S. troops found vast quantities of the regular variety, including four caches with armaments evidently left by deserting Iraqi troops. At one such cache, the Marines said, they found 10 tons of ordnance, including 12 SA-7 surface-to-air missiles. At another, they found 15 surface-to-surface missiles, thousands of rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47 assault rifles, mortars and bombs.
Chandrasekaran reported from Kuwait City. Correspondent Peter Baker at Camp Commando, Kuwait, Rick Atkinson with U.S. forces and Alan Sipress in Doha, Qatar, and staff writer Bradley Graham in Washington contributed to this report.
SVALKAR SIG I BUBBELPOOLEN Överstelöjtnant Mike Presnell - en av alla de soldater som inte sett ett badrum på månader - tar chansen och duschar sitt svettiga, nerdammade ansikte under guldkranen i Saddams lyxiga badrum. Här - liksom i resten av palatset - är allt tillverkat i exklusiva material som guld, marmor och ädelträ.
British forces in Basra give authority to tribal chief
By Roula Khalaf in Kuwait City.
Financial Times
Published: April 8 2003 18:27 | Last Updated: April 8 2003 18:27
British forces on Tuesday declared Basra the first Iraqi province to move into the post-conflict "regeneration" phase and said a tribal chief had been given authority to form a committee of local leaders for the area.
Colonel Chris Vernon, army spokesman, would not disclose the name of the "sheikh" or his tribe. But he told reporters in Kuwait City that the tribal leader in Basra, the southern city taken on Monday, had been the first to approach British forces.
Col Vernon said the sheikh's credentials were checked out and commanders had held a meeting with him for two hours on Monday evening.
"We were pretty encouraged by the stature and authority of this sheikh," he said.
Iraqi sources on Tuesday said that the sheikh from southern Iraq might be part of a group that has co-operated with the US-led invasion and facilitated the takeover of Basra.
A leader from the al-Ghezi tribe has been travelling between Kuwait and southern Iraq in recent weeks and is known to have been in contact with British forces.
With lawlessness breaking out in Iraq's second largest city, establishing a new local leadership to take over from Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party is a priority.
"There is looting in Basra," said Col Vernon. "Now we are trying to cement security, then we will turn our attention to law and order."
He said British forces were trying to keep what remains of the police force, stressing that Iraq had a functioning civil infrastructure, unlike Afghanistan or the former Yugoslavia.
Iraq's tribes, powerful social groups that have been rehabilitated by Mr Hussein in recent years, are expected to play a role in the postwar era. But like other Iraqi provinces, Basra includes many different tribes. Favouring one leader over another could exacerbate rivalry among clans that are known to take the law into their own hands.
"They [the US and UK] are running the show and they call upon any Iraqi they need," said Ghassan al- Atiyyah, editor of the Iraqi File, a London-based newsletter.
"This is a very delicate issue, and they risk antagonising other tribes."
Col Vernon said that British troops had been working in co-operation with Ret. General Jay Garner, the US official who will be acting as the de facto governor of Iraq.
Both the US and Britain have sought to portray the reconstruction process as a co-operative effort, to allay fears that they will rely upon the exiled opposition in a postwar interim Iraqi administration.
But many in the exiled opposition complain that they are excluded from the process and cast doubt on US claims that it is looking for genuine representatives of Iraqi society.
Hamed al-Bayati, a representative of Sciri, the Tehran-based Iraqi Islamist Shia group that claims a following in Basra and other southern towns, yesterday said US forces had brought to Iraq groups of American-Iraqis, who were helping build bridges with the local population.
"The Shia tradition is that anyone who co-operates with Saddam is a traitor, let alone someone who co-operates with occupying forces," he warned.
This message has been edited by TsarSamuil from IP address 212.181.9.227 on Apr 9, 2003 4:31 PM
As More Correspondents Die, Media Rethink Their Positions.
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 9, 2003; Page C01
The journalistic body count is rising, and some news organizations are starting to withdraw selected reporters from Iraq.
Three more journalists were killed yesterday, following the deaths of NBC's David Bloom and Atlantic Monthly editor and Washington Post columnist Michael Kelly. With the media death toll at 12, the networks are reassessing their situations, based both on safety concerns and on a sense that the once-dramatic story is running out of steam with viewers.
"I'm very nervous," said Marcy McGinnis, senior vice president of CBS News. Worrying about the correspondents "makes you a wreck. There's no point in keeping them there any longer than necessary. The risk is not worth the result." CBS may pull Jim Axelrod from the Baghdad airport.
"There's the danger, there's the personal exhaustion, and there's the question of are we getting enough out of it," said Paul Slavin, executive producer of ABC's "World News Tonight." "Every day we go over the level of safety."
Some embedded correspondents are no longer producing much news because their military units have stopped moving forward, Slavin said. ABC has withdrawn Ron Claiborne from the USS Abraham Lincoln and Tamala Edwards from an Air Force base in Kuwait. Reporter Bob Woodruff left a Marine unit because he was close friends with Bloom.
Tareq Ayyoub, a Jordanian journalist for the Arab network al-Jazeera, was killed yesterday when his Baghdad office was hit in a U.S. air raid. An American tank also fired rounds at the Palestine Hotel yesterday, killing Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk, a Ukrainian national, and cameraman Jose Couso of the Spanish network Telecinco.
Asked about the tank attack on a hotel known to house numerous journalists, Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke said yesterday that the military tries to avoid civilian casualties but that she had repeatedly told reporters that "war is a dangerous, dangerous business and you're not safe when you're in a war zone."
On Monday, Julio Anguita Parrado of Spain's El Mundo newspaper and Christian Liebig of the German newsweekly Focus were killed by an Iraqi missile. Kamaran Abdurazaq Muhamed, a Kurdish translator for the BBC, died Sunday in an accidental U.S. bombing strike on a Kurdish convoy.
Bloom, who spent long hours in a cramped vehicle, died Sunday from a pulmonary embolism caused by a blood clot in his leg. Business Week reported that Bloom had consulted military doctors days earlier about cramps behind his knee, but he ignored their advice to seek medical attention and kept working. Kelly died Thursday when he and a soldier tried to escape Iraqi fire and their Humvee crashed into a canal.
There have been numerous near-misses as well.
Ron Martz of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution was flanked by soldiers who were both wounded by bullets that could have hit him. "Had they not been there," he reported, "I most likely would not be now typing this."
Scott Nelson of the Boston Globe came under fire in an armored Humvee near Baghdad and pointed out the sniper to a soldier in the turret, who apparently killed the assailant with machine gun fire. David Zucchino of the Los Angeles Times was in a military vehicle that plunged into a canal but managed to escape.
"Over the last week," National Public Radio's Ivan Watson wrote on the network's Web site, "I've had to dive on the ground three times to escape incoming Iraqi machine gun fire and artillery." He said he took a weekend break from the fighting in northern Iraq at a resort "after I realized that too many of the people I eat dinner with have recently been killed or injured covering this conflict."
The level of journalist casualties is not unusually high, said Bill Hammond, a historian with the Army's Center of Military History. During the decade-long Vietnam War, by one account, 54 journalists were killed in Southeast Asia out of roughly 6,000 who spent time in the war zone.
"Anybody at the front lines is in danger," Hammond said. "When Saddam was lobbing Scuds at Kuwait, being in the rear was dangerous. War is just basically a dangerous thing. Soldiers and journalists, to the extent they walk the same ground, are in equal danger. Perhaps journalists are in more danger because in many cases they're driving these roads in Humvees as opposed to being in armored personnel carriers."
Decisions on whether to withdraw some of the 600 correspondents embedded with U.S. and British forces are difficult because, under Pentagon rules, news outlets cannot immediately replace those who come home.
Television executives are also looking to trim their budgets in the face of declining ratings as the war drama fades. The combined audience for Fox, CNN and MSNBC surged to 10.1 million on the first night of the war, March 19, but had dropped to 7.2 million by Sunday.
The audience for the NBC, CBS and ABC nightly newscasts dropped from 32.2 million the week the war began to 27.9 million last week.
After dozens of hours of special programming in March, the broadcast networks have essentially returned to their usual entertainment fare. Since April 1, ABC has broken into regular programming for 75 minutes, CBS for 45 minutes, NBC for 43 minutes.
NBC News, which also provides coverage for MSNBC and CNBC, has not yet pulled any of its staffers from Iraq. After Bloom's death, said NBC spokeswoman Barbara Levin, "we talked to all of our people and reminded them to take extra precautions."
But CBS spokeswoman Sandy Genelius said that "we are definitely looking at pulling people out as soon as we can, based upon the story." The network has already withdrawn reporter Cynthia Bowers from the Lincoln.
Fox News withdrew Christian Jacks from a Navy Seabees unit because "it just wasn't a productive embed," said spokesman Robert Zimmerman. CNN has recalled Kyra Phillips, Frank Buckley and Gary Strieker from aircraft carriers because "the story moved to Baghdad," said spokeswoman Ali Zelenko.
NPR Vice President Bruce Drake said he is concerned about his correspondents, particularly Anne Garrels, who has been reporting from Baghdad and was staying at the Palestine Hotel when it was hit yesterday. "I'm not sure if it's any safer for her to try to get out of Baghdad because of the uncertainty of the roads and chaos in a time of war," Drake said.
Major newspapers seem to be staying the course, even as editors agonize over the safety of their troops.
"We've been nervous since Day One," said Boston Globe Editor Martin Baron. "Are we getting more nervous? Yes, given the number of deaths and the number of close calls. We've made clear to the folks there that if at any point they want to leave, it's okay with us."
John Carroll, editor of the Los Angeles Times, agreed that "this is a tough situation to cover, whether you're embedded or roaming free. Those traveling with the military are in danger at all times." But, he said, "we really haven't talked about bringing them home, and I think they'd be very unhappy if we told them to come home."
Indeed, the depressing news about fallen colleagues doesn't seem to have deterred many newshounds.
"Despite the danger, we have so many more people who want to go than we can put in," said ABC's Slavin. "It's an incredible story. For people who grew up watching war, it's time to live out the fantasy."
Robert Fisk: Is there some element in the US military that wants to take out journalists?
The Independent
09 April 2003
First the Americans killed the correspondent of al-Jazeera yesterday and wounded his cameraman. Then, within four hours, they attacked the Reuters television bureau in Baghdad, killing one of its cameramen and a cameraman for Spain's Tele 5 channel and wounding four other members of the Reuters staff.
Was it possible to believe this was an accident? Or was it possible that the right word for these killings – the first with a jet aircraft, the second with an M1A1 Abrams tank – was murder? These were not, of course, the first journalists to die in the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Terry Lloyd of ITV was shot dead by American troops in southern Iraq, who apparently mistook his car for an Iraqi vehicle. His crew are still missing. Michael Kelly of The Washington Post tragically drowned in a canal. Two journalists have died in Kurdistan. Two journalists – a German and a Spaniard – were killed on Monday night at a US base in Baghdad, with two Americans, when an Iraqi missile exploded amid them.
And we should not forget the Iraqi civilians who are being killed and maimed by the hundred and who – unlike their journalist guests – cannot leave the war and fly home. So the facts of yesterday should speak for themselves. Unfortunately for the Americans, they make it look very like murder.
The US jet turned to rocket al-Jazeera's office on the banks of the Tigris at 7.45am local time yesterday. The television station's chief correspondent in Baghdad, Tariq Ayoub, a Jordanian-Palestinian, was on the roof with his second cameraman, an Iraqi called Zuheir, reporting a pitched battle near the bureau between American and Iraqi troops. Mr Ayoub's colleague Maher Abdullah recalled afterwards that both men saw the plane fire the rocket as it swooped toward their building, which is close to the Jumhuriya Bridge upon which two American tanks had just appeared.
"On the screen, there was this battle and we could see bullets flying and then we heard the aircraft," Mr Abdullah said.
"The plane was flying so low that those of us downstairs thought it would land on the roof – that's how close it was. We actually heard the rocket being launched. It was a direct hit – the missile actually exploded against our electrical generator. Tariq died almost at once. Zuheir was injured."
Now for America's problems in explaining this little saga. Back in 2001, the United States fired a cruise missile at al-Jazeera's office in Kabul – from which tapes of Osama bin Laden had been broadcast around the world. No explanation was ever given for this extraordinary attack on the night before the city's "liberation"; the Kabul correspondent, Taiseer Alouni, was unhurt. By the strange coincidence of journalism, Mr Alouni was in the Baghdad office yesterday to endure the USAF's second attack on al-Jazeera.
Far more disturbing, however, is the fact that the al-Jazeera network – the freest Arab television station, which has incurred the fury of both the Americans and the Iraqi authorities for its live coverage of the war – gave the Pentagon the co-ordinates of its Baghdad office two months ago and received assurances that the bureau would not be attacked.
Then on Monday, the US State Department's spokesman in Doha, an Arab-American called Nabil Khouri, visited al-Jazeera's offices in the city and, according to a source within the Qatari satellite channel, repeated the Pentagon's assurances. Within 24 hours, the Americans had fired their missile into the Baghdad office.
The next assault, on Reuters, came just before midday when an Abrams tank on the Jamhuriya Bridge suddenly pointed its gun barrel towards the Palestine Hotel where more than 200 foreign journalists are staying to cover the war from the Iraqi side. Sky Television's David Chater noticed the barrel moving. The French television channel France 3 had a crew in a neighbouring room and videotaped the tank on the bridge. The tape shows a bubble of fire emerging from the barrel, the sound of a detonation and then pieces of paintwork falling past the camera as it vibrates with the impact.
In the Reuters bureau on the 15th floor, the shell exploded amid the staff. It mortally wounded a Ukrainian cameraman, Taras Protsyuk, who was also filming the tanks, and seriously wounded another member of the staff, Paul Pasquale from Britain, and two other journalists, including Reuters' Lebanese-Palestinian reporter Samia Nakhoul. On the next floor, Tele 5's cameraman Jose Couso was badly hurt. Mr Protsyuk died shortly afterwards. His camera and its tripod were left in the office, which was swamped with the crew's blood. Mr Couso had a leg amputated but he died half an hour after the operation.
The Americans responded with what all the evidence proves to be a straightforward lie. General Buford Blount of the US 3rd Infantry Division – whose tanks were on the bridge – announced that his vehicles had come under rocket and rifle fire from snipers in the Palestine Hotel, that his tank had fired a single round at the hotel and that the gunfire had then ceased. The general's statement, however, was untrue.
I was driving on a road between the tanks and the hotel at the moment the shell was fired – and heard no shooting. The French videotape of the attack runs for more than four minutes and records absolute silence before the tank's armament is fired. And there were no snipers in the building. Indeed, the dozens of journalists and crews living there – myself included – have watched like hawks to make sure that no armed men should ever use the hotel as an assault point.
This is, one should add, the same General Blount who boasted just over a month ago that his crews would be using depleted uranium munitions – the kind many believe to be responsible for an explosion of cancers after the 1991 Gulf War – in their tanks. For General Blount to suggest, as he clearly does, that the Reuters camera crew was in some way involved in shooting at Americans merely turns a meretricious statement into a libellous one.
Again, we should remember that three dead and five wounded journalists do not constitute a massacre – let alone the equivalence of the hundreds of civilians being maimed by the invasion force. And it is a truth that needs to be remembered that the Iraqi regime has killed a few journalists of its own over the years, with tens of thousands of its own people. But something very dangerous appeared to be getting loose yesterday. General Blount's explanation was the kind employed by the Israelis after they have killed the innocent. Is there therefore some message that we reporters are supposed to learn from all this? Is there some element in the American military that has come to hate the press and wants to take out journalists based in Baghdad, to hurt those whom our Home Secretary, David Blunkett, has maliciously claimed to be working "behind enemy lines". Could it be that this claim – that international correspondents are in effect collaborating with Mr Blunkett's enemy (most Britons having never supported this war in the first place) – is turning into some kind of a death sentence?
I knew Mr Ayoub. I have broadcast during the war from the rooftop on which he died. I told him then how easy a target his Baghdad office would make if the Americans wanted to destroy its coverage – seen across the Arab world – of civilian victims of the bombing. Mr Protsyuk of Reuters often shared the Palestine Hotel's elevator with me. Samia Nakhoul, who is 42, has been a friend and colleague since the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war. She is married to the Financial Times correspondent David Gardner.
Yesterday afternoon, she lay covered in blood in a Baghdad hospital. And General Blount dared to imply that this innocent woman and her brave colleagues were snipers. What, I wonder, does this tell us about the war in Iraq?
'The American forces knew exactly what this hotel is'
The Sky News correspondent David Chater was in the Palestine Hotel when the hotel was hit by American tank fire. This is his account of what happened.
"I was about to go out on to the balcony when there was a huge explosion, then shouts and screams from people along our corridor. They were shouting, 'Somebody's been hit. Can somebody find a doctor?' They were saying they could see blood and bone.
"There were a lot of French journalists screaming, 'Get a doctor, get a doctor'. There was a great sense of panic because these walls are very thin. "We saw the tanks up on the bridge. They started firing across the bank. The shells were landing either side of us at what we thought were military targets. Then we were hit. We are in the middle of a tank battle.
"I don't understand why they were doing that. There was no fire coming out of this hotel – everyone knows it's full of journalists.
"Everybody is putting on flak jackets. Everybody is running for cover. We now feel extremely vulnerable and we are now going to say goodbye to you." The line was cut but minutes later Chater resumed his report, saying journalists had been watching American forces from their balconies and the troops had surely been aware of their presence.
"They knew exactly what this hotel is. They know the press corps is here. I don't know why they are trying to target journalists. There are awful scenes around me. There's a Reuters tent just a few yards away from me where people are in tears. It makes you realise how vulnerable you are. What are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to carry on if American shells are targeting Western journalists?"
AMERICAN TANKS FIRING AT THE PALESTINE HOTEL, HITING AL JAZEERA JOURNALISTS..
En amerikansk tanks närmar sig Palestine hotel.
Amerikanerna tror att krypskyttar siktar mot dem och öppnar eld.
A bus tried to drag a motorboat yesterday along one of the main avenues in Basra, Iraq. Looting is a concern under the crippled government.
By ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON, April 8 — As American-led forces push toward a military victory in Iraq, the Pentagon is wrestling with how to deal with the next phase of the campaign: policing the cities of Iraq and dealing with looting, lawlessness and a crippled government.
Once the war is over, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the allied commander in the Persian Gulf, will oversee security for Iraq but will delegate that authority, probably to his senior ground commander, Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan of the Army, military officials said today. Ultimately, though, the Pentagon wants to enlist other allied nations to help secure the country, and eventually turn over security responsibilities to a newly formed Iraqi government.
"The security nationwide in Iraq will be a combination of coalition forces and the new Iraqi government's re-established police forces and armed forces," Gen. Peter Pace, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview today.
But Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, said on Sunday that it might take the United States more than six months to cede power to an Iraqi-led civilian authority.
The size and scope of any postwar security force has already stirred debate on Capitol Hill and at the Pentagon. There are more than 125,000 allied troops in Iraq now, with more than 100,000 Army troops — including the Fourth Infantry Division, First Armored Division and First Cavalry Division — moving into the region or on the way from the United States and Europe.
But Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, has said several hundred thousand troops will be needed to keep the peace in postwar Iraq. Mr. Wolfowitz dismissed General Shinseki's assessment as "wildly off the mark." Pentagon officials have put the figure closer to 100,000 troops.
General Shinseki, who is retiring in June, has repeatedly clashed with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, but the general's supporters cite his experience as a former commander of American peacekeeping forces in Bosnia, and warn that Pentagon officials have underestimated the job ahead of them.
"I don't think they understand the scope of the problem, but I think they're starting to see it right now with the chaos, looting, revenge killing and political intrigue," said William L. Nash, a retired Army major general whose brigade stayed in southern Iraq more than two months after the gulf war in 1991.
"We are extraordinarily vulnerable from a force-protection standpoint as the cop on the beat," said one senior retired general, who voiced specific concern about the Iraqi capital. "There must be urgent consideration to have the Baghdad police do that job."
Pentagon officials say they have learned lessons from peacekeeping or security missions in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo and, most recently, Afghanistan. But the operation in Iraq will be dominated by the United States and its allies in the war, not the United Nations, senior Pentagon officials said.
And unlike Afghanistan, where there were multiple reconstruction efforts, "We know we want something a little more corporate and more efficient with cleaner lines of authority and responsibility," said one senior Pentagon official familiar with postwar planning for Iraq.
Senior defense officials said today that the cost to police Iraq after the war could reach hundreds of millions, or even billions, of dollars, but it is unclear where the money would come from.
Any American financing, either through the State Department or Defense Department, would require new appropriations by Congress. But Bush administration officials are hoping that allies, frozen Iraqi funds and even future Iraqi oil proceeds might defray future security costs.
Any plans for postwar security will need to be flexible, Pentagon officials acknowledged today.
According to a senior Pentagon official, there are three roughly drawn phases for securing Iraq.
First, the American military, under General Franks or a deputy, will maintain a security force officials describe as "robust" to root out pockets of resistance and any guerrilla attacks, and provide a security umbrella to allow aid to flow freely in the country.
The Pentagon hopes to find allies to help with this job. At least a dozen nations have offered to help with reconstruction, but for most that does not yet include a security role.
Prime Minister Jean Chrétien of Canada said today that Canada, a mainstay in past peacekeeping missions, was "ready to help as soon as possible" in Iraq's postwar reconstruction. But an embassy spokesman here said it was too early to talk about whether Canada could contribute to a postwar security force.
Senator John W. Warner, a Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee, suggested today that NATO might help with postwar security, and will hold a hearing Thursday to explore the idea.
The second phase will be to restore Iraqi civilian police forces back to their duties as quickly as possible. International law enforcement advisers will train the police, the senior Pentagon official said.
A retired Army lieutenant general, Jay Garner, is preparing to begin the Pentagon reconstruction and relief effort in Iraq, and will likely play a role in helping to establish a new civilian police administration, the senior Pentagon official said.
Finally, a force of gendarmes or constabulary drawn from allied countries' state police or national guard would patrol highways and perform riot control duties, the Pentagon official said.
"The military piece will be in place from Day One, and the other pieces will fall in behind," the senior Pentagon official said.
Some experts caution that because of its size and diverse religious and ethnic makeup, Iraq poses the most formidable set of security issues the military has yet faced.
"It's going to be a great challenge," said Gen. George A. Joulwan, a retired Army officer. "It's not only nation building for Iraq, but security building for the U.S."
Bearing Wounds, Shiites Return to Torture Chamber.
By Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, April 9, 2003; Page A01
BASRA, Iraq, April 8 -- Adnan Shaker pulled up his shirt to reveal dozens of scars crisscrossing his chest. He turned to show the marks of cigarette burns on his back. He waved his misshapen right hand, two fingers twisted and useless. He grabbed the electric wire attached to the ceiling in the cell where he lived until a few days ago, and demonstrated how his jailers had tied his hands behind his back when they administered the shocks.
His crime was participating in a Shiite Muslim uprising four years ago against Saddam Hussein's Sunni Muslim-dominated Baath Party. But when he was arrested three years ago, he would not confess to opposing Iraq's rulers. So he was charged with stealing a bag of flour, and tortured. "They put electricity into me three times a day," he said. "They just wanted me to say I was against the party."
He freely proclaimed his hatred today. "I killed seven people" in the uprising, he said.
Two days after the southern city of Basra was seized by the British military, Shaker and other former prisoners returned to their jail on the outskirts of the city. They came to celebrate and to tell their stories to anyone who would listen. They brandished identification cards and color mug shots of those they claimed died here. Shaker pointed to a Ministry of Defense identification card for an army officer named Hilal Abbas.
"This one said 'Death to Saddam,' " Shaker said. "They hanged him."
Around him, the crowd chanted their defiance of Hussein. "Yes! Yes! Bush! Yes! Yes! Bush!" they screamed. "Saddam! No! No! No!" One man grabbed a picture of Hussein and started eating it, ripping violently with his teeth. Another man took a newspaper with a photo of Hussein and slowly tore off the head.
Here then, a few weeks after they had been expected, were the scenes of Shiite rebellion that the U.S. and British military had anticipated when they rolled across the border from Kuwait last month. Emerging, too, were fragmentary firsthand accounts of human rights abuses under Hussein, stories like Shaker's that suggest how the Baath Party used repression to rule Basra.
Not all residents of this shabby port city share the freed prisoners' jubilance. As looters roamed freely through the streets in front of British tanks that made no move to stop them, those who took time to reflect today were often as ambivalent as they were relieved. Many said prisoners freed by Hussein before the war were to blame for the anarchy. Others blamed the British for occupying Basra without restoring order.
But for many, even those critical of how slow the British have been to restore order, it was a time to speak openly at last about the abuses of the Baath Party committed in Hussein's name.
At Basra Teaching Hospital, Nasser Hassan, an agricultural engineer, said the Sunni Muslims in the party had terrorized residents. "I saw many bad things myself," he said. During the Shiite rebellion in 1999, he said, he saw men being thrown from the roof of a school. "We are against Saddam," he said. "But before we cannot say anything opposite Saddam Hussein. They would kill us."
Hassan was at the hospital because his 2-year-old daughter lay in a coma after being injured when several coalition bombs fell on their house. He said he did not blame the British for her grave injury, but rather the members of Saddam's Fedayeen militia who hid in civilian areas.
As he spoke, Hassan's daughter moved slightly on her bed. Her eyes fluttered, but she did not regain consciousness. "Yes, people believe Saddam is no more, he is gone," Hassan said.
British goals for the occupation of Basra are lofty, even if the ability to execute them is limited. "Ultimately, what we have to do is replace what they've been fighting to protect with something better," said Maj. Kevin Oliver, whose company of commandos first stormed Hussein's apparently unoccupied summer palace here.
Today, the palace qualifies as a luxury barracks for war-weary British troops, some of whom were playing Scrabble in their underwear this afternoon as others showed off the sun shower they had rigged up in a marble bathroom with no running water but gold fixtures on the toilet.
"It's a striking thing," Oliver said of Hussein's palace. "He's prepared to have such opulence while these other people are living so desperately. . . . They're so desperate they're looting anything they find -- they are literally looting rubbish."
At the prison where Shaker and others returned today, there was nothing left to loot, just stacks of documents in a few front-room offices and leftover implements that the men there said had been used to torture them.
They were freed just two days ago from a jail that was once an "adult house of reeducation" but was taken over after the Shiite uprising that swept southern Iraq in the wake of the Persian Gulf War. The uprising was harshly repressed here. Now the building is known as the "jail for adult reeducation."
Liberation, when it came on a hot Sunday morning, was sudden. "They locked us inside and the police fled," Shaker said. "There was shouting. They said, 'Our brothers come, our brothers come.' "
Shaker said he was 32 years old and had four hungry children at home. He said he used to work selling food for donkeys. But he is not yet thinking about the future, about what it means to have British tanks in the street outside the prison where he lived. He is still thinking about the past and how he wants to come to terms with it. "I want to kill all Baathis, I want to kill Saddam," he said.
Other former prisoners also traced their detention to repression of Shiites by the Sunni-dominated government. In 1999, riots broke out in response to news reports that Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq Sadr, a prominent Shiite cleric in the holy city of Najaf, had been shot to death with his two sons. "So we started jihad against Sunni," Shaker said.
He pulled a small stone from his pocket, the stone used by devout Muslims to bow their heads against during their five daily prayers. "That is how they know we are Shiite," he said. "From the prayer stone." In the prison, the jailers often talked about politics. "They used to say, 'Long live Saddam,' " Shaker said. When he did not join in, he said, "they tortured me more."
Another prisoner who had returned was Ali Nasser, 16. He said he had come to this place more than six months ago. Smaller than his years would suggest, he did not answer directly when asked why he was arrested. An older man answered for him: "Because he was Shiite and he went to pray."
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein's rule collapsed in chaos in Baghdad on Wednesday as elated Iraqis welcomed U.S. forces while looters and gunmen ran wild.
As U.S. Marines rolled in from the east to a joyous reception on day 21 of the war, hundreds of people gutted official buildings, dragging off all they could carry, from air conditioners to flowers.
"People, if you only knew what this man did to Iraq," yelled an old man standing in the road, thrashing at a torn portrait of Saddam with his shoe. "He killed our youth, he killed millions."
There was no word on the fate of Saddam or his sons, targeted by U.S. planes that dropped four 2,000-pound bombs on a residential area in Baghdad on Tuesday.
"It is not known whether Saddam and sons were present and whether they survived the attack," a CIA official said.
About 20 U.S. tanks and other vehicles deployed in Tahrir Square on the east bank of the Tigris river in the heart of this sprawling city of five million, a Reuters correspondent said.
President Bush was heartened by "very good" progress in Iraq, a senior administration official said.
Sporadic shooting in parts of Baghdad prompted the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to suspend its operations, citing "chaotic and unpredictable" conditions.
The Geneva-based agency said Canadian ICRC staffer Vatche Arslanian had been missing since Tuesday. It feared he had been badly wounded when his vehicle came under fire. Two other ICRC staffers in the vehicle escaped.
GREETING THE MARINES.
Joyful crowds threw flowers and cheered as U.S. Marines drove into the city from the sprawling eastern suburb of Saddam City, home to about two million impoverished Shi'ite Muslims.
"I believe we are on the last leg," Marine Col. John Toolan told Reuters correspondent Sean Maguire, with the Marines on their triumphal ride through the suburbs to the Martyr's Monument, just three miles from the center.
"No more Saddam Hussein," chanted one group, waving to troops as they passed. "We love you, we love you."
Some Shi'ites, part of a majority community largely hostile to Saddam's Sunni-led Baathist government, beat their chests as they do during the Shi'ite religious festival of Ashoura.
U.S. war ally Britain said Iraqi "command and control" of Baghdad seemed to have disintegrated. But Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesman said Saddam loyalists could still offer paramilitary resistance in places.
Reuters Television crews watched cheering crowds sack U.N. headquarters in the Canal Hotel and drive off in U.N. cars. The building had housed U.N. aid workers as well as arms inspectors, who were withdrawn shortly before the war began on March 20.
Invasion forces have yet to find any banned chemical or biological arms. Saddam's government denied possessing them.
U.S. troops stood by as looters raided sports shops around the bombed headquarters of the Iraqi Olympic Committee, headed by Saddam's elder son Uday, who also leads the Fedayeen militia.
Elsewhere, an Iraqi waving a rifle yelled: "We are Americans, we are USA." Another screamed: "Thank you, Mr. Bush."
U.S. FORCES PUSH IN.
Thousands of U.S. troops moved toward the center overnight from the west, northeast and south, meeting little resistance.
Residents woke to the sound of birdsong and only occasional shooting after one of calmest nights in three weeks of war.
There were no signs of Iraqi police or uniformed men on the main streets. Information Ministry officials who have shadowed reporters through the conflict were nowhere to be seen.
Even Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, who has turned up daily during the war and poured abuse on the Americans, failed to make an appearance.
The U.S. military said a crucial point had been reached at which ordinary people realized Saddam's rule was over.
"I think we are at a degree of a tipping point where for the population there is a broader recognition that this regime is coming to an end and will not return in a way that it has been in the past," Brigadier-General Vincent Brooks said.
He said the military campaign would go on to pursue "regime appendages" in various parts of Iraq.
U.S.-led forces have yet to occupy northern cities such as Mosul, Kirkuk and Tikrit, Saddam's birthplace and power base, 110 miles north of the capital.
U.S. and Kurdish forces dislodged Iraqis from a mountain used to defend Mosul, their biggest victory yet in the north.
"That area was heavily defended by Iraqis throughout the campaign. From our perspective this is the most important gain of the northern front so far," said Hoshiyar Zebari, political adviser to Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Massoud Barzani.
Zebari said U.S. forces and Kurdish fighters took Maqloub mountain, some nine miles northeast of Mosul, overnight.
POSTWAR IRAQ.
On world markets, investors sold stocks and the dollar as they looked beyond the war in Iraq to focus on worries about the global economy. Safe-haven assets gained. Oil prices steadied after an early rise on a possible OPEC output cut.
With the battle for Baghdad almost over, the issue of ruling and reconstructing a post-Saddam Iraq loomed larger.
France and Britain, papering over their differences on the war, agreed on the need for international involvement.
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said after meeting British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw that he backed a U.S.-British pledge to give the United Nations a vital role.
"The more united the international community is, the better the chances of the process being successful," Villepin added.
France is concerned about how much control Washington will have over postwar Iraq.
Straw said U.S. and British troops were likely to remain in place immediately after the war to assure security.
"Britain and the United States want to see the creation of a representative, democratic Iraqi government as fast as possible, but it can't happen overnight," he said.
A fledgling U.S.-led civil administration preparing to steer Iraq through the immediate postwar period said it wanted to earn Iraqis' trust by keeping up a steady flow of aid.
"In many ways we are learning as we go," said Major Jeff Jurgensen of the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), speaking a day after an ORHA team arrived in the southern port of Umm Qasr to set up operations.
ORHA is headed by retired General Jay Garner, who reports to U.S. war commander General Tommy Franks.
U.S. Military: Hussein No Longer Controls Baghdad - Tank Convoys Ease Into Heart of Iraqi Capital.
By Thomas W. Lippman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 9, 2003; 10:21 AM
After three weeks of war, Saddam Hussein no longer rules Baghdad.
U.S. tanks rolled unmolested into the center of Baghdad today to a tumultuous welcome from the city's jubilant residents. The White House and U.S. military leaders proclaimed an end to Hussein's control of the capital city, stopping just short of declaring victory in the campaign to oust the Iraqi president and destroy his regime.
Television cameras showed stunning images of American troops, weapons at the ready, walking on the streets of Baghdad among residents celebrating the downfall of Hussein after more than two decades of police-state control.
Baghdadis poured into the streets in celebration, waving at U.S. troops and tearing down posters and busts of Hussein. In scenes reminiscent of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Iraqis attacked a giant statue of Hussein with sledgehammers and attempted to pull it off its pedestal with a rope around the neck.
At the same time, firefights continued around Baghdad's perimeter as U.S. Marines mopped up isolated pockets of resistance. Senior military commanders said fighting could still lie ahead against remnants of Iraq's military forces and militias, especially in Hussein's family center at Tikrit, about 90 miles north of Baghdad, but it was clear that they believe a critical milestone has been passed.
"In downtown Baghdad we're not seeing evidence of any central regime authority," Vice President Cheney said in a previously scheduled speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in New Orleans. "While pockets of resistance remain, they will be defeated."
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters that President Bush was cautiously optimistic. "As much as the president is pleased to see the progress of the military campaign . . . he remains very cautious because he knows there is great danger that can still lie ahead," Fleischer said.
At the Central Command field headquarters in Doha, Qatar, Army Brig. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks told reporters, "The capital city is now one of those areas that has been added to the list of where the regime does not have control."
Fighting continues in several parts of Iraq and "there is a lot of tough work to be done," Brooks said, but "I think we are at a degree of tipping point where for the population there is a broader recognition that this regime is coming to an end and will not return in a way that it has been in the past." In contrast to previous days, when the Centcom briefing focused on airstrikes and troop movements, Brooks dwelled at length today on the medical assistance he said U.S. military doctors are providing to sick and wounded Iraqi civilians.
As he spoke, tank-led U.S. convoys pushed into the heart of the Iraqi capital, amid abundant signs that Hussein's control has evaporated. Journalists in the city reported that government officials have disappeared and even the Information Ministry minders" who had supervised all foreign reporters were nowhere to be seen. Information Minister Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf, who as recently as yesterday was predicting victory, was not heard from today.
As state organizations collapsed, citizens of Baghdad rushed into the streets and into abandoned buildings to do some liberating of their own. Television cameras captured images of people carrying off air conditioners, tires, furniture, refrigerators and even a vase of flowers. Among the buildings plundered were Iraq's Olympic headquarters and traffic police headquarters, the Associated Press reported.
U.S. military forces are not trained or equipped to become a police force for Iraqi cities, and the need to install some form of civil authority appears to be urgent. The city lacks electricity, water and a functioning police force. Brooks, however, sought to minimize the threat of mass civil disorder.
"I think in this case we're seeing a lot of jubilation, and people who have long been oppressed for years and years having choices," he said. "We believe that this will settle down in due time."
"Total control has been replaced by sheer anarchy," said James Bays, a British journalist in Baghdad. He was reporting from the Palestine Hotel, the media center in Baghdad, where yesterday two journalists died when a U.S. Army tank shelled the upper floors. Today, Bays said, the hotel's occupants would welcome the approaching tanks in the hope that the would provide security, which no one else seemed capable of doing. The tanks were rolling unopposed along the capital's main boulevards.
There was no sign of Hussein himself or any members of his family. It is still not known if they survived the U.S. air strike that hit a building in Baghdad where Hussein and his sons were believed to be attending a meeting earlier this week. If they did survive and managed to flee the city, their destination would probably be Tikrit, at least initially, but U.S. troops have blocked most roads leading out of Baghdad. U.S. warplanes have struck government and Baath party installations repeatedly in the Tikrit area, but Brooks said U.S. commanders have not yet decided to send ground troops into Hussein's clan stronghold.
Brooks described an accelerating process by which U.S. forces in Baghdad and central Iraq, and British forces in the south and southeast, are consolidating their control and learning more about the alleged human rights abuses and military secrets of the Hussein government. "As regime security forces are eliminated from populated areas, more information is provided by the liberated Iraqis," he said, citing as an example a truckload of missiles to which U.S. Marines had been alerted by Iraqi civilians.
In Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, celebrating throngs poured into the streets of Sulaimaniyah to hail the apparent downfall of Hussein, their longtime oppressor. Restraining Kurdish military units from marching into Arab-controlled regions near the oil fields around Mosul and Kirkuk could present a major diplomatic challenge for the United States and Britain because of Turkey's concerns about aspirations for independence among its own Kurdish minority.
Residents Blare Horns, Dance and Empty Government Offices.
Marines entered the teeming northeast Shiite section of Baghdad known as Saddam City today without encountering resistance. Ramzi Haidar/Agence France-Presse
New York Times
By DEXTER FILKINS with JANE PERLEZ
BAGHDAD, April 9 — Residents swarmed out onto the streets today, suddenly sensing that the regime of Saddam Hussein was crumbling, and celebrating the arrival of United States forces.
Throngs of men milled about, looting, blaring horns, dancing and tearing up pictures of Saddam Hussein. Baath party offices were trashed.
Occasional sniper fire continued, but Iraqi resistance largely faded away. The American military hesitated to say the war was over, warning instead that more fighting could break out, both inside and outside Baghdad.
But the streets here were full of activity, after days of fearsome warfare.
The American military emptied jails overnight, releasing their prisoners.
In the neighborhood called Saddam City, a densely populated Shiite area, crowds of men shouted and waved their arms in jubilation. Some carried makeshift flags.
One middle aged man held up a huge portrait of Saddam Hussein, and in the middle of the street beat the face of the Iraqi leader with his shoe, a particular insult. "This man has killed two million of us,'' he yelled as bystanders milled around approvingly.
One American colonel said that there was not a single area of the city that the Iraqi government still controlled, after another night of heavy bombing and intense fighting. A few explosions continued during the day as bombs fell from American war planes.
But military officials said that resistance continued elsewhere in the country and that Baghdad could not be called secure. At Central Command headquarters in Doha, Qatar, an American military spokesman hesitated to say the war was over.
``I think it's premature to talk about the end of this operation,'' Captain Frank Thorp said. There could be more fierce fighting ahead, he said, within Baghdad and other cities.
Sporadic bursts of gunfire crackled from time to time in the morning hours, but there was no visible sign of organized resistance from Iraqi forces. The fighting has now changed from targeting major military targets to dealing with local pockets of resistance, another United States military spokesman said.
In the Shiite area of Baghdad, long suppressed by the forces of Saddam Hussein, there appeared to be a quick breakdown in law and order. Crowds rushed into a government building, unfettered by police, and emerged with furniture, china and mattresses. One man carried a huge porcelain urn. Another shouted at a foreign television camera: "No Saddam" as cars passed in the background honking their horns.
Some of the sporadic gunfire could have been shopkeepers warning looters to stay away, a sign of growing chaos as the mood spread throughout the city.
Foreign reporters in Baghdad said that for the first time the government officials assigned to follow them did not turn up for work. "The Information Minister decided to take the day off,'' a British general said.
Looters took over a United Nations compound in southeast Baghdad, taking air conditioners, cars and refrigerators.
American marines were moving from that neighborhood westward into the central city. Army and marine units have already linked up in the northern part of town.
In the north of Iraq, Kurdish leaders claimed a major gain, capturing a mountain that had been the last defense for the city of Mosul and its huge oil reserves.
As the end of the regime seemed clear, international aid organizations said they were prepared to go into Iraq, but only when conditions became secure enough.
Basra, the second largest city in Iraq, remained too chaotic today for aid organizations and it was far from clear when they could begin work in Baghdad. The International Committee for the Red Cross, the aid group that has remained working inside Iraq, said the hospitals in the capital were overwhelmed with civilian casualties.
Iraqis tear down a picture of President Saddam Hussein in Saddam City, a huge Shi'ite slum in Baghdad, as U.S. troops enter the area April 9, 2003. Iraqis looted major sites in Baghdad as uniformed soldiers and police disappeared from the streets ahead of a U.S. onslaught. Photo by Stringer/Iraq/Reuters
Iraqis are now trying to pull down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad's main square. Laurent Rebours/Associated Press
Iraqi Kurds in Sulaimaniya take to the streets to celebrate as U.S. Marines enter Baghdad on April 9, 2003. U.S. troops swept into the heart of Baghdad to an ecstatic welcome on Wednesday, as Saddam Hussein's 24-year rule crumbled into chaos and looting. REUTERS/Nikola Solic
U.S. Marines from Lima Company, a part of a 7-th Marine Regiment, walk in front of the Martyrs Monument, during the operation of securing the center of Baghdad on April 9, 2003. Iraqis joyously welcomed U.S. Marines driving through eastern Baghdad on Wednesday and looters moved in as the remnants of Saddam Hussein's rule collapsed. Hundreds of jubilant Iraqis cheered, danced, waved and threw flowers as Marines advanced through eastern Baghdad and into the center of Saddam's seat of power. REUTERS/Oleg Popov
A U.S. Marine M88 armored recovery vehicle pulls down a statue of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein April 9, 2003. Jubilant Iraqis tied a noose around a huge statue of Saddam Hussein in the heart of Baghdad and pelted it with shoes on Wednesday as the Iraqi president's 24-year rule collapsed in chaos. In scenes reminiscent of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, crowds cheered as men climbed the huge statue of Saddam in the center of Baghdad and placed the rope around the neck in preparation to topple it. REUTERS TV
Iraqis dance on the fallen statue of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, pulled down in central Baghdad April 9, 2003. U.S. troops pulled down the 20-foot (six meter) high statue of President Saddam Hussein in central Baghdad on Wednesday and Iraqis danced on it in contempt for the man who ruled them with an iron grip for 24 years. In scenes reminiscent of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Iraqis earlier took a sledgehammer to the marble plinth under the statue of Saddam. REUTERS TV
Revenge on fedayeen!
HETT BYTE Tv- och videoaffärer tömdes på all utrustning. Foto: AP
LAGLÖSHET NÄR REGIMEN FALLER Plundrare länsar affärer och myndigheter i centrala Bagdad på onsdagen. Foto: AP
En våg av plundringar går genom Bagdad. Amerikanska marinkårssoldater tittar på.
Den brittiska soldaten Samantha Sheppard får en blomma av en irakisk man i östra Basra. Av EXPRESSEN.SE/TT
FALLING...FALLING...FALLING..
Utanför Sheraton Hotel i Basra har irakiska män samlats för att ta om hand vad som finns kvar av värde. Plundringar och stölder pågår i dag i både Basra och Bagdad. Foto: Simon Walker/Reuters
En grupp irakier har slängt en bild av Saddam Hussein i floden i Basra. Foto: Tony Nicoletti/Reuters
Brittiska helikoptrar, beväpnad med missiler avsedda för pansarfordon, patrullerar över förstörda irakiska stridsvagnar i Basra. Foto: Ian Jones/Reuters
Irakiska flickor håller varandra i handen när de promenerar med sin far i utkanterna av södra Bagdad på onsdagen. Foto: Peter Andrews/Reuters
Tv-bilder visar hur irakier klättrar upp på en staty av Saddam Hussein och firar utanför oljeministeriet i Bagdad på onsdagen. Saddams styre tycks ha kollapsat i kaos. Foto: Reuters
Irakiska kurder i Sulaimaniya firar på gatorna efter nyheten att USA:s styrkor svept in i centrala Bagdad. Foto: Nikola Solic/Reuters
En amerikansk soldat täcker i förhastad iver ansiktet på en staty av Saddam Hussein när han hjälper en samling irakier att riva statyn. Flaggan togs snabbt ner och en irakisk sattes upp i stället. Foto: Reuters
En polisstation i stadsdelen Saddam har just plundrats och en civilist har kommit över ett vapen. På flera håll i Bagdad utbröt plundring på onsdagen utan någon irakisk polis ingrep. Foto: Goran Tomasevic / Reuters
U.S. Tells Iran, Syria, N. Korea 'Learn from Iraq'
ROME (Reuters) - The United States on Wednesday warned countries it has accused of pursuing weapons of mass destruction, including Iran, Syria and North Korea, to "draw the appropriate lesson from Iraq."
John R. Bolton, U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, also appealed to Syria and other countries in the Middle East to open themselves up to "new possibilities" for peace in the region.
"With respect to the issue of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the post-conflict period, we are hopeful that a number of regimes will draw the appropriate lesson from Iraq that the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction is not in their national interest," Bolton told a news conference.
Bolton, in Rome for meetings with Vatican and Italian officials, specifically mentioned Syria, North Korea and Iran in his comments in response to a question about what the postwar period would hold.
Iran has said its nuclear programs are for peaceful purposes, while Syria has denied U.S. charges of shipping military supplies to Baghdad and lawmakers have accused the United States of double standards in its support for Israel.
North Korea has sparked an international crisis with a suspected revival of its nuclear arms program.
Bolton was asked about a U.S. poll that showed that half of the United States population supports U.S. military action against Iran if it continues to move toward nuclear weapons development and 42 percent of those surveyed said the United States should take action against Syria if it was helping Iraq.
"I think Syria is a good case where I hope that they will conclude that the chemicals weapons program and the biological weapons program that they have been pursuing are things that they should give up," said Bolton, a leading U.S. hawk.
"It is a wonderful opportunity for Syria to foreswear the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and, as with other governments in the region, to see if there are not new possibilities in the Middle East peace process," he said.
Bolton said the United States' priority was "the peaceful elimination of these programs" and that this was the guiding principle in Washington's attitude toward North Korea and Iran.
Bolton met earlier with Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, the Vatican Foreign Minister, to discuss humanitarian efforts after the conflict and the Middle East situation in general.
Pope John Paul spearheaded the Vatican's efforts to avert war in Iraq, sending top envoys to both President George Bush and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
"The issue now is the future, turning to our common interests in providing humanitarian assistance to the people of Iraq, assisting in the reconstruction of the country, the rapid formation of a new government that would be representative of all the Iraqi people," Bolton said.
He also said he outlined to Vatican officials what he called "President Bush's determination" to move ahead with the Middle East peace process.
Bush, after meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Tuesday, promised to turn his focus to settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once Saddam was removed from power.
For Some, Syria Looms as Next Goal - U.S. Officials Talk of Peaceful Change in Government Seen as Aiding Hussein.
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 8, 2003; Page A22
Conservatives within the Bush administration would like to see a change of government in Syria but want it to happen through peaceful means rather that U.S. military action, according to current and former senior U.S. officials.
On Sunday, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz said, "There's got to be a change in Syria," which has been accused by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld of allowing war materials and Islamic fighters to cross its border to help the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. "The Syrians need to know . . . they'll be held accountable," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Wolfowitz and other officials have not spelled out how they expect a peaceful change of government in Syria would occur. But many are beginning to speak about a successful conclusion of the war in Iraq providing a possible springboard for change.
"I think a lot of countries, including Syria, will eventually get the message from this [Iraq war] that it's much better to come to terms peacefully with the international community, to not acquire these weapons of mass destruction, to not use terrorism as an instrument of national policy," Wolfowitz said.
Rumsfeld's remarks, which included a warning to Iran to not permit armed Iraqi exiles in Iran to return to Iraq outside U.S. control, encouraged other Bush administration supporters to speak out on the issue. R. James Woolsey, a former CIA director who has been considered for a post in the U.S. group that would help reestablish a new Iraqi government, told an audience at UCLA last Wednesday that the "fascist" government in Syria had to be replaced.
The Syrian government considered Rumsfeld's remarks a threat, triggering statements from other U.S. officials aimed at easing Syria's concerns. "Nobody in the American administration [has] talked about invading Iran or Syria," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said in an interview with the London-based Arab daily Al Hayat published April 5. "It seems that there is a constant desire by everybody to accuse us of invasion operations. That didn't, and won't, take place."
Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, yesterday dismissed a report first mentioned last December by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that Iraq had shipped some of its chemical and biological weapons to Syria. At the time, U.S. intelligence officials said that several large Iraqi truck shipments with guards had been observed heading to Syria but that no one knew what was inside them.
Last week, Gen. Yossi Kupperwasser, a senior Israeli intelligence officer, was reported as telling an Israeli parliament committee that "it is possible Iraq transferred missiles and weapons of mass destruction into Syria."
But Myers told reporters "there is no evidence" that weapons of mass destruction have been moved out of Iraq into another country.
Syria has given sanctuary to groups such as the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah that carry out terrorist acts against Israel. It has been regularly listed in CIA reports as a country that possesses or is building chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles that can deliver them.
Richard Perle, a close adviser of Rumsfeld and major supporter of the Iraq war, said in an interview yesterday, "You can arrive at Damascus and ask a taxi driver to take you to one of several terrorist organizations. It is a country that is host to such groups and is quite open about it."
But Perle said, "There are different ways to get people to change and I hope the example of Iraq after Afghanistan will prove persuasive." He told an audience at the American Enterprise Institute on March 25, "There are things we can do and there are things we can't do, and we're not going to make war on the world for democracy. . . . We should be using all the instruments of American influence to accomplish that purpose, and most of those instruments are not military."
There has been disagreement within U.S. administrations for years over how to handle Syria, first under President Hafez Assad, and more recently under his son, Bashar Assad.
Although Syrian support of terrorist groups was always on the agenda, said one former diplomat with direct experience in the area, "Assad was a clever negotiator and insisted his country was not being used as base for operational activities." In addition, he kept reminding the United States that "one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter."
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a new relationship has developed between the CIA and Syrian intelligence because Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network targeted the secular government in Damascus as well as the United States.
Rumsfeld's recent statement that singled out Syria along with Iran for assisting Iraq surprised not only the White House but also the CIA, which had not reported any major flow of military equipment or Islamic fighters from Syria to Iraq. It was seen by some as a shot not only at Syria but at CIA Director George J. Tenet.
"It is clear that the policy group in the Defense Department is intent on eliminating the present Syrian government as a factor in the Arab-Israeli dispute," said Walter P. "Pat" Lang, a former Defense Intelligence Agency specialist in Mideast affairs. "I think it's a good thing. I don't think the benefit derived from their help against al Qaeda outweighs the bad things they do harboring Iraqi materiel or fostering problems in the Israeli-Arab dispute."
The Syrian regime, fearful of the expansion of the ongoing American-British war to its territory once the invading side has achieved its objectives in Iraq, has reacted angrily to US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld accusing Syria of "interference" in Iraq, with Syrian Information Minister Adnan Omran saying that "it takes only a madman to widen the circle of war".
Rumsfeld has accused Syria and Iran of being engaged in "hostile acts". He warned Iran about allegedly allowing an Iran-based Iraqi opposition to deploy its forces in Iraq, but he reserved his anger for Syria for its alleged delivery of military equipment to the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. Rumsfeld claimed that Syria had transferred Russian-made night-vision goggles and other unspecified military equipment to the Iraqi military, which posed "a direct threat to the lives of coalition forces". He added, "We consider such trafficking as hostile acts and will hold the Syrian government accountable for such shipments."
Syria was not named in the US "axis of evil" of Iran, Iraq and North Korea, but the United States apparently believes that there is evidence of support for terrorism by Damascus. Syrian President Bashar Assad has been at the forefront of Arab opposition to the Iraq war and there is suspicion in the US that Assad has actively collaborated with Saddam Hussein and agreed to take weapons, including Scud missiles, from him so they would not be discovered in Iraq by United Nations weapons inspectors.
The Syrian government is understandably concerned about a US attack on it to change its regime, a policy backed, if not pushed, by Israel, which wants to turn hostile Syria, its last major Arab enemy, into a docile neighbor. Despite United Nations resolutions, Israel's refusal to withdraw from Syria's Golan Heights, which has been under its occupation since 1967, has demonstrated its willingness to annex that territory. The Syrians therefore see Israel as the real force behind the US war on Iraq and a call for its expansion to Syria and Iran. No wonder Omran held, "We see no sign that the United States can look at the region except from one vantage point - Israel's."
A few days after his initial attack, Rumsfeld repeated his warning. During a Pentagon briefing he accused Syria of continuing to allow the shipment of military equipment into Iraq, stating: "We have seen that Syria is continuing to conduct itself the way it was prior to the time I said what I said." Rumsfeld did not specify if, when and/or how the United States would react to Syria's alleged "hostile" activities. Among other factors, lack of such specification and the longer-than-expected war in Iraq convinced the Syrians that they should not expect an immediate attack. Thus Hassan Shaban, head of the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs' information bureau, felt confident enough to state that his government did not take Rumsfeld's remarks as a threat of US military action against Syria.
Nevertheless, the Syrians have taken the threat very seriously. Hence they have sought to stop the ongoing war against Iraq along with other regional states (Iran and Turkey) concerned about its long-term implications. Unlike Turkey, with which Syria has had troubled relations, Iran is a friendly country sharing Syria's concern as another target of recent US accusations and warnings. Turkey, which cooperates to a limited extent with the Americans in their war, is also concerned about the radicalization of its Kurdish minority as a result of the emergence of an Iraqi Kurd independent state.
Sharing borders with Iraq, the three states have been in close contact since the war broke out. On April 1, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara held separate telephone conversations with his Iranian (Kamal Kharrazi) and Turkish (Abdullah Gul) counterparts to find a way to stop the war. According to the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), the three ministers called "for further measures to be taken by the United Nations in line with peaceful settlement of the Iraqi crisis within the framework of the international laws and based on maintaining the territorial integrity of Iraq".
Syria has also sought the assistance of the European Union, which has its own reasons for grievances with the US. During a news conference on April 1, European Commission spokesperson for external relations Emma Udwin clearly expressed the EU opposition to any US war against Syria and Iran. Despite the mentioned US warnings, she stated, "Our relationship with those two countries remains unaffected." She added, "We are in a situation where in each case our relationship allows dialogue including on the question of non-proliferation and there is no reason at this moment to change the terms of our relationship with Iran and Syria ... one needs to do everything possible to reduce the emergence of new tensions or escalating of existing tensions."
The Americans' hint at a plan to expand their war to Iran and Syria has so far failed to receive any encouragement from regional and non-regional states, including the members of the "coalition of the willing". The Australian government has clearly stated its opposition to such expansion, while the British government has denied any such plan and distanced itself from any such war in the future. During a March 3 interview with the British Broadcasting Corp Arabic service, British Prime Minister Tony Blair stressed: "I know of absolutely no plan to do that." He added, "There is no question of 'who next?' We are in Iraq for a particular reason ... They [the Americans] have got absolutely no plans to attack those two countries."
Given that the Americans are yet to achieve their desired victory in Iraq, they are currently unable to expand their war against Iraq to any country. Added to that, the opposition of their close allies and the EU to such a plan has forced the US government to deny it. Al-Hayat, a London-based Arabic newspaper, quoted US Secretary of State Colin Powell on March 5 as saying, "Nobody in the American administration [has] talked about invading Iran or Syria." He added, "It seems that there is a constant desire by everybody to accuse us of invasion operations. That didn't, and won't, take place."
Given the circumstances under which Powell denied any new war plan, his assurances do not convince anyone in the Middle East. However, it is certain that, as an immediate option, such a war seems unlikely, although the repeated US accusations create grounds for its future occurrence. The remarks of a former head of the Israeli military intelligence, Amus Golad, during a television interview of Israel's Channel One suggested that a US war against Syria could be conceivable at some point in the future. Accordingly, the US government requested from Israel unspecified "urgent intelligence" about Syria.
Dr Hooman Peimani works as an independent consultant with international organizations in Geneva and does research in international relations.
Jubilant Iraqis stomped on a toppled statue of Saddam Hussein and dragged its severed head through the streets of Baghdad yesterday as the despot's regime collapsed in an orgy of cheering, waving and looting.
Iraqis released two decades of pent-up fury as U.S. tanks rolled unopposed into Firdos Square in the heart of the capital.
And far from the fallen seat of Saddam's ruthless power, Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations, who had defended his boss so faithfully, admitted "the game is over. The work now is peace."
Outside Iraq's U.N. mission yesterday, Mohammed Al-Douri even insisted "I have no relationship with Saddam."
Al-Douri's effort to distance himself from Iraq's deposed czar was repeated all over Baghdad.
In a scene recalling the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, Iraqis bashed the marble base of the main statue of Saddam with a sledgehammer.
When they got nowhere, they hooked a noose around the statue's neck and attached the rope to a Marine vehicle. Slowly, the statue began to sway.
As cheers rose, the statue - showing Saddam with one arm raised and pointed toward Jerusalem - leaned downward. Then it snapped, leaving only the feet and two protruding metal bars.
As the icon fell, Iraqis threw shoes and slippers at it - a major insult in the Arab world.
After it was on the ground, they stomped and danced on it with undisguised glee, waving their arms and fists in the air.
Later, they dragged the head through the streets, the noose still around its neck. People rode on it and pounded it with shoes.
"Bush, Bush, thank you," some chanted.
As the Marines prepared to topple the statue, they draped a Stars and Stripes over it - a flag that had flown over the Pentagon on Sept. 11.
It was brought to Baghdad by 1st Lt. Tim McLaughlin, who was working there that day.
He handed it to Cpl. Edward Chin, 23, of Brooklyn, who had the honor of plastering it on Saddam's face.
PUCKERING UP: A euphoric Iraqi plants an appreciative kiss on the cheek of a U.S. soldier yesterday in downtown Baghdad, where freed citizens rallied in the streets. - Laura Rauch/AP
In Brooklyn, Chin's mother, Laikoon, was watching the scene on TV. When she saw that the soldier's helmet read "Chin," she began crying hysterically.
"I'm so proud of him," she said, "[fighting] for Iraqi freedom."
Fearing they'd be portrayed as conquerors, the Marines quickly removed it and placed an Iraqi flag on the base.
The statue's demise was televised worldwide to an audience that included President Bush. "They got it down," he said.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called the action "breathtaking," adding, "This is a very good day."
"Saddam Hussein is now taking his rightful place alongside Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Ceausescu in the pantheon of failed brutal dictators, and the Iraqi people are well on their way to freedom," Rumsfeld said.
But the celebration on the streets did not mean all the fighting in Baghdad is over.
Early this morning, one Marines was killed and at least eight injured in a fierce fight for still another of Saddam's presidential palaces - this one on the northern side of the capital.
A small Iraqi force used rocket-propelled grenades, hitting some American vehicles before the Marines took the palace.
There was also some lingering fighting at Baghdad University, where Iraqis were cornered with the Tigris at their backs.
Some Iraqi demonstrators made it clear that America will face resistance in establishing a post-war government in Iraq.
"We will never allow [the Americans] to stay," said Ali al-Obeidim, a store owner. "Whatever Saddam has done . . . we are a Muslim nation."
In other developments:
* U.S. officials warned that difficult and dangerous days may yet lie ahead for coalition forces. "This is not over," said Rumsfeld, "despite all the celebrating on the streets."
* Steps were taken to create a new Iraqi government. Ahmad Chalabi, a leading Iraqi politician, said 43 colleagues - 14 former exiles and 29 inside the country - would meet on Iraq's political future at an air base near Nasiriyah after Saturday.
* In the north, warplanes bombed Saddam's birthplace, Tikrit, about 100 miles from Baghdad, in advance of a ground attack. U.S. commandos and Kurdish fighters also seized a key mountaintop, eliminating an Iraqi air-defense installation near the city of Mosul.
* In the south, British forces reached Qurnah, the supposed site of the Garden of Eden. The troops were welcomed by cheering crowds of Ma'dan, marsh Arabs who suffered genocide at the hands of Saddam.
* Saddam's whereabouts remained a mystery after U.S. attempts to kill him Monday night. Russia's Foreign Ministry denied he had taken refuge in Moscow's embassy in Baghdad.
Alive or dead, his regime's collapse was apparent everywhere.
For the first time since Operation Iraqi Freedom began three weeks ago, Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf failed to appear before reporters with his usual fantastic claims of glorious battlefield victories by Iraqi troops.
And for the first time in decades, Iraqis defaced images of the man who has brutally ruled their country since 1979.
An orgy of looting erupted - by car, by pony cart, by bicycle and makeshift sled. Elsewhere, a man used an office swivel chair to haul away a TV.
One man rushing from a government building took off his shoe to hit a poster of Saddam that another looter had removed from an office wall.
"If you only knew what this guy did to Iraq! He killed our youth, killed millions of people," said one looter.
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, April 10, 2003; Page A01
BAGHDAD, April 9 -- A scene erupted on a street in Baghdad today that many residents had not seen in their lifetimes. People debated.
"Believe me, I have waited for this moment for 35 years," said Majid Mohammed, an electrical engineer. "You must bring these words to the American people. Thank you, thank you very, very much."
Zuheir Girgis hesitated, then said he would wait and see. "Nobody hates freedom, and if they bring freedom, nobody will hate them," he insisted.
Dhikran Albert shook his head. "If they've come as invaders," he warned, "nobody will welcome them."
Mohammed delighted in the moment. No one was looking over their shoulders, no one was dreading a question. The Baath Party cadres in the neighborhood were in their homes, dressed in civilian clothes. The Iraqi soldiers had fled, some leaving weapons behind.
"We are now free, so everybody has an opinion," he said.
But even in freedom, the shadow of President Saddam Hussein fell over the crowd. One person asked an American reporter how they could know he was not a spy. Others turned away questions about politics, about brushes with security forces, about the fate of Hussein.
"I think he has nine lives," Mohammed said, his tone softer. "Maybe he will come back and have his revenge."
At that moment, someone down the street called out that the Americans had arrived. The curious and the jubilant ran down the road. As they gathered, a line of tanks and other armor paraded down Saadoun Street, toward a statue of Hussein in Firdaus Square. An Iraqi exile working with the Americans shouted into a microphone, "We're bringing freedom for everyone, we're making a free Iraq."
Crowds that lined the streets erupted in cheers. Women ululated, a cry of joy in the Arab world. One man asked if a soldier could be found to marry his daughter. Others threw candy, cigarettes and flowers at the soldiers atop vehicles flying the U.S. flag. When they stopped, many ran to the soldiers to shout hello, to shake their hands and, for a few, to kiss them on the cheek.
"Did the war end?" asked Kamel Hamid, as he stood on the road. "Is it over?"
"It is a liberation," shouted Abbas Ali, holding his daughter's hand.
Others, more reserved, held back from the curb. Some uttered words of caution or rebuke: that the Americans wanted Iraq's oil, that war was not the answer, that U.S. troops were here to stay.
"This is my country and this is an occupation," said Stefan Abu George, 59, standing along the street. "I can't imagine what the result of this is going to be." A friend, Wathiq Abzara, answered: "Like Palestine."
Down the road, Mazin Hussein, a doctor at Ibn Haitham Hospital, and a friend, Saad Kaabi, gingerly approached a U.S. tank with the words "Love Machine" scrawled on its side. Over the roar of its engines, they asked the soldiers to take down the U.S. flag on their tank. They could not be heard and, after a few minutes, they gave up.
"This is not the liberation they told us about. It's not the right time to raise flags," Hussein said.
Americans threw packaged meals down to the crowd, almost setting off a riot. A friend of Hussein brought one to him.
"I will not eat from them," he said, with a look of disgust, before turning away.
A Changed City
At daybreak, the morning newspapers looked as they have every day since Hussein became president in 1979. There were the portraits of Iraq's leader grinning in khakis and beret, lecturing in suit and tie, and firing a rifle. Headlines in a floral Arabic exhorted the nation to victory. "The faithful sons of Iraq continue their heroic resistance against invasion," one pronounced.
But overnight, the world had changed for Baghdad's 5 million residents. The city had emptied of the authorities who had lorded over daily life. Gone were the swarms of Baath Party militiamen, who had fanned out across the city at the beginning of the war. Uniforms and boots were discarded in the streets, and weapons and military trucks were abandoned, some with ammunition spilling out of their trunks. Ministries were deserted, blue-uniformed traffic cops disappeared, and the streets crackled with anticipation of the unknown.
For a few hours, order was replaced by anarchy.
Gangs of young men, some slinging Kalashnikovs, ambled down the streets. Some let off a few rounds to make a point. Flying white flags, cars ignored traffic lights; many headed down the wrong side of the road. Nearly all of them barreled through Baghdad with a reckless desperation, fearful of being caught in the crossfire that killed and wounded so many in the five-day offensive.
"Go back! Go back!" one driver shouted. He pointed behind him to what he said were U.S. tanks coming across a bridge.
At Kindi Hospital, Ali Mizhar, 38, arrived with five children wounded when a U.S. blast struck their home in the neighborhood of Zayuna. "Can you just ask them to stop bombing?" he shouted. "The resistance is over, it's totally over."
For many, the first sign that the government had collapsed was the looting that spread across parts of the city by early morning.
From government offices, state-owned companies and U.N. buildings came computers, appliances, bookshelves, overhead fans, tables and chairs. From military bases came new Toyota pickups, without license plates, that were careering through Baghdad by afternoon. An elderly woman made her way down Saadoun Street, her back sagging from a mattress she was carrying. Others rode on top of white freezers they wheeled down the road. Throughout the day, trucks piled high with booty roamed the capital.
"People believe these things belong to them," said Faleh Hassan, 51, as he sat at Abu Ahmed restaurant in the Karrada neighborhood. At lunchtime, he served customers kebab and kufta grilled on a charred stove crafted from an air-conditioning duct. He spoke with an ease that seemed to delight him, saying in public what he believed in private.
"The situation has changed," he said, "so even our speech is different."
Hassan, like so many in Baghdad, had his grudges. In the war with Iran from 1980 to 1988, he was arrested for deserting the army, drawing a death sentence that was later commuted. His brother, Ahmed, was killed by thugs he said came from Hussein's home town of Tikrit. Over tea, he looked back at 30 years during which one of the world's richest countries became a nation of paupers.
"It's a long story, the history of Iraq," he said.
He said he was tired of the fear, tired of the repression, tired of the isolation that he blamed for the loss of his once-fluent English. He was thankful for Hussein's end. But he was suspicious of the Americans.
"We feel peaceful and we feel relieved, but we are still frightened by tomorrow," Hassan said, dragging on a cigarette. "We will see the American and British intentions over the next few months."
A current of such ambivalence raced across Baghdad along with jubilation and surprise. Relief was tied up with trepidation, joy with anxiety. What next, many seemed to ask. Hassan, a little weary, hoped the future would be better than the past.
"I want to feel that I'm a human being, I want to feel that I'm free and that no one can take it away," he said. "I want to work, so that my family has enough to live. I want to live like everyone else in this world who lives in peace."
Bringing Down Hussein
There was little of that reflection in Firdaus Square, the site of what is likely to become the lasting image of the U.S. entry into Baghdad. The park, built in 2001, was one of the city's newest. A statue depicted Hussein in a suit, surrounded by columns of descending height, each bearing the initials "S.H." By early afternoon, hundreds of Iraqis swarmed around it with one task in mind: bringing it down.
They threw a heavy rope tied like a noose around its neck. Many hurled rocks at it. A few minutes later, someone in the crowd showed up with a sledgehammer, and residents took turns pummeling the purple granite at its base.
"Scum, son of scum!" shouted Yusuf Abed Kadhim, as he swung at the pedestal.
"I'm 49, but I never lived a single day. Only now will I start living," he said.
An hour later, the statue wasn't budging, and several men scurried up the rope to try to push it down from above. They couldn't, and U.S. Marines came to their aid. A tank recovery vehicle plowed through the circle, crushing two flights of stairs and a flower bed in the middle of the park. When it arrived, residents helped put its cable around one leg, then both legs.
As they worked, Shiite Muslims chanted, "There is no god but God, Saddam is the enemy of God."
The Marines brought a U.S. flag, draping it over the statue's face, but that drew few cheers. More acclaim came when someone from the crowd produced an Iraqi flag, a version from before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and draped it over Hussein's likeness. But the statue was still standing. Iraqis finally tied a heavy chain around its neck, and tethered it to the vehicle.
"If Saddam was watching this scene, he would be laughing at us," said Shidrak George, 38, standing nearby.
Finally, after two hours, the statue fell halfway; with another pull, it toppled to the ground. Shouts of joy went up, and the crowd converged, kicking it, pummeling it with a chain, rocks and a sledgehammer, and slapping it with shoes -- a great insult in the Arab world. Its head was carted off down the street, pulled by ropes. Iraqis jumped up and down on the body.
From the crowd went up a chant familiar to everyone in Hussein's Iraq as a pledge of loyalty and love to the man who ruled them. But this chant was different, the object of praise a country, not a man. And for the first time in 30 years, people seemed to mean it.
"With our spirit, with our blood," they shouted, "we sacrifice for you, Iraq."
The Commercial Appeal ^ | 4/10/03 | Shirley Downing
Calling President Bush's name between smiles and tears, 76-year-old Ghabia Al-Abes rejoices Wednesday in the news of freedom for her homeland.
Iraqi-Americans feel liberated too
By Shirley Downing downing@gomemphis.com April 10, 2003
When Haithem Al-Hamdani learned about 3 a.m. Wednesday his native Iraq had been liberated, he knelt in prayer in a friend's front yard.
Several hours later, he and a dozen Iraqi friends gathered to celebrate and thank Americans for bringing freedom to their homeland.
"To celebrate, we all take off work today to congratulate each other and, at the same time, we would like to find a way to say thanks to all the American people who are fighting over there, and who gave their lives to liberate Iraq," said Rahif Al-Absawi, 37, a computer engineer at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
"Bush, Bush, Bush," they chanted in the yard of a small red brick house in the Berclair area.
The sidewalk was adorned with American and British flags, and orange drinks and cookies covered a table on the porch.
Some of the men - engineers, warehouse workers, university students and businessmen - were damp-eyed.
All came to Memphis between 1994 and 1997 as political refugees and have made new lives here.
Most are American citizens with family in Iraq. All want to return to visit or to live.
"I can't even describe it," said warehouse worker Ahmed Al-Hamdani, 31.
Ahmed's cousin, used car lot owner Haithem Al-Hamdani of Newport, Ark., described the group as "more than happy."
"We been dreaming of this for long, long time and, until right now, we not believe it," he said.
Ahmed, who said he completed paperwork Wednesday to become an American citizen, has parents and 10 siblings south of Baghdad. He's eager to see them again.
The men stayed glued to the news for days, watching American and British troops roll across Iraq.
They worried about relatives' safety and that Saddam Hussein would cling to power.
They wonder if he's dead or alive, though Al-Absawi wishes for Hussein's capture so he would stand trial.
"I would like to see him judged for what he has done," he said.
The news was poignant for 76-year-old Ghabia Al-Abes. Two of her sons were killed by Hussein's troops.
So she sat on another son's porch on a cool afternoon in Memphis, thousands of miles from her homeland, clutching an American flag on a stick. She called the President's name, between tears and smiles.
Haithem Al-Hamdani looked at the elderly woman, and then said of the President: "We call him King. He is the one who stood up for the Iraqi people."
Perhaps, said Haithem, the Iraqis could buy George Bush a gift, but what could they afford?
"He is really the man," said Kamel Al-Abes, 36, a computer engineer at Solectron. "Just a thank you would be fine."
THREE weeks into the Iraqi War, the cancerous Ba'athist regime has been destroyed, and the hunt for Saddam has become a bunker-buster version of the carnival game in which the chipmunk's head pops up through a hole in the board, and you clobber him with a mallet.
So much for the "quagmire."
You'd think the fact that the liberation of 22 million oppressed people was accomplished with minimal civilian casualties (indeed, minimal military casualties) would give pause to those who've been marching against the war.
It won't, of course. For the antiwar movement consists not of thinkers but of true believers; indeed, it's more akin to a religious cult than a political cause, hoist on tenets of faith rather than points of evidence - and, thus, in the final analysis, no more responsive to counterarguments than guys who stand on street corners in sandwich boards forecasting the end of the world next weekend . . . no, next weekend . . . no, next weekend.
As the Iraqi people rise up to cheer the American troops, the true believers will claim the scenes are staged. As chemical and biological weapons are uncovered, the true believers will claim they were planted. As an interim government is established, the true believers will claim it's a puppet for American interests. As the oil wealth of Iraq is translated into prosperity for the people, the true believers will claim American companies are hogging profits.
To view this as mere idiocy would be wrong. People who believe such things are, in reality, clinging to their faith, clinging to a set of beliefs that infuses their lives with meaning, that connects them to a higher purpose, that makes them feel a part of something larger than themselves.
It's a constant, uphill struggle to maintain this particular faith in light of the manifest truth that America is the most benevolent world power in the history of the planet. The antiwar movement, thus, should be ignored, or pitied, or even ridiculed, but not condemned too harshly.
Like the rest of us, true believers are entitled to their pursuit of happiness.
Mark Goldblatt teaches at SUNY'S Fashion Institute of Technology.
By Jefferson Morley
washingtonpost.com Staff
Thursday, April 10, 2003; 8:57 AM
What if they gave a victory party and nobody showed up?
The Western online media outside of North America seems far less impressed by the news out of Baghdad than their U.S. counterparts. Even in countries allied with the U.S. war effort, the toppling of statues of Saddam Hussein is being greeted less an an occasion for joy than an opportunity to comment quietly on the American way of war.
The French are certainly not in a rush to expound on the Bush administration's apparent victory. Today's editorial in Le Monde, the antiwar daily in Paris, was written about the time U.S. tanks rolled into downtown Baghdad yesterday. But the editors' focus was not on the imminent demise of the regime, but on the U.S. attacks Monday morning on the Palestine Hotel and the al-Jazeera offices in Baghdad which killed three journalists.
These attacks, already ancient history in the speedy American news cycle, are symbolic of U.S. tactics in taking of Baghdad, say the editors.
"A flood of fire vis-a-vis the slightest threat or what is perceived as such: air raids and tank fire and heavy machine gun shooting in a crowded downtown. The civilian victims undoubtedly amount in the hundreds. It is a military culture which is the cause: the massive use of force against the least danger, so much the worse for civilians. The British army gives a contrary example: that of patience and reserve. To preserve the future, even if it means to take risks."
British critics of the war are subdued but still full of advice.
"On one level the US-British success to date is deeply impressive and on another, troubling," write the editors of The Guardian, the leftist London daily that lead the antiwar campaign in the British press. "Saddam's overthrow is a great boon. But Iraq's 'liberation' must not lead to internal destabilisation or external exploitation. Pre-war promises must be fulfilled; there must be long-term follow-through and a major rethink, too. For George Bush's America must understand that Iraq does not mean future pre-emptive, unilateral, illegal war-making is now somehow OK. Sometimes war proves unstoppable; but it is seldom OK."
Compared to getting the water supply running again, talking about history at this moment might seem a luxury, writes historian Timothy Garton Ash in The Guardian. "It isn't. Dealing rightly with the past is more important even than water for the long-term health of a future Iraqi democracy," he says.
Garton Ash, who made a name for himself writing about transition from communism to democracy in Eastern Europe, warned that against U.S. plans to try Iraqi war criminals under American law.
"There's always the suspicion among the defeated in a war that any subsequent trials are "victors' justice". Nothing could be better calculated to confirm that view than this crass proposal."
Garton Ash says establishing democracy depends on being sensitive to the defeated Iraqis.
"Trials should, usually, be confined to the very worst category of human rights violations and war crimes. They should be conducted by a neutral international court applying international humanitarian law that was in force at the time the crimes were committed. Otherwise you violate a principle of justice by making it retrospective. If you use your own national laws, or make up new ones to fit the occasion, this, to the defeated, does not look like justice at all. "
In Switzerland, victory celebrations get short shrift in favor of the Swiss's favorite topic: banking. The top Iraq story in the English-language edition of the Zurich daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung declares, "Saddam's successor has controversial Swiss past."
The story details how Ahmed Chalabi, the Pentagon's favorite candidate to run post-war Iraq, ran the Geneva branch of the Lebanese bank, Mebco, which is owned by his family. The story details why the bank was shut down by the Swiss Federal Banking Commission in 1989.
In the Madrid daily El Mundo the lead story reports that the war goes on. Turkish officials are quoted saying the Kurdish advance on the oil-rich city of Kirkuk is unacceptable. The photo of Iraqis holding up a sign that says "Bush: Yes Yes Yes" is relegated to second place.
The front page photo in another Spanish daily, El Pais reports, not on celebrations, but on the arrival of the Red Cross. On the opinion page, the editors write that Hussein's fall "is a reason for satisfaction, but adds, "Although the scent of the victory distracts those who carried it out, this war was avoidable. The world is better without this dictator, but the management of this conflict contributes to debilitation of the already fragile international order."
In Australia, the most junior partner in the war coalition, the Sydney Morning Herald doesn't treat the fall of Baghdad as a big deal. The paper's lead story is about a battle for a palace north of the Iraqi capital that "demonstrates the fighting is far from over."
And the paper's cartoons give a more sardonic Down Under view of the American victory. One shows a U.S. tank pulling down a statue of the United Nations. Another shows three hooded figures, one adult, two children (a poke at the dimunitive British and Australian roles) smashing a bee hive called the Middle East. A swarm of bees is headed for a nearby group of peacefully picnicking Europeans.
Forces May Be Protecting Figures Near Syria Border.
By Dana Priest and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, April 10, 2003; Page A01
Secret CIA and military teams in Iraq and surveillance devices set up to monitor Saddam Hussein's inner circle reported yesterday that nearly the entire Iraqi leadership had vanished.
U.S. military commanders said they suspected that some leaders had headed to Hussein's hometown of Tikrit for a final bloody showdown and that others had fled to Syria. Dogged fighting by Iraqi forces at Qaim, near the Syrian border, has led some U.S. and British officials to suspect that Iraqi troops there may be protecting important Iraqi leaders or family members, although it was not clear who.
As Baghdad slipped from Hussein's control yesterday, covert CIA and Special Operations teams dedicated to killing or capturing the Iraqi president and senior leaders discovered that the Baath Party leaders, Republican Guard leaders, troops and high-level government officials they had targeted were not at their usual posts. Even the information minister, who had been briefing journalists with outlandish versions of daily events, did not go to work.
"All of a sudden, all communications ceased and the regime didn't come to work," was the way one senior administration official described what happened in Baghdad. "Even the minders for [foreign] journalists did not go to work," he added.
The most likely explanation for the sudden dropoff in detectable communications and activity among such a large number of key people, according to reports from analysts in the CIA's Iraq Operation Group at Langley and those working at the U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar, is that an order to disappear was given in Hussein's name, and that he is still alive.
"There was no sign of any leaders, anywhere," a senior U.S. administration official said.
Another less probable possibility, intelligence sources said, is that the Iraqi leader died in one of two U.S. air attacks that targeted Hussein -- one March 20, the other April 8 -- and that word of his death finally leaked out.
If Hussein is alive, he and his loyalists may have sought refuge in Tikrit, a town about 90 miles north of Baghdad on the low bluffs overlooking the Tigris River. "We certainly are focused on Tikrit," Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks of the U.S. Central Command told reporters yesterday, " to prevent the regime from being able to use it as a place to command and control, to restore command and control, or to hide."
Brooks said new Iraqi troops have been deployed to Tikrit to try to "reinforce those initial defenses." Hussein has been a generous benefactor to the town and has filled key posts in the army, his security apparatus and the Baath Party with Tikritis. They, in turn, are extremely loyal to Hussein and are expected to fight hard to protect him.
Capturing or killing Hussein remains a top U.S. priority. "In order to come to closure" psychologically, "we need to demonstrate he's not in control anymore," a senior administration official said. "It will make it easier to start afresh."
Some Iraq analysts, such as former CIA analyst Kenneth Pollack, said Hussein is highly conscious of how he will be perceived by history. Therefore, he would be unlikely to leave Iraq, and would probably prefer to make a last stand in Tikrit.
His support is so strong there, said Pollack, research director of the Brookings Institution's Saban Center, that "this could be a Mogadishu. There is a civilian population who are willing to actively assist Saddam's loyalists." There was fairly credible intelligence from more than a week ago that Hussein's first wife and other relatives had left Baghdad and probably are in Tikrit.
Tikrit has been a special target of U.S. precision bombing, including what was described as a major underground bunker that Brooks called a command and control center. He said last week that U.S. Special Forces have set up checkpoints on the main roads between Baghdad and Tikrit to prevent movement between the two cities.
Tikrit is also the only part of Iraq where there apparently are enough military and paramilitary units to mount a sizable, organized fight.
Of Hussein's inner circle, only Ali Hassan Majeed, better known as "Chemical Ali," is believed to have been killed by allied forces. Hussein's younger son, Qusay, who headed the Special Republican Guard and the defense of Baghdad, has not been heard from for some time, although "there have been references about him in traffic within the past few days," one senior official said. Uday, Hussein's older son, has not been heard from since the war began March 20.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld raised the possibility that Iraqi leaders are fleeing to Syria. "Senior regime people are moving out of Iraq into Syria, and Syria is continuing to send things into Iraq," he said. "We find it notably unhelpful."
The most likely escape routes to Syria include Qaim and Mosul, where fighting also continues. At the same time, U.S. intelligence officials said allied forces continued to stop and turn around busloads of non-Iraqi fighters attempting to come into Iraq from Syria.
Iraqis greeted Marines in the center of Baghdad. Oleg Popov/Reuters
Iraqis helped U.S. troops topple a statue of Saddam Hussein. Karim Sahib/Agence France-Presse
Kurds in Sulaimaniya, Iraq, celebrated the fall of Baghdad. Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
Iraqi-Americans in Dearborn, Mich., celebrated the fall of Baghdad. Associated Press
Kurds in the city of Erbil, Iraq, cheered as they gathered in the streets to celebrate the demise of Saddam Hussein's government. Ruth Fremson/ The New York Times
Kurds cheered, danced and played music in the streets. Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
An Iraqi Kurd joined the thousands dancing and cheering in the streets of Erbil. Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Marines Cpl. Edward Chin, from New York, placed an Iraqi flag around the neck of a statue of Saddam Hussein. Laurent Rebours/Associated Press
Iraqis destroyed a statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad after it was pulled down by the U.S. military. Karim Sahib/Agence France-Presse
Kurdish fighters, known as pesh merga, brought out the heavy machinery for this tile mosaic in the village of Karahanjir in northern Iraq. Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Children in Basra. Tony Nicoletti, Pool via Reuters
U.S. troops pulled down a statue of Saddam Hussein in central Baghdad today. Goran Tomasevic/Reuters
Too much to watch - A Jordanian in Amman covers his face in front of a television showing a U.S. Marine draping a U.S. flag over the face of a statue of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in Baghdad on Wednesday. Jubilant Iraqis tied a noose around the statue and pelted it with shoes as Saddam's 24-year rule collapsed in chaos.
Gone fishing - Pfc. Mark Bennett drops a line in the lake surrounding one of Saddam Hussein's palaces in western Baghdad. Bennett was using noodles from a chicken with noodles MRE as bait, but didn't have any luck.
An oil well burned today in the outskirts of Kirkuk, in northern Iraq. U.S. Special Forces and Kurdish troops reportedly made significant progress towards the city. Peter Dejon/Associated Press
Coalition Troops Close on Kirkuk; Special Forces Take Oil Fields.
New York Times
By STEVEN LEE MYERS with JANE PERLEZ
BAGHDAD, April 10 - After the exuberance that swept Baghdad on Wednesday, fighting quickly resumed today, as United States Marines came under heavy fire at a presidential palace in the north of the city.
Some 150 miles to the north, Kurdish and American forces closed in on the important oil city of Kirkut. Kurdish forces also entered Khaneh on the Iranian border, and, in joint operations with American Special Forces, took oilfields near Kirkut. Despite the successes in the field, American military officials remained cautious about declaring victory in Iraq.
At the United States military's Central Command headquarters in Doha, Qatar, Navy Capt. Frank Thorp told reporters today: ``I would say agani that we fully expect that there are fierce battles ahead, that there continues to be resistance and that the overall objective of bringing down the regime has not yet been achieved. But it will be.''
He said that the United States-led forces were still involved in sporadic fighting in Baghdad and other areas of Iraq. ``There are still some organized units of Republican Guard and regular army in the country as well as remnants of the Republican Guard divisions that have coalesced into composite forces,'' the captain said.
In Baghdad, the Marines First Division, Fifth Regiment faced Iraqi fighters armed with AK-47's and rocket-propelled grenades shortly after midnight before securing the palace and a nearby mosque.
By the time the fighting ended, one Marine was killed and more than 20 others were wounded, American military officials said. The mosque was believed to be a stronghold of government loyalists and Saddam Hussein was rumored to be hiding there, according to the Marines. An estimated 20 Iraqi prisoners of war were captured, they said.
``We had information that a group of regime leadership was attempting to organize a meeting,'' Captain Thorp said at Central Command. ``The fighting an and around the mosque complex could not be avoided as enemy forces were firing from the area of the mosque.''
But the city center was calm with only occasional bursts of automatic gun fire from remnants of Iraqi fighters hiding in buildings, under bridges and on rooftops.
The main armored units of the Third Infantry Division pushed eastward this morning from the Baghdad International Airport and met with the Second Brigade which had been in downtown Baghdad since Monday.
Together they established total control over the main road from the airport to the center city, Route 8. They met some resistance, including two minefields strung across the road. But by midday the forces had cleared the road and opened it to military traffic.
The road passes through an area of embassies and residencies, and at midday Iraqis were seen looting the Chinese and Turkish embassies.
There was sporadic gunfire but officers said some was aimed at the American troops while some came from Iraqis celebrating the arrival of the United States forces.
Shops remained shuttered, and by midday in Baghdad there was little sign of the widespread looting that ravaged the main buildings of Basra, the second city, immediately after it fell into coalition control earlier this week.
Baghdad residents seemed more intent today on continuing to obliterate the symbols of Saddam Hussein. This morning American Marines tried to assist by setting explosives on an iron statue of the Iraqi leader in central Baghdad. But after flames shot up from the statue, it remained steadfast on its pedestal with just a hole ripped out at the groin.
In the north, a few hundred Kurds, working with about 100 Special Forces members, moved into Kirkut after about two or three hours of fighting. There appeared to be little damage to nearby oil fields; only one plume of smoke was visible.
Some shooting continued, and the American forces in Qatar said they could not claim control of the city.
A statue of Saddam was pulled over, and a local prison erupted, killing Iraq officials running it. It was unclear whether the Iraqi officials fled to Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, or evaporated into the city.
In northern Iraq, the Kurds reacted jubilantly to the fall of Saddam Hussein. People entered the headquarters of his Baath Party in the town of Dibis, and looted it and vandalized it, The Associated Press reported. Nearby oil facilities were reported completely intact. In the town, local people attacked a tile mural of Mr. Hussein, throwing mud at it, smashing it and hitting it with their shoes.
Away from the war front, there were diplomatic and political moves.
Washington and London set in motion a new campaign aimed at winning over the Iraqi populace, saying that President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair would broadcastinga new message today telling the Iraqis that very soon they would be rid of Saddam Hussein.
``The nightmare that Saddam Hussein has brought to your nation will soon be over,'' Mr. Bush said in his message. ``You deserve better than tyranny and corruption and torture chambers. You deserve to live as free people. And I assure every citizen of Iraq, your nation will soon be free.''
In his message, Mr. Blair said: ``Saddam Hussein's regime is collapsing and the years of brutality, oppression and fear are coming to an end. A new and better future beckons for the people of Iraq.
``We did not want this war but in refusing to give up his weapons of mass destruction Saddam gave us no choice but to act. Now that the war has begun it will be seen through to the end.''
Reuters reported the the messages will be broadcast over a new Arabic television network, produced by the American and British governments, called Nahwa, Al Hurrieh or ``Toward Freedom.'' The British government said that the messages also will be broadcast for one hour a day from a United States Air Force plane flying over Iraq, Reuters reported.
In the Arab world, leaders began to react to the collapse of the Iraqi regime with caution. In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak, urged the United States to hand power back to the Iraqis as quickly as possible. In Saudi Arabia, the government controlled newspapers gave even-handed coverage. Baghdad Falls, Saddam Disappears and Search on for Saddam were headlines in two major dailies. The morning newspaper, Al Riyadh, warned that a collapse of law and order could lead to civil war.
In Kuwait, the most pro-American country in the region and from where the war was launched, officials gave an enthusiastic welcome to the fall of the regime. The arrival of the American troops in Baghdad was a victory for the liberation of Iraq, proclaimed this morning's edition of the Kuwait Times.
Also in Kuwait, the retired American general, Jay Garner, who is set to become the civilian leader of Iraq, waited with his advisers for a more settled situation in Baghdad and other cities before venturing over the border.
In London, the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, announced that he would be sending an envoy to Syria and to Iran in the coming days to discuss post-war Iraq.
``It is important to maintain the dialogue with both these countries,'' Mr. Straw told parliament. ``Syria and Iran now have the chance to play their part in building a better future for Iraq.''
And in Berlin, a government spokesman said that Chancellor Gerhard SchrÃoder will meet with Mr. Blair on Tuesday to discuss the war in Iraq. Mr. SchrÃoder and French President Jacques Chirac were two of the most outspoken critics of the war against Iraq and led the fight against the United Nations giving its sanctions for the attack.
Kurdish Allies Enter Kirkuk; Turks to Send Observers
Skirmishes Continue in Baghdad.
washingtonpost.com
Staff and Wire Reports
Thursday, April 10, 2003; 9:41 AM
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- America's Kurdish allies achieved a major breakthrough Thursday entering the city of Kirkuk near some of Iraq's most productive oil fields, prompting Turkey to say it is sending military observers to the oil-rich city.
In Baghdad, U.S. forces battled holdout fighters Thursday at a palace and a mosque; one Marine was killed and up to 20 wounded.
Turkey Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said he spoke with Secretary of State Colin Powell on Thursday and that Powell offered to let Turkey send military observers to Kirkuk to make sure that Iraqi Kurdish fighters withdraw from the city.
"We've accepted this," Gul said.
Turkey has repeatedly said that it will not accept Iraqi Kurdish control of Kirkuk.
President Bush, in a remarks televised throughout Iraq, told its citizens, "The long era of fear and cruelty is ending. . . .the future of your country will soon belong to you."
Both skirmishes and widespread looting continued in Baghdad, a day after U.S. officials declared that Saddam Hussein's regime was no longer in control. U.S. Central Command said Marines engaged in "intense fighting" with pro-Hussein forces at the Imam Mosque, the Az Amihyah Palace and the house of a Baath party leader.
Capt. Frank Thorp, a command spokesman, said U.S. troops acted on information that regime leaders were trying to organize a meeting in the area. During the operations, he said, Marines were fired on from the mosque compound.
Thorp said he didn't know if Hussein was among those trying to organize the meeting, and he had no information on any regime leaders being captured or killed.
That engagement aside, the largely one-sided battle for Baghdad appeared nearly over, and U.S. commanders were focusing on plans to oust pro-Hussein forces from their handful of remaining strongholds in the north -- including Hussein's heavily defended hometown of Tikrit and the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk near the northern oil fields.
A convoy of Kurdish fighters drove into an industrial neighborhood of Kirkuk on Thursday. There was shooting on the northwest edge of the city, but the extent of pro-Hussein resistance was unclear.
After Wednesday's momentous celebrations, and after perhaps the quietest night since the war began, Baghdad residents were back out on the streets Thursday.
Motorists flew white flags on their vehicles. Many people embarked on a new wave of looting, setting fires to some Interior Ministry buildings and making off with carpets, furniture, TVs and air conditioners from government-owned apartments, abandoned government offices and the police academy.
Also looted was the German Embassy -- representing a government that had emphatically opposed the U.S. decision to go to war.
In Saddam City, a densely population Shiite Muslim district in Baghdad, some residents set up roadblocks, confiscated loot being brought back from the city in wheelbarrows and pushcarts, and sent the booty to a nearby mosque.
Some U.S. units received word Thursday that they should try to stop the looting, but strategies for doing so remained incomplete.
"There's civilian looting like crazy, all over the place," said Lance Cpl. Darren Pickard of Merced, Calif. "There just aren't enough of us to clear it out."
One Baghdad man, Adel Naji al-Tamimi, 49, said had spent 17 years in prison for writing anti-Saddam articles.
"He made himself a legend and a myth," al-Tamimi said. "His atrocities and oppression controlled our feelings and we're still afraid."
In many parts of the country, civilians struggled with serious shortages of food, medicine and clean water. Several major international aid groups are demanding swift access to Iraqi civilians, without interference from U.S. or British troops.
"We need the independence to move around and do our assessments and we need security," said Kathleen Hunt of Care International. "The images we see on television (of widespread looting) are not very encouraging in terms of lawlessness in certain parts of the country."
Hoping to restore some degree of order to the southern city of Basra, British troops Thursday asked residents to turn in their guns -- no questions asked.
"If we want to give the new Iraq a chance, these weapons have to be taken out of circulation," said Capt. Cliff Dare of 3 Commando Brigade Engineer Group.
Humanitarian assistance is expected to be high on the agenda of the U.S.-led interim administration that is expected to begin operating in Baghdad within the next week or two. Headed by retired U.S. Gen. Jay Garner, the team will coordinate relief programs, rebuild shattered infrastructure and start setting up a democratic government.
Vestiges of the old government were vanishing rapidly. Statues and portraits of Saddam were toppled and defaced in Baghdad and other cities, while Iraqi diplomats at some embassies abroad shredded or burned documents. Iraq's U.N. ambassador, Mohammed Al-Douri, told reporters "the game is over, and I hope peace will prevail."
Hussein's precise fate remained unknown. Hoping to resolve the mystery, U.S. special operations forces examined a site in a Baghdad residential neighborhood that was bombed Monday based on intelligence that Saddam and at least one of his sons were there.
Though elated by the U.S.-led coalition's success, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said several missions remain to be accomplished before any victory declaration. Among them: securing the northern oil fields, determining what happened to Saddam and his sons, uncovering details of Saddam's weapons programs, and capturing or killing any terrorists still at large in Iraq.
Across the Arab world, the fall of Baghdad -- and the televised scenes of jubilation and looting -- provoked shock, disbelief and bitterness. Some Arabs expressed hope that other oppressive regimes in the region would crumble; others were disappointed that Saddam's forces offered such weak resistance to America.
After an anti-war march in Khartoum, Sudan, lawyer Ali al-Sayed said U.S. troops should not misinterpret the rejoicing in Baghdad as an invitation to stay.
"Those people under oppression. . . .they will be happy to see someone removing a dictator and liberating them," al-Sayed said. "But the moment they feel free and liberated, they will not tolerate a foreign presence."
The celebrations in Baghdad took place 21 days after U.S. forces started the war with an airstrike intended to kill Saddam. According to the Pentagon, 101 American troops died in the first three weeks of the war, 11 were missing and seven were listed as captured. The British said 30 of their troops were dead. There are no reliable estimates for Iraqi casualties; an Army spokesman said 7,300 prisoners had been taken.
This story was written by David Crary in New York, based on reporting from Ellen Knickmeyer, Ravi Nessman, Chris Tomlinson and Hamza Hendawi in Baghdad and other AP reporters in Iraq and elsewhere.
JUBLAR MED ROCKY Jublande kurder i Erbil har plockat fram den amerikanska flaggan som pryds av skådespelaren Sylvester Stallone i sin roll som boxaren Rocky. Foto: REUTERS
See No Freedom, Hear No Freedom, Speak No Freedom.
frontpagemag ^ | April 10, 2003 | By Brian Sayre
"Baghdad residents celebrate the downfall of Saddam Hussein."
Eight words. That's the entire coverage of the celebrations in Baghdad provided by Media Transparency's anti-war website, Cursor.org. Terse, isn't it? Especially when you consider how much Cursor.org usually has to say about the war - the rest of the day's coverage is a litany of complaints. Why so quiet about the main events of the day? It seems the anti-war crowd has a problem - yesterday was a great day.
Not that Cursor.org's coverage was particularly bad, compared to the rest of the anti-war crowd, both left and right. Faced with joyous Iraqis celebrating in the streets, toppling statues of Saddam Hussein in cooperation with American troops, those against the war faced a dilemma - how could they maintain their beliefs and their credibility in the face of directly contradicting evidence? Their first response, it seems, was to deny their eyes.
As the Iraqis' support for the U.S. military appeared on the television, the first instinctive reaction of Democratic Party activists at the popular discussion site Democratic Underground was to deny what was actually happening. One claimed there was only "2 dozen" Iraqis celebrating, and claimed they only celebrated out of fear of our troops. Another sarcastically questioned the Iraqis' sanity, writing "I think I just read where they released all the mental patients." Others didn't believe the protestors were 'real' Iraqis, arguing that the event was staged and those celebrating were exiles returned by the American army. Another expresses his total racist contempt for the Iraqi people by writing, about the Iraqis who trampled Hussein's statue underfoot, "Okay, we're dancing, massa. you going to give us some food now or what?" But this was remarkably polite, compared to other comments. One Democrat best kept Underground, if his party wishes to avoid a complete rout next year, wrote that "being anti-Bush is being pro-American, because George Walker Bush Jr. is an unelected fascist piece of s**t dictator. And you can quote me on that."
With pleasure - it's quite revealing. But these anonymous commentators, the bastion of the left-wing of the Democratic Party, aren't the only ones who think our own government is worse than Hussein's. Take Jane Fonda, a prominent anti-war activist since the Vietnam era. According to NewsMax.com, Jane Fonda was in Vancouver, Canada, claiming that Operation Iraqi Freedom will make the whole world unite against America. Fonda suffers from the particular leftist belief that America is the dictatorship. "I don't know if a country where the people are so ignorant of reality and of history," she said, "if you can call that a free world." Aside from America's sizeable coalition of supporters, Jane, the Iraqis in Baghdad don't appear to be 'uniting against us' - but at least this time you weren't speaking over enemy radio.
Anti-war columnists who filed the night before were completely caught by surprise. On the day American troops were greeted by cheering Iraqis, antiwar.com's Christopher Deliso wrote about the swelling frustration of the Muslim world. You'd think the Iraqis weren't Muslim. His fellow antiwar.com writer, Justin Raimondo, spent his column writing about a conquering American imperialism, posted just as it became clear that the Iraqi people didn't have to be conquered. Journalists in the print media fared little better. For example, Molly Ivins tore into the American administration in her own syndicated column, criticizing the government for listening to Iraqi émigrés and believing the Iraqis would welcome the invading coalition with open arms. "Anyone who has studied the history of emigre groups knows the endless infighting and delusional quality of the emigre culture," she wrote, but the welcome of our troops was hardly a delusion. And Thomas Friedman, who wrote that our presence was "a scene of humiliation, not liberation," and declared that "we must do better," got his scene of liberation before the New York Times hit my doorstop. What a difference a day makes.
The popular Internet news sites of the anti-war crowd, normally a hive of continually-updated activity, were curiously quiet about of the liberation of Baghdad and the happiness of the Iraqis. If you perused the headlines at BuzzFlash, you'd never know that statues of Hussein were falling in Baghdad, and Iraqis were dancing in the streets. You will, however, read that "Looters Accompany Liberation - Ain't War Grand?"
Do the maintainers of BuzzFlash really have nothing positive to say about the toppling of a dictatorship? The clearing-house web site antiwar.com is also quite silent, posting only bare-bones reports from Reuters as their usual flood of linked media pessimism slowed to a trickle. Instead of sharing in the joy of the Iraqi people at the collapse of the Baathist regime, they too focus on the sporadic looting taking place in Baghdad and Basra. If these people won the lottery, they'd complain about having to pick up the check. And we've already seen how Cursor.org got the main events of the day out of the way in eight words to resume their stream of criticism. Left-wing gadfly Michael Moore, who has been posting collections of links daily on his web site, is condescendingly dismissive - "Liberation comes," he writes, "but don't believe the hype." One can practically see the clouds of dust as these left-wing pundits ran past Iraqi freedom to get to territory more to their likely. And they say the 'mainstream media' is biased?
As their theories were being crushed by reality, many anti-war commentators knew enough to simply keep quiet. Look at Eric Alterman, a liberal commentator who thinks there was more diversity in the Soviet Union's press than on American talk radio today. Alterman writes a blog for MSNBC called Altercations, which asks us "Is this the right room for an argument?" None came on Liberation Day. Every previous day, Alterman has criticized both the war on Iraq and the Bush government, often in the crudest terms - in his most recent Nation column, he argued that the war is not in the interests of the Iraqis or Americans, but the Jewish "Likudniks" in the Bush administration. But when Iraqis got their freedom, Alterman gives us Lou Reed. A long, rambling story about Lou Reed, mysterious curses, and restaurant harassment. The political cartoonist Tom Tomorrow is similarly silent about the war - 'one of those days', he writes. Liberal blogger Atrios was busy, posting a dozen time, but for some reason decided to skip any discussion of statue-toppling.
A dozen entries in an eight-hour day, Atrios, and the only one that mentions the liberation of Baghdad is about Wolf Blitzer's technical difficulties? At least Atrios was covering current news. The American Prospect's blog, TAPPED, mentions the liberated Iraqis only briefly, when they complain about the New York Times for reporting a statement of President Bush too quickly. "Were the President's thoughts so urgent that they had to be headlined the moment they were uttered?" TAPPED wrote. TAPPED, was the trampling of Hussein's statue by cheering Iraqis so peripheral you preferred to spend your time quoting extensively from Thomas Friedman's already out of date column?
Disturbingly, some news sources on the left actually began to censor news of Iraq liberation. The network of Independent Media Centers, financially supported by a variety of left-wing charitable foundations, showed their hypocrisy by declaring their support for 'Open Publishing' while systematically censoring anything that disagreed with them. 'Open Publishing', a concept where the readers of a website contribute to it directly, allows for a diversity of views, but if one looks at the stories Indymedia has removed from their front page, one sees systematic ideological bias. Conservative viewpoints have been progressively eliminated. One reader notes the hypocrisy, writing "Iraqi Information Minister to Join SF Indymedia Censorship Committee." This dissent was hidden just as quickly. What did Indymedia have to say about the happiness in Baghdad? Absolutely nothing.
So it goes. After a day of liberation, the anti-war movement has absolutely nothing to say. The major anti-war organizations - International A.N.S.W.E.R., Not in Our Name, Win Without War, United for Peace and Justice - all tell us nothing, even as they continue organizing their protests. The organizations behind them - the Workers' World Party, the Revolutionary Communist Party - again, they say nothing. But this shouldn't surprise anyone; in the face of the freedom of the Iraqi people and the nobility of the U.S. military, their anti-American harping rings hollow. But the criticism will return anew. If Iraq does not immediately rise to the level of prosperity and freedom found in America, the leftists will cry foul, conveniently forgetting the enormous progress already made by the removal of Iraq's evil dictator.
Already they are switching tactics, focusing on minor negatives in the face of a great good. They will continue to focus on the few accidental deaths caused by coalition forces in Iraq. As the anti-war news site Alternet.org reported reported, there are two stories coming out of Iraq. One, the liberation of the Iraqis, will be permanent. The other, the sensationalistic reporting of accidental deaths by Iraqi collaborationists like Peter Arnett, is strictly temporary. While devastating for the unfortunate victims and their families, these accidental deaths are kept to a strict minimum by the careful actions of the American military, and far less than the damage caused by the butcher of Baghdad's dictatorship. Once the military campaign reaches its inevitable end, these accidents will cease completely.
Yesterday was a victory - for Iraq, for America, and for freedom. Thousands of people in Iraq took to the streets to celebrate their liberation as the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein all but collapsed. The images of cheering Iraqis and the American military cooperating together to topple statues of the dictator were seen around the world, including on Arab media; such images of freedom have not been seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The vast majority of Americans, those who support our troops and our government, were not surprised - this had been expected from the start. Only the anti-Americans in our midst are unable to explain it; and therefore they must ignore it. The rest of us know better.
Mosul Falls as Saddam's Support Collapses in North.
By Sebastian Alison
MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraq's third city of Mosul fell, apparently without a fight, to Kurdish guerrillas and U.S. special forces on Friday, heralding the total collapse of support for Saddam Hussein in the north. In Kirkuk, the main oil town in the north which fell on Thursday, Kurdish fighters said they were ready to leave as soon as U.S. forces arrived to provide security, probably later in the day.
There, too, Iraqi forces had simply walked away. Events in the north left Saddam's home town of Tikrit, which is 175 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad on the main road from Mosul, as the one significant target left to the U.S.-led forces. Mosul is 390 km (240 miles) north of the capital. Amid reports of the remnants of Saddam's army throwing down their arms and walking away from Kirkuk, Kurdish fighters moved into the center of Mosul, apparently unopposed.
Reuters Television producer Soheil Afdjei said that the streets appeared calm and the mood was one of celebration. "There are a lot people on the streets. There are a lot of Kurdish peshmerga at checkpoints," he added from the heart of the city. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, speaking earlier, said small numbers of U.S. troops were also in Mosul. "I haven't seen any Americans, although the peshmerga say the Americans are in town too," Afdjei said. A Kurdish commander in the city's outskirts told Reuters: "There are no Saddam regime followers left."
"It's fairly calm. There's a happy mood in town," Afdjei added. "There was the sound of gunfire earlier. The peshmerga said 'It's our boys firing in the air'." He watched as jubilant Iraqis, chanting anti-Saddam slogans, entered a branch of the Bank of Iraq and emerged with bundles of Iraqi dinars bearing Saddam's face that they tore to shreds.
Both the United States and Iraqi Kurdish leaders, who have run a large slice of the north under the protection of U.S. and British warplanes since shortly after the 1991 Gulf War, are sensitive to neighboring Turkey's reaction to the presence of peshmerga fighters in the main oil centers. Turkey fears that Kurdish control of Iraq's northern oil fields will fuel separatist aspirations both there and among its own Kurdish minority. At one stage Ankara threatened to send troops to intervene.
PREPARING TO LEAVE.
In Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of the capital Baghdad, a senior Kurdish commander said his forces were preparing to hand over control of the city to the Americans. "Yes, we expect to be leaving when the Americans arrive, and that may well be later today," said Mam Rostam, a senior Kurdish commander whose forces had rushed into Kirkuk, apparently without the full agreement of the United States.
Five buses were parked outside the main administration building in the center of the city and fighters there said they had been informed they would probably leave on Friday back to their positions in their Kurdish-controlled northern enclave. Kirkuk was quiet early on Friday after a day of jubilation and celebration at the collapse of Iraqi government forces. Dozens of armed peshmerga roamed the streets but the only U.S. soldiers seen were a small number of special forces.
Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the two main Iraqi Kurdish parties, told CNN the Kurdish forces had entered Kirkuk only to secure the oilfields from retreating Iraqi troops and to prevent looting in the city. "They will go out of Kirkuk immediately when American forces replace them," he said, echoing Rostam's comments.
"The city of Kirkuk will be in the hands of American and coalition forces. It will be part of Iraq, the new Iraq, the new democratic, federative Iraq," said Talabani. Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said on Thursday that Secretary of State Colin Powell had told him U.S. troops would remove the peshmerga from Kirkuk.
In Washington, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Washington had agreed to Turkey sending a small number of military observers to the area. On the edge of Mosul, peshmerga said the people had risen up. "Mosul is finished. People make revolution. Revolution is finished," one said. (With additional reporting by Mike Collett-White in Kirkuk)
Kurdish pershmerga fighters are in control of the centre of the main northern Iraqi city of Mosul, witnesses say. The move came as Kurdish leaders said their forces, which have seized the nearby oil-rich city of Kirkuk, would start handing over to US troops on Friday. US-led forces in northern Iraq have been targeting the last significant Iraqi army units, and are still trying to work out the strength of defences around Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit.
As Saddam Hussein's regime crumbles in key cities, the United Nations has criticised US and UK troops for failing to curb widespread looting and lawlessness. But the Pentagon said US troops were dealing with pockets of Iraqi resistance as a top priority, before turning their attention to restoring law and order.
Northern targets.
Mr Rumsfeld said US and Kurdish troops were entering Mosul - Iraq's third largest city - with no apparent Iraqi resistance. "There appears to be an opportunity for the regular Iraqi forces to turn in their weapons and no longer pose a threat, in which case Kurdish forces and US forces in small numbers are in the process of moving into Mosul," he told reporters.
"To my knowledge, at last hearing, it is an orderly process and the forces that are entering are being welcomed by the people," the defence secretary said. Lieutenant Colonel Robert Waltemeyer, commander of a US special forces unit north of Mosul, said Kurdish troops would not be allowed to take the city - as they did in Kirkuk on Thursday, ignoring a specific US request.
American troops arrived in Kirkuk late on Thursday to replace the Iraqi Kurds after the Turkish Government threatened to intervene. Turkey is sending military observers to oversee the move. A senior Kurdish official told the BBC both Iraqi Kurdish parties had given instructions for their forces inside Kirkuk to move back to their original positions on Friday.
The BBC's John Simpson, who is in Kirkuk, says the US forces are popular among the Kurds and expects the Kurdish fighters will withdraw in favour of the Americans. The collapse of Saddam Hussein's control of Iraq's fourth-largest city of Kirkuk could have major ramifications as different groups position themselves for power in post-war Iraq.
Turkey has repeatedly opposed Iraqi Kurdish control of the oil-rich region, fearing it could encourage Kurds in southern Turkey who wish for an independent state. The BBC's Jonny Dymond in Istanbul says that Turkey fears the oil fields surrounding Kirkuk could give an economic foundation to Kurdish hopes for an independent state.
American and Kurdish forces entered Mosul today after military officials said Iraqi commanders there were offering to surrender in exchange for amnesty and an end to bombing. Kamran Jebreili/Associated Press
Iraqis toppled a statue of Saddam Hussein in Kirkuk. Joseph Barrak/Agence France-Presse
Deputy Prime Minister Aziz Was Key Spokesman to West.
By Monte Reel and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 25, 2003; Page A01
BAGHDAD, April 24 -- Tariq Aziz, Iraq's urbane former deputy prime minister who was his country's chief spokesman to the West, surrendered to U.S. custody in Baghdad today, becoming the highest-ranking official in fallen president Saddam Hussein's Baath Party government to give himself up.
A senior U.S. official said Aziz, known for his silver mane, large-framed glasses and a taste for fine cigars, made several inquiries through intermediaries about his fate once in U.S. hands before being taken in by U.S. officials. He was detained at an undisclosed place for what is likely to be extensive interrogation on what he knows about Hussein, his two sons and other top Iraqi leaders unaccounted for more than two weeks after the government's collapse.
Aziz, an English-speaking Chaldean Christian born near Mosul in 1936 and educated in Baghdad, toiled for years as Hussein's foreign minister and main representative abroad. He served on the Revolutionary Command Council, the ultimate authority in Iraq, but was not part of the ruler's inner circle, composed of Hussein's family and Baath stalwarts who have stood beside him since the party took over here in 1968. He was No. 43 on the U.S. list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis.
Aziz turned himself in as U.S. occupation authorities struggled to organize an interim administration to replace the now-destroyed Baath Party government that he represented so long. Retired Lt. Gen. Jay M. Garner, the Pentagon appointee setting up the new administration, said he hoped to fill the country's power vacuum by early next week, chiefly by getting government ministries running again.
A self-styled mayor of Baghdad, however, went ahead with meetings and the appointment of city officials in defiance of a U.S. order to stop his activities and cede to U.S. occupation authorities. Garner, head of the Pentagon's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, suggested he might force out the self-appointed Baghdad leader, Mohammed Mohsen Zubaidi, unless he goes away voluntarily.
"If the people of Baghdad are unhappy with him, all they have to do is come tell us," Garner said at a news conference concluding a four-day tour of the country. "We'll ask him to leave and show him how."
Garner said his efforts were intended to allow Iraqis to take control of their country and eventually elect leaders to replace the destroyed government. The only requirement Garner said his organization had of those new leaders was that they follow democratic processes.
Asked what he would do if Iraqis chose an Islamic state, as some groups from the country's 60 percent Shiite Muslim majority have called for during recent demonstrations, Garner said he did not believe such a government was likely to meet the U.S. condition. "It's hard to think an Islamic republic could be a democratic process," he said.
Garner's boss, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, also ruled out a clergy-run Islamic government for Iraq, telling the Associated Press in an interview in Washington: "If you're suggesting, how would we feel about an Iranian-type government with a few clerics running everything in the country, the answer is: That isn't going to happen."
Garner said, as have other U.S. officials, that the anti-U.S. demonstrations by Iraqi Shiites in recent days have been orchestrated in part by neighboring Iran, which is predominantly Shiite and run largely by the clergy. He added that his office would work to quash any external influence on Iraq's future.
But Iran rejected the suggestions that it was interfering in Iraq and attempting to promote the fortunes of Iraqi Shiites. Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, at a news conference today in Tehran, said that if any country is interfering in Iraq, it is the United States.
In the city of Kut, meanwhile, gunmen fired at least 15 shots at a U.S. Marine command post in two drive-by shootings, U.S. military officers reported. No one was injured. Tensions have been high in Kut, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, between Marines who are supposed to control the area and a Shiite cleric who has taken over the town hall with apparent support from the population.
U.S. officials have said they believe the cleric, Sayed Abbas Fadhil, is part of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Tehran-based Shiite group headed by Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim that has boycotted Garner's attempt to lay groundwork for a U.S.-led interim administration.
Zubaidi's assumption of mayoral functions in Baghdad occurred last week, while Garner and his team were still in neighboring Kuwait awaiting military clearance to start work in Iraq. Zubaidi's activities have emerged as another significant obstacle confronting the Defense Department as it seeks to organize civilian authority here alongside the U.S. military.
Although U.S. officials have made clear they want him out, they remain reluctant to forcibly evict him. There is concern that Iraqis could regard such an action as heavy-handed for a government that has repeatedly asserted it wants Iraqis to take charge of their destiny now that Hussein has been ousted.
As Garner spoke, Zubaidi was busy looking and acting like a big-city mayor. He met with hundreds of Baghdad residents and toured public institutions, including hospitals and water facilities, then headed off for a meeting in a neighborhood that he said had invited him to visit. That is his mandate, Zubaidi insisted, as he brandished a letter of support signed by 74 Iraqi professors, clerics and tribal leaders who he has claimed elected him to administer the city, without saying when or where they did so.
Zubaidi rattled off a string of accomplishments. He said he had created civilian committees to extinguish fires and bury war casualties. He has made dozens of appointments to police, military, financial and agricultural committees and encouraged doctors and utility workers to return to their jobs. He did this, he said, while U.S. soldiers watched looters ransack the city, leaving ordinary citizens with nowhere to turn.
"The Americans stood by and did nothing," he said at the coffee shop of a hotel, where he received a steady procession of notables coming to seek favors and dispense advice. "They said, 'We are not the police; it's not our job to keep order.' "
So Zubaidi, who fled Iraq 24 years ago and has lived in several countries since, said he took the initiative, acting out of a patriotic duty. "We are the sons of Baghdad," he said. "It is up to us to maintain our city and to serve its people."
U.S. officials do not view it that way. On Wednesday, an emissary for Army Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, the ground commander here, hand-delivered a notice to Zubaidi saying U.S. and allied forces are the only civil or military authority in Iraq and anyone else claiming the authority is guilty of misrepresentation.
Zubaidi said he has drafted a response in Arabic and intends to deliver a translation to McKiernan. Zubaidi pointedly described himself as "not a politician" but a civil administrator. He said his work does not conflict with the goals of the U.S. administrators and that he would welcome a working relationship with Garner and his organization.
He said Garner sent a messenger this afternoon requesting a meeting with him Monday and predicted that Garner would change his mind about him after they talk. "They will see we are doing what the Iraqi people want," he said.
Another exile leader, Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress, planned to meet with Garner tonight, according to a Chalabi spokesman. Chalabi, who has enjoyed Pentagon support, also has been meeting with Iraqi groups. But the spokesman said that, unlike Zubaidi, Chalabi has not assumed any authority.
He also said Chalabi supported McKiernan's proclamation and described the INC's relations with Zubaidi, a former member of the organization, as "increasingly difficult."
Garner and his top British adviser, Maj. Gen. Tim Cross, rebuffed the notion that Chalabi was being groomed for a top interim position. They said Chalabi was one of many potential leaders.
Garner said he expects the country's 23 government ministries to reopen next week under U.S. supervision. They are to be run by a mix of U.S. advisers, Iraqi exiles with technical experience and former ministry employees. Using databases with information on former workers, Garner said, his office will screen those who try to return to work. Those who had close ties to Hussein, he said, need not apply.
"I think the policy is that we will identify anyone that was a crony of Saddam Hussein or anyone who was involved in violation of human rights, and he will be disqualified," Garner said. "Beyond that, I don't think there will be disqualifications."
Maj. Gen. Carl Strock, Garner's point man on reconstruction, said it was likely that most ministries would operate from a central location until permanent locations can be found. Many government buildings in Baghdad were destroyed by bombing, looting or burning.
"If they still have a ministry and there's no furniture," Garner said, "we'll buy the furniture."
Relatives of executed political prisoners exhumed remains from graves marked by numbers on metal plates. Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
ABU GHRAIB, Iraq, April 24 — First the gravedigger found some teeth. "Please, just barely scrape the sand," Adel Rahaif Hani, whose brother, Satter, was arrested as a political prisoner in 1995, begged the digger. "I'm worried he's just below this layer."
Mr. Hani came to a cemetery here today, like dozens of other Iraqis, not with the name of his dead brother but with a number. Satter's number was 535. A cousin, Sagur, arrested at the same time, was 537.
These numbers were what was left of people convicted as enemies of Saddam Hussein and then made to disappear. Their graves were not dignified with names but with numbers painted on metal plates. The plates spread like rusty weeds, covering more and more feet of desert every year Mr. Hussein held power.
But now that he is gone, the families of the disappeared are finding the numbers, matching them to the metal plates and finally collecting their dead.
These were people executed — most by hanging in the fearsome Abu Ghraib prison a mile away — merely because the government considered them a threat. Many were Shiite Muslims more active in their religion than the Sunni-dominated government felt it could tolerate.
"This is all because of Saddam!" shrieked Ali Majid al-Shamali, in tears, as he waved his arms at the long rows of graves marked with metal signs, well over 1,000 of them. "My brother! My brother!"
He sat on the ground and stroked the dirt on the grave of his only brother, Walid, arrested in October, 1993. A man from another family at the graveyard tried to comfort him. "You lost only one person?" the man asked. "We lost eight here."
Two women in black wailed. Both men started to cry.
"Why these innocent people?" Mr. Shamali yelled. "Why?"
The thousands of Iraqis executed as political prisoners — more probably tens or hundreds of thousands — might have been unidentified forever, except that the Hussein government, which was as bureaucratically efficient as it was cruel, kept records of most everyone it killed. These were not available to ordinary Iraqis. But now a new organization, the Committee for Free Prisoners, says it has received millions of documents from the custodians of the nation's graveyards for executed political prisoners. The numbers are contained in these documents.
The head of the group, Ibrahim Raouf Idrisi, who says he spent 6 of his 35 years in prisons because he joined a Muslim party, has opened the records to family members to find what happened to their loved ones, and they are coming here every day.
Sitting today in the abandoned house in Baghdad of a Hussein general, whose rooms are now piled with fat green record books of torture and execution, Mr. Idrisi mused at the hundreds of millions of dollars Mr. Hussein spent jailing and killing his enemies. "If he had spent only half that money on the people, they would have loved him," he said. "He is a terrorist, the only terrorist in the universe."
The documents represent only a small part of what existed on cemeteries around Iraq, he said, before the government went on a spree of paper shredding in its last hours.
Much survived. Mr. Hani, for example, now has the death certificate of his brother, which states plainly that on Aug. 23, 1997 he was "executed by hanging."
A slightly broader picture of what happened has emerged from the chief gravedigger, just 21 years old. He is Muhammad Muslim Muhammad and he said he began digging graves here when he was 14 to fulfill his military service.
He said he received the bodies every Wednesday at about 11 a.m., after the weekly hangings at around 5 a.m. There were never fewer than nine bodies to bury. During one especially bad time in 2001, he said, the numbers rose. One day he buried 18 people. He said he had never told anyone the details of his job.
"I didn't open my mouth, or I would have ended up with these poor people here," he said.
The oldest graves in the cemetery, he said, date to 1983, four years after Mr. Hussein took power. The most recent, he said, was from six months ago, about the time that Mr. Hussein declared an amnesty for prisoners at Abu Ghraib as the threat of an attack by the United States rose.
He said he personally helped bury 700 people, but he has no idea how many bodies are in the cemetery, a walled-off part of the huge Islamic cemetery here. The area is sizable, measuring about 130 graves by 25 graves, which if full might hold more than 3,000 bodies.
Slowly, the area is emptying of corpses. In the two weeks since the government fell, the families have been coming, but they were not able to find their relatives until the documents were recovered. So far, Mr. Muhammad said, 80 bodies have been removed.
It is not easy, even for families who have the numbers. Today, a 40-year-old tailor named Hassan Jassim arrived with a scrap of paper scrawled with the number 849, which was supposed to mark the grave of his brother, Selim.
A student in the Hawsa, the Shiite religious school in Najaf, about 85 miles south of Baghdad, Selim was arrested in 1998 at the family's home in Baghdad. The military then destroyed the house.
What Mr. Jassim wanted was to provide his brother with a proper Islamic burial, in which the body is ritually washed and wrapped in white linen. But he could not find the grave: The numbers ran from 847 to 848, then skipped up to 853.
They decided to dig anyway. "Do you want me to dig up everything or just the head," the gravedigger asked. Mr. Jassim decided just to see the head, because he believed he could identify his brother by his two missing back teeth.
"There are so many graves that don't have numbers," he said. "We don't know what to do."
The dirt was dry and easily dug and soon the gravedigger held up a skull. "It's not him," Mr. Jassim said. "The teeth are complete."
At grave No. 444, a large family worked together to unearth Hamid Omran, who was 31 when he was arrested in 1994. As the family carefully lifted the bones onto fresh linen, his cousin, Farhan Jassim, 47, exploded in anger.
"I don't think there was a regime in the world that treated political prisoners the way Saddam did," he said. "You can't imagine such exaggerated injustice."
The jaw surfaced. Mr. Hussein, the cousin said, "hated every Iraqi. Believe me, he hated all Iraqis."
Then the family found the skull, which showed a crack in a temple. A guard kicked him when he was arrested, the family said.
Another cousin, Thaer Ghawi, 27, wept as he smoked a cigarette once the bones were out of the grave. "We are just people who opposed the regime," he said. "Why couldn't he just put political prisoners in prison?"
Mr. Hani, the man whose brother disappeared in 1995, spent three hours picking through the grave of his brother. It was laborious. After the teeth, a few small bones, perhaps from the feet or hands, were found. Finally, Mr. Hani had found enough to fill a small coffin. He did not find the skull.
"It is enough for me," he said as he loaded the coffin onto a truck. "I feel relieved. What worried me before was I didn't know if he was alive or dead. Now I know."
New York Times
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON and DAVID E. SANGER
President Bush swept through Ohio Thursday to campaign for his tax cut. He waved to supporters as he prepared to leave Akron Canton Airport. Agence France-Presse
WASHINGTON, April 24 — President Bush said today that Iraqi officials and scientists had provided the United States with information that Saddam Hussein may have destroyed or dispersed chemical and biological weapons before the war, suggesting that the search for proof of an Iraqi weapons program could be a long one.
Responding to speculation about Mr. Hussein's fate, the president said that there was considerable evidence that he was dead or severely wounded but that the United States did not have definitive proof, like DNA, that the Iraqi leader had been killed.
Mr. Bush also said the resistance faced by American troops in southern Iraq in the conflict's first weeks was fiercer than he had expected, an admission that seemed at odds with the Pentagon's insistence at the time that the war was unfolding according to plan.
"Shock and awe said to many people that all we've got to do is unleash some might and people will crumble," Mr. Bush said in an interview with NBC News, his most extensive since the invasion of Iraq. "And it turns out the fighters were a lot fiercer than we thought."
Mr. Bush gave a detailed account of how the war looked from his perspective as commander in chief. He said he had some initial concerns about the first blow of the war, his last-minute decision to bomb a home in Baghdad where an agent had reported that Mr. Hussein and his sons might be spending the night.
"I was hesitant at first, to be frank with you," Mr. Bush said, "because I was worried that the first pictures coming out of Iraq would be a wounded grandchild of Saddam Hussein."
But in the end, Mr. Bush said, he was convinced that he had a good opportunity to kill Mr. Hussein. The agent who provided the information from the scene, he added, judged the bombing a success.
"He felt like we got Saddam," the president said, adding that the evidence about Mr. Hussein's fate remained uncertain but that if he was not killed he was severely wounded.
Asked if it might take two years to bring stability to Iraq, Mr. Bush replied: "It could, it could. Or less. Who knows?"
Mr. Bush did not elaborate on the evidence that the United States has gathered since the war's end about Iraq's weapons programs. He acknowledged that questions about the credibility of the United States would not be put to rest until weapons were found.
"I think there's going to be skepticism until people find out there was, in fact, a weapons of mass destruction program," he said.
Despite that, he expressed confidence that American forces would eventually find chemical and biological weapons.
"We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some," Mr. Bush said.
Mr. Bush said the United States had so far examined only 90 of the hundreds of sites that Mr. Hussein and his government might have used to hide the weapons. But the sites that have been examined are those designated by the administration as most likely to conceal weapons.
"And so we will find them," Mr. Bush said in the interview, conducted today by Tom Brokaw aboard Air Force One between the president's appearances in Ohio. "But it's going to take time to find them. And the best way to find them is to continue to collect information from the humans, Iraqis who were involved in hiding them."
In an interview last week, a senior administration official who had reviewed the same intelligence on the weapons program that Mr. Bush had seen said it was unclear what kind of chemical and biological stores the United States would find.
"It's possible that they had the precursors, the raw stuff, but they did not weaponize it," the official said. "We just don't know yet."
But the senior official said there was no real concern in the administration that nothing of importance would be found. "We couldn't have been that far off," the official said.
In describing the war from his perspective, Mr. Bush combined acknowledgments of doubts and pressures with accounts of dramatic moments and humor, including his fascination with the relentlessly upbeat accounts of heroic Iraqi resistance provided by the information minister, Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf.
"He's my man; he was great," said a laughing Mr. Bush. "Somebody accused us of hiring him and putting him there. He was a classic."
The meeting in the White House situation room on March 19 at which he gave Gen. Tommy R. Franks the go-ahead to begin the war was "an emotional moment," Mr. Bush said.
"I then went outside and walked around the grounds, just to get a little air and collect my thoughts," he recounted.
But the plan he had just settled on, calling for Special Forces to begin operating in Iraq, was quickly overtaken by new intelligence about Mr. Hussein's whereabouts.
Mr. Bush recounted how an agent who called in to Central Command from outside a residential compound in Baghdad was able to provide firmer and firmer intelligence throughout that afternoon.
"There in the Oval Office, we were getting near-instant feedback from eyes on the ground," Mr. Bush said. "It was an amazing moment to think that a person risking his life, viewing the farms, watching the entries, seeing, observing what was taking place inside one of Saddam's most guarded facilities, was able to pick up a device, call Centcom, and Centcom would call us."
Asked whether the agent was alive, the president said: "Yes he is. He is with us. Thank God. A brave soul."
Mr. Bush had nothing nice to say about President Jacques Chirac of France, who led the opposition to a United Nations resolution authorizing the use of military force against Iraq. "I doubt he'll be coming to the ranch anytime soon," Mr. Bush said, saying it appeared to many in his administration "that the French position was anti-American."
He expressed fear that the disagreement would weaken the NATO alliance, and in recent days some administration officials have been talking about marginalizing France within NATO.
"Hopefully," Mr. Bush said, "the past tensions will subside, and the French won't be using their position within Europe to create alliances against the United States, or Britain, or Spain, or any of the new countries that are the new democracies in Europe."
Mr. Bush made it clear that Turkey's refusal to allow American forces to invade Iraq from the north had in his view made the war more difficult and bloody.
"Because, for example, we didn't come north from Turkey, Saddam Hussein was able to move a lot of special Republican Guard units and fighters from north to south," Mr. Bush said.
The result was that American forces faced "significant resistance," the president said.
For the first time, Mr. Bush acknowledged that he was concerned about power vacuums in Iraq "being filled by Iranian agents." On Wednesday, the White House said it had warned Iran not to interfere with American efforts to build an "Islamic democracy" in Iraq.
"We have sent the word to the Iranians that's what we expect," he said, adding that he had talked to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and Jose Maria Aznar of Spain about that subject on Wednesday, to get them "to send the same message."
But he made no threats against Iran, and said "we have no military plans" to deal with the country. He noted that he had sent a similar message to Syria, where officials were responding.
Mr. Bush's overt use of diplomatic pressure against Syria and Iran, two countries that Mr. Bush has identified as sponsors of terrorism, is in stark contrast to the use of preemptive force against Iraq.
Yet at one point in his interview, Mr. Bush acknowledged that he had yet to fully form the "Bush doctrine," or to think through how the American victory in Iraq would affect his vow to deal with weapons of mass destruction on a global basis.
He also said that he would "work hard to achieve a two-state solution" in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and that he now had an opportunity to attempt that. "I think it will accelerate" he said of the peace process, "and, hopefully, greatly." But he added, "I'm not so sure what that exactly means."
Even when the fighting was toughest, a time when many commentators were raising questions about the military strategy and predicting a long, difficult war, Mr. Bush said his faith in the war plan never wavered.
"I had confidence in the plan, because I had confidence in my national security team," Mr. Bush said.
But he said there were low moments along the way, including the day when five American soldiers were taken prisoner of war. One of the high points, he said, was the rescue of Pfc. Jessica D. Lynch.
"Secretary Rumsfeld told me not to get my hopes up, but there was going to be a very sensitive operation into a hospital where he thought that there would be an American P.O.W.," Mr. Bush said. "And then when we heard that she had been rescued, it was a joyous moment."
OPEC Decides to Cut Output by 7% - Goal Is to Halt Price Fall, Clear Way for Iraq Oil.
By Robert J. McCartney
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, April 25, 2003; Page E01
VIENNA, April 24 -- Key oil-exporting countries agreed today to cut production by about 7 percent starting in June in an effort to stem a fall in prices and make way for the expected resumption of Iraqi exports this summer.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries decided to reduce output by 2 million barrels a day from what it said was its current total production of 27.4 million barrels a day. A cut by Saudi Arabia, OPEC's biggest producer, will account for more than half of the reduction.
OPEC also said it will consider trimming output further at its next meeting, in Doha, Qatar, on June 11, if that is needed to keep prices in OPEC's target range of $22 to $28 a barrel. Prices soared earlier this year to almost $40 a barrel because of concern over the impending war in Iraq, but they have dropped sharply since early March. Crude oil for June delivery fell 1 cent today, to $26.64 a barrel, on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
OPEC's action was a first step in rolling back production increases of at least 4 million barrels a day that it approved at meetings in January and March. The cartel was moving then to cope with the war fears and with drops in production caused by a strike in Venezuela and ethnic disturbances in Nigeria.
The group said the output cut was necessary now because demand for oil is falling because of the end of the winter heating season, sluggish world economic growth, and a decline in airline travel caused by the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome.
Iraq did not attend the meeting, for the first time since OPEC was founded in Baghdad in 1960. Its embassy in Vienna declined to send a representative, and its former oil minister, Amir Rashid, is on the list of Iraqi officials most wanted by U.S. and British forces in Iraq.
Iraq resumed producing small quantities of oil this week for domestic use, and OPEC pledged to make room for its exports in the future.
"When Iraq will come to the market, we will accommodate Iraq in the right time," OPEC President Abdullah bin Hamad al Attiyah, who also is Qatar's oil minister, said at a news conference at OPEC headquarters in Vienna.
There was some confusion over the result of the one-day meeting, partly because it meant OPEC's new temporary production level of 25.4 million barrels a day will be higher than its own official ceiling of 24.5 million barrels under a quota system adopted in January. Al Attiyah was peppered with questions by reporters suggesting that OPEC was raising its production ceiling rather than lowering it.
Al Attiyah responded with a rare public admission that the group has been exceeding its own quotas for months.
"The quota was on holiday" because of the need to avoid severe oil shortages, Al Attiyah said. "We are cutting 2 million barrels from reality."
The biggest excess producer has been Saudi Arabia, which pledged in March to produce as much as necessary to supply the market. Saudi Arabia's official quota is just under 8 million barrels a day, but Saudi Oil Minister Ali Nuaimi said his country has been producing considerably more than that.
"We have been operating at very high levels," Nuaimi said. While saying he didn't want to go into specifics, he said, "the market knows we've been significantly above" 9.5 million barrels a day.
A high-ranking OPEC source said Saudi Arabia, on some days, produced as much as 10.5 million barrels a day.
Another source of confusion was discrepancies in reports about how much individual countries would cut production under the accord. Attiyah said Saudi Arabia would reduce output to 8.25 million from 9.12 million barrels a day. Nuaimi suggested the cut would be larger than that, however, and an OPEC delegate, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Saudi reduction would be at least 1.2 million barrels a day.
The OPEC delegate also said Kuwait would reduce output by 300,000 barrels a day, Algeria would trim 200,000 barrels, and Libya, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates would each cut 100,000 barrels. Other members would make no cuts, or minimal ones.
The delegate also said that some of the 10 OPEC members at the meeting had inflated their own production figures. He suggested the actual cut in total OPEC production would be from 26.7 million barrels a day to 24.7 million barrels, but emphasized that a total of 2 million was to be removed from markets.
Although OPEC didn't say much about the U.S.-led toppling of Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq, the change there will have far-reaching implications for the group. Iraq has been excluded from OPEC production agreements since it was placed under U.N. sanctions after the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
Al Attiyah was asked whether he expected Iraq to remain in OPEC, given that the U.S. military is now administering Iraq and that U.S. official policy opposes manipulation of markets as practiced by OPEC.
"I'm not asking the Americans to be a member of OPEC," Al Attiyah said. "We believe that when Iraq will have their own government, recognized by the U.N., recognized by the whole world, then they will continue in OPEC," he said.
Former Iraqi Oil Minister Surrenders - Al-Ubaydi Listed Number 47 on Coalition's 55 Most-Wanted.
By Niko Price
The Associated Press
Tuesday, April 29, 2003; 2:54 AM
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Saddam Hussein's former oil minister, a trusted adviser who earlier oversaw Iraq's top-secret missile programs, has surrendered to U.S.-led forces, the U.S. Central Command said Tuesday.
Amer Mohammed Rashid, known to U.N. weapons inspectors as the "Missile Man," turned himself in Monday. A former general with expertise in weapons delivery systems, he was ranked No. 47 on the U.S. military's list of the 55 most-wanted officials from Saddam's regime.
Rashid is married to Dr. Rihab Taha, a microbiologist known as "Dr. Germ" who was in charge of the secret Iraqi facility that weaponized anthrax and other toxic substances. She also is sought by the United States; there was no word on her whereabouts.
Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said last month that Taha and Rashid would be among "the most interesting persons" for American investigators to interrogate because of their familiarity with a range of Saddam's secret weapons programs.
Seeking to curtail looting and lawlessness in Baghdad, the U.S. Army will deploy up to 4,000 additional military police and infantrymen over the next 10 days, the deputy commander of U.S. ground forces said Tuesday.
Maj. Gen. Glenn Webster outlined the plans prior to a meeting with about 100 Baghdad city officials and other Iraqis to discuss the law and order problems.
In London, curators from some of the world's major museums met to draft a recovery plan for Iraq's pillaged art works. Organized by the British Museum and UNESCO, the meeting drew experts from the Louvre in Paris, New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, Russia's Hermitage and the Berlin Museums.
They were hearing a report from British Museum Near East curator John Curtis, who returned Monday after a week in Iraq, and from Iraqi Donny George, director of research at the looted National Museum in Baghdad.
Thousands of items, some dating more than 6,000 years, were stolen from Iraq's National Museum in Baghdad and other cultural institutions. Among the missing items are the Sacred Vase of Warka from 3200 BC. and other treasures from the Assyrian and Sumerian civilizations.
The commander of U.S.-led forces in Iraq, Gen. Tommy Franks, said Monday that his troops are making progress in efforts to recover the looted items. Over the weekend, U.S. forces began broadcasting radio announcements offering rewards for looted art.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Franks said Iraqis have started providing information regarding the whereabouts of some of the artifacts. More than 100 items have been returned already, according to Central Command, including priceless manuscripts, a 7,000-year-old vase and one of the oldest recorded bronze bas relief bulls.
"Over the last 96 hours we have had a whole lot of Iraqis contact our people up in Iraq and say actually we know where a great many of these artifacts are," Franks said from his command headquarters in Qatar.
Franks also discussed the hunt for weapons of mass destruction, plans to reorganize the U.S. military presence in the Gulf, and the status of Saddam and his two sons.
"I don't know whether Hussein and his sons are alive or dead," Franks said. "I have seen nothing over the last week or two that convinces me that he is alive."
With the collapse of Saddam's regime, Franks said there will be "reorientation and some reorganization" of U.S. forces in the Gulf. Specifically, he said the United States no longer needs to fly aircraft out of Turkey and Saudi Arabia to patrol the northern and southern no-fly zones over Iraq.
He said the hunt for banned weapons continues at 950 to 1,000 sites around Iraq, but said he didn't know if about a dozen 55-gallon drums found near Baiji north of Baghdad contained any. One barrel initially tested positive for nerve and blister agents, but a U.S. chemical weapons expert said new tests - though still not conclusive - indicate the contents may instead be rocket fuel.
Rashid, the former oil minister, was a member of Saddam's Military Industrialization Organization, the group responsible for producing all of Iraq's most lethal weapons. Others members included Lt. Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin, Iraq's chief liaison with U.N. weapons inspectors, and Amir al-Saadi, Saddam's senior weapons adviser, both of whom are also in custody.
In announcing Rashid's surrender, U.S. Central Command identified him as Amir Rashid Muhammad al-Ubaydi. But in his previous jobs, the Iraqi News Agency and other official sources gave his name as Amer Mohammed Rashid.
U.S. military officials have accounted for the last American soldier listed as missing in Iraq. A body found March 24, the day after a convoy was ambushed in southern Iraq, was identified as Army Spc. Edward John Anguiano, 24, of Los Fresnos, Texas.
Officials used DNA tests to confirm that the remains were Anguiano, according to the soldier's grandfather, Vicente Anguiano Sr.
At Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, Buddhist monks in flowing orange robes prayed over the casket of Cpl. Kemaphoom Chanawongse, 22, who was honored Monday in a rare Buddhist prayer service at the cemetery. He died last month in a firefight in Iraq.
By John Mintz and Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, May 9, 2003; Page A18
U.S. military forces have released 7,000 Iraqi prisoners captured in the three-week war, including more than 3,700 men who were let go after signing a "parole" document in which they swore not to engage in hostile actions against American soldiers, defense officials said yesterday.
U.S. military police still hold about 2,000 Iraqi prisoners whose backgrounds they are investigating. Among them are 200 foreign fighters who had come to attack U.S. soldiers, 178 common criminals, a number of mid-ranking Iraqi military officers and some members of the Saddam's Fedayeen paramilitary forces, the U.S. officials said at a briefing in Kuwait.
These large groups of detainees, most of them held in a temporary jail in the southern Iraq city of Umm Qasr, are separate from the 20 highly placed aides to former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein who have been captured. The aides, who are among the 55 senior officials wanted by the United States, are being housed and interrogated in solitary confinement at a prison in Baghdad, officials said.
"They're being well cared for," Army Col. John Della Jacono, a top commander of coalition forces in Iraq, said of the top-level prisoners. "They're being treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention, with dignity and respect."
The 200 foreigners in custody include men from Jordan, Iran, Syria, Kuwait and a number of other nations, Della Jacono said.
Asked what the American plans are both for the group of 20 as well as the 2,000 lower-level prisoners, U.S. military officials declined to be specific, except to say interrogators are asking them questions to determine their legal status.
"We're going through a vetting process," Della Jacono said. "We have gone through a deliberate screening of the over 7,000 that we held at one time." Of those still being held, he said, "no determination has been made as towards the disposition of these individuals." Besides being released, other possibilities for them include facing U.S. military tribunals, trials by international legal panels or prosecution in an Iraqi court, officials said.
Special hearings called for under the Geneva Conventions that govern treatment of prisoners of war have been held for as many as 100 of the Iraqi prisoners when there were questions about whether they were regular military combatants and, therefore, deserve prisoner of war status. POW status limits the extent that a detainee can be interrogated and confers some privileges in detention.
A substantial number of the 7,000 Iraqis released were civilians. They were "just at the wrong place at the wrong time," Della Jacono said.
In the agreement signed by the 3,700 or so Iraqi soldiers allowing their release, they said they understood they could return home or to their military units, but could only perform administrative or medical duties. They risk being rearrested if found without the agreement on their person.
U.S. forces transported the released soldiers to their home towns or central drop-off points, and gave them $5 as well as clothing and food.
Meanwhile, Adm. Edmund P. Giambastiani Jr., head of the U.S. Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, said yesterday that he hopes to brief Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld by mid-June on war lessons learned.
The Joint Forces Command's primary missions are to train, develop and experiment with "joint" war-fighting techniques and doctrine using more than one service, and to provide troops to other regional commanders.
Rumsfeld made Giambastiani, his former chief military assistant, head of Joint Forces Command with an eye toward turning the unit into his primary engine for transforming the U.S. military from a Cold War force to one capable of fighting 21st-century wars.
Before the war in Iraq began, Giambastiani said at a breakfast with defense writers, he "embedded" 30 officers at all levels inside U.S. Central Command, which was responsible for prosecuting the campaign. Retired Army Gen. Gary Luck, he said, served as a "senior mentor" to those officers and accompanied Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the Central Command chief, throughout the conflict, even during meetings with President Bush.
Calling the war in Iraq "a gigantic battle lab," Giambastiani said his review would focus on systems and tactics that enabled the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines to effectively fight together, what the Pentagon calls "jointness."
The particular lessons his officers have been pursuing, Giambastiani said, involve how to "drive jointness down to the lowest level," so that Army soldiers in a foxhole, for instance, can call in Air Force, Navy or Marine fighter jets for close air support.
In building joint fighting capability, he said, the premium comes in figuring how to build networks across the services that allow for the rapid movement of data across the battlefield. "It allows us to change the pace and the tempo of operations" to stay ahead of the enemy, as happened in Iraq, he said.
Troops Will Stay as Long as Necessary, Rumsfeld Pledges.
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 10, 2003; Page A01
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday pledged to keep as many U.S. troops in Iraq as necessary to stabilize the country and said it could take longer than a year to create the conditions necessary for a new Iraqi government to assume control of the nation.
Rumsfeld spoke shortly after the United States, Britain and Spain formally presented a draft resolution on Iraq's interim governance to the United Nations Security Council. The draft calls for the United States and Britain to assume the responsibilities of "occupying powers" under international law. It would grant the two countries broad authority for managing Iraq's political and economic life, including control over its oil revenue, for an initial period of a year and longer, if necessary.
Rumsfeld, briefing reporters at the Pentagon, said the resolution's reference to "an initial" occupation of a year "is probably just a review period, because anyone who thinks they know how long it's going to take is fooling themselves."
"The United States is prepared to keep any number of troops that are appropriate and necessary in Iraq for as long as it takes to create a secure and permissive environment so that [the Iraqis] can go about their business of reconstructing their country," Rumsfeld said.
Amid complaints from U.S. officials and military personnel in Iraq about continuing instability and lagging reconstruction efforts, Rumsfeld and his top military commander, Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, conceded problems existed. But they said considerable progress has been made since the war to topple the government of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein began 53 days ago.
Insisting that conditions are improving "in almost every corner of that country," Rumsfeld urged patience. "It's going to take some time," he said at a news conference at the Pentagon. "And we accept that, and we're there to create an environment where that process can take place. And we have patience and we accept the fact that it's untidy. And I hope that others can recognize that and accept it, and put it into some historical context."
With about 135,000 U.S. forces and another 40,000 British troops now in Iraq, Rumsfeld has avoided estimating how many will be necessary over what time period to stabilize the country and ensure its return to self-governance, other than to say that U.S. troop levels could ultimately be reduced.
He has said this would depend in part upon the number of peacekeeping forces contributed by other countries.
But Rumsfeld has in recent weeks left the impression that he was interested in committing as few troops as possible for as short a time as necessary for stabilizing Iraq, given his long-standing assertion that U.S. combat forces in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan should return home as other countries assume peacekeeping obligations.
Yesterday, however, both Rumsfeld and Franks emphasized the open-ended nature of the Pentagon's troop deployments in Iraq.
"I think right now what the future will hold a year, two, three . . .ahead of us is not exactly knowable," Franks said.
Franks, head of the U.S. Central Command, which ran the war, acknowledged that basic services such as health care, electricity and water are improving but are "not where they need to be, and certainly not where they will be."
"Iraq's best days are yet to come," Franks said, "and the Iraqi people are already taking steps to build a new government that will, in fact, be of their choice."
Rumsfeld and Franks commented one day after Army Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, the commander of allied ground forces in Iraq, said in Baghdad that his forces could not guarantee total security in a country the size of California that has 25 million people.
Now that the 1st Armored Division, based in Germany, is heading into Iraq, the total number of U.S. forces on the ground could increase, with Pentagon officials saying that the 3rd Infantry Division -- the main force that invaded Baghdad -- could delay its departure until June.
"Security in that country is absolutely critical to everything else that's going to be done there," Franks said. "A condition has to be established so that the people of Iraq can feel free to unshutter the windows of their shops and go to work and so forth."
He said change in the composition of U.S. forces is likely to take place as heavy combat units are withdrawn and replaced with military police, engineers and less heavily armed forces more suitable to stability operations. But Franks declined to estimate how many troops would be needed over time. "I'm not sure at this point we know exactly what the force structure or size is going to look [like] -- or what the international content is going to look like as we move forward," Franks said.
Last week, senior Bush administration officials revealed a plan for creating three separate commands for managing postwar Iraq to be headed by the United States, Britain and Poland. While the U.S. command would involve primarily U.S. forces, they said, the British and Polish would command multinational forces, with Italy, Spain, Denmark, Bulgaria, Netherlands and Ukraine all agreeing to provide troops.
But by and large, these countries do not seem to be offering large numbers of troops. Earlier this week, Jerzy Szmajdzinski, Poland's defense minister, met with Rumsfeld and said that his country would need $50 million in financial assistance to provide headquarters elements and about 1,500 troops in Iraq for six months. A full year's stay would run about $90 million.
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar pledged during his visit to Washington this week that Spain would send as many as 1,500 troops but said they would be forbidden from engaging in combat.
Britain, which has already reduced the number of its forces in Iraq from 45,000 to 40,000, held a meeting this week in London with representatives of nations interested in committing peacekeeping forces to the British command in Iraq. But a British official in Washington said it is "too early to [talk] about force commitments, force rotations and length of stay."
Rumsfeld said that "a large number of countries are stepping forward," adding that only a minority of them have said that their commitment of troops would be contingent upon successful passage of a U.N. Security Council resolution.
But questions remain about how many forces NATO allies would be willing to commit, particularly now that NATO is preparing to assume control of a 5,500-troop international force in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Rumsfeld has complained that the peacekeeping force in Afghanistan has been confined to the Kabul area and not deployed across the entire country because so few countries have been willing to commit forces.
By Mike Allen and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, May 10, 2003; Page A01
COLUMBIA, S.C., May 9 -- President Bush told University of South Carolina graduates today that economic growth and the rule of law are keys to quieting the rage of the Middle East, and he promised to build on the victory in Iraq by increasing trade with the Arab world.
Bush launched a 10-year effort to form a U.S.-Middle East Free Trade Area, and he pledged to help modernize the region's justice, education and political systems and to promote concrete steps toward equality for women.
"The bitterness of that region can bring violence and suffering to our own cities," Bush told the 1,200 hushed graduates in his first commencement address of the season. "The advance of freedom and peace in the Middle East would drain this bitterness and increase our own security."
Describing "a great goal for this nation," Bush said, "across the globe, free markets and trade have helped defeat poverty and taught men and women the habits of liberty."
Bush's announcement added economic rewards to the administration's military and diplomatic efforts to promote democracy in the Middle East. His aides said they saw the free-trade offer as a short-term step toward easing the anti-American views that hardened during the Iraq war. The administration also hopes to demonstrate that Bush had a higher purpose that he intends to pursue. Over the longer term, Bush aides believe, opening some of the globe's most closed and moribund economies -- not only to the United States, but also to Israel -- will increase political stability.
"In an age of global terror and weapons of mass destruction, what happens in the Middle East greatly matters to America," said Bush, who was awarded an honorary doctorate of laws. "We will use our influence and idealism to replace old hatreds with new hopes across the Middle East."
The president described the proposals as part of a policy continuum that includes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and peace between Arabs and Israelis. Bush has kept his distance from the Israeli-Palestinian issue over the past year, but he has now pledged to devote new, personal energy toward its success.
Although he made his customary call for Palestinians to "take concrete steps to crack down on terror," Bush also used the occasion to sharply warn, "Israel must take tangible steps to ease the suffering of Palestinians and to show respect for their dignity.
"The way forward in the Middle East is not a mystery," Bush said. "It is a matter of will and vision and action. The way forward depends on serving the interests of the living, instead of settling the accounts of the past."
Bush said he had sent Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to the region "with my personal commitment: America will work without tiring" to achieve a two-state solution. Powell left tonight for an extended Middle East tour that will include a meeting with new Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, the first encounter between senior U.S. and Palestinian officials in more than a year.
Powell, who will also meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as well as Arab leaders, will be pressing for acceptance of the "road map," a step-by-step formula for ending violence and achieving Palestinian statehood by 2005. Sharon is to visit Bush in Washington on May 20, and the White House has indicated it might be amenable to a trip here by Abbas.
Bush invoked former president John F. Kennedy, reminding the graduates that as a senator from Massachusetts, Kennedy had warned -- at the University of South Carolina's commencement of 1957 -- of the need to untangle the strife-torn, hate-ridden Middle East.
In proposing to build a thriving Middle East free-trade area by 2013, Bush is offering to eliminate tariffs and other barriers to imports from the Arab world, which would spur investments and new jobs in the region. Economic benefits to this country are likely to be small, international economists said today. "From the U.S. standpoint, the whole payoff is political stability," said Gary Clyde Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics. "If it pays off, the whole oil picture is a little more settled than it otherwise would be." The move could also decrease the $3 billion to $4 billion in aid that the United States pays annually to Egypt and Israel.
Will Marshall, president of the pro-trade Progressive Policy Institute, said he considers the proposed pace "a very leisurely approach for a highly volatile situation." But he said Bush's plan has the potential to "change the context in which terrorism and Islamic extremism are flourishing."
As he spoke of building more open societies in the Middle East, Bush denounced the "corruption and self-dealing" that characterize the region, comparing the staying power of its governments to the "autocratic rule" of Japan and Germany before World War II and the "imperial communism" of the Soviet Union. But those countries came to democracy, and "the men and women of the Muslim world, one-fifth of all humanity, share this hope of liberty," he said.
Bush did not cite specific countries in this negative context, although U.S. allies in the region, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, are not known for flourishing democracy.
Administration officials said they will use the incentives as leverage to demand fundamental reforms from participating states. Bush did not spell out specific requirements, which will vary by country. U.S. trade officials who briefed reporters in Washington said they would adopt a "graduated" approach, negotiating bilateral trade agreements country by country before moving toward a regional agreement. Currently, the United States has free-trade agreements in the region with only Jordan and Israel; an agreement with Morocco is under negotiation.
Any country seeking an agreement with the United States, a senior official said, would first have to meet all requirements for World Trade Organization membership. In the Arab world, that would mean refusing to honor regional boycotts of Israel.
Bush spoke generally of the development of "central laws on property rights and . . . good business practices." He said that Powell and U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick will begin discussing the possibilities when they meet with potential participants next month in Jordan on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum.
The White House said Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has agreed to lead a team of American judges to Bahrain this fall to begin discussions on legal reforms. The administration said it plans to establish campaign schools for women and a finance facility to help small businesses line up capital.
"Making the most of economic opportunities will require broader and better education, especially among women, who have faced the greatest disadvantages," Bush said. "We will work to improve literacy among girls and women," he said. "As trade expands and knowledge spreads in the Middle East, as women gain a place of equality and respect, as the rule of law takes hold, all peoples of that region will see a new day of justice and a new day of prosperity."
Beginning this fall in Qatar, the United States will establish "campaign schools" to provide training in leadership and organization for women seeking elective office across the region, according to the administration's outline of its plan. The White House also promised to help expand existing girls' and women's literacy programs in the region, and to provide incentives -- such as vouchers -- to families that send their daughters to school. Education Secretary Roderick R. Paige will meet Egyptian officials in Washington next week to discuss such programs in Egypt and Morocco.
Media training and media law projects will include participants from Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia.
Today's address continued a tradition of making major foreign-policy announcements during commencement speeches. Last June, Bush told graduating cadets at West Point about his intention to preempt the worst foreign threats to the United States by striking first rather than relying on the doctrine of containment. While he was secretary of state, George C. Marshall used Harvard University's graduation in 1947 to unveil his plan for rebuilding Europe. The White House announced today that Bush's other commencement address this season will be delivered at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.
With Reconstruction Plan Under Criticism, Changes Are Made at the Top.
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Peter Slevin
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 11, 2003; Page A01
BAGHDAD, May 10 -- The American diplomat serving as chief administrator of Baghdad has been reassigned by the Bush administration after less than three weeks in Iraq in what U.S. officials here said was part of a broader shake-up of the troubled Pentagon operation to rebuild the country.
Barbara K. Bodine, a former ambassador to Yemen and the highest-ranking woman in the U.S.-led interim administration in Iraq, said she intended to leave for Washington on Sunday to fill a senior post at the State Department. As Baghdad's effective postwar mayor, she had been in charge of restoring vital public services and forming a democratic local government for the capital's 5 million residents -- a job that is incomplete.
Senior U.S. officials said other top members of the reconstruction effort here, including the overall leader, Jay M. Garner, a retired Army lieutenant general, and several of his close aides would depart soon. Although Garner had said before the war he would stay in Iraq for about three months, President Bush on Tuesday appointed L. Paul Bremer III, a retired diplomat and counterterrorism expert, to be the senior civilian in charge of rebuilding the country's government and infrastructure.
"By the end of this month, you will see a very different organization," a senior U.S. official involved in the reconstruction said today.
In another development, an Iranian opposition group agreed tonight to turn over its weapons and accede to the demands of U.S. forces, the Army said. The surrender of the Mujaheddin-e Khalq, at a camp about 60 miles northeast of Baghdad, occurred after two days of negotiations with the Army's 4th Infantry Division.
Bremer's appointment and Bodine's departure are occurring as concern grows in Washington and foreign capitals about the pace of the U.S. reconstruction program in Iraq. Several people involved in the process have said Garner and his staff -- as well as his superiors at the Pentagon -- did not properly plan for the task, from repairing damage suffered during the war to restarting government ministries and forming an Iraqi-led interim administration.
Iraqis have become increasingly frustrated with Garner's operation, saying that his team has failed to fulfill promises to hand out emergency payments, restore basic public services, address a wave of criminal activity and involve resident Iraqis in the planning for a new government. In Baghdad, many neighborhoods still lack electricity and running water, heaps of garbage line the streets and most shops remain closed because merchants are afraid of looters.
"There's large parts of the city that are in really bad shape," the senior official said. "The city is better than it was three weeks ago, but it has a long way to go."
The shortage of visible progress appears to have sparked consternation at the State Department, where officials argued that a civilian with diplomatic skills and foreign policy experience should coordinate reconstruction activities. The Defense Department chafed at that idea and insisted the program remain under military control. Ultimately, the State Department view won out at the White House on the grounds that having a civilian at the helm would inspire other nations to support the costly and complicated chore of transforming Iraq into a stable, democratic nation.
U.S. officials interviewed today said the U.S. presence in Iraq would likely become more assertive in coming weeks. The absence of strong leadership -- Iraqi or American -- is a subject of intense complaint among ordinary Iraqis, who are struggling with a lack of civil order after 35 years of authoritarian rule.
One senior American official in Baghdad said the U.S. team had been so concerned about being seen as an occupying power that officials were overly reluctant to exert their full authority.
"We came in here hands-off," the official said. "There was a bit of ambivalence between being an authority and being authoritarian. We were so concerned about being authoritarian that we didn't exercise authority."
It was not immediately clear why Secretary of State Colin L. Powell asked Bodine to leave. Some observers have criticized her performance, saying she possessed impressive diplomatic skills but not the management know-how to run Iraq's largest city, which was pummeled during the war and ransacked by looters after the fall of Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party government.
Bremer's involvement in counterterrorism may have had a role in her departure. Bodine antagonized the closely knit community of U.S. anti-terrorism officials, of which Bremer is a member, after the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. She accused the FBI's chief of counterterrorism, John O'Neill, who sent more than 250 agents to Yemen, of conducting a heavy-handed investigation that was damaging U.S.-Yemeni relations.
O'Neill later left the FBI and became chief of security at the World Trade Center, where he died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
In an interview today, Bodine said she did not know the specific reason for her reassignment. She said her new position in Washington would be deputy director of the State Department's political-military division, which handles a wide range of security-related matters with other countries.
"I think so far we've had a good start, but we haven't hit our stride yet," Bodine said in her office in the marble-floored Republican Palace on the Tigris River. "I'm not leaving with the sense that we've done everything we could have done, but I'm also not leaving with the sense that it's been a failure."
Bodine insisted that some of the infrastructure problems that have inspired intense criticism by Iraqis occurred before the war. The city, she said, has had rolling blackouts since 1991, when most of its electricity-generating system was damaged in the Persian Gulf War.
"A lot of what was dysfunctional about Baghdad predates the war," she said.
She suggested that her reassignment, which came in a late-night call on a phone that had been installed in her office only hours before, was something of a surprise. Even so, she said her departure was occurring at a "natural break point" after she and her staff finished setting up initial operations here.
"We've kind of cobbled the machinery together," she said. "Now it's time to hand off to somebody who can take it from here to the political transformation."
Americans involved in the reconstruction effort said the departures of Bodine, Garner and other top officials likely would further roil what has been a chaotic and ill-prepared operation, depriving it of continuity and potentially delaying some programs as new leaders familiarize themselves with the operation.
But one official predicted the transition could occur relatively quickly, with Garner and some of his top aides departing in a week or two. Garner is expected to meet with Bremer at the Central Command's field headquarters in Qatar and escort him to Kuwait and then to Iraq, first visiting the southern port city of Basra before traveling to Baghdad early in the week.
"There will be a pretty quick turnaround," the official said.
Bodine, 54, is one of the few members of the U.S. interim authority who speaks Arabic and had spent time in Iraq before the war. She served in the U.S. Embassy here for about 18 months in the early 1980s.
When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, she was deputy chief of mission in the tiny desert emirate. Although Iraqi forces surrounded the embassy compound and cut off water and electricity to force out the occupants, she and other diplomats toughed it out for four months, drinking water from the swimming pool and eating canned food.
In a statement released tonight, the Army's V Corps said it had accepted the "voluntary consolidation" of the Mujaheddin-e Khalq, a group of several thousand armed men opposed to Iran's Islamic government. They have been based in Iraq for years with the blessing of Hussein, who launched an eight-year war against Iran in the 1980s that resulted in more than 500,000 deaths.
The surrender process would take several days to complete, the Army said.
Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, spent the day inside a desert compound negotiating the surrender. Outside, Army tanks blocked the entrance to the camp, preventing anyone from entering.
The Mujaheddin-e Khalq is the military wing of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an umbrella body of Iranian opposition groups. They helped train Republican Guard units in Iraq, and have been on a U.S. list of terrorist groups since the 1990s.
In what was seen as a direct challenge to U.S. authority in Iraq, they had set checkpoints near the Iranian border with armed men in uniforms behind sandbags. The United States also fears a confrontation between the Mujaheddin-e Khalq and the Iranian-based Badr Brigade, a group of fighters opposed to the former government. There have been reports that Badr Brigade forces have infiltrated into Iraq from Iran.
Staff writer Carol Morello contributed to this report.
By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 11, 2003; Page A23
NAJAF, Iraq, May 10 -- One of Iraq's most powerful Shiite Muslim clerics returned today from more than two decades of exile in Iran, declaring that this country's oppressed Shiite majority "will not accept a government that is imposed on us."
Tens of thousands of chanting supporters greeted Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir Hakim, 63, the head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, when he arrived in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. Hakim told them that Iraq's next government "must be chosen by Iraqis and totally independent."
"We have gone such a long way in such hard times, we are now on the road to security and stability. This is a jihad of reconstruction after the destruction of the oppressors," Hakim said.
Since fleeing the holy city of Najaf for Iran 23 years ago, Hakim has been closely aligned with and supported by Iran's Islamic government and the clerics who lead it, including the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, whom Hakim thanked for his support over the years.
Hakim established his own large militia in Iran, known as the Badr Brigade, composed not only of infantry but heavy artillery and tanks. Members of the brigade have been pouring into Iraq, though they have not come as an organized army.
Roughly 60 percent of Iraq's population is Shiite, but under more than three decades of rule by Saddam Hussein, Iraq was dominated by Sunni Muslims, and Shiites were subjected to brutal repression. Since the U.S.-led war toppled Hussein last month, Shiites have insisted that now is their time to run Iraq, particularly its holy cities.
In Najaf and other Shiite centers, clerics and politicians have begun to stress that they wish to work with Americans to establish the groundwork for an interim government. U.S. officials have expressed concern that Hakim might call for a theocratic government in Iraq; Hakim and his senior advisers recently have attempted to play down those fears.
But Hakim has also said that he believes Iraqi civil and religious groups should quickly take over security and police work from the United States.
Rather than backing a nation led by a supreme ayatollah, Hakim has pledged to support a new government that is democratically elected and reflects all groups in Iraq -- though Hakim's advisers have said that Islam should play a prominent role in civil life. In placards around the Shiite cities of southern Iraq, Hakim is shown offering a prayer calling for an Islamic republic.
His younger brother, Abdul Aziz Hakim, is preparing to represent the political wing of the Supreme Council and has been meeting in recent days in Baghdad with U.S. officials working to form an interim government.
Ayatollah Hakim is due in Najaf on Monday, where his followers are preparing to install him as one of the supreme religious authorities in Iraq. When he arrives, he will be re-entering a roiling, politicized cauldron in which various Shiite factions are jockeying for support and power.
While Hakim has substantial and well-organized support, its depth is hard to measure. Other Shiite clerics and political groups have disparaged Hakim for fleeing Iraq and not doing enough to help Iraqi Shiites in their opposition to Hussein. Moreover, Hakim took the side of Iran during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, which taints him in the view of some more secular Shiites.
Senior U.S. officials and military officers say they have been surprised at the militancy and organization of the Shiites, many of whom want their political leaders to be clerics.
In Najaf, the Shiites are seething at the appointment by U.S. military commanders of a mayor who is Sunni. In addition, Shiite leaders say, the new mayor, Abdul Munem, is a secularist, a former Iraqi army colonel who they say worked with the intelligence services. The mayor maintains his own militia and is hostile to Shiites, dismissive of clerics' authority and dangerous, they say.
"This person, this mayor," said Mansour Abdul Muhsin, head of the tribes in the Supreme Council, "he is the puppet of the Americans. We treat this matter most seriously. The Americans come and they promise democracy, but they give us this outsider."
Munem said he served as an artillery officer in the Iraqi army during the Iran-Iraq war and lost a foot. After that, he continued his service, but he denied he was an intelligence officer.
Instead, Munem said, "I worked secretly in the opposition," traveling around Iraq, "gathering papers and documents" against the Hussein government. He is a leader of the formerly underground Iraqi National Unity Party.
The American civilian and military authorities seem overwhelmed by the Byzantine allegiances and the new proliferation of Islamic political groups, which are now jostling for supporters and power.
"I'm a better Marine than I am a political scientist," said Lt. Col. Chris Conlin, who has served as the effective mayor of Najaf. He said he understands that Najaf's Shiite groups are upset about the appointment of the new mayor, but said that, in time, "the people can elect a new mayor."
Najaf is the site of annual pilgrimages, and its vast cemetery is the final resting place for hundreds of thousands of devout Shiites. It is the center of learning and study, but it is also a city built on lucrative tourism trade and a repository for donations the Shiite faithful give to their mosques, charities and spiritual leaders.
Last month, two leading Shiite clerics were assassinated here in the shrine of Ali, the son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad, who founded the Shiite branch of Islam in the 7th century.
Confronted by a crowd at the shrine, Abdel Majid Khoei, a returning exile, was shot and stabbed to death, as was Haidar Kadar, who was administrator of the shrine under Hussein.
The slayings have not yet been solved; several people have been arrested and then released by the mayor's militia. Some supporters of Khoei have accused followers of a young but increasingly powerful Shiite leader, Muqtuada Sadr, of having had a hand in the assassinations.
One of Sadr's close aides in Najaf, who declined to be named, dismissed the political assassinations as "an accident" that "produced nothing but wicked rumors."
Sadr is the son of Mohammed Baqir Sadr, one of modern Shiite Islam's most prominent clerics, who was executed along with his two eldest sons by the government in 1999. He reportedly was killed by having nails driven through his skull.
Muqtuada Sadr, leads the Sadr Foundation, which distributes food and medical care and has been paying the salaries of municipal workers in Najaf and other cities.
Sadr has been coy about his political aspirations, but says if the people call upon him to serve, he will.
Franks Declares End of Hussein's Apparatus as Some Members Retake Posts.
By Peter Slevin and Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, May 12, 2003; Page A10
BAGHDAD, May 11 -- Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, announced today that Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, which dominated the country for more than three decades through violence and intimidation, has been abolished, although U.S. authorities have allowed many prominent members to return to top government positions.
The party essentially evaporated after U.S. forces invaded Iraq and overthrew Hussein and his government, but Franks made it official by ordering an institution that exercised power in every Iraqi city and village to cease existence immediately. He said in a broadcast on U.S.-controlled radio that one-party rule was over.
"The Iraqi Baath Socialist Party is dissolved," Franks said in a statement read by an announcer in Arabic and broadcast across Iraq this afternoon. He said the "apparatus of Iraqi security, intelligence and military intelligence belonging to Saddam Hussein are deprived of their authority and power."
The effect of Franks's declaration remained unclear, but it seemed largely symbolic, given the party's organizational implosion and the somewhat contradictory U.S. request that many former high-ranking government officials, most of whom were Baath members, report to their jobs as usual.
U.S. authorities have made "de-Baathification" a goal of the occupation period, but have not laid out consistent rules for accomplishing it. Officials in charge of Iraq's reconstruction have emphasized that the majority of Baath Party members are useful citizens who joined the party without passion, whether out of fear or pragmatism.
The only Baath members automatically disqualified from participating in the new government are senior figures from Hussein's rule because of suspected involvement in human rights abuses or close ties to the former Iraqi leader.
Just in the past week, however, U.S. officials have removed a dozen Baathists from the Planning Ministry and promised other selective purges. Scattered protests flared again today outside government ministries where employees protested the continued presence of top party officials.
"They're all crooks," said Entisar Ahmed, an accountant at the Trade Ministry who had gathered with a group of colleagues at a grain silo to demand they be paid their monthly salary and a promised bonus for last year's performance. "They should not be allowed back to work."
Dealing with the estimated 1.5 million people who were Baath members has become a controversial and complicated part of the Pentagon's postwar reconstruction effort. Many Iraqis want former Baathists to be excluded from reclaiming high-level government jobs or at least scrutinized.
Non-Baathists, particularly those leading once-exiled political groups opposed to Hussein, contend the inclusion of Baathists could promote corruption, undermine the interim administration's legitimacy and anger those persecuted by the party during years of vengeful rule.
U.S. officials say that barring former party members from returning to work until they are screened would delay the resuscitation of important services. Almost every national government agency and local council was stocked with party members. Many are technocrats and bureaucrats that the Pentagon's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance says it needs.
At the Health Ministry over the weekend, the U.S. official in charge ordered more than 50 aspirants to senior administrative jobs to resign their Baath memberships. If they were not members, they were required to sign a statement denouncing "the Baath Party and Saddam Hussein and his regime."
The official, Stephen Browning, required non-members to declare, "I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of the Arab Socialist Renaissance Party of Iraq," the Baath Party.
Former membership did not disqualify any of the aspiring interim officials, as long as they resigned immediately. Browning named as the ministry's temporary leader Ali Shnan, a party member derided by many fellow doctors. Shnan signed the document and quit the party at Browning's insistence.
Franks, in addition to dissolving the party, said coalition forces expect Iraqis to help them collect key Baath Party documents.
"Anyone who possesses documents related to the Baath Party or the Iraqi government must maintain and protect them and hand these documents to the coalition," Franks said in the statement.
Successive U.S. administrations spent more than $10 million collecting evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the Baath Party's reign. The Bush administration has pledged criminal prosecutions against top members but also aims to assist future leaders in investigating lower-level Baathists as part of a truth and reconciliation process.
Addressing the political process to come, Franks said freedom of expression would be central as Iraqis prepare to choose an interim government and, ultimately, elect a permanent leadership.
"All parties and political groups can take part in the political life in Iraq," Franks said, "except those who urge violence or practice it."
In One Major City, Power Goes to an Iraqi With a Past
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
OSUL, Iraq, May 10 — Mishan al-Jaburi is a very busy man. His living room — a lofty space where boys skitter with trays of tea — is full of sheiks, tribal leaders and armed guards in fatigues. They come to him for answers.
"So many guests," he said on a recent afternoon. "I tell them we have a new governor, but they are still all coming to me."
Mr. Jaburi is a controversial figure. His critics accuse him of having been a business partner of Saddam Hussein's son Uday, something he vigorously denies.
What is beyond dispute is that he was the main local power broker behind Iraq's first postwar election, a vote among tribal leaders last Monday to choose a local government. In a week of meetings, Mr. Jaburi, a leader from the Iraqi National Congress, and the American commander in the area brought together 240 elders and tribal leaders.
Today, American military and civilian affairs officers handed over the government to the Iraqi Citizen Council chosen in the Monday election. American Army officers say they want to hand over as many duties to the Iraqis as soon as possible.
"I am the leader of the city," said Mr. Jaburi in an interview in his new residence, a house of angular modern design that just a month ago belonged to the infamous Gen. Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as "Chemical Ali" for his role in gassing Iraqi Kurds in 1988. "All the power is in my hands. I told the Americans to hold elections."
As American authorities in Iraq get down to the business of building local governments, they are faced with the task of finding leaders. Mr. Jaburi and a small coterie of men have assumed that role in this city, Iraq's third largest.
The task is not easy. Mr. Hussein's authoritarian government discouraged leadership and initiative. Even recent history in the provinces is one of control by complex tribal systems rather than formal laws. Elections have been few and far between. Those with recent experience in public administration were members of Mr. Hussein's Baath Party.
"Iraq was a big prison for 35 years," said Farhan Sharafani, a tribal leader in the far north of Iraq in a village called Mrehban. "Anyone under 35 knows only that. In his mind, he's thinking of himself, not his country."
Enter Mr. Jaburi.
An energetic businessman, Mr. Jaburi, 44, lived outside Iraq for a number of years, an experience his critics say was necessitated by having stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from Uday Hussein in a cigarette business.
Mr. Jaburi insists that he never worked with Uday, saying he met Mr. Hussein's son only three times, the first in 1989 at Uday's behest. He said he left Iraq because he had been privy to a plot to kill Saddam Hussein and feared for his life.
Mr. Jaburi speaks English fluently, and wears Western-style clothing. He says he was never a member of the Baath Party or connected to the old government.
Even so, he had a very favored position in society. He was rich in the 1980's, living in what he described as a mansion, gilded on the inside, "that all the generals wished was theirs." He made millions of dollars from what he described as an import-export business.
He moved around, living in Turkey, Jordan and Syria. But he loved politics. He saw his chance in Mosul, as the United States was in the final stages of its war against Mr. Hussein. He became an ally of the renegade Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani.
There was friction with the American commander from the start. In an interview last month, the commander, Col. Robert Waltemeyer, said Mr. Jaburi hindered his troops as they entered Mosul. According to Colonel Waltemeyer, Mr. Jaburi falsely told him that the Iraqi Army was waiting to surrender.
In fact, the Iraqi troops had long earlier fled the city. And as the Americans waited for the surrender to happen, people began a looting spree. Residents still blame American forces for not entering the city more quickly and securing it.
The American military also raised questions about Mr. Jaburi's role in a shooting incident that left at least 10 dead. When a crowd of anti-American protesters gathered soon after the city fell, Mr. Jaburi presented himself as the new governor of the city. The crowd pelted him with rocks and Mr. Jaburi retreated into the building.
Later, shots came from the enraged crowd. Marines fired back. Mosul residents still refer to the incident as a massacre.
But the next American commander to arrive in Mosul, Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, chose to work with Mr. Jaburi. For Mr. Jaburi, the prize was the election of the local government. He quickly took a leading role. General Petraeus said Mr. Jaburi had been given power because he took the initiative and his tribe was one of the biggest.
"There are some views that he has had too high a profile," the general said. "But you have to have people who are willing to invest lots of energy and time."
In the end, a mayor was elected. The election was praised as advancing a political process that seemed to be lagging in other parts of the country. The new city council also included representatives from most ethnic minorities in the area.
But Arab and Kurdish critics said the group that took part in the election was replete with Baath Party officials and complained that delegates were given a choice of just three candidates for mayor, all nominated by Mr. Jaburi.
"It's not democracy," said Ali Jajawee, a retired Iraqi Army general. "He was the man behind the screen, controlling the process."
Though the first elections in Iraq's short history were in 1953, the Iraqi people — Sunni and Shiite Muslims, Kurds and Assyrian Christians — have bounced between military junta, kings and dictators for most of the past century.
For that reason, says Mr. Sharafani, the tribal leader, it was too early to hold elections. "You don't start to build your house in the winter — you wait for spring," he said. "Now is winter. Opportunists are very, very dangerous for Iraq."
Mr. Sharafani is among those who sat out the election rather than fight what they saw as a flawed process. Still, he is hopeful that better elections — once they are held — will bring about effective government.
But the Americans have to stay. "Without the Americans," he said, "it will be worse than Saddam."
U.S. to Syria: Don't Be 'On Wrong Side of History'
Sun May 11, 2003 03:02 PM ET
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Sunday that Syria would find itself "on the wrong side of history" if it tried to destabilize postwar Iraq or continue harboring radical Palestinian groups.
Powell spoke in an Israeli television interview after launching talks with Israel and the Palestinians on implementing a new "road map" peace plan.
He said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad should have "every incentive to respond" to issues he raised in talks with him in Damascus a week ago addressing strategic change in the Middle East after the fall of Iraq's Saddam Hussein in a U.S.-led war.
Washington wants Syria to help in rounding up Saddam loyalists, discourage the spread of mass-destruction weapons in the region and cease backing Palestinian and Lebanese groups that Washington classifies as terrorist, concerned that their conflict with Israel could endanger the "road map."
"What I said to (Assad) very clearly is that there are things we believe he should do if he wants a better relationship with the United States, if he wants to play a helpful role in solving the crisis in the region," Powell told Israeli TV.
"So if President Assad chooses not to respond, if he chooses to dissemble, if he chooses to find excuses, then he will find that he is on the wrong side of history," he went on.
Powell has dismissed suggestions that Syria was next on any list of U.S. military targets after Iraq.
After his meeting with Assad, Powell said Syria had taken measures to rein in Palestinian militant groups with offices in Damascus by carrying out "some closures."
Syrian officials said later the groups' offices served as media outlets and that none had been shut down. They said they were interested in dialogue, not ultimatums from Washington.
Assad, in a Newsweek magazine interview released on Saturday, linked curbing radical Palestinian groups to getting the occupied Golan Heights back from Israel.
Israel captured the Heights from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war and Assad said Syria was prepared to negotiate with Israel to get it back.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said last week he was ready to reopen peace negotiations with Syria but without guarantees of the outcome.
TEHRAN, May 11 (Reuters) - Iran is demanding Washington extradite Iranian opposition guerrillas from Iraq, fearing the United States might try to use them to put pressure on Tehran, a newspaper said on Sunday.
On Saturday, the U.S. military said forces of the People's Mujahideen (MKO) group, or the Mujahideen-e Khalq in Farsi, had agreed to yield to U.S. forces in Iraq.
The U.S. army's 5 Corps would take control over the group, it said in a statement.
The MKO, a left-leaning Islamist group during the 1979 Islamic revolution which toppled U.S.-backed shah, later broke from the ruling clergy, accusing them of monopolising power, and has since fought to overthrow Iran's Islamic government.
It has a large and well-equipped military force on the Iraqi side of the Iranian border and had reported daily clashes with Iranian-backed forces in the northeast of Iraq.
Iran denies it backs any forces in Iraq and has accused the United States of holding double standards in its war on terrorism by allowing the Mujahideen to keep their weapons.
"If America extradites them to us, it will fulfil its responsibility, if not, America will have to send them to another country," the Siyaset-e Rouz daily quoted Intelligence Minister Ali Yunesi as saying.
"The Americans want to use the 'hypocrites' (People's Mujahideen) as a tool against Iran," Yunesi said, adding that the Iraqi nation "would never allow the Americans to use the 'hypocrites' against Iran's national security".
The U.S. government has included the MKO on a list of "terrorist" organisations and has said it is determined to clear Iraq of any independent fighting forces.
But the MKO says its disarmament would boost the influence of Iran over post-war Iraq and some U.S. hardliners have backed the group as allies against Tehran, which Washington has branded part of an "axis of evil" with pre-war Iraq and North Korea.
Iran is eager to see the Mujahideen, which has thousands of armed fighters and has had tanks, fighting vehicles, artillery guns and rocket launchers positioned near the Iranian border, finished off for good.
Analysts said many MKO members could face execution in Iran. But Yunesi said: "Iranians would forgive those who repent. If they return home we will try to help them to run a normal life".
1,500 Spanish Troops To Aid Iraq Recovery - No Combat Role Allowed, Aznar Says.
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 8, 2003; Page A21
Spain has agreed to send as many as 1,500 troops to participate in a postwar stabilization force in Iraq, but has barred them from any combat missions, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar said yesterday.
"We're still in the discussion phase" of a mission for the troops, Aznar said in an interview at Blair House, where he is staying during a Washington visit. He said that he anticipated the Spanish force would be working on reconstruction and stability tasks, but that their mandate included "no combat missions."
The Spanish agreement follows a similar commitment this week from Poland, whose foreign minister met with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on Tuesday.
As lawlessness and lack of control continue to be a problem in Iraq, the administration is trying to quickly assemble what would amount to an international peacekeeping force to take over at least part of the policing and reconstruction task. Anxious to appear less of a unilateral occupier, U.S. defense officials have said they hope to divide the country into three sectors, with Britain taking charge of the south, Poland the north, and the United States the middle and retaining overall command.
Representatives from at least 11 countries that have said they would contribute forces are to meet today in London to work out deployment details, with another meeting May 22 in Poland.
But U.S. plans for how the foreign troops would be deployed and what their mission would be remain as opaque as other aspects of its occupation strategy. One of the major questions is how the new forces will relate to the 135,000 U.S. combat troops still in Iraq.
Most of the countries that have agreed to participate in the stabilization force have promised only small numbers of troops, with conditions attached. Poland has said it wants the United States to pay for its deployment -- $60 million for six months or a bargain price of $90 million for a year. Honduras and Nicaragua have said they would contribute troops to a "Spanish brigade" in the British sector, but only if Spain reimburses them.
Poland and a number of countries that have not made a commitment have said they will send troops only under a U.N. mandate, which does not exist. Primarily made up of eastern Europeans and Asians, the proposed force includes no Arabs.
Aznar is the latest in a string of foreign officials who have visited the administration in recent weeks to sign on to the postwar policy in Iraq; to get a better understanding of what that policy will be; or, in the case of Security Council members that opposed the war, to patch up a frayed relationship.
Germany, Mexico and Chile -- all council members that have sent senior officials here in the past two weeks -- are in the last category. "Fence-mending is the order of the day," a senior German official said. The Germans, the official said, saw themselves as a "bridge" between the United States and Europe, and urged the administration not to "punish" France.
France and Germany opposed a U.S.-sponsored Security Council resolution authorizing war against Iraq. But U.S. ire was largely directed toward France, a permanent member of the council whose veto threat was a major factor leading the administration to withdraw the measure before a vote.
The administration is considering reprisal against France. Although Paris said it wants to be constructive, the administration is concerned France will try to block a new resolution giving U.N. blessing to U.S.-directed political and physical reconstruction in Iraq and lifting an international economic embargo.
Spain, along with Britain, plans to co-sponsor the new resolution when it is introduced, perhaps as early as Friday. Aznar echoed the Germans in calling for disagreements to be overcome in the United Nations and between the United States and its allies in Europe. "I'm convinced that Europe and the United States have to act together," he said. "Any weakening of the Atlantic alliance is directly opposed to Europe's interests."
Aznar said that healing the divisions of the past several months "requires actions by both sides," and he called on Bush to reach out to estranged countries in Europe soon with a "vision" for a strong trans-Atlantic relationship. "I believe President Bush should go to Europe and should speak about the content of the relationship in broader political terms" beyond the U.N. battles, he said.
In a Rose Garden appearance with Bush, Aznar thanked the president for taking the initiative leading to yesterday's State Department announcement that it had placed a political party Spain has charged represents the Basque separatist group ETA on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations.
The Spanish Supreme Court in March outlawed the party, called Batasuna, and Aznar said he had personally asked Bush about putting it on the U.S. list about five weeks ago. Aznar's support for the Iraq war was overwhelmingly opposed in Spain. As his party heads toward local elections later this month, he had been hoping for the designation as proof of the benefits of U.S. cooperation.
"I know, I understand that there are people [in Spain] who disagree with me" on Iraq, Aznar said. "But this decision is an expression of firm [U.S.] commitment."
Removing Baathists Takes Backseat to Scaling Up Iraqi Petroleum Output.
By Peter S. Goodman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, May 14, 2003; Page A18
KIRKUK, Iraq -- U.S. authorities rejected a bid by ethnic Kurds for a stake in the state oil giants of northern Iraq -- the dominant force in the local economy -- preferring to retain existing managers and minimize disruption to resume large-volume production as quickly as possible, according to Kurdish and U.S. officials.
Citing the same goal, U.S. officials have also largely postponed plans to remove former high-level members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party from oil jobs. The U.S. Army commander for the region did dismiss the former director general of a large company that distributes gasoline after he appeared on a blacklist of former Baathists compiled by U.S. intelligence, a spokesman confirmed. But workers and Kurdish party leaders in Kirkuk complain that the old Baath structure remains largely intact, with many oil divisions still filled with the party's people.
The American focus on oil production first and new leadership later has upset Kurdish leaders, who had hoped the end of Hussein's regime and the arrival of their long-time allies would gain them entree into the political system and the oil industry.
The Kurds and other ethnic minorities have achieved significant political influence through a new city council made up of representatives from each of the region's major ethnic groups -- Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen and Assyrians. But one of the two Kurdish political parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, was unsuccessful when it pressed the Americans at a recent meeting to establish a similarly balanced council to oversee the oil industry.
"We're not satisfied," said Ramadhan Rasheed, the party's deputy director. "The oil industry is controlled by these old Baathists. Many have come back and hold very sensitive positions in the oil industry. They are very dangerous, very serious. They continue to meet in secret. They are capable of causing many problems."
As U.S. officials present it, the future composition of the state oil companies is an issue for the Iraqis to sort out for themselves, after a new government is in place. They portray their mission as rebuilding the industry to its prewar state in order to produce gasoline and fuel oil now in critically short supply, while eventually resuming exports to fund Iraq's government.
U.S. officials say Baath Party leaders with direct responsibility for past crimes must be rooted out immediately. But in recent decades, any Iraqi desiring a decent job or education was virtually required to join the party, and casting them all out would leave hardly anyone to run the oil industry, officials say.
"It is unacceptable to allow senior Baath Party members to occupy positions of leadership and influence with the oil companies," said Maj. Rob Gowan, spokesman for the Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade, which controls the area. "However, there are some members who were affiliated with the Baath who will be allowed to work."
Throughout Iraq, battles over control are unfolding as long-repressed groups such as Shiite Muslims in the south and Kurds and Turkmen in the north seek a stake in the future. But battles over Iraq's oil industry have been particularly charged. The Kurdish groups say they have no designs themselves on the fields around Kirkuk, which produce 40 percent of the country's oil. Such a development could well bring military action from Turkey, whose government fears that Iraqi Kurds with oil could finance Kurdish resistance groups inside Turkey. The Kurds say they only want a new system that supplies them a fair opportunity to get jobs and contracts.
Hussein systematically excluded the Kurds, who set up an essentially separate state in the northern part of the country, aided by a U.S. enforced zone barring Iraqi military flights. Hussein moved Arabs into the Kirkuk area and forced Kurds out, ensuring that Arabs got almost all of the oil jobs -- a trend not hindered by the fact that Arabs are more likely to bring engineering credentials from prestigious universities. Of the roughly 10,000 people who now work at North Oil Co., no more than six are Kurdish, according to company officials.
Omer Amin, a local Kurd, tried to get a job at North Oil in 1991 after the death of his father, who had worked there as a gardener. North Oil had a policy that children could assume their parent's jobs as a way to keep company-provided housing. But even though Amin held a degree in mechanical engineering from the Kirkuk Institute of Technology and was willing to take any job, he was repeatedly turned away, he said. Amin and his mother, brother and sister had to give up their rent-free, three-room home, moving into a one-bedroom house for which they now must pay. He works as a clerk in a supermarket.
"My family said, 'Don't even bother, because you are a Kurd,' " Amin recalled. "I looked for any job, even a street-sweeper, just to take care of the family. But the company said they could not get approval from the oil ministry to hire me."
The American groups now tasked with rebuilding the oil infrastructure -- the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and its contractor, Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton Co. -- say they are trying to work around the politics, focusing on the pragmatic tasks of fixing what is broken.
"The reality is the regime is gone and you have all these groups trying to get a piece of what comes next," said Capt. John Connor, with the Army Corps of Engineers. "We're here to facilitate the pumping of oil. All these other issues are things the Iraqis will have to work out for themselves. Maybe it will work out, and maybe it won't."
Associated Press
Wednesday, May 14, 2003; Page A19
LONDON, May 13 -- More mass graves have been found at two new sites in Iraq, containing at least 4,000 bodies and perhaps as many as 15,000, human rights groups and a British news report said today.
If forensic experts confirm the findings, the mass graves at Hilla and the village of Muhammad Sakran would be the largest uncovered since Saddam Hussein's government collapsed in the U.S.-led war.
Residents using tractors and, later, their hands, excavated bodies this week from graves in the central Iraqi town of Hilla, 60 miles south of Baghdad.
In a news release today, New York-based Human Rights Watch said the United States had known about the Hilla site since early May, when the mayor of the city asked for help in guarding the graves and U.S. forces refused.
"The U.S. government has not acted on important information about mass graves in Iraq," said Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch in Baghdad.
"The result is desperate families trying to dig up the site themselves -- disturbing the evidence for forensic experts who could professionally establish the identities of the victims."
The British Broadcasting Corp., which showed television footage of the grisly scene, said that at least 3,000 bodies were exhumed. It quoted unidentified human rights groups as saying that the graves could contain 10,000 to 15,000 bodies. Human Rights Watch did not confirm estimates of the number of people buried there.
The BBC said it did not know how or when the victims in the Hilla graves were killed, but said they could have been Shiite Muslims massacred by Iraqi forces after a Shiite uprising against Hussein after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
Another grave containing more than 1,000 bodies was recently found in Muhammad Sakran village, about 25 miles north of Baghdad, Human Rights Watch said.
Reuters, Associated Press
By Sabrina Tavernise and Neela Banerjee in Suleimaniya
May 16 2003
A Kurdish political party working with the United States to shape an interim government in Iraq has quietly pushed ahead on three oil development projects, acting autonomously as a local government.
The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the two main Kurdish parties in Iraq, has signed production-sharing contracts with two Turkish companies, PetOil and General Energy, to develop and survey oilfields in north-east Iraq, according to Rasheed Khoshnaw, deputy director of the party's special projects division.
Party officials also agreed recently to allow an Australian company to do surveying work in eastern Iraq, Mr Khoshnaw said. He did not name the company.
Mr Khoshnaw said that the most recent of the oil agreements was concluded three months before the war in Iraq began in March. At that time, United Nations sanctions limiting Iraqi oil exports were firmly in place, although now the Security Council is considering a resolution that would lift them.
The US, pushing for a UN vote on Iraq next week, said on Wednesday it would submit a "modified" resolution shortly. Diplomats said revisions would centre on the role of the UN in postwar Iraq - hinting at a bigger role for the body in forming a new government - as well as how the oil-for-food program would be phased out.
The US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, said on Wednesday after talks in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin that the US had yet to agree with Moscow on draft proposals to end sanctions. "With respect to Iraq, there are some outstanding issues and we will be working these issues in a spirit of partnership and trying to come to a solution," he said.
US military commanders in Baghdad, under pressure to impose order on a still-lawless capital, are defending their approach to keeping the city safe and said they were "aggressively targeting" looters. But they said they would not authorise a shoot-to-kill policy, as previously reported.
In Washington, a US Treasury official said that Lebanon's central bank had located $US495 million ($768 million) in Iraqi funds - thought to be some of Saddam Hussein's hidden billions.
The Bush Administration has changed its tune on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction - its argument for going to war. Instead of looking for stocks of banned materials, it is now pinning its hopes on finding documentary evidence. The change in rhetoric seems designed to prepare the public for the fact that special US military teams have found little to justify the Administration's claim that Iraq was concealing vast stocks of chemical and biological agents and was working on a nuclear weapons program.
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 22, 2003; Page A01
UNITED NATIONS, May 21 -- The foreign ministers of France, Russia and Germany said today that they will support a U.N. Security Council resolution lifting more than a decade of international sanctions on Iraq, clearing the way for approval of the measure and providing the Bush administration a major diplomatic victory.
The Security Council is poised to adopt the resolution as early as Thursday, granting the United States and Britain -- Washington's leading military ally during the war in Iraq -- broad control over the country's economy and its budding political process until an internationally recognized Iraqi government is in place, according to senior U.S. and U.N. diplomats.
Meeting in Paris, the French, Russian and German foreign ministers, whose countries led the opposition to the war this spring, announced that they will support the United States' postwar plans despite reservations about what they view as the limited U.N. involvement in shaping the country's political and economic future.
"Even if this text does not go as far as we would like, we have decided to vote for this resolution," French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin told reporters at a news conference with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. "This is because we have chosen the path of unity of the international community."
The announcement ensured that the resolution, which the Bush administration said it will put to a vote before the 15-nation Security Council on Thursday, will pass easily. Only Syria, the lone Arab country on the council, has indicated it may not vote for the resolution, saying that it needs more time to consider the text.
The support the United States has been able to muster represents a major diplomatic achievement for the Bush administration, which launched an invasion of Iraq in late March in the face of broad international opposition. The adoption of the resolution would mark the Security Council's first endorsement of a foreign occupation of a U.N. member nation after an invasion that its members roundly opposed.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell struck the final deal in a series of telephone conversations with his French, Russian and German counterparts during the past 24 hours, officials said. He will meet with them in France on Thursday at a meeting of foreign ministers from the Group of Eight economic powers.
The seven-page resolution would immediately transfer legal control over Iraq's oil industry from the United Nations and Iraq to the United States and its allies. The oil proceeds would be used to finance the country's reconstruction, the costs of an Iraqi civilian administration, the completion of Iraq's disarmament and "other purposes benefiting the people of Iraq."
Iraq's revenue would be placed in the Development Fund of Iraq, to be held in Iraq's Central Bank, which is being run by a former U.S. bank executive. The United States and Britain would select an auditor, subject to the approval of an international advisory and monitoring board, to scrutinize expenditures. A blanket immunity would shield Iraq's oil revenue from claims by foreign creditors until the United States yields control to an internationally recognized Iraqi government.
The resolution would also extend political legitimacy to U.S. rule in Iraq by granting the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority a formal mandate to "promote the welfare of the Iraqi people through the effective administration of the territory." It would pave the way for international financial institutions and for countries that questioned the legality of the overthrow of the Iraqi government to participate in the reconstruction of Iraq.
In an effort to broaden support for the resolution, the United States preserved a significant, though limited, role for the United Nations, with the resolution directing Secretary General Kofi Annan to appoint a special representative to oversee the U.N. relief and reconstruction efforts and to participate in the political transition to an Iraqi government. Powell has been urging Annan to appoint to the post a Brazilian diplomat, Sergio Vieira de Mello, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, who oversaw East Timor's transition to independence.
Despite sharp differences with the United States over the substance of the resolution, France and Russia were unable to marshal sufficient political momentum to force the Bush administration to make serious concessions that would ensure continued international control over Iraq's oil and place the United Nations at the center of efforts to rebuild the country.
Though the United States ceded little ground on crucial matters during two weeks of negotiations on the draft resolution, it made a total of 90 changes to address the concerns of Security Council members. One key concession that helped clinch the agreement was the inclusion of a provision that would allow the council to review the implementation of the resolution within 12 months.
The United States also agreed to grant the U.N. secretary general as much as six months to phase out the U.N. oil-for-food program, which has $13 billion in the bank. But the United Nations would have to immediately transfer $1 billion of that money to a fund controlled by the U.S. military and its allies. The extension of the 7-year-old humanitarian program, which permitted Iraq to sell its oil to finance the purchase of food, medicine and other humanitarian goods, would allow Annan to honor -- on a priority basis -- billions of dollars in contracts for products approved by the former Iraqi government. Russia has more than $4 billion in outstanding contracts.
The United States also left open the door to a return of U.N. weapons inspectors to Iraq, a key demand of several council members.
Despite the concessions, the resolution proved tough to accept for Syria. In a bid to gain more time, Syria's ambassador to the United Nations, Mikhail Wehbe, flew to Damascus to discuss the U.S. proposal with the leadership. Syria's charge d'affaires, Fayssal Mekdad, said he will boycott a vote on Thursday if he does not receive instructions. "Can you imagine how difficult it is for the Syrians to endorse something which is legitimizing the foreign occupation of an Arab country?" a council diplomat said. "It is not easy."
De Villepin said today he was satisfied that the text provides a "tangible and independent role" for the United Nations. "The text on the table is the result of compromise," he said. "The important thing today is that the United Nations play a key role."
ERBIL, Iraq, May 21 — The two main Kurdish political parties sharply criticized an American proposal today for a new United Nations resolution on Iraq, saying it would take away $4 billion that rightfully belongs to the Kurds.
In a letter to L. Paul Bremer III, the chief allied administrator in Iraq, two leaders, Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani, expressed outrage over a plan to redistribute unspent money from the oil-for-food program.
The United Nations let Iraq sell its oil in exchange for food and medicine starting in 1996. The Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq, semiautonomous after an uprising in 1991, received 13 percent from sales of the oil. The Kurds' money — $4 billion since 1996, said Dr. Sami Abdul Rahman, a senior official of the Kurdish Democratic Party — accumulated in a separate bank account.
Now the United States is trying to get the United Nations to cancel economic sanctions imposed on Iraq after the Persian Gulf war in 1991. The money, according to the resolution, would be combined and transferred to an internationally monitored Iraqi Development Fund.
The Kurds say they have earmarked the money for projects like hospitals and power plants.
"I want our fair share," Dr. Rahman said in an interview. "I don't want to pray that Gen. Jay Garner will do something for us," referring to the previous American leader here. "By the time I get to him, he has been transferred. It is very confusing."
Kurds Want To Establish Independent State Under USA's Patronage.
No score for this post
June 17 2003, 11:40 AM
Kurds Want To Establish Independent State Under USA's Patronage.
Utro.Ru
06/17/2003 13:16
Kurds break their promise to Washington to stop struggling for an independent state of their own.
Representatives of Turkish largest Kurdish groups set forth a very unusual ultimatum to Ankara. They demanded the Turkish government should officially recognize the People's Movement of Kurdistan v a separatist organization that conducts subversive activities in the south of the Turkish republic and in the north of Iraq. The Kurds threatened that they would perform new acts of terrorism in the region otherwise.
The People-s movement of Kurdistan is a strange organization. Having come into conflict with the Democratic Party of Kurdistan, which was chaired by Abdullah Ocalan, activists of the People's Movement of Kurdistan pronounced their objective: to establish the independent state of Kurdistan under the USA's patronage. Unlike Ocalan's followers, the movement's leaders said that the direct dependence on the Western capital was the only way for the new structure to develop. Probably, that was the reason why a lot of commanders believed the movement's ideas and took part in seizing Tikrit, Fallujah and other towns in northern Iraq during the operation in the Persian Gulf. The Turkish government has repeatedly warned Washington and London against establishing close contacts with the Kurds.
The Turkish government's concern was not groundless. Activists of the People-s Movement of Kurdistan were inspired with the victory over Saddam Hussein's regime, who had done his best not to let the Kurdish separatism develop in Iraq. They announced that they had a right to count at least for a broad autonomy, if not for an independent state. Moreover, they said that an autonomy was supposed to take a larger territory than just the north of Iraq.
The Turkish government stated in this respect that the Kurds were playing on the emotions of the world community, trying to strengthen their separatist movement in the south of Turkey. Turkish President Ahmed Necdet Sezer stated at a press conference in Ankara that Turkey would preserve its integrity by all means for the sake of the nation's prosperity. The president emphasized, if someone was going to call the prosperity into question, the government would order to take adequate measures in return. In Sezer's opinion, the Kurdish separatism poses a potential threat to the national security of Turkey, so any acceptable methods will do to struggle against it.
During the time of Saddam Hussein's regime, the Turkish army periodically raided Kurdish bases in the north of Iraq. It has now become impossible to do so for two reasons. First of all, the north of Iraq is controlled by the American army at present. US servicemen will not let any raids to happen. Secondly, Kurdish commanders in the north of Iraq are considered to be national heroes. In this connection, local people would perceive any aggression against them as an infringement upon democratic values.
Apparently, Kurdish separatists have already used such sentiments. Kurdish students arranged a demonstration of protest in the south of Turkey, claiming their support for the People's Movement of Kurdistan, and asking the Turkish government to make considerable concessions about the so-called new Kurdistan. The majority of protesters do not have a precise notion of the perspectives to set up a state of their own. The Kurds previously promised the US administration, a Turkey's ally, not to go on with their subversive activities in Iraq and in the south of Turkey. However, the Turkish press reports that they have already broken their promises. It is not known, what new methods they might use.
Kurds Nab Iraq's Ex-Vice President - Close Adviser to Hussein Turned Over to U.S. Forces.
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, August 20, 2003; Page A13
MOSUL, Iraq, Aug. 19 -- Kurdish militiamen captured Iraq's feared former vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, in a bloodless operation in this northern city today and turned him over to the U.S. military, marking one of the highest-profile arrests since most of ousted president Saddam Hussein's leadership went underground after his government collapsed in April.
Ramadan, once one of Hussein's closest advisers, was seized with three guards soon after midnight from a two-story villa in the northern city of Mosul, where U.S. forces killed Hussein's two eldest sons last month. After trying to flee through a back door, Ramadan surrendered peacefully, Kurdish officials said. Residents said he had done little to disguise himself other than letting his hair turn gray.
"He wasn't expecting anyone," said Sadi Ahmed Pire, the local director of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the two main Kurdish parties whose militiamen seized Ramadan. "He was totally surprised and then he was totally resigned."
Once known as "Saddam's knuckles," Ramadan, 65, was one of a handful of lieutenants in Hussein's inner circle. His relationship with the former Iraqi president dated from the 1960s, when the Baath Party was largely an underground organization. After it assumed power in 1968, he became one of its most recognized, and notorious, officials and remained so until its collapse on April 9.
Ramadan was No. 20 on the U.S. list of the 55 most wanted officials from Hussein's government. President Bush, speaking in Texas, said he was pleased with Ramadan's capture and said the rest of the people on the list would eventually be detained.
"Slowly but surely, we'll find who we need to find," he said. "It's just a matter of time."
Pire said Kurdish officials had been actively pursuing Ramadan for two weeks. Twice, he said, Ramadan had escaped -- once just an hour before they arrived at his farm north of here; a second time a day before they entered another villa in Mosul. During that time, Pire said, Ramadan had moved as many as six times, mainly to different houses in the city.
Pire credited the break to a series of arrests of Ramadan's aides over the previous 48 hours. The final arrest led to Ramadan's private secretary, who divulged Ramadan's exact whereabouts in an upscale neighborhood known as Wahda.
An hour later, several Kurdish militiamen set up surveillance at the stone-and-concrete house, driving along nearby roads until Ramadan, his guards, wife and 10 relatives went to bed.
At 12:30 a.m., about three hours later, they brought an aide of Ramadan's to the front door. Recognizing his voice, guards allowed him to enter, and about 15 militiamen rushed in, Pire said.
Ramadan, wearing a traditional white robe known as a dishdasha, ran for the rear door, then surrendered. Pire said the militiamen found a handful of pistols and Kalashnikov assault rifles, but Ramadan was seized without any shots being fired.
"It was a very well-organized operation, it was a very quiet operation. Not even the neighbors knew what was happening," Pire said. "Sometimes it is not necessary to have a huge army for an operation."
Kurdish militiamen brought Ramadan to their headquarters in Mosul and contacted the Army's 101st Airborne Division, which is stationed nearby. He was taken away in a convoy of four Humvees about 3 a.m., Pire said.
Ramadan, tall and lanky with a mustache, became vice president in March 1991, after holding a series of ministerial posts. He was believed to have overseen several purges of party ranks as well as the crushing of a Shiite Muslim uprising in southern Iraq that followed the 1991 Persian Gulf War and was considered no less ruthless than Hussein.
Outside the government, he was a brusque, even vulgar figure, given to harangues. In an interview before this year's war, he suggested that Bush fight a duel with Hussein. He was often brought before foreign media during the war. In one tirade, he told Saudi Arabia's foreign minister to "go to hell" and dismissed him as "a minion and a lackey."
Neighbors said they had never seen Ramadan, though they said they believed the house had been occupied for two weeks. Shadowed by six-foot-high concrete walls and lime trees, the house was purchased last month by a Kurdish resident for $34,000, residents said. "House for sale," written in large red letters on the front wall, had been lightly whitewashed.
"No one saw him, no one knew he was here," said Yahya Jumaa Hassan, 62, who lived in a house behind the villa.
Another neighbor, Luai Jasem Abadi, 40, said he saw people moving furniture and belongings into the house two weeks ago. "But when we said hello, we could tell by their answer that they didn't want to mix," he said.
Mosul, a historic city that overlooks the Tigris River, is predominantly Sunni Arab, with a large Kurdish minority. For years, it provided much of the military's leadership, and U.S. officials have said they have been surprised by the level of Baath Party organization that remains. Among some of its Arab residents at least, anti-U.S. sentiments are common.
Both Abadi and Hassan insisted that had Ramadan asked for their help, they would have gladly provided it.
"If Saddam Hussein asked for our protection, we would not deliver him," Hassan said. "They are our traditions. If someone comes inside my home, I should protect him. Not because he's a party member, but because it's a question of our dignity."
Abadi interjected: "Shame on the Kurds for arresting Taha Yassin Ramadan."
"I saw his children, and I saw his wife, and they were crying," he added. "It hurts me to see that as a Muslim."
Blast Devastates U.N. Baghdad Offices - Chief Envoy, At Least 16 Others Killed.
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, August 20, 2003; Page A01
BAGHDAD, Aug. 19 -- A truck bomb exploded outside U.N. headquarters here today, killing at least 17 people, including U.N. special representative Sergio Vieira de Mello, in one of the deadliest attacks ever directed at a U.N. facility.
Witnesses said that at about 4:30 p.m., a cement truck crashed into a security wall under construction on one side of the Canal Hotel, which has served as U.N. headquarters since 1991. The explosion brought down the entire corner of the three-story building where Vieira de Mello's office was located, sending flames, smoke and dust high into the air and leaving a five-foot-deep, 15-foot-wide crater. It also heavily damaged the National Spinal Cord Injury Center hospital and a tourism training institute next door and scattered pieces of the truck's twisted chassis up to 200 yards away.
Red Crescent ambulances and U.S. military helicopters ferried dozens of wounded workers, guards, visitors and patients from the spinal hospital to medical facilities throughout Baghdad. American soldiers, Iraqi police and fire rescue workers dug with their bare hands to find survivors and bodies.
President Bush, speaking at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., called those behind the bombing "enemies of the civilized world." In a statement issued at U.N. headquarters in New York, Secretary General Kofi Annan called the death of Vieira de Mello "a bitter blow for the United Nations and for me personally."
The attack was the deadliest on a U.N. facility since Israeli forces, responding to an assault by the Lebanese group Hezbollah, bombarded a U.N. compound at Qana in southern Lebanon in April 1996, killing 91 refugees.
Mohammed Shaker, an Iraqi journalist who was attending a news conference inside the building , said he saw 15 corpses as he retreated from the building, and at least 20 seriously wounded people. The Associated Press reported 20 deaths.
"There was an enormous amount of explosives in what we believed to be a large truck," said Bernard Kerik, a former New York City police commissioner who is working to reestablish Baghdad's police force. "We have evidence to suggest it could have been a suicide attack."
Bombing attacks have escalated steadily across Iraq since June, when the use of roadside bombs to attack U.S. forces first became commonplace. In recent weeks, bombs have been used not only against troops but Iraqi infrastructure and other nonmilitary targets. On Aug. 7, a car bomb destroyed the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad, killing 17. Over the past week, two bombs damaged sections of a key oil pipeline that runs to Turkey, and saboteurs blew up a water main in a north Baghdad neighborhood.
At dusk today, L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, inspected the rubble outside the building, walking through the 30-yard gap torn in the perimeter wall. Tears rimmed his eyes when he recognized Ghassan Salame, an assistant of Vieira de Mello's. They embraced. "The people who did this will be found," Bremer said. Pieces of the building suddenly cascaded to the ground, and bystanders shouted "Watch out!" at Bremer.
Later, Bremer issued a statement of condolences and defiance. "Today I lost a friend," he said of Vieira de Mello, 55, a Brazilian who had served the United Nations since 1969 in such trouble spots as East Timor, Yugoslavia, Cambodia and Bangladesh.
"He worked tirelessly and devotedly to bring freedom and democracy to this damaged and traumatized country," Bremer said. "We will honor that legacy and honor his memory with an unswerving commitment to his goals and his vision."
Akila Hashimi, a member of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council who accompanied Bremer to the building, declared: "We are shocked but not surprised. All the Iraqi people are subject to these kind of cowardly attacks."
There were no assertions of responsibility for the attack, and the question of who has carried out the various bombings around the country remains unanswered. U.S. officials attribute most of the attacks to remnants of deposed president Saddam Hussein's government and his supporters. Most assaults on occupation forces have taken place in central Iraq, a largely Sunni Muslim region that was Hussein's principal power base.
But U.S. officials are speaking more and more about the possibility that foreigners have infiltrated Iraq to join the fight against the U.S.-led occupation. In remarks published today in the London-based Arabic-language newspaper Al Hayat, Bremer accused Syria of permitting "terrorists" to cross its borders into Iraq and said he was "still worried" about Iranian meddling in Iraqi affairs.
"We held talks with the Syrians in this regard. We hope to see better cooperation in the future," he told the newspaper. As for Iran, he declared: "This is irresponsible conduct and runs counter to Iraq's interests. We believe that a free Iraq must not be subject to any interference by its neighbors."
Many international aid organizations have kept their distance from Iraq, partly because the United Nations does not play a central role in rebuilding or governing the country and partly because of the danger. Hashimi, the Governing Council member, urged the United Nations to "stay and continue" its work.
Over the past dozen years, the U.N. role in Iraq has ranged from searching for weapons of mass destruction to feeding millions of destitute people. Despite prewar tensions between the United Nations and the Bush administration over the justification for invading Iraq, Vieira de Mello had lobbied for U.N. recognition of the Governing Council -- which was granted last week -- and had recently traveled to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Iran and Egypt looking for support.
In July, Vieira de Mello warned of danger. "The U.N. presence in Iraqi remains vulnerable to anyone who would seek to target our organization," he said. That month, a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at U.N. headquarters from a nearby highway. There was no damage or injury.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil said Vieira de Mello was a "victim of the insanity of terrorism," and he decreed three days of official mourning for a man who was the country's most prominent international diplomat in decades.
[In New York tonight, the United Nations released the names of seven other victims whose families had been notified, the Reuters news agency reported. The dead included Rick Hooper, an American working for the department of political affairs, and Chris Klein-Beckman, a Canadian who served as program coordinator for UNICEF.]
Witnesses inside the compound said a lone assailant wearing a white T-shirt was driving the truck that plowed into the outer wall. U.S. troops were guarding the main entrance to the building, and it was not immediately known if any were hurt.
It was impossible to ascertain whether the bomber's target was specifically Vieira de Mello's office or whether he simply aimed for the point where the new perimeter wall passed closest to the building. Salim Lone, a U.N. spokesman, suggested that the killer calculated his attack to, in effect, assassinate the special representative. "I guess it was targeted for that," he said. "It was a pretty huge bomb. His office and those around it no longer exist. It's all rubble."
Videotape taken inside the building showed panicked survivors staggering past a staircase, some bleeding from the head, apparently cut by broken glass. A generator restored light to the building, easing the escape of many. "People were breaking through doors and jumping out of windows. I tried to tell myself not to be afraid, but it was hard," said Hussain Querishi, a security guard.
As word of the bombing spread in Baghdad, relatives of U.N. workers gathered outside the complex awaiting word about the dead and injured. They rushed forward as U.S. soldiers bore stretchers of wounded victims to helicopters that ferried patients to American combat field hospitals.
"My niece! My niece! Why don't you let me go find her?" a Kurdish woman screamed at an impassive soldier blocking the way to the headquarters. "I hate Saddam. I hate this life. I hate what is happening," cried the woman, who works for the World Food Program.
Ahmed Sudami, a security guard, emerged with blood on his shoulder and told bystanders that they were being kept away for the safety of the wounded, who lay helpless with crushed legs and arms. "If someone wants to shoot the Americans, they can shoot them outside. Not in this house of peace," he said.
An elderly man, Hassan Ali, emerged from the spinal cord hospital in a wheelchair to beg for help evacuating patients inside. "Many are trapped. The ceiling fell in, so many cannot walk," he cried, his right leg shaking uncontrollably from his affliction.
The hospital's director, Kadar Chalabi, said that collapsed ceilings injured eight of his patients. "I never worried about being close to the U.N.," he said. "I never thought it would be a target. Nothing like this, anyway."
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Wednesday the world body would not pull out of Iraq despite an attack on its headquarters in Baghdad that killed its top envoy and 19 other people.
``We will persevere. We will continue. It is essential work,'' Annan said at a news conference in Stockholm, where he stopped briefly before heading to U.N. headquarters in New York. ``We will not be intimidated.''
Annan said he was to meet with the Security Council later in the day to discuss ways to better protect U.N. workers in Iraq following the attack Tuesday, when a cement truck packed with explosives detonated outside U.N. offices in Baghdad. The explosion blew a 6-foot-deep crater into the ground, ripped apart the building's facade and injured 100 people.
``We are reassessing our security arrangements in Iraq. We have been in Iraq for 12 years and we have never been attacked,'' Annan said, expressing shock at how a U.N. mission was targeted by an apparent suicide bombing. Unlike U.S. occupation forces, the organization had been welcomed by many Iraqis.
Annan said he was mourning those killed, including the top U.N. envoy in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, whom Annan called a ``brilliant colleague.'' The United Nations will continue its humanitarian mission in Iraq so that the victims' deaths ``shall not be in vain.''
Vieira de Mello began work June 2 and would have finished his assignment at the end of September. A 55-year-old veteran diplomat from Brazil, Vieira de Mello was trapped in the rubble and died within hours.
U.N. workers were told to stay home Wednesday following what was thought to be the first suicide bombing ever against a world body facility. The United Nations distributes humanitarian aid and is developing programs aimed at boosting Iraq's emerging free press, justice system and monitoring of human rights.
Annan appeared to indirectly criticize the United States for having underestimated the difficulties of pacifying and rebuilding Iraq following its March invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.
``We had hoped that by now, the coalition forces would have secured the environment for us to be able to carry on ... economic reconstruction and institution building,'' Annan said. ``That has not happened.''
But he also recognized the difficulty in bringing stability to postwar Iraq.
``Some mistakes may have been made, some wrong assumptions may have been made, but that does not excuse nor justify the kind of senseless violence that we are seeing in Iraq today,'' Annan said. ``These extremists who are targeting innocent civilians are not doing their nation or the people of Iraq any service.''
Annan said he hoped those responsible for the attack would be brought to justice -- although that may be a long way off. The unidentified perpetrators appear to be organized and sophisticated, Annan said.
``There are those who believe that these are limited efforts by a small group of people trying to undermine the work of the coalition. Others have described it as a guerrilla war,'' he said. ``Obviously it seems to be much more organized and much deeper than one thought at the beginning.''
Leaders around the world also vowed not to let it deter the world body's efforts to rebuild Iraq.
``The process of Iraq moving toward independence and steady development will not be stopped and the U.N. mission will not be suspended either,'' the official Xinhua news agency quoted Chinese President Hu Jintao as saying.
Mr Vieira de Mello had been widely tipped for the Iraq post.
Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN's special representative in Iraq who has been killed in Baghdad, was an experienced and widely respected diplomat. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan wasted no time in deciding who should take on the key role of his special representative to Iraq. It was an open secret that Sergio Vieira de Mello, then UN high commissioner for human rights, was the main contender for the post.
The Brazilian diplomat's steady, pragmatic style guided him through a 33-year career in the United Nations. In late 2002 he took over from Mary Robinson as head of the UN's Human Rights Commission, a tough and often controversial job. And his most recent - and final - mission to Iraq proved equally difficult. Mr Vieira de Mello had to carefully assert the UN's role in Iraq against occupying forces keen to retain the final say.
Long UN career.
Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1948, he joined the organisation while studying philosophy and humanities in his home city and the Sorbonne University in Paris. He spent the majority of his career working for the UN's High Commissioner for Refugees office in Geneva, and served in Bangladesh, Sudan, Cyprus, Mozambique, Peru and Yugoslavia. Mr Vieira de Mello's first high-profile role came in 1981, when he was appointed principal adviser to UN forces in Lebanon.
Two years later he returned to a management post in Geneva. After the Rwandan genocide in the mid-1990s, he spent several months working as humanitarian coordinator for the Great Lakes region in 1996. He was later appointed deputy high commissioner for refugees, before being promoted to the position of under secretary for humanitarian affairs. He then worked as Kofi Annan's special representative for Kosovo.
East Timor mission.
Mr Vieira de Mello took the lead in the UN's operations in East Timor. Commentators say his successful overseeing of the territory's fractious transition from Indonesian province to independence was his greatest achievement. The mission was not without its dangers: a visiting correspondent from the South China Morning Post recalled a poster on the wall of his office requesting visitors to unload their weapons.
Mr Vieira de Mello described the peaceful election of independence leader Xanana Gusmao as president in April as "a truly historic moment". Although some analysts said he lacked hands-on experience in the field, he spent 30 years working for the UN in some of its most difficult missions and his appointment to the top UN human rights job was welcomed by Britain and the United States.
Involvement.
As the UN's special representative in Iraq, correspondents say Mr Vieira de Mello quickly won the respect of the US administrator, Paul Bremer, despite tension between Washington and the UN over the US-led invasion. Although he played no obvious part in the formation of Iraq's new governing council - chosen by the US-led coalition - Mr Vieira de Mello toured Iraq's neighbours urging them to give their backing to the institution.
However he also recognised the delicate nature of the UN's mission in Iraq. He told the Security Council in July: "The United Nations presence in Iraq remains vulnerable to any who would seek to target our organisation." Mr Vieira de Mello was appointed to the posting in Iraq on the understanding that he would return to his permanent position as UN high commissioner for human rights after four months.
---
Career highlights
1981: Adviser to UN forces, Lebanon
1996: Humanitarian coordinator, Rwanda
1999: Special representative for Kosovo
2000: Head of UN operations, East Timor
2003: UN special representative in Iraq
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The devastating bombing of U.N. headquarters here Tuesday is the latest in a series of recent attacks that may be the work of foreign terrorists bent on wrecking efforts to rebuild the country, some experts say.
There are a variety of groups believed to be operating in Iraq, including supporters of the ousted dictator Saddam Hussein, and no one can know for certain who was involved in attacking the U.N. hotel.
But the nature and targets of the recent attacks, which hurt Iraqis and humanitarian workers, don't seem to fit with the ideology of nationalist Iraqi resistance groups who seem more focused on attacking U.S. forces.
United Nations workers ``are now and have been working to help the Iraqi people,'' said political risk analyst Linda Jamison of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. ``These terrorists don't want anything but a body count.''
Most of those killed in the suicide truck bombing at the U.N.'s Baghdad headquarters were Iraqis and U.N. officials, including the chief U.N. official in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello.
It was similar to the Aug. 7 bombing of the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad that killed 19 people - all Iraqis. The bomb that blew up outside the U.N. building was twice as large as the one at the Jordanian embassy.
Both attacks bore the hallmarks of previous bombings by foreign terrorists like al-Qaida, blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. Strikes blamed on Saddam Hussein loyalists and other homegrown guerrillas since the U.S. coalition ousted Saddam Hussein have been on a much smaller scale and have not involved suicide attackers.
``The second effective use of a car bomb in less than two weeks suggests at least some foreign involvement,'' said political risk analyst Jon Alterman, Middle East director of the Washington-based CSIS.
Iraqis, not coalition forces, bore the brunt of other attacks over the past two weeks as well: a bomb that cut off the water supply to most of Baghdad on Sunday and Monday, mysterious fires that shut down the country's export pipelines days after Iraq's economic lifeblood oil began flowing to into Turkey. The pipeline explosion is costing the Iraqi people $7 million a day, according to L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator of Iraq.
An audiotape released on the eve of the U.N. attack, purportedly from an al-Qaida militant, urged Muslims around the world to travel to Iraq and fight the U.S.-led occupation. The tape was thought to be the first public call by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network for Muslims to join the fight in Iraq.
Prior to the U.N. attack Tuesday, U.S. officials warned that al-Qaida terrorists were already in Iraq. On Tuesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld echoed earlier comments by Bremer, blaming some recent attacks in Iraq on ``jihadists who came in from Syria for the most part.''
Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner who is rebuilding the Iraqi police force, said it was too soon to know if al-Qaida was linked to the U.N. blast. ``We don't have that kind of evidence yet,'' he said.
Dia'a Rashwan, an expert on radical Islam at Egypt's Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said Iraqis who have been staging guerrilla attacks against U.S. forces ``have no problems with the U.N.''
``The attack is logical within the ideology of al-Qaida,'' Rashwan said.
After Tuesday's bombing, the Arab television station Al-Jazeera reported that an anti-U.S. group in Iraq, the Iraqi Islamic National Resistance Movement, released a statement condemning the attack and saying no Iraqis would have attacked the United Nations.
Earlier this week, Al-Jazeera aired a videotaped statement purportedly from the same group making threats against U.S. forces in Iraq.
Al-Qaida has long expressed hostility toward the United Nations, accusing the international body of lending its legitimacy to encroachment on Palestinian lands and attempts to contain Iraq.
After Sept. 11, the United States lobbied for support at the United Nations for the war that toppled on Afghanistan's Taliban rulers, which had harbored al-Qaida. Bin Laden appeared in a videotape accusing the United Nations of ``issuing decisions supporting the oppressive, tyrannical and arrogant America against those oppressed who have emerged from a ferocious war at the hands of the Soviet Union.''
The reference was to the struggle against the 1979-89 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Telegraph.co.uk
By Robin Gedye, Foreign Affairs Writer
(Filed: 19/08/2003)
An oil pipeline fire contines to burn after being sabotaged at the weekend.
Muslim fundamentalists from throughout the Middle East are being drawn to Iraq for a protracted guerrilla war, senior military officials said yesterday after a wave of weekend sabotage attacks.
"Far from a new Vietnam, we appear to be heading for a new Afghanistan, Somalia or Chechnya as the next battleground between Islam and the infidels," said one official in Washington.
As he spoke fires still raged on a broken oil pipeline in northern Iraqi and youths bathed in the water gushing from a sabotaged water conduit in Baghdad.
The latest assaults in Iraq, which included a seemingly random mortar attack on a jail in which six Iraqis died and 59 were wounded, seemed designed to cause havoc and sow discontent against coalition forces in Iraq. "By taking on civilian targets as well as military the terrorists are pursuing a two-pronged strategy in demoralising troops while building public discontent," said Jonathan Stevenson, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Contrary to President George W Bush's assertion this month that "Iraq is more secure" than at any time since the war, General John Abizaid, who took over in July from Tommy Franks as the US military commander in Iraq, conceded that resistance had intensified.
"They are better co-ordinated now, less amateurish and their ability to use improvised explosive devices, combined with tactical activity, is more sophisticated," he said.
Resistance fighters speak of operating in cells of five or six members, of being recruited at religious gatherings and of lying low until they receive a call to act. Their aim: to create a new Islamic state, without Saddam Hussein, but equally authoritarian. As targets are broadened, from military to civilian, claims by Washington that the numbers of foreign fighters in the Iraqi resistance are growing have gained credence.
The change in tactics suggests that guerrillas from abroad have grown in influence in recent weeks.
Gen Richard B Myers, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of the US ground forces in Iraq, and Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defence secretary, have all suggested that foreign terrorists were an increasing problem for American forces.
Sceptics suggested that this could be an attempt to alienate Iraq's civilian population from the resistance by suggesting that it was being infiltrated by non-Iraqis.
But more than 70 foreign fighters were reported killed last month in a US military assault on a terrorist training camp in the desert west of Baghdad. Local townspeople confirmed that the fighters were from Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan.
"Iraq is now the central battle in the war on terrorism," Mr Wolfowitz told the Fox television network.
Of particular concern to America is the attraction of Wahhabism, an austere form of Islam prevalent in Saudi Arabia, which is gaining a foothold in Iraq. Wahhabi mosques, funded by Saudi wealth, are becoming centres of opposition to America.
In June, US special forces arrested 15 Saudi Wahhabis and captured a huge supply of weapons and ammunition.
During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s tens of thousands of Muslims volunteered to fight the invader.
Trained in neighbouring Pakistan, they were financed and armed by the CIA. When the Russians withdrew, the so-called "Afghan Arabs" remained to form the basis of what became al-Qa'eda.
Others went on to fight for Islamic causes from Bosnia to Chechnya. Iraq is their new cause celebre.
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, August 22, 2003; Page A01
BAGHDAD, Aug. 21 -- Ali Hassan Majeed, a confidant of former president Saddam Hussein who earned the nickname "Chemical Ali" for overseeing chemical weapons attacks that killed thousands of Iraqi Kurds, has been taken into custody, the second former senior government official reported detained this week, the U.S. military said today.
Majeed, Hussein's first cousin and the man accused of engineering some of the government's bloodiest episodes over two decades, was No. 5 on the U.S. list of the 55 most-wanted officials. His capture leaves 16 still at large, including Hussein and Iraq's senior intelligence chiefs.
The military thought Majeed had been killed in an airstrike on April 5 in the southern city of Basra, and British military officials reported recovering his body. But by June, U.S. military officials were saying he might have escaped, and it was widely believed in Baghdad and other cities that he was still alive.
The circumstances of his arrest remained unclear tonight. The U.S. Central Command said only that he "has been captured and is in custody of coalition forces." Wafiq Samarrai, a former intelligence chief who went into exile in 1995 and returned after the war, said he believed Majeed was seized on the outskirts of Samarra, 70 miles north of Baghdad.
In Washington, a senior defense official said Majeed was captured Sunday in northern Iraq in the company of five or six others the official described as bodyguards. The official said announcement of the capture was delayed to confirm Majeed's identity and avoid tipping off others on the most-wanted list.
The disclosure of his arrest follows the detention Tuesday of former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan, another feared aide to Hussein who was captured by Kurdish militiamen in a two-story villa in the northern city of Mosul.
In contrast to the celebratory gunfire that greeted the deaths of Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay, residents of Baghdad were more subdued about news of Majeed's capture, which was first aired on Arabic-language news stations. As with the sons' deaths, many said they would not believe Majeed was in custody until U.S. authorities aired footage of his capture. Nevertheless, there seemed to be a current of relief, even satisfaction, at the arrest of a man whom many consider more brutal than Hussein.
"Execution is not good enough for Ali Hassan Majeed," said Yasser Saad as he stood with fellow employees at an electronics store along the busy commercial thoroughfare of Karrada.
Laith Zuheir, a 25-year-old worker, said he wanted a public trial of Majeed, then his execution.
"I wish I could torture him with my own hands, shoot him with a pistol, beginning in his leg until I reached his head, so that he could feel the pain of every innocent person he killed," he said. "Then he would see how they suffered."
Majeed, who was born in 1941 in the same town as Hussein and once served as a motorcycle messenger in the Iraqi military, was present at some of the bloodiest and most decisive moments of his cousin's 24-year rule.
Rising through the ranks of the Baath Party, in large part on his ferocious loyalty to Hussein, he was said to have taken part in the arrests and executions of 66 people accused of plotting a coup just days after Hussein's inauguration in 1979.
He was interior and defense minister, and was appointed governor of Kuwait soon after Iraq invaded the neighboring emirate in 1990 and declared it the country's 19th province. After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Majeed was instrumental in the brutal repression of Iraq's Shiite Muslim uprising, and he personally reoccupied Basra, the country's second-largest city. Infamous video footage shows a chain-smoking Majeed, his paunch stretching his uniform, kicking prisoners on the ground and barking insults.
In 1996, when Hussein's two sons-in-law were coaxed back to Iraq after six months in exile in Jordan, Majeed headed the tribal party assigned to execute them. In a 13-hour battle, the sons-in-law were killed, along with their father, two sisters and their children. Iraqis often recount a story -- even as myth, illustrative of Majeed's reputation -- that after the battle, he put his foot on the neck of one of the sons-in-law and fired the fatal shot into his head.
But his role in crushing Kurdish resistance during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war gave him his greatest notoriety. In March 1987, Hussein appointed Majeed, by then a general, as head of his forces in northern Iraq. Majeed soon used chemical weapons in two Kurdish cities, earning him his nickname.
In the ensuing months, he launched a scorched-earth campaign known as Anfal. In all, at least 100,000 Kurds -- and perhaps many more -- were killed. Iraqi forces destroyed 2,000 villages, with mass transfers of residents, to create a cordon sanitaire.
In the most notorious episode, in March 1988, Majeed's forces used mustard gas and nerve agents against the town of Halabja near the Iranian border, killing an estimated 5,000 people.
In January, Human Rights Watch called Majeed "Saddam Hussein's hatchet man," adding that he had been involved in "some of Iraq's worst crimes -- including genocide and crimes against humanity."
Some U.N. officials have suggested that a war crimes trial for Hussein, Majeed and others on the list of the 55 most wanted be conducted by a mixed body of Iraqi and international experts. U.S. officials have said they envision a tribunal led by Iraqis, an idea that appears popular.
"We want a public trial," said Ahmed Hussein, an employee at Fayha, a store selling refrigerators, air conditioners and fans. "We want all those criminals to admit their crimes in front of the Iraqi people and confess to everything they did."
Despite the U.S. military's success in rounding up many of the former government's senior officials, many Iraqis are deeply skeptical about the claims. Even after U.S. officials aired pictures of the corpses of Hussein's sons and permitted television crews to film their bodies, some in Baghdad contended the men were still alive. Officials on the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council have urged U.S. authorities to televise the capture of other senior officials to dispel doubts.
Given the reports that Majeed was killed in April, many expressed reservations about reports of his capture. "We're a little bit suspicious," Nizar Mohammed Ali, 27, said as he shopped in Baghdad.
"People think it was faked. They think it is theater," said Mohammed Hussein, who heard the news on the BBC. "We won't believe it until we see it with our own eyes."
Blast Kills at Least 95 at Iraqi Shrine - Key Shiite Cleric Among Dead in Car Bombing After Prayers.
By Anthony Shadid and Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 30, 2003; Page A01
NAJAF, Iraq, Aug. 29 -- A powerful car bomb tore through a crowded street next to Iraq's most sacred Shiite Muslim shrine today, killing at least 95 people, including an influential cleric, and deepening tensions in a country already reeling from war, disorder and strife.
The bomb was detonated soon after Friday prayers ended, a moment when the narrow streets and dun-hued markets of the holy city, about 90 miles south of Baghdad, were teeming with pilgrims, worshipers and shoppers. It claimed the life of Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim, the son of one of Iraq's most esteemed clerics and the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, who had returned to Iraq in May after 23 years in exile.
The powerful explosive left a panorama of misery and devastation unparalleled since the fall of Hussein's government on April 9. The brick facades of shops were sheared away. Cars were flipped and hurled onto the sidewalk. Burned, mangled and dismembered bodies littered the street, trampled as others ran in confusion and panic for safety.
Into the night, lit by a crescent moon ordinarily regarded as a good omen, desperate residents dug with pick axes and bare hands into piles of brick and debris. Shouting "God is greatest," they searched for survivors, more out of piety than hope.
The blast -- the third car bombing in Iraq since Aug. 7 -- blackened one wall of the shrine. Tan bricks were blasted off, and four chunks of tiles were missing from a portico. Houses and shops all along a colonnade shook, and some collapsed into piles of rubble. Windows shattered, and at least six cars littered the street, their paint seared off.
The death of Hakim, 64, the most influential Iraqi cleric openly allied with the U.S.-led occupation, dealt a severe blow to U.S. efforts to build a representative postwar government. Though long funded and supported by Iran, Hakim had appeared to moderate his views on an Islamic state since his return to Iraq. He also had the final say in bringing his movement -- the best-organized among Shiite groups -- into the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council this summer.
L. Paul Bremer, the civilian administrator of Iraq, blamed the attack on "the evil face of terrorism."
"The bombing today in Najaf shows again that the enemies of the new Iraq will stop at nothing," Bremer, who was in Washington, said in a statement.
A statement issued by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell "condemned in the strongest terms the horrific bombing . . . This is a heinous crime against the Iraqi people and the international community."
Hakim's death seemed sure to complicate the growing rivalry for leadership of Iraq's Shiite majority, which many believe holds the key to Iraq's stability. U.S. officials have repeatedly expressed worry that turmoil among the Shiites could delay or even derail reconstituting a government and writing a constitution -- efforts already beset by attacks on occupation troops, rampant crime and growing cleavages along ethnic and sectarian lines.
Shiite factions are divided primarily over the U.S. occupation. Iraq's senior clerics -- men known as grand ayatollahs, who carry great influence -- have tacitly supported the occupation, but younger, more militant clergy have gathered around Moqtada Sadr, 30, and have demanded an American withdrawal.
On Sunday in Najaf, a bomb planted outside the house of Ayatollah Mohammed Saeed Hakim, the uncle of the cleric killed today, killed three people. The elder Hakim was only slightly wounded. Some in the city suggested Sadr's men were responsible, although they denied any role.
But in the crowds today, most blamed loyalists of former president Saddam Hussein -- whose repressive government assassinated and executed hundreds of Shiite clergymen over three decades -- and ruled out the possibility of Shiites damaging the shrine of a man they believe was the heir of the prophet Muhammad.
"They violated the sanctity of Imam Ali. It's not possible a Shiite could do such a thing. They respect Imam Ali," said Jamil Hashim, 33, who was helping control crowds inside the mosque when the bomb detonated.
Others blamed U.S. forces for failing to bring security to a country that many complain is adrift and lawless.
"It's the Americans who have created chaos. It's the Americans who are responsible for the lack of security," said Mohammed Aboud, 23. "They're not finding a solution, and they're not letting us make a solution."
Thousands had gathered in the gold-domed shrine of Imam Ali to hear Hakim, who had led traditional Friday prayers after his return from Iran. As in past sermons, he called for Islamic unity. Witnesses said the bomb, about 15 yards from the southern wall of the shrine complex, exploded just after Hakim left the mosque and got into a blue sport-utility vehicle, parked behind a convoy of at least four other cars.
"It sounded like a missile landing," said Ghalib Abed, who was working in a fabric store on the corner and was cut on his arms, legs and shoulder by flying glass. "I couldn't feel anything. It was as though I was unconscious. I just ran and ran."
Qassim Jabr had arrived, as he did every Friday, to sell peanuts from a cart near the shrine, a sprawling complex of tan and blue brick with four intricate porticos of turquoise tile. He left the cart to pray, and when he moved toward the exit, he saw a bright flash of light, followed by darkness. He was knocked unconscious, then awoke to someone pulling him into a taxi.
"I saw arms; I saw people and their clothes were gone," he said from Najaf's Teaching Hospital, where thousands had gathered to donate blood. "I saw women and children covered with blood."
Outside the mosque, vendors' wooden stalls lay splintered in blackened pools along with charred metal and brick. On one sidewalk, men searched with their hands through shards of glass for silver rings blown from a display case. Pieces of cars were hurled through restaurants and storefronts frequented by Iranian and Indian pilgrims, who, like all Shiites, seek to visit the shrine at least once in their lifetimes.
By dusk, thousands of residents, tribesmen and clerics milled around the shrine, their bodies pressed together in an impromptu wake. Some stretched their heads to see the damage, and others clapped their hands in a show of resignation. Many of their faces were grim, with a look of shock and anxiety that suggested more trouble ahead, although the city remained largely calm.
For hours, many in the crowd believed Hakim was still alive. Every so often, his followers surged through the crowds, carrying posters of his aquiline face and gray beard. "God's prayers on Mohammed," they shouted.
But at 8 p.m., a voice on the loudspeaker at the mosque announced his death. "We are from God, and to God we return," the voice said.
At that moment, a hush fell across the crowd. One man started sobbing uncontrollably. Another put his head on a foam cooler. Along the curb, men cried into their soiled robes or sobbed into their hands.
"The assassination of Hakim is the beginning," said Mohammed Aboud, as he heard the news. "It will only get worse."
Doctors at the Teaching Hospital, Najaf's largest, said 95 bodies had arrived at the morgue and estimated the number of wounded at more than 200. By evening, hundreds had gathered outside the hospital gates, offering to give blood. They were eventually turned away, although doctors complained of shortages of antibiotics and intravenous fluids.
A U.S. military armored vehicle was parked outside the hospital, and a translator began reading the names of dead and wounded: "Aida Ali Abbas, Mohammed Nasser, Abbas Hussein Ali, Ali Abbas, Zahra Hussein Ali Yusuf, Hussein Abed Jawad." At one point, a man started wailing and pounding his forehead. He collapsed and was carried off by friends and relatives.
To the mourners, Hakim's death -- as a martyr and as a holy fighter, in the words from the loudspeaker -- fit almost seamlessly into a Shiite narrative of suffering and martyrdom that began with the death of Imam Ali's son, Hussein, on a 7th century battlefield. "When we love a cleric and when we follow him, they always try to kill him," said Ali Hadi.
The aftermath of Hakim's death reverberated across Iraq.
Thousands left their homes in Sadr City, a sprawling neighborhood that is home to the majority of Baghdad's Shiites, and poured into the streets to march to the headquarters of the Supreme Council. They carried pictures of Hakim and unfurled a banner that read, "Loyalty to the Hakim family, we condemn the cowardly attack." Men and boys, beating their chests in a ritual known as lutm, shouted, "Mohammed, after you, we are orphans." Others cried, "We will not forget Mohammed Bakir Hakim as long as we live."
In other rallies, hundreds chanted, "There is no god but God. The Baathists are the enemies of God," referring to Hussein's ruling party. Across the city, hundreds visited mosques to pray or marched to neighborhood worship halls.
Sadr's office in Najaf issued a statement urging followers to remain calm and calling for peaceful marches in all Iraqi cities "to demonstrate our unity to the world." It also declared a day of mourning and a three-day strike to protest Hakim's death.
Monday, September 01, 2003 - Page updated at 12:00 A.M.
Guest columnist
Democracy takes root beneath the turmoil in Iraq.
By Ayad Rahim
Special to The Times
Ayad Rahim is a freelance writer living in Cleveland. He immigrated from Iraq to the U.S. in 1971.
Judging from news reports — of terrorist attacks in Iraq and political sniping at home — some might think that my native Iraq is in a terrible mess. Not so.
Many critics see the attacks as signs that Iraqis oppose American involvement. A British survey and an Iraqi poll, however, found that 76 and 85 percent of Baghdadis, respectively, favor the continued presence of coalition troops. That's because Iraqis know, to the core of their marrow, that after 35 years of subjugation, brutality and isolation, they need help, and that if America left prematurely, disaster would likely ensue.
Moreover, considering the grip Saddam Hussein had on the country for 34 years, and the complicity and loyalty he'd purchased, the dead-end attacks are not surprising, for Saddam's killers know they don't have a future in an Iraq without their boss's patronage and protection, and that past atrocities will be punished.
In addition, the overwhelming majority of Iraqis oppose the attacks, knowing that they hinder efforts to rebuild, democratize and modernize the country. Now, with Saddam's sons dead and three-quarters of the "most wanted" in custody, Iraqis are more and more assisting the campaign to destroy the remains of Saddam's terrorist apparatus.
Many who militated against toppling Saddam predicted that Iraq would descend into communal violence or civil war. Instead, Iraqis have worked together and closely with coalition authorities and troops. Local councils and courts are functioning throughout the country. Workers in schools, hospitals and government ministries have elected their own leaders, and seeds of democracy are sprouting up in the forms of private organizations and 150 new newspapers and magazines.
Dilapidated schools and infrastructure are being rebuilt, and the economy is being reformed and revived. In parts of the country that for more than 20 years were limited to one hour of electricity a day and no clean water, stunting people's growth, basic services are now almost nonstop.
Except for the isolated contract killings and sabotage, the country is calm and experiencing improved conditions day by day. A transitional government is in place, the only political body in Iraq's history representative of the country's religious and ethnic groups. Iraqis also will convene soon to write the country's constitution, paving the way for elections.
One friend in America told me that his brother in Iraq is so happy with the way things are going, he wants to build a statue of President Bush in front of his house. Another friend said his siblings told him they could finally breathe — inside their homes — after years of strangulating fear. My uncle in Baghdad said, "We've been brought back to life."
Many experts and diplomats warned grimly that without Saddam, Iraq would break apart, destabilizing the region. Instead, Iraqis of all stripes have shown that their main allegiance is to Iraq, and their main aspiration is to live freely. Most clergy have counseled patience and cooperation with the coalition, and extremists have not gathered great support. Ayatollah Khomeini's grandson, having just moved to Iraq, praised America as a liberator in Iraq and urged separation of mosque and state.
Critics predicted that if we encroached on Iraqi territory, thousands of coalition soldiers (many said tens of thousands) would perish, and face urban combat, house-to-house fighting, and chemical and biological attacks. However, because Iraqis wanted to be rescued from Saddam, not fight for him, coalition troops faced little resistance. Instead, coalition troops were greeted with jubilation when Iraqis knew they were at last free, and soldiers are still cheered and received warmly as they carry out their duties.
Military action did not cause a refugee crisis, nor humanitarian or health crises. Environmental disaster was averted, as dams were not broken and oil fields were rescued before Saddam could set them ablaze, as he did in Kuwait.
There were also dire predictions that attacking Saddam would unleash an explosion of anger in the "Arab street" and terrorist attacks at home. The evidence appears to argue the converse — that weak and ineffectual responses to terrorist attacks in the '80s and '90s perpetuated them, while strong action halts them.
Thus, the world's most powerful terrorist has been toppled, the Middle East has been moderated, and some Arabs, despite their media's obfuscation, watch with fascination as an experiment in representative democracy unfolds at their doorstep, an eventuality that could transform the region and counter the wave of terrorism.
During Operation Iraqi Freedom, coalition forces did their utmost to avoid hitting water-pumping stations, electricity networks, hospitals, schools and mosques that Saddam used to base weapons directed at coalition forces.
Thus, by restraint, civilian casualties were kept to a minimum, and the coalition's targeting of Saddam's palaces and bases of power delighted Iraqis, knowing that their salvation was near.
Arab terrorists from Chechnya involved in notorious terrorist acts in Iraq.
Arab terrorists from Chechnya led by Abu-Valid were involved in the most notorious terrorist acts in Iraq (the explosion of the Jordanian Embassy, the UN mission and Imam Ali Mosque in Al Najaf), the Al-Qabas newspaper (Kuwait) reported referring to a well-informed source.
According to the data of the Arab special services, Abu-Valid (Abd Al-Aziz al-Hamidi from Saudi Arabia) was Khattab's deputy in Chechnya till March 2002. Later he led units of Arab and foreign terrorists. He might have penetrated to Iraq via Georgia, Turkey and Syria two months ago. All in all, about 3,000 terrorists from Al-Qaeda and other Islamic military units penetrated to Iraq since May, the newspaper said.
After the arrival of Mujaheddins, the actions of the Iraqi resistance which were earlier limited to separate attacks on US servicemen have boosted and acquired acute sabotage character.
Saddam Hussein's special services are, of course, experienced in masterminding terrorist acts and murders but more varied "Chechen experience" has become apparent in the last weeks, the newspaper said.
Saddam Defense Minister Surrenders to U.S. -Mediator.
1 hour, 49 minutes ago
MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraq's former Defense Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmed, number 27 on Washington's wanted list of former top officials under Saddam Hussein, has surrendered to U.S. forces, an Iraqi mediator said on Friday.
Dawood Bagistani, a local human rights official who acted as a go-between in talks with Ahmed, told a news conference the ex-minister surrendered at a house in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and was being taken to Baghdad by U.S. forces.
"At eight o'clock this morning (midnight EDT), Sultan Hashim Ahmed and his family surrendered to coalition forces," he said.
Bagistani said Ahmed gave himself up after U.S. officials agreed in negotiations that he was innocent of "crimes." There was no immediate U.S. comment.
"We didn't take this step until the U.S. announced that Sultan Hashim was innocent of crimes," Bagistani said. "This is a moral commitment by the U.S. government."
"We do not sell people like Sultan Hashim. It is true he served the Iraqi government but he is an innocent man and we want you (the U.S.) to treat him honestly," he added.
Mosul is where Saddam's sons, Uday and Qusay, were killed in a gunbattle with U.S. forces in July and Ahmed's surrender may fuel speculation that U.S. troops could be closing in on other top fugitives, perhaps even Saddam himself.
Ahmed was seen by Saddam's side in video footage, said to have been shot in Baghdad on April 9, of the Iraqi leader waving to cheering crowds in a northern suburb of the capital as the city was being overrun by U.S. forces.
In the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam chose Ahmed to head the Iraqi delegation at cease-fire talks near the border with Kuwait. However, he was regarded largely as a figurehead in the Iraqi armed forces with real control resting with Saddam.
Ahmed is the eight of hearts in a pack of playing cards issued to U.S. troops to help them identify fugitive Iraqi leaders. Saddam himself is the ace of spades.
Ahmed's surrender means 40 out of the 55 former top Iraqis wanted by Washington have now turned themselves in or have been arrested or killed.
In the sizzling heat of an Iraqi summer, Saddam Hussein’s loyalist guerrillas cannily select targets that will make the life of the ordinary Iraqi unbearable, trusting in acute disruptions to provoke him to rise up en masse against the Americans. Their organization is Saboteurs are systematically disrupting oil, electricity and water supplies. There is efficient organization somewhere in the background. In ten days, guerrillas set two calamitous fires at key points on the 600-mile pipeline just when oil exports were due to resume from northern Iraq’s huge Kirkuk fields, source of 40 percent of country’s oil, to Turkey’s Ceyhan terminal on the Mediterranean.
Each fire takes days to extinguish at great hazard in the windblown desert.
Every day lost costs Iraq $7m of vital reconstruction money.
Fuel shortages have caused riots in the southern town of Basra. Most parts of Iraq are plagued by power cuts. This week, to compound the suffering, the water taps of 300,000 Baghdadis ran dry after a bomber breached the water main in the north of the capital.
The American civil administration this week awarded a contract to an international security company to more than double the guard on the vulnerable pipeline to Turkey. An extra 6,500 guards, most Iraqis, will join the 5,000 who are clearly not coping with the task of protecting the oil. They face a surging threat described in DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s last issue on August 15 as a new international Islamic guerrilla legion, set up expressly to fight the American presence in Iraq by ambush, murder, terror, sabotage and disruption.
US intelligence has dissected the makeup of the guerrilla groups lurking in Baghdad and points north in an area enclosed by Tikrit, Haditha, Fallujah and Baquba. They have come up with some alarming findings:
1. Since late June, Chechen terrorists have been coming to Iraq to join the anti-American offensive.
2. The intake of Arab fighters entering Iraq from Syria is beginning to outnumber the indigenous Iraqi guerrillas fighting in the northern Mosul-Haditha district and the central Ramadi-Fallujah region.
3. The commanders of the guerrilla campaign, Saddam Hussein or his henchmen, appear to are imparting Muslim fundamentalist characteristics to units fighting the Americans - both as camouflage and to foster greater cohesion. In at least one case, a group was lent a pan-Arab identity. The deposed ruler or his commanders are clearly giving careful thought to the ideological nature and makeup of their following. Therefore they may not be quite so pressured by the pursuit as believed. Their ability to strike simultaneously in different places also attests to military and intelligence capabilities.
The Chechen fighters arriving in Baghdad are not drawn from the ranks of foreign Muslims fighting the Russians in Chechnya but ethnic Chechens. They were assigned to duty in the Sunni Triangle of central Iraq by the Chechen rebels’ Saudi al Qaeda commander, Abu al-Walid, also known as Emir al-Walid, who succeeded al Khatib who died in a Russian ambush two years ago.
Not much is known about the new commander except that he comes from western Saudi Arabia and receives funds from Saudi Islamic relief organizations funneled through Balkan or Central Asian Islamic organizations.
The report notes that the Chechen insurgents reach Iraq through Syria.
The US intelligence force outlines five groups – all wings or allies of the Iraqi Baath party which are operating in different districts and under diverse banners:
Muhammad’s Army This group of Iraqi Baathists operates in the guise of Muslim fundamentalists. They are concentrated around Baghdad international airport and the cluster of military airfields in Habania and western Iraq, H-1, H-2 and H-3, armed with shoulder-launched Sam 7 anti-air missiles. In July, they tried to down a US fighter plane and a C-130 transport but missed both.
The Black Flags: This group, mostly Syrian Arabs from the Damascus region, is responsible for sabotaging oil installations and fields. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Islamic experts explain that the black flag was once the symbol of the Abbasid revolt against the Omayyad caliphs who ruled Iraq. Although Sunni Muslims, they posed and lived as practicing Shiites until their army overthrew the Caliph in the year 705 A.D., when they came out from their Shiite cover and reverted to the Sunni faith. The message conveyed by this symbol is that it is permitted for Saddam loyalists to assume any religious facade that will help them defeat the enemy.
Iraqi Nasserists: This group of Saddam loyalists pretends to accept the pan-Arab doctrine preached by the Egyptian dictator Gemal Abdul Nasser in the 1950s and 1960s, a doctrine totally rejected by the Iraqi Baath. This group’s turf lies between Samarra and Baquba.
The Wahhabis: The state religion of the Saudi kingdom was never able to pierce Saddam Hussein’s secular dominion in Iraq. Now the bar has been removed, the Wahhabis have taken up position in Falujjah and its environs. They are working together with some of the Chechens.
Al Awda’s Military Wing: Al Awda, meaning “The Return”, runs the most highly-trained, best armed and richly endowed guerrilla group made up of ex-officers sworn to serve Saddam Hussein to the death. Flush with funds, they go around Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle offering $500 in cash on the spot for any Iraqi prepared to join their operation against US forces.
Suspicion falls on Chechens for Iraqi blasts
Asia Times ^ | Sep 9, 2003 | B Raman
Posted on 09/08/2003 7:11 AM PDT by zacyak
There are indications that Arab nationals of Chechen origin belonging to al-Qaeda were responsible for the four explosions in Iraq recently - three in Baghdad and one at Najaf. The explosions in Baghdad were directed at the Jordanian Embassy, a building housing the offices of the United Nations and its allied organizations, and police headquarters.
The explosion at Najaf, the deadliest of the four, outside the Imam Ali Shrine, killed about 120 Shi'ite worshippers coming out of the shrine, including Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, who returned to Iraq after it was occupied by troops of the United States and the United Kingdom from his more than 20-year exile in Iran. He was viewed by followers of deposed president Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda as a US surrogate.
According to sources in Pakistan, which are well informed on the activities of the Osama bin Laden-led International Islamic Front (IIF), about 50 Arab nationals of Chechen origin, who are members of al-Qaeda or closely associated with it, have infiltrated Iraq from the Waziristan area of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. They were responsible not only for the attacks on US soldiers in many incidents, but also for the four explosions. They reportedly received the explosives and other material for the explosions from the ordnance stocks of Saddam's disbanded army. It is said that the explosions, using vehicles, closely resembled those that have taken place in Chechnya in the past.
Elements close to the IIF in Pakistan have been saying that the United States is in a vulnerable position in Iraq at present and that if the jihadis miss this opportunity to humiliate it, they will not get another one for some time. They also say that by teaching the US a lesson in Iraq that it will not forget, they could protect other Islamic countries from similar intervention by the United States and weaken its credibility as a superpower.
The jihadis have been recalling the Beirut car-bomb attack against US marines in the early 1980s, which resulted in the death of more than 200, after which Ronald Reagan, then president of the United States, ordered a withdrawal of US troops from the Lebanon. It is reported that the jihadis are planning a similar massive explosion against US troops in Iraq, designed to cause a large number of casualties, possibly coinciding with the second anniversary of September 11, 2001.
Many Chechens, whose ancestors left the Caucasus during the 1817-64 Caucasian war, now live in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Turkey, Syria, Egypt and Persian Gulf countries and have acquired the local nationality. A large number of them had joined the 6,000 plus jihadi mercenary force raised by the US Central Intelligence Agency through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the 1980s to fight against the Soviet troops and they fought in Afghanistan under bin Laden. They maintained their links with bin Laden after the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1988.
Some of them were taken by bin Laden into his al-Qaeda and IIF and worked as instructors in training camps in Afghan territory. They were also used by the ISI for training the Taliban militia after 1994 and for assisting the Taliban in its fight against the Northern Alliance. Many others were sent to Chechnya by bin Laden after 1994 to assist the indigenous Chechen groups in their jihad against Moscow for an Islamic caliphate.
This message has been edited by TsarSamuil from IP address 212.181.9.227 on Oct 3, 2003 12:14 PM
Iraqi Kurds who had helped US forces topple Saddam Hussain are threatening to turn their guns against their old enemy Turkey if Ankara sends troops to Iraq at Washington's request.
Turkey's efforts to suppress a Kurdish separatist movement within its own borders have inflamed the antagonism of Iraqi Kurds towards their neighbour.
"I don't want Turkish troops coming to Iraq," Kurdish taxi driver Saddam Younis, 27, said in Mosul. "They will be attacked when they pass through the north," he said.
"We don't want them in the north, south, middle, east or west," said Mahdi Herky, spokesman for the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Mosul.
"We don't want them to come."
"What they're after is control in the north," said Jasim Mahmoud, a 34-year-old Kurd who works at a Mosul Internet shop. "Kurdish parties are preparing their wea-pons and if the Turks come down through the north I'm sure they will be attacked."
Michael Howard in Irbil
Monday October 13, 2003
The Guardian
The Bush administration is in danger of scoring a disastrous own goal with its decision to bring Turkish peacekeeping troops into Iraq, a Kurdish leader has warned.
Necirvan Barzani, prime minister of the Kurdistan regional government in Irbil and a key US ally in the war to remove Saddam Hussein, said the plan to bring Turkish soldiers to Iraq had needlessly upset the pro-American Kurdish population in the north, and was also opposed by Sunni and Shia Arab communities in central and southern Iraq.
"We believe that their presence, or that of any other neighbouring country, on Iraqi soil will only create instability," Mr Barzani told the Guardian.
"The question on the table is: how much respect has the US for the will and the wish of the people of Iraq, the governing council, and the political parties of Iraq?"
Mr Barzai's comments came as a delegation from the Iraqi governing council sought the support of Muslim nations at the summit in Malaysia of the organisation of Islamic countries for its opposition to the planned deployment of peacekeeping troops from any of Iraq's neighbouring countries.
Last Tuesday's vote in the Turkish parliament in favour of a force of about 10,000 soldiers going to Iraq created a rift between US officials and the US-appointed governing council, and raised dissenting voices from political and community leaders in the country. Another of Iraq's neighbours, Iran, signalled support yesterday for the council's stance.
Ankara, meanwhile, put the ball back in America's court at the weekend by saying that the US must "overcome the Iraqi opposition" to the plan before finer details are finalised.
The preferred US option is thought to be for the Turks to operate in areas north and west of Baghdad, towards the Syrian and Jordanian borders.
However, Fawzi Shafi Ifan, the mayor of Falluja, west of Baghdad, said Turkish troops there would be seen as "a punishment" by the Americans. He said Ankara would "find an occasion to revive its old projects and interfere in Iraq's internal affairs".
But it is in the northern Kurdish areas that the decision to deploy Turkish troops has been greeted with the most hostility, albeit tinged with a feeling of disappointment with their American allies.
"We just got rid of Saddam, must we now suffer from the Turks?" said Dara Ahmed, a trader in Irbil's Sheikallah bazaar.
Jamal Farraj, who owns an internet cafe near the city's ancient citadel, said: "We just want to be left alone and to run our affairs. The presence of Turkish troops, wherever they are, makes that much less probable. If they come here I will fight them, and so will we all."
Mr Barzani's administration controls Iraq's northern border with Turkey. He warned yesterday: "If the US insists on Turkish troops coming in, then we will be firmly against them coming through the borders of the Kurdistan region."
US officials insist they want to keep Turkish forces well away from Kurdish areas.
Turkey's generals, however, are thought to favour a deployment to the north of Baghdad.
A Turkish foreign ministry official rejected suggestions that the country had a hidden agenda in Iraq.
"If we had wanted to crush the Kurds, why did we let US and British airplanes here to protect them during the last 12 years?" he said.
Turkey prepares to stake claim in Iraq's oil fields.
telegraph.co.uk
By Amberin Zaman in Ankara
(Filed: 07/01/2003)
Turkey, one of Washington's most important allies against Saddam Hussein, claimed yesterday that it may have a historical stake in Iraq's northern oil fields.
Yasar Yakis, the foreign minister, said he was examining treaties from the early 20th century to see whether Turkey had a claim to the oil fields of the Mosul and Kirkuk provinces, which the Turks ruled during Ottoman times.
In comments published yesterday in the Hurriyet newspaper, Mr Yakis said: "If we do have such rights, we have to explain this to the international community and our partners in order to secure those rights."
His comments will not be welcomed in the United States or the region, where there are considerable anxieties about the likely results of a war on the integrity of Iraq.
While Mr Yakis was careful to emphasise that Turkey had no territorial claims over the provinces, his comments were greeted with anger by Arab diplomats in Ankara.
"He is revealing Turkey's true intentions. They are playing a dangerous game," said one senior Arab diplomat, who declined to be identified.
However, Western diplomats interpreted Mr Yakis's remarks as a further attempt to discourage the Iraqi Kurds from making a play for the provinces during an eventual war against Baghdad.
The Iraqi Kurds, who have controlled the north of the country - but not the oil fields - since the 1991 Gulf war, say that Kirkuk is historically a Kurdish city and should be the capital of the semi-independent state they are demanding in exchange for support in a war against Saddam Hussain.
Such claims have angered Turkey, which claims that Kirkuk and Mosul are dominated not by the Kurds but by an ethnic Turkish group called the Turcomans.
In recent years, Turkey has been arming and training a Turcoman faction in northern Iraq known as the Turcoman Front as its stalking horse in the Kurdish-controlled enclave.
Ankara's top generals have taken turns to threaten to invade Iraqi Kurdistan should the Kurds try to break away from Baghdad. Some 5,000 Turkish troops are already deployed in and around Iraqi Kurdish territory held by Massoud Barzani, the leader of the stronger of the two Kurdish factions controlling northern Iraq.
The troops are officially there to hunt down Kurdish separatist PKK guerrillas who fought a 15-year insurgency against Turkish troops that ended in 1999 after the capture of their leader, Abdullah Ocalan.
Iraq is home to the world's second-largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia and before the 1991 Gulf war more than half of the country's oil exports were pumped through a dual pipeline running from Kirkuk to Turkey's southern Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.
The pipeline was sealed in compliance with United Nations sanctions after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. It was re-opened in 1996 under the UN's oil for food programme, which allows Iraq to export its oil in order to purchase humanitarian supplies.
Iraq has repeatedly accused America of wanting to seize control of its oil under the pretext of installing a democratic government in Baghdad.
Turkey's claims to Iraqi oil date back to the early 1920s when the Ottoman Empire was being carved up following its defeat by the Allies in the First World War. Under a treaty signed by the new Turkish Republic and Britain, Turkey was to receive 10 per cent of all Iraqi oil revenues for a 25-year period in exchange for renouncing its territorial claims over Mosul and Kirkuk.
That treaty was suspended in 1958 under the government of Adnan Menderes, the late Turkish premier, as a gesture of goodwill towards Iraq. But subsequent governments sought to revive the treaty.
"Such initiatives by Turkey will go nowhere," said Baskin Oran, a professor of international relations at Ankara University, who has studied the treaties.
According to Prof Oran's own estimates, Turkey is not due any more than £20 million in unpaid revenue stemming from its 1926 treaty rights.
October 15 2003 at 7:04 PM toyman (Login toyman)
Forum Owner
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The U.S. plan to send 10,000 Turkish troops to Iraq has Kurdish leaders outraged -- and analysts of all stripes incredulous at its folly.
America has rarely lost an opportunity to betray the Iraqi Kurds, but this time was supposed to be different. Their suffering under Saddam Hussein served as one of the war's justifications, and in the war's aftermath they've been America's most grateful and enthusiastic allies in an otherwise restive region. After selling them out in the '70s, '80s and '90s, the United States owed the Kurds justice, and it was finally going to make things right.
It didn't take long, though, for other American interests to take priority. Thus despite protests from Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq's Kurdish foreign minister -- indeed, despite the increasingly ardent objections of the Iraqi Governing Council and the Iraqi Kurdish leadership -- the United States plans to bring 10,000 troops from Turkey into Iraq.
The Turks are an implacable enemy of the Kurds. They have viciously repressed their own Kurdish population and oppose the Iraqi Kurds' ambitions for autonomy. The two sides are already threatening each other -- in the Arabic newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat, members of the Peshmerga, or Kurdish militia, were quoted saying they'd attack the Turks. On Monday the Turks warned that if they were attacked, they'd fight back.
So besides alienating the Kurds, the Turkish deployment seems likely to bring new instability to northern Iraq, the country's most peaceful region. In the last few days, Kurdish leaders have been traveling to cities worldwide to make the case against Turkish troops. But with the American military stretched thin, an election year approaching and critics on both left and right clamoring to internationalize the occupation and bring U.S. troops home, the Kurds find themselves, as they so often do, an inconvenient people lacking leverage among the powerful.
"Calling in Turkish troops for sheer political expediency with an election looming is nothing short of a betrayal of the Kurds," says Ralph Peters, a retired Army intelligence officer and author of the new book "Beyond Baghdad: Postmodern War and Peace." Peters is an Iraq hawk and a fierce critic of those who see only failure and quagmire there, but now he says, "We're making a mockery of many of our promises to the Iraqi people by shoving the Turks down their throats. It's shameful and outrageous and unworthy of our country."
Peters, a columnist for the right-wing New York Post, finds himself in the unusual position of being in agreement with longtime leftist Clare Short, Tony Blair's former secretary of international development. Even as she traveled to Washington to argue that the occupation needs to be internationalized, she told Salon last week, "It's better not to have Turkish troops there, because there's too much complex politics and history. It's a further destabilizing development."
With virtual unanimity, analysts, scholars and veterans from across the political spectrum say that, moral issues aside, introducing Turkish soldiers into an already volatile ethnic and sectarian situation is counterproductive. "The decision is a very bad one, for Turkey and for Washington," says Graham Fuller, former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA during the Reagan administration and author of "The Future of Political Islam." Fuller, like many others, believes Turkish troops will further fracture the region, causing tensions in the north, spurring other neighboring governments, especially Iran, to step up their involvement in Iraq, and, if things go wrong, potentially weakening America's important strategic relationship with Turkey.
"Iran will see this as an effort by Turkey to create a foothold in Iraq," he says, and will be likely to send more of its own proxies into the country. He also dismisses the American hope that shared religion will lead to Turkish rapport with the Iraqis in the fractious Sunni triangle. "My sense is that Turkey will be treated as the functional equivalent of Americans," he says. "This business of being fellow Muslims will have no relevance. Indeed, you could argue that Turkey has baggage from being a former colonial power."
"I see very little positive about this, except maybe they can send 10,000 American troops home as a result," says Fuller.
For most politicians, Democrat and Republican, that's enough. There's simply no domestic upside to opposing the Turkish deployment. Bush partisans hope that bringing in troops from a Muslim country will add a bit more legitimacy to the occupation while easing the pressure on American troops. Bush's opponents, who have called for the U.S. to get other countries involved in Iraq's rebuilding, aren't in a position to object.
"What politician can stand up and say we need to keep 12,000 reservists in Iraq?" asks Juan Cole, a professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of Michigan. "These are guys with small businesses, mortgages that they're not able to make their payments on. They vote, they give money to political campaigns -- it's very hard for a U.S. politician to try to keep the Turks out and continue to Shanghai these poor reservists."
But critics like Peters argue that it's a shortsighted, politically expedient fix that will backfire. "It's going to make the security situation in Iraq worse," he says. "The only thing we get out of it is the chance to bring back a few American troops, but we wind up sacrificing all that those troops have gained. This is an act of electioneering folly. I've supported President Bush all through the war, the buildup and the aftermath, but I just find this despicable and foolish."
Despicable, perhaps, but not very surprising, given the Kurds' unhappy history. "The Kurds have been like Charlie Brown and Lucy and the football, with America playing Lucy," says Cole. "America always pulls the ball out at the last minute, and the Kurds land on their backs." They've been sold out so many times that in 1979 exiled Iraqi Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani asked in despair, "Have the Kurdish people committed such crimes that every nation in the world should be against them?"
The world's largest population of stateless people, the Kurds, who currently number around 25 million, were denied their promised independence by the British and French officials who cavalierly redrew the map of the Middle East after World War I. Instead, they were shunted into Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, all of whom have regarded them as a threat to their national identity and have oppressed them to various degrees.
The Kurds' friendlessness has made them easy for the U.S. to use and abandon. In the early 1970s, anti-Saddam Iraqi Kurdish insurgents were supported by Iran, Israel and the CIA. In 1975, though, the Shah, an American client, reached an accommodation with Saddam, and thus aid to the Kurds was cut off. Saddam proceeded to deport tens of thousands of Kurds from northern Iraq in an attempt to Arabize it. "Once they were dropped, they had no defenses, and the Baath came in and mopped them up," says Cole. As America's erstwhile allies were ethnically cleansed, Henry Kissinger sneered, "Covert action should not be confused with missionary work."
In the 1980s, while Saddam gassed the Kurds -- the genocide that was often invoked as a rationale for the current war -- the Reagan administration, which had embraced Saddam's regime because it feared the Ayatollah's Iran more, fought efforts to impose sanctions. In her 2002 book "A Problem From Hell: America in the Age of Genocide," Samantha Power quoted an internal administration memorandum, "Human rights and chemical weapons use aside, in many respects our political and economic interests run parallel with those of Iraq."
That changed when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. Following Saddam's defeat in the first Gulf War, the Kurds, like the Iraqi Shia, heeded the first President Bush's call to rise up and overthrow their dictator. But the support they expected from the Bush administration never came, and Saddam, under the terms of the war's cease-fire, was permitted to use helicopter gunships against the rebels. Once again, Kurds were slaughtered, and up to 2 million of them fled into the mountains.
Footage of those refugees finally spurred America and Britain to act, and soon they established no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq, halting the butchery and allowing the Kurds to return to their homes. Under that military umbrella, the Kurds have created a remarkable civil society in Iraqi Kurdistan.
In the recent Gulf war, the Kurds were America's best friends in Iraq. The Peshmerga, or Kurdish militia, fought the Baath in the north, and the jubilant Kurdish crowds celebrating Saddam's fall provided some of the war's most triumphant scenes.
"The Kurds truly feel liberated by the United States," says Mike Amitay, executive director of the Washington Kurdish Institute. "The Kurds, since the end of the Gulf War, have acknowledged that their very survival and the progress they've made is a direct result of U.S. protection. Of all of the people in Iraq who were subjected to Saddam Hussein's cruelty, the Kurds more than anyone have welcomed the U.S. with open arms. It would be absolutely tragic if this goodwill was wasted."
Almost everyone agrees that the Kurds aren't going to turn on the Americans. The danger is that they might turn away from them. "The Kurds wouldn't turn on U.S. forces; they'd just withdraw their support," says Peters. "The Kurds in Baghdad would be so suspicious of any move America makes. You would see the Kurds trying to build up more armaments in case they had to fight the Turks. It would just create an atmosphere and mentality you don't need."
Just how bad the friction becomes depends in part on the details of the Turkish deployment. The Turks want their soldiers deployed just south of Iraqi Kurdistan, while the Americans are pushing to have them stationed west of Baghdad, in the heart of the violence-wracked "Sunni triangle." There is also debate about how free a hand the Turks will have to go after members of the PKK, a Turkish Kurd guerrilla force thought to have several thousand members in Iraqi Kurdistan. Although the PKK doesn't have good relations with either of the leading Iraqi Kurdish parties, most experts say that ordinary Kurds will be incensed if the Turks hunt fellow Kurds on their territory.
To judge by its rhetoric, Turkey doesn't intend to stay out of Kurdish affairs. It's selling its involvement to its own reluctant people as a way to keep the Kurds in check and to protect Iraq's Turkoman minority, who live in Iraq's north and who are ethnically related to the Turks. (It is also widely believed in Turkey, and elsewhere, that the Turkish troop commitment is repayment for a U.S. loan of $8.5 billion -- part of the delicate line Turkey must walk between enraging its people, who overwhelmingly opposed the U.S. invasion, and harming relations with the U.S., which has propped up its staggering economy.)
"What the Kurds fear most is that Turkish troops will be stationed just south of the autonomous region," says Amitay. "Turkey's prime minister told the Parliament that Turkish troops were needed in Iraq to prevent the establishment of any Kurdish autonomous entity. The thinking is that things are going poorly in Iraq and the instability could lead to civil war and a declaration of Kurdish autonomy, which is something Turkey has rejected strenuously. If that happened, Turkey would be in a position to move in troops from north and south to quash any Kurdish move toward independence."
It's not just full Kurdish independence that the Turks want to prevent, though. They're against any kind of ethnic nationalism that might inspire their own oppressed Kurds. "The Turks have been very outspoken that not only should you not have a federal system, but you should not have any program to help any minority," says Jim Prince, president of the Democracy Council, a non-governmental organization that promotes democracy in developing countries.
Prince, who worked in Kurdistan throughout the 1990s, says, "The Turks' main objective is keeping the country ruled from Baghdad rather than giving any of the minorities disproportionate power." By coming to America's aid in Iraq now, he says, the Turks hope to have a say about the structure of the new Iraqi state.
Of course, that's months away. The real problems might start much sooner. After all, wherever the troops are stationed, it's likely that the Turks will have to create a land corridor through Kurdistan. On Monday, the BBC reported that Americans were unfazed by Kurdish objections to having Turkish troops travel through their territory, quoting an American general who said, "The United States, which is the authority in Iraq, does not have reservations on the issue."
Having such fierce enemies in such close proximity creates all sorts of risks, say many observers. Henri Barkey, a former member of the State Department's policy planning staff on Turkey and Iraq who now chairs the International Relations Department at Lehigh University, says there are several groups who might try to ignite a fight.
"Imagine if suddenly you had serious clashes between Turkomen and Kurds, provoked by hotheads, agent provocateurs, even provoked by al-Qaida. What will the Turkish military do?" he asks. "If they do nothing, it will put the Turkish government under tremendous pressure at home. You have the potential for conflagration between Kurds and Turkomen or Kurds and Turks, not to mention some Kurdish hothead taking potshots at the Turkish military."
That's why many say it's not just America's relationship with the Kurds that would be jeopardized by a Turkish deployment. America's relationship with Turkey, already damaged by Turkey's refusal to allow U.S. forces to use its territory to invade Iraq despite a massive bribe, could be further weakened. "If it ends up in serious internal conflict between Turkish troops and Iraqi Kurds, the United States will then be caught in the middle of this, and that makes Iraq all the more complex," Fuller says.
Still, these scenarios are theoretical. What's assured is that, by bringing Turkish troops in, America will be spurning its allies within Iraq and demonstrating the impotence of the Iraqi Governing Council. "Members of the Iraqi Governing Council, they don't want Turkish troops; they know how divisive it would be," says Peters. "What's our response? Washington tells the IGC, who we're touting as representatives of the Iraqi people, to shut up."
The irony here is that the United States has pressured the rest of the world to recognize the Iraqi Governing Council's legitimacy, and now the Governing Council is asking the rest of the world to support it against the United States. On Sunday, Massoud Barzani, a Kurdish leader and member of the governing council, asked the Arab League to oppose America's attempt to bring in Turkish troops. That same day, Zebari held a press conference in London to say that Iraq's "governing council does not want any of Iraq's immediate neighbors to take part in peacekeeping missions."
"Look at the contradiction here," says Barkey. "The Iraqis now have an interim foreign minister who's a Kurd, who's attending the Arab League meeting in Cairo. He's there to represent Iraq, and we say he has full power. Some Arab countries did not want to even accept him. We put pressure on them. And then we say what these guys think is not important, we're going to decide who comes in" to Iraq.
For once, then, Iraqi people really are asking for protection from America's blundering dominion. This time, though, no one's marching for them. "This is an issue the left and right should unite on," says Peters. "The left should be against Turkish troops going to Iraq because of Turkey's appalling record of human rights abuses against the Kurds, and the right should be against it because it threatens to undo the very real gains we've made in Iraq."
Instead, the left and right are united in silence. "I'm appalled that there's not more attention paid to this," says Peters. It might be naive, though, to expect otherwise. Once again, the old Kurdish saying is born out: They really have no friends but the mountains.
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About the writer
Michelle Goldberg is a staff writer for Salon based in New York.
Coalition seeks to downplay role of Ankara's troops
Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor
Friday October 17, 2003
The Guardian
The US-British coalition in Iraq is running into problems over its attempt to bolster its forces with Turkish troops.
Washington and London have been forced to rethink by the level of hostility generated in Iraq by the prospect of troops from Turkey, a neighbour and detested former colonial power.
The crisis has also sparked a fresh round of in-fighting in Washington between the Pentagon and the state department.
Several options are being considered to try to minimise Iraqi anger.
One being floated is for Turkish troops to serve in Iraq but not in uniform, a proposal that is unlikely to go down well with the Turkish high command. Another is for the Turkish troops to be given tasks that would not involve highly visible frontline policing of the kind being carried out by US and British troops. Instead, they would be used to train the Iraqi army or as border guards.
Yet another is to halve the proposed number of Turkish troops, from the estimated 10,000 being suggested at present.
The Turkish parliament voted last week to send the troops, a move gratefully seized on by the US and British governments, who have had little success in obtaining troops from other countries for duties in Iraq. But the Iraqi governing council voted by 24 to 0 against the move.
It is understood that Paul Bremer, the US envoy to Iraq and head of the coalition in Baghdad, is sympathetic to the Iraqi governing council and favours minimising the role of Turkish forces.
Mr Bremer is from the state department, though until now has enjoyed the backing of the Pentagon. But Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy US defence secretary, favours maximum involvement of Turkish troops.
The extent of the dilemma facing the US and British governments was underlined yesterday when the Iraqi Kurdish leader, Masoud Barzani, threatened to resign from the Iraq governing council if the Turkish troops arrive.
Turkey has a long history of suppression of the Kurds, including those in Iraq. Mr Barzani told Asharq al-Awsat newspaper: "The intervention of Turkish troops in Iraq will have dire consequences.
"Military involvement in Iraq by a neighbouring country will create a dangerous situation and lead to greater instability."
The urgent need for more troops to bolster US and British forces was underlined by the highest-ranking Briton in Iraq, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who said Iraq's open borders must be blocked.
"I don't believe that having open borders or ammunition dumps around the country open to the world helps in damping down the use of violence on Iraqi territory. These gaps need to be plugged," he told journalists in London on a visit from Baghdad to brief Tony Blair on recent developments.
The US and British forces are worried about the extent of easy movement across the border not only of supporters of the former regime but of elements bent on mischief and supported by the Syrian and Iranian governments.
Sir Jeremy, until recently the British ambassador to the United Nations, said there was a need to redouble efforts on the security front.
"There is a security threat and challenge, particularly in Baghdad and in the 'Ba'athist triangle' north and west of Baghdad. I think it will go on for some time. You will be reporting bangs every few days in and around Baghdad."
He added: "That is not going to knock us off our stride ... we have to redouble our efforts to meet that [threat]."
Missile Hits U.S. Copter in Iraq; 16 Dead, 20 Soldiers Hurt in Crash Near Fallujah.
By Theola Labbé and Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, November 3, 2003; Page A01
FALLUJAH, Iraq, Nov. 2 -- A U.S. Army CH-47 Chinook transport helicopter packed with soldiers headed for a short-term break was hit with a missile and crashed in a field west of Baghdad on Sunday morning, killing 16 soldiers and wounding 20 others in the deadliest single attack on American forces since they invaded Iraq, military officials and witnesses said.
The shoulder-fired missile streaked through a clear blue sky and struck the dual-rotor helicopter in its rear around 9 a.m. as it was ferrying soldiers from bases in western Iraq to Baghdad's international airport. The impact sparked an explosion and a fire in midair. Moments later, the witnesses said, the helicopter pitched upward, spun out of control and plummeted to the ground just southwest of Fallujah, a city 40 miles west of Baghdad where resistance to the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq has been particularly intense.
The force of the impact destroyed the 10-ton Chinook, scattering twisted and charred bits of fuselage over a wide area. Everyone on board was killed or injured, many of them severely, military officials said. Several of the wounded suffered serious internal injuries and extensive burns, the officials added. One witness said he saw a soldier whose legs were on fire crawling away from the crash site with his hands.
"It was a tremendous explosion," said Arif Jassim Hadi, a 30-year-old farmer standing along a dirt road near the crash site, which smoldered for hours.
The missile strike provided an example of the increasing sophistication and lethality of attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq. Resistance fighters who began their effort to evict American troops by indiscriminately firing guns and rocket-propelled grenades at supply convoys now are targeting well-fortified bases with mortars, firing volleys of rockets inside the seat of the U.S. occupation authority, concealing roadside bombs and launching antiaircraft missiles.
It was not immediately clear who fired the missile. U.S. officials have blamed three groups for the violence that is plaguing Iraq: loyalists of former president Saddam Hussein, homegrown Islamic extremists and terrorists who have infiltrated from neighboring countries. Some American military and intelligence officials say they believe the groups may be collaborating.
Although more than two dozen missiles have been fired at aircraft in Iraq since June, according to military reports, the Chinook was the first to have been hit. Two other helicopters have been shot down since President Bush declared major combat in Iraq over on May 1 -- a UH-60 Black Hawk and an AH-64 Apache -- but neither involved antiaircraft missiles, officials said. Only one soldier was injured in those two incidents.
The successful attack could force the military to reevaluate its flight patterns and missile-defense measures. U.S. commanders have been increasing the use of helicopters in hostile areas, assuming they were safer than ground convoys. "This underscores that regardless of how you travel in this country, it's a dangerous place," said Capt. Jeff Fitzgibbons, a spokesman for the Army's 82nd Airborne Division.
Less than a half-hour before the crash, two American civilians working as private contractors for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were killed in Fallujah when their convoy hit a roadside bomb, a military spokesman said. The contractors were working on a project to destroy Iraqi munitions, which have been used in the manufacture of the roadside bombs.
Hours earlier, a soldier from the 1st Armored Division was killed in Baghdad when a roadside bomb exploded as he was responding to another incident.
The Pentagon has so far identified only one of the soldiers killed in the missile attack. Staff Sgt. Paul A. Velazquez, 29, of California, was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 5th Field Artillery Regiment, based at Fort Sill, Okla.
"It's clearly a tragic day for America," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said in Washington on ABC's "This Week." "In a long, hard war, we're going to have tragic days. But they're necessary. They're part of a war that's difficult and complicated."
The helicopter crash is the second major setback for the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq in the past week. Last Monday, car bombs exploded outside three police stations and the local headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Baghdad, killing about three dozen people and wounding more than 200.
Sunday's fatalities brought to 138 the number of U.S. military personnel who have died in hostilities in Iraq in the past six months. Over the past seven days, resistance fighters have killed 27 soldiers, the highest one-week total since major combat ended.
The Chinook that was struck, packed with 33 passengers and three crew members, was flying next to another Chinook after picking up passengers at various base camps west of Baghdad. Both helicopters, piloted by the Army's 12th Aviation Brigade, were carrying soldiers from the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, based at Fort Carson, Colo., and the 82nd Airborne Division, based at Fort Bragg, N.C. The soldiers were supposed to fly out of Iraq later Sunday for different destinations: four-day breaks in Qatar, two-week holidays in the United States or emergency family leave.
Military officials and witnesses said the missile that brought down the Chinook was a Russian-made SA-7, a shoulder-fired, heat-seeking device known as a Strela that appeared from witness accounts to have locked onto the helicopter's engines, which are below the rear rotor.
A U.S. military spokesman said the missile, which either failed to explode or did not detonate fully, did not shoot the plane out of the air but severely damaged the engine system. The crippled engine severely limited the pilot's ability to control the craft, and when the pilot tried to make an emergency crash landing, "the aircraft disintegrated on impact," the spokesman said.
U.S. officials have said thousands of antiaircraft missiles, most of them SA-7s, were looted from Iraqi army stockpiles and remain unaccounted for. "Nobody knows with certainty how many there are," the spokesman said.
The military initiated a buyback program for surface-to-air missiles in August, paying up to $500 apiece. Although hundreds of them have been acquired, military officials said thousands more are still in circulation.
U.S. military helicopters have flares and other counter-measures designed to deflect missiles. It was not clear whether they were used by the crew.
Witnesses said they saw two missiles fired at the Chinooks from a grove of date palms about 500 yards from where the helicopter crashed. "It hit the back of the helicopter," said Hadi, the farmer. "There was an explosion and fire, then it crashed. The smoke was everywhere."
When the missile struck, the second helicopter made a sharp right turn and threw up several flares, then circled before landing, apparently in an attempt to help rescue survivors and put out the fire, witnesses said.
Soon thereafter, several Black Hawks swooped in to pick up survivors while at least six other Black Hawks hovered over the area, a flat expanse of farms with corn and clover, bisected by dirt roads and canals fed by the Euphrates River. The region, just south of the Euphrates town of Fallujah, has emerged as a center of resentment over the U.S. occupation, and most residents gathered near the crash site celebrated the helicopter's downing as a victory. By noon, soldiers forced onlookers to evacuate the site.
"Why are the Americans here? They're just showing off their muscles," said Habib Ali, a 36-year-old truck driver. "Force creates force."
Others from the nearby village of Albu Ali Harat gathered around. "This is an expression of our opinion," he said, "of Muslims, of all people."
"This is my land, and they came as strangers," said 22-year-old Jassim Mohammed. "They should be afraid."
Nafia Fahed Hamoud, 32, a builder who lives near the crash site, praised the person who fired the missile as "an honest man who does not like to be occupied by foreigners."
At a news conference Saturday, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, acknowledged that American forces were facing a "determined enemy." He predicted that in the months ahead, the U.S.-led occupation would face "more obstacles, more setbacks and more tragedies in the future."
But as in the past, Sanchez dismissed the importance of an increase in attacks carried out by resistance fighters. "The coalition has maintained its offensive focus in the face of what we regard as a strategically and operationally insignificant surge of attacks," he said.
Before Sunday's loss, the deadliest attacks during the military campaign in Iraq occurred March 23 around the southern city of Nasiriyah, where a total of 29 U.S. troops died, including 12 Marines killed in an ambush by Iraqi soldiers who appeared to be surrendering, and 11 Army soldiers killed in an ambush after they were separated from their convoy. Six other Marines also died in fighting near Nasiriyah that day.
Iraq's six neighbors convened security talks in Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Sunday in response to American allegations that countries bordering Iraq, particularly Iran and Syria, are not doing enough to clamp down on the flow of militants into Iraq. In a statement, the countries condemned terrorist attacks on "civilians, humanitarian and religious institutions, embassies and international organizations" and promised to cooperate with Iraqi authorities to "prevent any violation of borders." Iraq's interim foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, turned down a belated invitation to attend the talks.
Chandrasekaran reported from Baghdad. Correspondent Anthony Shadid and staff writer Vernon Loeb in Fallujah contributed to this report.
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images - American soldiers inspecting the site near Falluja, Iraq, where a Chinook helicopter carrying G.I.'s crashed after being hit by a guerrilla missile.
The New York Times ^ | 11/03/03 | William Safire
Posted on 11/02/2003 8:06 PM PST by Pokey78
WASHINGTON
We thought we won the first Iraq war in 100 hours, but lost the peace to Saddam and his Baathist followers. We thought we won the second Iraq war decisively in one week, but Saddam's murdering class and his imported terrorists chose to run and fight from underground.
We are now six months into Iraq War III. The coalition is clearly winning on two of the three war fronts. As the team of ABC-TV and Time magazine reporters are persuasively showing this week, the people of Iraq's Shiite south and Kurdish north — 80 percent of the population of 23 million — are making substantial progress toward reconstruction and self-governance.
But the battle within the Sunni triangle around Baghdad — where Saddam's rapacious sons and secret police long victimized other Iraqis — is not yet won.
One terrorist aim is to increase suffering by driving out the U.N. and Red Cross relief workers. Another is to assassinate Iraqi leaders and police who dare to cooperate with the liberation. The key goal is to kill enough Americans to cause U.S. public opinion to lose heart. Such a retreat before federal democracy takes root would set the stage for an Iraqi civil war.
There is no denying that the shooting down of a transport helicopter, killing 16 Americans and wounding 20, was a terrorist victory in Iraq War III. The question is: Will such casualties dishearten the U.S., embolden failuremongers and isolationists on the campaign trail, and cause Americans and our allies to cut and run?
Although such a retreat under fire would be euphemized as an "accelerated exit strategy," consider the consequences to U.S. security of premature departure:
Set aside the loss of U.S. prestige or America's credibility in dealing with other rogue nations acquiring nuclear weapons. Iraq itself would likely split apart. Shiites in the south would resist a return of repression by Saddam's Sunnis and set up a nation under the protection of Iran. Kurds in the north, fearing the return of Saddamism, would break away into an independent Kurdistan; that would induce Turkey, worried about separatism among its own Kurds, to seize the Iraqi oil fields of Kirkuk.
One result could well be a re-Saddamed Sunni triangle. Baghdad would then become the arsenal of terrorism, importer and exporter of nukes, bioweapons and missiles. There is no way we can let that happen. Either we stay in Baghdad until Iraq becomes a unified democratic beacon of freedom to the Arab world — or we pull out too soon, thereby allowing terrorism to establish its main world sanctuary and its agents to come and get us.
Our dovish left will say, with Oliver Hardy, "a fine mess you've got us into" — as if we created Saddam's threat, or made our C.I.A. dance to some oily imperialist tune, or would have been better off with our head in the sand. Most Americans, I think, will move past these unending recriminations, reject defeatism and support leaders determined to win the final Iraq war.
To catch Saddam or otherwise break up the terror network, we need Iraqi informers to tip us to the plans of the attackers. We should blanket the Sunni triangle with a powerful media message: a return of Baathism would mean bloody war with the rest of Iraq that the coalition would make certain Saddam's followers lost.
Most television sets in the triangle depend for reception on the old rabbit ears, not satellite dishes; the Iraqi Media Network we set up is now operational but runs mainly old movies and canned messages from our Paul Bremer with an Arabic translation. I'm told by programmers in the contractor handling IMN, Science Applications International, that attention-getting Arabic programs produced in the gulf states will begin this month, which should attract many new viewers.
But why not supplement Bremer on the air with our secret weapon? John Abizaid, our commanding general, speaks fluent Arabic. He should be on radio and television regularly — the live voice and face of liberation — answering questions from Iraqi reporters in their native language. If Donald Rumsfeld can deliver the message of resolve on TV here, why not Abizaid there?
We will help Iraqis win the final war against Baathist terror. Failure is not an option.
By Shaista Aziz
Tuesday 28 October 2003, 19:01 Makka Time, 16:01 GMT
A leading Saudi dissident says thousands of fighters from the kingdom are embroiled in attacks against American occupation soldiers in Iraq.
Dr Muhammad al-Massari, a political activist living in exile in London has told Aljazeera.net that resistance attacks in Iraq will continue to escalate in Baghdad.
''There are around 5000 mujahedin fighters from Saudi Arabia in Baghdad, and many others joining them from all over the Muslim and Arab world.
"These men have already stepped up their efforts to kick out the American imperialist's from Iraq, but what we are seeing is the tip of the iceberg'' he said.
Al-Massari claims that the resistance attacks against the American fighters will spread to Saudi Arabia where anti western and Saudi government sentiment is rising.
Calm before the storm.
''For the past 10 years Saudi Arabia has been relatively calm, the mujahedin were busy recruiting and training men from as far a field as Chechnya and Kashmir to fight against American aggression in the Muslim world''.
Al-Massari claims that 10 years ago it would be inconceivable for Muslim fighters to take arms and launch attacks within a Muslim country.
However with Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait allowing American troops to be stationed in their countries, resentment against Arab regimes has increased.
''For the past 10 years Saudi Arabia has been relatively calm, the mujahedin were busy recruting and training men'' Dr Muhammed Al Massari, Saudi exile.
''The resistance fighters had a dilemma in the past when it came to fighting within a Muslim country because of the rules of Sharia (Islamic) law.
"However as we are seeing in Saudi Arabia itself Muslims are prepared to launch attacks within their own countries''.
Warning.
Both the Qatar and London embassies of the Saudi kingdom declined to comment on al-Massari's allegations.
Al-Massari's remarks coincide with the American government issuing warnings that an attack against western interests in the kingdom is imminent.
The warning, which the Americans describe as ''credible'' comes at a time when there is huge discontent amongst the Saudi population against their rulers, the royal family.
Americans have been warned to avoid non-essential travel to the kingdom, and advised citizens to be vigilant in the Persian Gulf region.
Continuation.
The Bush administration called on Syria and Iran on Tuesday to take action to stop cross-border infiltration of guerrillas into Iraq.
US military officials say there are signs that foreign fighters were behind the four suicide bombings that killed 35 people and wounded 230 on Monday in Baghdad's bloodiest day since Saddam Hussein was overthrown.
The US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, said over the weekend that most of the "terrorists" in Iraq were not Iraqis but came from countries such as Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Sudan.
Border control was a major issue in Iraq, he said, adding that it was very difficult to seal the country's borders.
According to al-Massari, the Saudi Royal family are also targets for the mujahedin fighters who are angry at the Saudi government for ''inviting the Americans on to their holy soil''.
Al-Massari plans to launch a political party in London, calling for reforms in Saudi Arabia.
His group, the Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights is keeping a close watch on events unfolding in the region.
At least six people are reported to have been killed in a truck bomb attack on an Italian police base in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriya. The casualty figure was given by General Guido Bellini of the Carabinieri in Rome, citing witnesses. The powerful explosion rocked the building at about 1040 local time (0740GMT), setting it on fire. Italy has sent more than 2,000 troops to help the reconstruction efforts in post-war Iraq.
Several people were reported to be trapped under rubble after the blast. The casualties are said to include Italian police and local Iraqis. Meanwhile, the US military is reporting that another of its soldiers has been killed in an explosion north of Baghdad. More than 150 US troops have been killed in attacks by unknown groups since major combat operations in Iraq ended.
BASRA, Iraq (AP) - An Assyrian politician working with coalition authorities in the southern Iraqi city of Basra was abducted and killed by unknown assailants while on his way to work, his political party said Thursday.
Sargoun Nanou Murado, a representative of the Assyrian Democratic Movement party and member of Basra's city council, was ambushed on Tuesday, said a party statement that condemned the killing.
``The body of our party member was discovered in a city suburb,'' it said.
The assassination is the second this week in the south of Iraq of people working with coalition authorities. In the town of Diwaniyah, gunmen on Tuesday killed the education ministry's director general for that province.
Guerrillas have warned that they will target any Iraqi who collaborates with occupation authorities.
The Assyrian Democratic Movement, which represents Iraq's long-oppressed Assyrian minority, is represented on Iraq's 25-seat Governing Council set up by the U.S.-led coalition authorities.
US launches massive search in northern Iraq for Saddam's number two.
26 minutes ago
KIRKUK, Iraq (AFP) - The US military launched a massive operation around Iraq's northern oil centre overnight in its intensifying hunt for Saddam Hussein's deputy, Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, the suspected paymaster of many attacks on the coalition, a senior police official said.
"It's the biggest search operation ever launched around here," the official in Kirkuk told AFP, asking not to be identified.
"They're searching for Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri and other top officials of the former regime following intelligence reports he was in the region," said the official.
The operation was concentrated on the town of Hawijah, 45 kilometres (nearly 30 miles) to the west of Kirkuk, and the village of Rashad, 60 kilometres (nearly 40 miles) to the south, he added.
The police chief in Hawijah, Commander Awad al-Obeidi, said that US troops had encircled the town since 5 am (0200 GMT) and made dozens of arrests.
Asked whether Duri was among those detained, Obeidi said: "No information is available as to his capture or killing."
The Kirkuk police official said that part of the search focused on Duri's eldest son Ahmad, based on new intelligence that he was in the area.
US commanders had reports that he was transmitting orders from his father to two insurgent brigades, each composed of 250 men under his command.
"He transmits the orders from his dad, he finances the attacks and sets the targets, be they US military or Iraqis working with them," according to the police official.
The official said several members of the two brigades had been captured in the overnight raids.
Some were members of Saddam's feared intelligence service and others members of his now disbanded army, who have voiced mounting anger with the US-led coalition over their slow progress in integrating them into a new defence force.
The official said that US soldiers overnight also raided the home of the head of the Al-Sawalha tribe in the village of the same name, 75 kilometres (45 miles) south of Kirkuk.
He said US reports suggested that Duri had stayed with Sheikh Nuzhan Abed Mutlak at least four times since the fall of Saddam's regime in April.
The new intelligence resulted from the capture in a Mosul coffee-shop on Sunday of two former generals of Saddam's elite Republican Guard, the official said, naming one of them as General Dia al-Duri.
Police in Mosul, the biggest town in northern Iraq, said late Monday that the two generals were suspected of links to Duri.
The Kirkuk police official said the arrest three weeks ago of a local tribal chief, Ali Hussein Saleh, sheikh of the Jawada tribe, had led to the arrest of one of Duri's wives and a daughter on November 26.
The detention of the two women, along with the son of Duri's doctor, in a raid on a house in Samarra came just a week after US commanders posted a 10-million-dollar bounty on the fugitive former number two.
The same day US troops announced that they had used warplanes to destroy two of his homes near Samarra, one of them still under construction, that they charged had been used to mount attacks on coalition troops.
Number six on the US wartime list of most wanted Iraqi officials, Duri is the highest-ranking official of the former regime still at large, apart from the ousted president himself.
The northern region between Samarra and Kirkuk is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim and its population fared relatively well under Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime.
The area has been a hotbed of resistance to the coalition virtually since the US-led six-week spring invasion.
US commanders said they killed 54 insurgents and wounded 18 in clashes with insurgents in Samarra on Sunday after they mounted coordinated ambushes of three separate convoys.
Saddam Hussein is shown in custody in a photograph released by the U.S. Army on Sunday. His beard was shaved off later. U.S. Army/ AP
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Without firing a shot, U.S. forces captured a bearded and haggard-looking Saddam Hussein in an underground hide-out on a farm near his hometown of Tikrit, ending one of the most intensive manhunts in history.
In the capital, radio stations played celebratory music, residents fired small arms in the air in celebration and passengers on buses and trucks shouted, "They got Saddam! They got Saddam!"
After sundown, large explosions were heard in central Baghdad, and flames and thick smoke were seen. Bursts of gunfire rang out from the area of the blasts.
"The former dictator of Iraq will face the justice he denied to millions," U.S. President George W. Bush said in a midday televised address from the White House, eight months after American troops swept into Baghdad and toppled Hussein's regime. "In the history of Iraq, a dark and painful era is over. A hopeful day has arrived."
Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said in a statement that Russia believes the arrest "will contribute to the strengthening of security in Iraq and to the process of political regulation in the country with the active participation of the UN."
Washington hopes Hussein's capture will help break the organized Iraq resistance that has killed more than 190 American soldiers since Bush declared major combat over on May 1 and has set back efforts at reconstruction.
But Major General Ray Odierno, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, which captured Hussein, said the ousted leader did not appear to be directly organizing resistance -- noting no communication devices were found in his hiding place. "I believe he was there more for moral support," Odierno said.
Hussein's capture was based on information from a member of a family "close to him," Odierno told reporters in Tikrit. "Finally we got the ultimate information from one of these individuals."
The capture took place at 8:30 p.m. Saturday at one of dozens of safe houses Hussein is thought to have: a walled compound on a farm in Adwar, a town 15 kilometers from Tikrit, not far from one of Hussein's former palaces, Odierno said.
The event comes almost five months after his sons, Qusai and Odai, were killed July 22 in a four-hour gun battle with U.S. troops in a hideout in the northern city of Mosul. There was hope at the time that the sons' deaths would dampen the Iraqi resistance to the U.S. occupation. But since then, the guerrilla campaign has mounted dramatically.
In the latest attack, a suspected suicide bomber detonated explosives in a car outside a police station Sunday morning west of Baghdad, killing at least 17 people and wounding 33 more, the U.S. military said.
Hussein was one of the most-wanted fugitives in the world, along with Osama bin Laden, the leader of the al-Qaida terrorist network who has not been caught despite a manhunt since November 2001, when the Taliban regime was overthrown in Afghanistan.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we got him," U.S. administrator Paul Bremer told a news conference. "The tyrant is a prisoner."
Some 600 troops and special forces were involved in the raid that netted Hussein -- though not all were aware beforehand that the objective was "High Value Target No. 1," Odierno said.
Troops found the ousted leader, armed with a pistol, hiding in an underground crawl space at the walled compound, he said. The entrance to the hiding place, covered with rugs and dirt, was near a small, mud-brick hut where Hussein had been staying.
The hut consisted of two rooms, a bedroom with clothes scattered about and a "rudimentary kitchen," Odierno said.
Hussein was "very disoriented" as soldiers brought him out of the hole, Odierno said. A Pentagon diagram showed the hiding place as a 2-meter vertical tunnel, with a shorter tunnel branching out horizontally from one side. A pipe to the concrete surface at ground level provided air.
Hussein did not fire his weapon. "There was no way he could fight back so he was just caught like a rat," Odierno said.
Two other Iraqis -- described as low-level regime figures -- were arrested in the raid, and soldiers found two Kalashnikov rifles, a pistol, a taxi and $750,000 in $100 bills.
A U.S. defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Hussein admitted his identity when captured.
Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, who saw Hussein overnight, said he "has been cooperative and is talkative." He described him as "a tired man, a man resigned to his fate."
"He was unrepentant and defiant," said Adel Abdel-Mahdi, a senior official of a Shiite Muslim political party who, along with other Iraqi leaders, visited Hussein in captivity.
"When we told him, 'If you go to the streets now, you will see the people celebrating,'" Abdel-Mahdi said. "He answered, 'Those are mobs.' When we told him about the mass graves, he replied, 'Those are thieves.'"
Eager to prove to Iraqis that Hussein was in custody, Sanchez played a video at the news conference showing him in custody.
Hussein, 66, with a thick, graying beard and bushy, disheveled hair, was seen as doctor examined him, feeling his scalp and holding his mouth open with a tongue depressor, apparently to get a DNA sample. Hussein blinked and touched his beard during the exam. Then the video showed a picture of him after he was shaved, juxtaposed for comparison with an old photo of the Iraqi leader while in power.
Iraqi journalists at the press conference stood, pointed and shouted "Death to Saddam!" and "Down with Saddam!"
Though the raid occurred Saturday afternoon U.S. time, U.S. officials went to great length to keep it quiet until medical tests and DNA testing confirmed Hussein's identity.
Hussein was being held at an undisclosed location, and U.S. authorities have not yet determined whether to hand him over to the Iraqis for trial or what his status would be.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair hailed the capture, saying the deposed leader "has gone from power, he won't be coming back."
"Where his rule meant terror and division and brutality, let his capture bring about unity, reconciliation and peace between all the people of Iraq," Blair said.
RAMALLAH (Reuters) - Disbelief and gloom seized many Palestinians on Sunday at news of Saddam Hussein capture while Israel, which came under Iraqi Scud missile attack in the 1991 Gulf War, hailed the United States for capturing Saddam.
The former Iraqi ruler was a hero to many Palestinians for his stand against Israel and its U.S. ally, as well as for giving financial aid to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers and others who died in a three-year-old uprising.
For Israel, he was a menace over the horizon who long bankrolled the enemy and the Iraqi leader rained at least 30 Scud missiles on Israeli cities during the 1991 Gulf War.
"It's a black day in history," said Sadiq Husam, 33, a taxi driver in Ramallah, West Bank seat of the Palestinian Authority.
"I am saying so not because Saddam is an Arab, but because he is the only man who said 'no' to American injustice in the Middle East," he said.
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and his government made no comment. But Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi, a senior leader of the militant Hamas group, said the United States would "pay a very high price for the mistake" of capturing Saddam.
"What the United States did is ugly and despicable. It is an insult to all Arabs and an insult to Muslims," he told Reuters.
Islamic factions sworn to Israel's destruction have taken strength from Iraqi resistance and cautioned on Sunday that Saddam's capture would not end attacks on U.S. forces.
As Palestinians lamented Saddam's capture, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) telephoned President Bush to congratulate him on "a great day for the democratic world."
"I believe that dictatorships in general and those who support terror in particular learned a historic lesson today," Sharon told Bush in the telephone call.
Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, currently visiting Washington, said Saddam's capture proved persistence paid off in the "uncompromising battle against terrorism and totalitarian regimes" and it would promote regional stability.
Saddam paid over $35 million to the kin of Palestinian suicide bombers, militants and bystanders who died in an uprising that began in 2000.
Although far from all Palestinians supported him, militants marched to back Saddam ahead of the U.S.-led invasion in March and Palestinian protesters were often heard chanting: "Oh, Saddam. Oh, Saddam. Bomb, bomb Tel Aviv."
During the 1991 Gulf War, Palestinians cheered as Iraqi Scud missiles crashed into Israeli cities.
Some did not believe news of Saddam's capture even when images of the bearded figure flashed across television screens.
"Maybe they captured someone who looks like him," said Laila Abusharigh, 55, in the Gaza Strip. "Saddam is a real man and all of us are with him."
(Additional reporting by Shahdi al-Kashif in Gaza and Dan Williams in Jerusalem)
The links of Saddam Hussein to the organization and coordination of the Iraqi insurgents will be of crucial importance to the Americans, according to a representative of the US intelligence service announced on December 13.
He did not rule out the scenario that the former Iraqi leader has been betrayed by his ex-allies in a bid to continue the fight against coalition forces on their own, ITAR-TASS reported.
Official spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry Hamid Reza Asefi has expressed his satisfaction over the arrest of the former President of Iraq Saddam Hussein.
The press service of the Iranian foreign ministry quotes Asefi as saying: We are joining the joy of the Iraqis. The arrest and neutralizing of Hussein will in effect become the reason for healing the wounds and torments of the Iranians, especially members of those families whose relatives were killed or wounded during the eight-year Iranian-Iraqi war (1980-1988).
According to the Iranian diplomat, the crimes of Saddam Hussein against the people of Iraq, the Iranian nation, and the population of the region, including the use of chemical weapons on his orders are obvious and are not to be forgotten.
Open trial over Saddam Hussein and his supporters will serve as a ground for restoring the violated rights, Asefi said.
He also expressed the hope, that the arrest of Hussein would help make the transfer of power in Iraq and control over the country to the Iraqi people simpler, would expedite this process and put an end to the country's occupation.
Saddam's Capture Will Not Stop The Relentless Killings From Insurgents.
The Independent
Robert Fisk in Baghdad
15 December 2003: (The Independent) "Peace" and "reconciliation" were the patois of Downing Street and the White House yesterday. But all those hopes of a collapse of resistance are doomed. Saddam was neither the spiritual nor the political guide to the insurgency that is now claiming so many lives in Iraq - far more Iraqi than Western lives, one might add - and, however happy Messrs Bush and Blair may be at the capture of Saddam, the war goes on.
In Fallujah, in Ramadi, in other centres of Sunni power in Iraq, the anti-occupation rising will continue. The system of attacks and the frighteningly fast-growing sophistication of the insurgents is bound up with the Committee of the Faith, a group of Wahabi-based Sunni Muslims who now plan their attacks on American occupation troops between Mosul and the city of Hilla, 50 miles south of Baghdad. Even before the overthrow of the Baathist regime, these groups, permitted by Saddam in the hope that they could drain off Sunni Islamic militancy, were planning the mukawama - the resistance against foreign occupation.
The slaughter of 17 more Iraqis yesterday in a bomb attack on a police station - hours after the capture of Saddam, though the bombers could not have known that - is going to remain Iraq's bloody agenda. The Anglo-American narrative will then be more difficult to sustain. Saddam "remnants" or Saddam "loyalists" are far more difficult to sustain as enemies when they can no longer be loyal to Saddam. Their Iraqi identity will become more obvious and the need to blame "foreign" al-Qa'ida members all the greater.
Yet the repeated assertions of US infantry commanders, especially those based around Mosul and Tikrit, that most of their attackers are Iraqi rather than foreign, show that the American military command in Iraq - at least at the divisional level - knows the truth. The 82nd Airborne captain in Fallujah who told me that his men were attacked by "Syrian-backed terrorists and Iraqi freedom-fighters" was probably closer to the truth than Major Ricardo Sanchez, the US commander in Iraq, would like to believe. The war is not about Saddam but about foreign occupation.
Indeed, professional soldiers have been pointing this out for a long time. Yesterday, for example, a sergeant in the 1st Armoured Division on checkpoint duty in Baghdad explained the situation to The Independent in remarkably blunt words. "We're not going to go home any sooner because of Saddam's getting caught," he said. "We all came to search for weapons of mass destruction and attention has now been diverted from that. The arrest of Saddam is meaningless. We still don't know why we came here."
There are groups aplenty with enthusiasm to attack the Americans but who never had any love for Saddam. One example is the Unification Front for the Liberation of Iraq, which was anti-Saddam but has now called on its supporters to fight the American occupation. In all, The Independent has identified 12 separate guerrilla groups, all loosely in touch with each other through tribal connections, but only one could be identified as comprising Saddam loyalists or Baathists.
When the first roadside bomb exploded in the centre of a motorway median at Khan Dari in the summer, killing one soldier, it was followed by identically manufactured mines - three mortars wired together - in both Kirkuk and Mosul. Within a week, another copy-cat mine exploded near US troops outside Nasiriyah. Clearly, groups of insurgents were touring the country with explosive ordnance capabilities, organised, possibly, on a national level.
In many areas, men identifying themselves as resistors have openly boasted that they are joining the new American-paid police forces in order to earn money, gain experience with weapons and gather intelligence on their American military "allies". Exactly the same fate that befell the Israelis in Lebanon, where their proxy Lebanese South Lebanon Army militia started collaborating with their Hizbollah enemies, is now likely to encompass the Americans.
The same men who are going to carry on attacking the Americans will, of course, be making a secret holiday in their heart over the capture of Saddam. Why, they will argue, should they not rejoice at the end of their greatest oppressor while planning the humiliation of the occupying army which seized him?
On Monday, Kofi Annan will have a chance to play "a vital role" in Iraq that the U.S. has promised. Iraqi, U.S. and British representatives will troop into his New York office with a request: inform the Shiite leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, that the world body supports a reasonable timetable for Iraqi elections, not a premature election that would amount to a coup by Iraq's Shiite majority.
As the U.N thus demonstrates its nation-building usefulness, the U.S. will face its own delicate task: to persuade the Kurds in the north not to demand so much autonomy that it may endanger the nation's unity.
Here is what we owe the Iraqi Kurds, targets of genocide, as demonstrated in Saddam's poison-gas massacre of 5,000 innocents in Halabja:
(1) We abandoned Kurds to the shah in the 70's, after Mullah Mustafa Barzani placed his trust in America. We double-crossed them again after the gulf war, when their forces rose at our instigation and were decimated by Saddam's gunships. Despite this double duplicity, Kurds fought on our side with little equipment and great valor against Saddam for over a decade.
(2) After we protected this non-Arab people in a no-flight zone, Kurds overcame tribal differences to establish a working free-enterprise democracy in Iraq's north, now a model of freedom for the rest of the country.
(3) Despite casualties elsewhere in the post-victory war, not a single U.S. soldier has been killed (knock wood) in the area called Iraqi Kurdistan and patrolled by the pesh merga, its battle-hardened Kurdish militia. (But in a blunder, Kurdish leaders suspicious of Turkey blocked the contribution of 10,000 Turkish troops to help us put down the Baathist insurgency.)
The Kurds owe their American ally plenty, too: U.S. and British air forces, from bases in cooperative Turkey, secured the Iraqi Kurds from Saddam's predations for a decade. And last year we freed all Iraqis from that dictator forever.
Now Americans and Kurds need each other's understanding. The U.S. is committed to helping to build a unified Iraq, with no path to secession, and with representation based on geography, not ethnicity. The Kurds, a 20 percent minority in Iraq, are committed only to autonomy within a federal Iraq: they refrain from declaring independence, but require constitutional and security guarantees that they will not be tyrannized again.
"We cannot afford another Halabja," says Barham Salih, the articulate Kurd who would make Iraq's most effective U.N. representative. "Surely Americans grasp the value of states' rights, and remember how all states had to ratify your Constitution."
Commitments to unity and autonomy may not be in conflict, but they are not in accord. Though Arab Iraqis are happy to let the Kurds continue to run their local affairs in what used to be the no-flight zone, many find trouble arising in other Kurdish lands seized by Saddam, who drove Kurds from their homes and moved in his supporters to "Arabize" the area.
The key is the city of Kirkuk, which Iraqi Kurds consider their capital. But Arab colonists and indigenous Turkmen dispute that hotly, as does Turkey, worried about a rich Kurdistan attracting Turkish Kurds. Kirkuk sits atop an ocean of oil holding 40 percent of Iraq's huge reserves.
Determined to reverse Saddam's ethnic cleansing, Salih insists that "Kirkuk is not about oil." (I think of Senator Dale Bumpers's line during impeachment: "When you hear somebody say, `This is not about sex' — it's about sex.")
Our Paul Bremer told Kurdish leaders brusquely last week to forget the past U.S. autonomy policy and get with the unity program; they suggested he stick that in his ear. He has since modified his demeanor, and Washington is reviewing our policy reversal. Mollified Kurds then met constructively with Iraqi Arabs, and Salih meets tomorrow with "our friends to the north [Turkey]."
The solution should include relocation funds for Arabs displaced by returning Kurds; a referendum to decide status within a Kurdish or other Iraqi "governorate"; legal protections in Kirkuk for Turkmen, Christians and other minorities; and the pesh merga's place in Iraq's national military command.
"The oil is part of the national treasure," says Salih, in autonomy's concession to unity. "We just want to make sure that Iraq's oil wealth is never again used against Kurds."
Kurds Press for Independence - Effort Alarms Neighbors and Threatens U.S. Plan for Iraq.
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 30, 2004; Page A18
IRBIL, Iraq -- From a tent lined with the red, white and green flag of Kurdistan, a young man's amplified voice excitedly invited passersby Wednesday to "come sign the petition for federalism. It is a step to independence."
A cluster of laborers, shoppers and office workers pressed up to a table to write their names. Some stuck pins in their fingers and signed in blood.
This was the beginning of a mobilization of Iraq's Kurds. Although autonomy within a new, federal Iraq is their official goal, signer after signer at the tent wanted something more: separation, if not now, sometime in the near future. The boy in the booth did nothing to discourage the hope. On a busy, tree-lined street here, the genie of Kurdish desires was out of the bottle. The mood was one of exhilaration.
"We want to be like the rest of the world. There are plenty of countries much smaller than Kurdistan that have their own government, their own flag and their own freedom. We should not have any less," said Siyamend Kader, a high school student and enthusiastic supporter of independence.
"I don't know what federalism is," said Jabbar Mohammed, a gardener. "I don't care, as long as it means independence."
Kurdish aspirations have caused alarm in neighboring Turkey, Syria and Iran. Each has its own Kurdish minority, and all have warned of turmoil if Iraqi Kurds gain significant autonomy.
It also presents a potentially grave complication for U.S. plans to hand over authority to an Iraqi government by June 30. The Bush administration is committed to maintaining Iraq intact. But Kurdish leaders say they will not endorse the U.S. transition plan for Iraq unless it includes guarantees for autonomy involving disputed territory extending as far south as central Iraq.
Forming a government without the Kurds, until now the most enthusiastic supporters of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, would mean de facto disintegration of the country. Kurds make up 15 to 25 percent of Iraq's population.
There were no overt signs of anti-Americanism here Wednesday. Nonetheless, Kurds expressed dismay that their support for the war, which included putting Kurdish militias under U.S. command, was not being answered with firm help on autonomy. "America is our hope. We don't understand why they don't do more," said Saria Ezzedine, a college English teacher. "They have a federal system, don't they? Independence is our dream, but autonomy can be our reality, and we are having trouble getting that."
Before the war, autonomy was taken for granted. Kurds in the far north enjoyed virtual independence from Baghdad for a dozen years following the 1991 Persian Gulf War in a "no-fly" zone protected by U.S. and British warplanes. Exiled Iraqi opposition parties gathered by the Bush administration had repeatedly endorsed Kurdish autonomy.
This began to change last November, when the administration set a date for the transfer of authority in Iraq. The Kurds wanted ironclad guarantees. Suddenly, some of their erstwhile allies among Iraqi Arab political groups opposed the Kurdish autonomy formula, which included annexation of several areas with large Kurdish populations south of the no-fly zone.
Among the most disputed was Kirkuk, a city in the heart of Iraq's northern oil fields. The Kirkuk fields contain 40 percent of the country's petroleum reserves. The Kurds also want to remove tens of thousands of Arabs that Saddam Hussein's government moved into the area and bring back tens of thousands of Kurdish refugees he expelled.
For the past week, Kurdish political leaders have lobbied Iraqi politicians on the Governing Council, a U.S.-appointed group responsible for formulating rules for a new government, to endorse expanded autonomy. They have yet to succeed, Kurdish officials say.
Under the Kurdish plan, the central government would control national defense, foreign policy and financial and budgetary affairs.
"We view the transition rules as an interim constitution that will be hard to change later," said Saad Othman, who heads the Irbil regional branch of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which rules far-northern Iraq along with its sometimes bitter rival, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). "We Kurds have an expression: You struggle during cultivation, not the harvest. We want changes now, not later."
Kurds were signing the autonomy petition throughout the north as well as in Kirkuk and other towns and hamlets. Copies are to be delivered to President Bush, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, the European Union and the Iraqi Governing Council. The Kurds want a Kurdish referendum on their future, based on principles of self-determination.
While the Governing Council wrestles with the basic law, the KDP and PUK are taking steps to shore up their hold on the north. They plan to merge their administrations into a single government. A KDP official would be prime minister, a PUK leader his deputy. The PUK would hold the post of parliamentary speaker. The Kurds plan to hold parliamentary elections next year -- a goal independent of U.S. proposals to hold a nationwide vote in 2005.
From the Kurdish point of view, any decision to remain within Iraq would be purely voluntary. Geographically, culturally and socially, Kurds contend that Iraq begins south of the low Hamrin mountain range, which follows an arc south from the city of Mosul, then east through north-central Iraq. It is virtually impossible to find a red, white and black Iraqi flag in Irbil. Men in their early twenties speak little Arabic, if any.
On Wednesday, Kurds in the street expressed marked mistrust of the Arabs. Hussein's brutal suppression of Kurdish revolts, including the 1988 poison gas attack on civilians in the village of Halabja, massive roundups and executions and vast deforestation campaigns in northern Iraq left their mark. "Our life with the Arabs has been unhappy. Who is to say we won't have trouble again?" said Farhad Ahmed, a telephone technician.
The opposition to federalism voiced by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's leading Shiite Muslim cleric, also awakened Kurdish fears. Sistani and other opponents of autonomy equate federalism with division of Iraq.
Sistani's lieutenants dispatched tens of thousands of demonstrators into the streets of Baghdad last week to press for elections and oppose a federal system for Iraq. Arab Shiites constitute the majority in Iraq, and Kurds -- who are Sunni Muslims -- are afraid their hopes would be crushed by a Shiite-dominated government.
Othman, the KDP leader in Irbil, called Sistani's opposition to federalism, as well as to Governing Council proposals to choose a new government through caucuses, a "dangerous hint" of things to come. "Rejecting a Governing Council decision is like rejecting the rule of civil law," Othman said. "He wants to impose a kind of religious rule on Iraq. Kurds don't accept that. Our parties are secular."
If someone like Sistani runs Iraq, "it will be worse than Saddam. No more dictators for us," said Ali Abdullah, a barber.
The damage from an attack Sunday on the offices of a Kurdish political party in Erbil, Iraq. Lynsey Addario/Corbis, for The New York Times
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Blasts Target Iraq's Kurdish Parties - Local Leaders Among at Least 56 Killed in Suicide Attacks at Political Offices.
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, February 2, 2004; Page A01
IRBIL, Iraq, Feb. 1 -- In nearly simultaneous strikes Sunday, a pair of suicide bombers set off explosives during Muslim holiday celebrations inside two buildings housing offices of the main Kurdish parties in northern Iraq, killing at least 56 people and wounding more than 200.
The blasts killed senior members of the two parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which are among the best-organized and most staunch U.S. allies in Iraq. Both groups supported the invasion that toppled President Saddam Hussein and put their large militias at the service of U.S. commanders.
The attacks in the crowded auditoriums at the KDP and PUK headquarters came on the first day of the celebration of Eid al-Adha, the festival commemorating the Koran's account of God allowing Abraham to sacrifice a ram instead of his son Ishmael.
The blasts were the first major strikes in Iraq in which the assailants strapped explosives to their bodies, employing means similar to those used against Israelis by Palestinian suicide bombers. Most suicide bombings in Iraq have involved explosives packed into cars or trucks.
The dead included Sami Abdul Rahman, deputy prime minister of the Kurdish north. The KDP regional director for Irbil, the city's mayor and his deputy, and the chief of police also were killed. The PUK dead included the top representative for Irbil.
"It was an attack by terrorists, al Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam," said Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zubari, who is also a member of the KDP.
Iraqi and U.S. officials have long suspected Ansar, a Kurdish Islamic fundamentalist organization, of providing logistical support for foreign fighters and Iraqi insurgents. Authorities have suggested the group is tied to al Qaeda and has particular expertise in suicide bombings.
In the attacks on Sunday, the bombs were synchronized to detonate at 10:30 a.m., when large crowds gathered at both headquarters and pressed into the small auditoriums as people wound in a large line to greet the dignitaries.
The bomb at the KDP headquarters exploded first, followed moments later by the explosion at the PUK building. One U.S. military civil affairs officer had just left the KDP building when that blast went off, Kurdish officials said.
At the green and cream PUK building, the blast destroyed a wall, completely charred the interior and left a jumble of furniture and clothing. Bits of flesh littered the scene. At the sand-colored KDP office, a mix of blood, chairs, tables, body parts and burned clothing made for a hellish scene. A clock blown off the wall was stopped at 10:30 a.m.
The gatherings at both buildings were held under lax security. Guards said they were under orders not to search participants as they entered. "It was considered too embarrassing to search people at this happy occasion," said Ahmed Ali Ahmed, a guard for the KDP. "I myself complained about it, but those were the orders."
"There was probably too much goodwill shown by both PUK and KDP security forces," said Qubad Talabani, a PUK spokesman in Baghdad.
The lax security was all the more striking because, with the arrival of the Eid holiday, Iraq has been under a state of high alert. U.S. officials had warned of an upsurge in violence during the four-day holiday, which began Sunday.
Militants used the occasion of last fall's holy month of Ramadan to launch a devastating series of car bombings, mostly in Baghdad. On Saturday, a car bombing destroyed the facade of a police station in Mosul, 45 miles west of here, and killed nine Iraqis. The suicide bomber timed the blast to coincide with a gathering of policemen lined up to receive their monthly salaries.
U.S. military officials have expressed frustration in trying to stem an insurgency whose organization is shadowy and whose leadership is unknown. Repeated campaigns by U.S. forces against insurgents have been unable to halt or significantly reduce attacks. U.S. forces are constantly ambushed and threatened by the prospect of roadside bombs. The guerrillas regularly target Iraqi civilian and police officials with virtual impunity.
At the same time, the Bush administration is in the process of reducing the number of troops in Iraq from 130,000 to 105,000. U.S. officials say the reduction will not hamper U.S. operations, but they have also not suggested that replacement troops will improve the situation. The deputy defense secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz, said during a visit to Baghdad on Sunday that the attacks reflected the perpetrators' "fanatical view of the world."
"We're winning and they're losing," he said.
Iraqi Kurdistan has been the safest part of the country since the fall of Hussein. During the previous dozen years, it had enjoyed independence from Baghdad. U.S. and British warplanes protected this stretch of the north against incursions by Hussein's troops.
The PUK and KDP are former rivals that have found common cause in a drive for Kurdish autonomy in the north, but their desire to include the oil-rich region of Kirkuk in an expanded zone has been widely opposed. The KDP rules the western half of the current zone and the PUK governs the east.
"It is too early to predict the fallout, but the bombings will strengthen those who want to isolate Kurdistan physically and politically from the rest of Iraq," said Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. diplomat who is visiting Iraq.
Despite the relative calm here, there had been signs that insurgents were trying to foment insecurity in the far north. In December, a car bomb blew up in front of the Kurdish Interior Ministry here, but did not kill anyone. Since then, Kurdish militias had installed checkpoints throughout Irbil, the autonomous region's largest city, to watch for car bombs. "Car bombs were our worry," said Kurdo Amar, a PUK staff member. "We did not adequately consider this eventuality" of bombers on foot, he added.
After the blasts Sunday, party members stood sullenly outside the two buildings as rescue workers removed the wounded and the dead from the ruined auditoriums. "Whoever did it is not human," said Azzad Taher, a PUK official. "There were children here. It was Eid. Impossible!"
Kurdish television reported that both bombers had been dressed as Muslim clerics.
At KDP headquarters, the apparent remains of one of the bombers were strewn over several feet near a dais. KDP officials inspected his head, which lay in a corner. He appeared to be in his forties and had a close-cropped moustache.
"No one knows him. There were so many people here. If only we were searching the people," said Sadala Youssef, a member of the pesh merga, the Kurdish fighting force.
Police and militia members kept relatives from storming Irbil's hospitals. If a family was searching for someone, a single representative was let inside. At Rizgali Hospital, pickup trucks bearing a corpse periodically left the grounds. Relatives hopped on board to get their first chance at mourning.
Talabani Accuses Turkish Intelligence of Massacre.
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
February 2, 2004, 12:21 AM (GMT+02:00)
Two huge bombs were detonated Sunday, February 1, at the very moment that Iraq’s Kurds joined their leaders for a mass celebration at the headquarters of their two parties in the north Iraqi town of Arbil. The crowds had gathered to mark the Muslim Feast of the Sacrifice and the passing of their archenemy Saddam Hussein.
The carnage was unimaginable, the worst terrorist assault ever seen in post-war Iraq. The death toll rose fast towards 70 with more than 200 injured. Hospitals recalled staff from their holidays and US helicopters rushed in medical assistance. The extent of the bloodshed and damage indicated strongly that vehicles packed with explosives outside the buildings must have backed up the suicide killers within.
According to DEBKAfile’s sources in Kurdistan and Washington, PUK leader Talal Jalabani talking later to senior US officials - believed to include visiting US Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz - bluntly accused Turkish intelligence of orchestrating the massacre with the aim of wiping out the entire Iraqi Kurdish leadership at a single stroke.
Kurdish PM Baram Salah repeated the allegation during a visit to White House that day.
Kurdish sources declared the Qaeda-linked Ansar al Islam lacked the resources and capabilities for mounting an operation of such magnitude and precision. It was clearly the work of a professional intelligence agency, who knew the two Kurdish heads Masoud Barzani, leader of the KDP and Jalal Talabani, head of the PUK, were to greet their followers at their respective headquarters in Arbil, along with the entire Iraqi Kurdish political and military leadership.
Talabani smelled a rat at the last minute and went into hiding. Barzani is in deep shock.
Among the dead are Sami Abdul Rahman, Dep. PM of the Kurdish region and his two sons, and Medhi Khoshnau, Dep. Governor of Arbil Province.
Turkish prime minister Tayyep Erdogan and foreign minister Abdullah Gul have just ended four days of talks in Washington at which they voiced concern over the generous measure of autonomy Iraq’s Kurds had been promised as America’s primary allies in the new Iraq. DEBKAfile’s sources report that they were not satisfied with the replies they received from President George W. Bush. Neither were they happy when secretary of state Colin Powell told them that the Kurdistan problem would be resolved in negotiations between the future sovereign government in Baghdad and Kurdish leaders.
The American responses were seen by Turkish leaders as leading inevitably to near-Kurdish independence, creating a model in Iraq that threatened to inflame Turkey’s own Kurdish minority.
strategypage.com ^ | February 8, 2004 | Austin Bay
February 8, 2004: On January 14 of this year Turkey's prime minister said that “Iraq's neighbors” won’t allow Iraq to shatter “along ethnic lines.” Turkey would act to stop an independent Kurd state in northern Iraq. This is not a new Turkish fear. For almost two decades “The Kurd War” has flickered in southeastern Turkey. Here’s the direct quote of Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan: "If Iraq moves toward disintegration, neighbors will get involved. Both Syria and Iran think the same way." The Turkish government has made it plain to the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority), to the US, and to the Iraqi Governing Council that Turkey won’t permit an independent Kurdistan. That suggests Turkey would send troops into Iraq, and provoke “a wider war.” Which is why the Baath holdouts and Al Qaeda are trying to provoke the Kurds into opting for independence instead of a federal arrangement in Iraq. The Ansar al-Sunna Army that claimed to have carried out the two suicide bombings February 1 in Iraq’s Kurd areas remains a shadowy outfit. However, 109 Kurds died in the terror attacks in Irbil. The US Army said that Ansar al-Sunna is probably a splinter group of Ansar al-Islam, Al Qaeda’s chief Iraqi connection. The group is also called Jaish Ansar al-Sunna (Army of the Supporters of the Sunna). (Austin Bay)
Iraq Council, With Reluctant Shiites, Signs Charter.
NEW YORK TIMES
By DEXTER FILKINS
Yonadem Kanna, of the Assyrian Democratic Movement, displays the interim constitution after the 25 Iraqi council members finished signing it. Joao Silva for The New York Times
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 8 — Iraq's leaders signed an interim constitution on Monday and agreed to embark on a common path toward democratic rule, but the celebratory mood was dampened by calls from the country's most powerful Shiite leaders to amend the new charter before it goes into force.
The signing ceremony for the interim constitution, delayed once because of terrorist attacks and again because of a political deadlock, unfolded without a hitch inside the fortified confines of the American compound. Each of the 25 members of the Iraqi Governing Council signed it or had a representative do so.
The document, with its bill of rights and guarantees for women, was hailed by Iraqi and American leaders as a milestone in the project to implant a democracy here less than a year after Saddam Hussein was swept away.
But immediately after the ceremony ended, Shiite leaders, representing the country's largest group, brought forth sharp reservations that called into question the viability of the accord.
A leading Shiite member of the council, saying he spoke for 12 of the 13 Shiites on the council, read a statement saying they intended to amend key portions of the document that they considered undemocratic.
Ibrahim Jafari, a Shiite council member, said the group had endorsed the interim constitution in order to preserve the unity of the country. But he made it clear that the Shiite leaders intended to rewrite portions of the constitution before June 30, when the Americans plan to transfer sovereignty to the Iraqi people.
"We say here, our decision to sign the document is pegged to reservations," Mr. Jafari said.
The main issue concerns the mechanism by which the permanent constitution is to be ratified. The Shiites object to a provision that they say grants the Kurds veto power over the permanent constitution, which is to be written after national elections are held.
The Shiites also object to language that bars changes in the document signed Monday, except with the approval of the government and the new national assembly, which is to be elected by Jan. 31, 2005.
The Shiites' objections were endorsed by the most powerful religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who released a religious decree later in the afternoon in which he declared that the charter would obstruct an agreement on a permanent constitution.
In his statement, Ayatollah Sistani said the interim constitution would lack legitimacy until it was approved by a democratically elected national assembly. Under the most favorable circumstances, that is not likely to happen until the end of the year.
"This law places obstacles in the path of reaching a permanent constitution for the country that maintains its unity, the rights of sons of all sects and ethnic backgrounds," Ayatollah Sistani's decree said.
Together, the reservations portend a shakier future for the interim constitution than American officials and some Iraqi leaders had hoped for.
Still, the immediate impact of the protest was not clear. The ayatollah, who has involved himself deeply in the talks on Iraq's future, did not actually denounce the interim constitution or call on his followers to reject it.
And whether the Shiite leaders could amend the interim constitution before it takes effect on June 30, when the Americans transfer sovereignty, seemed uncertain as well. The 12 who endorsed Mr. Jafari's statement form less than a majority of the 25-member council.
A senior American official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said additions to the interim constitution would likely be limited to the shape of the caretaker government that would take over on June 30. But Shiite leaders said they hoped to use that process to make the changes they sought.
The interim constitution exhibits many of the fundamental elements of a modern state: a bill of rights, which include freedom of speech, assembly and religion; civilian control over the military; and an elaborate system of checks and balances. The document declares Islam the official religion and yet only "a source" of legislation. It calls on lawmakers to devise an electoral system that would give women at least a quarter of the seats in the national assembly.
For 90 minutes on Monday, the mood was high, betraying nothing of the quarrels to come. The 25 Iraqi leaders, many of them scarred by wars and traumas past, gave their names to an expansive document that enshrines human rights and democratic rule as firmly as any constitution in the region.
"This is a great and historic day for Iraq," Adnan Pachachi, a member of the Governing Council, told the crowd that had gathered deep inside the protected confines of the American compound. "This is an Iraqi constitution, made by Iraqis. We have produced a document of which we can all be proud."
With that, the 25 leaders moved to an antique table once used by King Feisal, Iraqi's first monarch, signed the charter and stepped onto a raised platform. As the stage filled, the council stood as the embodiment of the extraordinarily diverse nation, patched together 83 years ago from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, that the interim constitution is meant to hold together.
Among the Iraqis stood Shiite and Sunni Muslims, ethnic Kurds, an Assyrian Christian, a Communist, a Turkmen, several former guerrilla fighters and a handful of survivors from Saddam Hussein's jails.
One of the most striking moments came when Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party and a guerrilla leader, switched from Arabic to Kurdish midway through his speech. By so doing, Mr. Barzani highlighted one of the principal compromises of the interim constitution: its enshrinement of Kurdish as an official language of the Iraqi state and its recognition of Kurdish identity.
Mr. Barzani recalled the sufferings of the Kurdish people, thousands of whom died by poison gas and other means under Mr. Hussein's dictatorship. And he saluted the fallen fighters of the pesh merga, the Kurdish guerrillas who helped topple Mr. Hussein and clear the way for a new Iraqi state.
"This constitution will make some of this sadness go away," Mr. Barzani said. "This is the first time we feel as Kurds that we are equal with others in this country, that we are not second-class citizens."
For all the political difficulties, American officials said, their gravest challenge lies in implanting new democratic institutions in a country tormented by violence.
Evidence of that challenge abounded Monday. As the signing ceremony began, guerrillas fired mortars at a Baghdad police station, wounding two policemen and three civilians. In Mosul, in the north, attackers opened fire on a car carrying two city council members, killing one and wounding another.
The ceremony in Baghdad opened with a moment of silence for the more than 180 people killed last Monday in a wave of attacks against Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad and Karbala.
A senior American official here said again that the Bush administration was determined to hand over sovereignty on June 30, even though the violence was expected intensify.
"I think we are heading into a very dangerous time for terrorism, because the terrorists know that time is not on their side," the official said. "But we will make the deadline."
Zapatero Vows to Withdraw Spanish Troops From Iraq.
Novinite.com
Politics: 15 March 2004, Monday
Spain's prime minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero voiced his determination to pull Spain's 1,300 troops out of Iraq a day after an election upset ousted ruling conservatives.
Talking to Spanish Cadena SER radio the Socialist leader called the Iraqi war a "disaster".
He assured that no decision on troops in the U.S.-led force in Iraq would be taken until he was in power and without wide political consultation.
"The war has been a disaster, the occupation continues to be a disaster, it has only generated violence," Zapatero said.
Spain's Socialists won 43% as compared to 38% of the votes in Sunday's general elections. The Socialist Workers Party soared from 125 seats to 164 in the outgoing 350-seat legislature. The ruling Popular Party saw its seats fall from 183 to 148.
Zapatero began his first speech with a minute of silence for those killed in the terror attacks.
The elections were overshadowed by the Madrid train bombing three days earlier, which claimed the lives of at least 200 people. The attacks were followed by massive street rallies against the bombings and smaller ones against the government.
This was the first time that a government that supported the Iraq war has been voted out of office.
American armed forces arrested radical Shiite leader Muqtada Al-Sadr, reported the leader's close assistant Hasem Al-Araadge, Chief of Baghdad bureau "Mahdi army". Al-Arradge was also arrested by the Americans. Both are currently held in the "Palestine" hotel in Baghdad.
The leader of Shiite opposition Muqtada Al-Sadr proposed Jihad to the coalition army. Starting November 2003 until March 2004, his militants have ambushed coalition forces several dozen times.
On March 28 2004, American officials shut down the headquarters of the daily newspaper "Al-Havsa," the main periodical of Shiites. At first, Americans issued a warrant to arrest Muqtada Al-Sadr and his closest personal assistant Mustafa Al-Yakubi. Both of them appeared suspects in a murder of Abdula Madjija Al-Hoi in April 2003. Al-Yakubi was arrested on April 3 2004. Al-Sadr in turn called for an armed resistance against Americans.
At least 45 American soldiers and five members of the coalition forces have died during the first week of fighting "the big Shiite war" (3-9 April). The fighting took place in Najaf, Fallujah, Ramadi, Baghdad, Mosul and other towns. Dozens of soldiers were wounded. According to various sources, 5-15 foreigners were taken hostages. Nearly 500 dead and more than 100 wounded were on the Iraqi side.
By Jefferson Morley
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 7, 2004; 4:35 PM
Sadr is a 30-year old Shiite cleric from a poor neighborhood of Baghdad who has long opposed the U.S. occupation of Iraq. He draws much of his popularity from the reverence many Iraqi Shiites feel toward his father, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq Sadr, who was assassinated in 1999, allegedly by Saddam Hussein loyalists.
(For a profile of Sadr's supporters, see An Iraqi Call: Get on the Bus, Oct. 31, 2003.)
Why is Sadr in the news?
After U.S. troops shut down Sadr's weekly newspaper on March 28 for publishing inflammatory articles about the U.S. occupation, Sadr unleashed demonstrations and armed strikes against the U.S. occupation authority. In the ensuing fighting, dozens of U.S. soldiers and scores of Iraqis were killed.
(See Protests Unleashed by Cleric Mark a New Front in War, April 5, 2004.)
Why do U.S. forces want to arrest him?
Six months ago, Iraqi law enforcement concluded that Sadr was involved in the April 2003 killing of a rival cleric, who was hacked to death by a mob in the southern Iraqi city of Najaf. After the uprising began, the U.S. announced that an arrest warrant had been issued for Sadr last fall.
(See Mob Kills 2 Clerics at Shiite Shrine, April 11, 2003.)
What is the Mahdi army?
The Mahdi Army is a fighting force loyal to Sadr that is estimated to have between 3,000 and 10,000 men, armed with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and light weapons. U.S. officials say the emergence of such independent armed groups threatens the coalition forces now occupying the country and the new Iraqi government that is set to take power on June 30. U.S. officials have vowed to "destroy" the Mahdi army.
What do Iraqis think of him?
Sadr's religious authority is far overshadowed by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country's leading religious figure. Sadr and his followers remain distinctly unpopular in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, where the more established clergy hold sway. But he commands a street following in Baghdad and the long-neglected cities of the south.
(For a profile of Sistani, see Call of History Draws Iraqi Cleric to the Political Fore, Feb. 1, 2004.)
Does Sadr's uprising mean Iraq's Shiite majority has turned against the United States?
Not necessarily. As Aljazeera.net, the Web site of the Arab satellite news channel, said, Sadr "is seen by many Shia and politicians as a zealous leader who has chosen the wrong time for this escalation of protests." But given the unpopularity of the U.S. occupation, Shiite leaders, including Sistani, are loathe to criticize him.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 12 — A powerful delegation of Shiite clerics met with Moktada al-Sadr in Najaf on Monday, beginning negotiations that appeared to offer the best hope yet of resolving the standoff between the American military and Mr. Sadr, the cleric whose followers threw much of central and southern Iraq into anarchy over the last week.
Shiite clerics had largely stayed silent while Mr. Sadr's followers briefly seized control of several southern Iraqi cities, but their influence could be a crucial check on Mr. Sadr. The delegation included men with ties to Iraq's most powerful Shiite leaders, including the son of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
Although American commanders said last week that they planned to "kill or capture" Mr. Sadr, officials have conceded privately that any raid into Najaf, a city sacred to Shiites, would risk provoking more anti-American violence.
Other developments on Monday pointed toward a tentative easing of a confrontation that, with the American siege of Falluja, has presented the American command with its biggest challenge since the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
As late as Sunday evening, many people in Baghdad were locking their doors and preparing evacuation routes in case Mr. Sadr tried to attack the capital to try to foil American attempts to seize him.
On Monday, for the first time in a week, life in the capital returned to something like normal, with many businesses reopening and traffic back on streets that had been almost deserted. American officers said that after a week in which several hundred insurgents had been shot dead, a drop in attacks had set in late Sunday, and an unstable situation had begun to improve.
In Najaf, the first sign of easing tensions came with the withdrawal of hundreds of Sadr militiamen from police stations and other government buildings. Agence France-Presse quoted the chief of the American-trained police there — most of whom left their posts or joined the militiamen when the fighting started — as saying American forces and Mr. Sadr had reached an agreement for the police to resume control of Najaf.
Residents of Najaf and its twin holy city Karbala said the numbers of militiamen were dwindling.
American commanders denied there had been any deal and said Mr. Sadr's men roamed both cities in large numbers as of nightfall.
In Najaf, residents identifying themselves as "intellectuals," distributed leaflets that in effect endorsed the American case against Mr. Sadr. "We don't want anyone, whoever he is, to surround himself with armed bodyguards and return us to an era of slavery for the Iraqi people," the leaflets said.
The possibility of a breakthrough in Najaf came as a parallel effort continued to avoid further bloodshed at Falluja, which has been encircled by American marines seeking to end its role as a base for Sunni insurgents. The marines have also been given the task of capturing the killers of four American security guards under contract to the military who were ambushed, shot and mutilated, then hung from a bridge, as they drove through the city two weeks ago.
American commanders said Monday that "the situation in Falluja remains calm" on the fourth day of a cease-fire the Marines declared to allow Iraqi intermediaries to enter the city for talks, and to allow its 200,000 residents to bury the dead, tend to the wounded and acquire needed supplies of food and medicine across the American siege lines.
The surge of kidnappings that have become, in a few days, one of the most threatening features of the conflict, continued Monday. Al Jazeera television, the Arab satellite channel, said Monday that nine Russians had been seized on the western outskirts of Baghdad, in addition to at least 30 other foreigners taken hostage in the area. The Russians' capture could not be confirmed.
Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the American field commander in Iraq, said in a teleconference with Pentagon reporters on Monday that two American soldiers had been listed as missing, as well as seven employees of Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of the Houston-based oil field services company Halliburton.
The New China News Agency said Monday that seven of its citizens taken hostage over the weekend had been released. But Japanese diplomats said there was no word on the fate of three Japanese who were seized last week and threatened with execution if Japan did not withdraw from Iraq.
Other new additions to the list included two Czech television journalists who disappeared Sunday. A Romanian private security guard caught in an ambush in the Abu Ghraib area on Sunday was killed, the Romanian Foreign Ministry said.
The talks with Mr. Sadr brought together several figures from the supreme clerical establishment for the world's Shiites, based in Najaf. The delegation's leader was Muhammad Ridha, a son of Ayatollah Sistani, the most influential Shiite cleric in Iraq, and included Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Sayed al-Hakim, whose authority is considered almost on a par with Ayatollah Sistani's.
The decision of the prominent clerics to intervene was a result of days of secret contacts, and a vindication, American officials said, of months of assiduous American courtesy toward Ayatollah Sistani. The aged cleric has been an increasingly shrill champion of Shiite rights in Iraq, but at the same time a restraining influence through his emphasis on the importance of settling the country's web of ethnic, religious and political rivalries peacefully.
Neither side offered any details of the talks. Nor was it clear what concessions, if any, the delegation might have offered Mr. Sadr as the price of ending his insurrection, or even whether the American occupation authority had indicated a willingness to make a deal with him.
American officials gave mixed signals suggesting they were hoping that tough warnings that they were after Mr. Sadr, coupled with the military threat outside Najaf, might tip the balance in the talks. Since last week, the American occupation authority has said it planned to arrest Mr. Sadr in connection with the murder of a grand ayatollah on April 10, 2003.
The clearest hint came in the remarks by General Sanchez, who in a teleconference call linking the American headquarters in Baghdad with reporters at the Pentagon, said, with emphasis, that "the mission of the U.S. forces is to kill or capture Moktada al-Sadr." But at another point, he said that there would "probably end up being a uniquely Iraqi solution" to the effort to bring Mr. Sadr to justice, and that "we're applying the military force necessary to assist in that regard."
Three Marines killed in the Falluja fighting on Sunday, along with three other members of the American military whose combat deaths were announced Monday, pushed the number of troops aligned with the occupation forces killed in a week of fighting to "about 70," according to Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, chief spokesman for the American command in Baghdad.
The Department of Defense released the names of 60 Americans who died in the conflict last week. Previously, the most Americans to have died in one week was 50, during the week of March 23 to 29, 2003, at the war's beginning.
Iraqi casualties in the newest fighting, estimated by General Kimmitt as "somewhere about 10 times" the number of American dead, were also by far the highest of any week of the insurgency.
ITALIAN hostage dies as HERO in the hands of the Muslim monkeys
by Boris I (no login)
The Italian hostage killed by kidnappers in Iraq was a defiant "hero" in his final moments, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini says.
The dead man was identified as Fabrizio Quattrocchi, 36, a security guard.
As the gunman's pistol was pointing at him the hostage "tried to take off his hood and shouted: 'now I'll show you how an Italian dies,'" he said.
Al-Jazeera also said it had video footage of Mr Quattrocchi's death, but would not broadcast it, because it was "too gruesome".
THE AL-JAZEERA MONKEYS KNOW, THAT THE WHOLE ITALIAN NATION WILL BE UNITED AGAINST THE BARBARISM OF THE MUSLIM SCUM.
US Army and Marines use "Israeli" tactics to crush the Arab monkeys.
by Boris I (no login)
With sporadic fighting in Falluja and US forces moving into position outside Najaf, the Arab press is pointing to similarities between US military operations in Iraq and the tactics Israeli forces employ in the West Bank and Gaza.
Such similarities are not coincidental.
The Israeli army has long experience of offensive operations in urban areas and it is experience that the Pentagon has been eager to draw upon.
Israel and the US have developed a close military relationship over the years.
Two-way exchange
Israel's armed forces are undergoing a process of transformation similar to that advocated by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with the emphasis on lighter, more agile units employing devastating firepower and drawing on a variety of new information and intelligence gathering systems.
Go to any US military exercise and Israeli observers are much in evidence.
But the transfer of doctrine and tactics is not just a one-way street.
US commanders have drawn extensively on Israel's experiences in the West Bank and Gaza Strip for lessons that might be applicable to Iraq.
Urban trap
Fighting in urban areas is something that modern armies tend to avoid wherever possible.
In the low-rise warren of alleys and narrow streets the advantages of technologically sophisticated soldiers are much reduced.
Even lightly armed opponents with local knowledge can constitute serious opposition.
And the proximity of civilians adds the risk of significant loss of innocent life and widespread damage to property.
While many of Israel's methods are controversial it has, in purely military terms, developed highly effective tactics for offensive operations in urban areas along with a range of specialised equipment which, for example, can help troops to breach walls, gather intelligence, and locate snipers.
The Pentagon has already bought some Israeli equipment. It is planning to buy more.
And senior US commanders have visited Israel specifically to discuss what the Pentagon jargon calls "Military Operations on Urban Terrain".
Rumsfeld: Al-Jazeera is disgraceful. They are simply lying
April 15 2004 at 4:25 PM
No score for this post Marko (Login Ultra_Nationalist_Serb)
US Secretary of Defense called the pan-Arab satellite news channel Al-Jazeera "vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable" for reporting that US and coalition troops were killing and terrorizing Iraqi citizens.
Rumsfeld, speaking to reports at a Pentagon press conference Thursday, was reacting to a question posed as to the accuracy of Al-Jazeera reports saying hundreds of Iraqis have been killed in the fighting in Falluja.
"Its disgraceful what that station is doing," Rumsfeld said, adding, "They are simply lying."
Their frequent use of the term "massacre" and their ongoing use of images of bloodied women and children has led US officials in Iraq to question the balance of their reporting.
"There is no doubt that if al-Jazeera and al-Arabiyeh continue to incite violence and sectarian rifts in this country... they will be closed down here," said Iraqi National Security Adviser Dr. Muafak Rube'i. In a press conference with Western and Arab journalists, he slammed the Arab world's leading satellite news channels for stirring up both the Shi'ite rebels in the center and south of the country and insurgents in the so-called Sunni Triangle.
Russian media interviews Shiite leader, Muqtada Al-Sadr (D-MA)
Pravda ^ | 4-16-04
In his exclusive RIA Novosti interview, Muqtada As-Sadr, leader of Iraq's Shiite community, demanded an end to aggression and the withdrawal of troops.
We are ready to negotiate with the occupation regime; however, we have no intention of renouncing our demands with regard to that regime, As-Sadr noted.
First of all, this concerns our demands pertaining to the withdrawal of troops from all Iraqi regions and an end to the aggression against the Iraqi nation, As-Sadr stressed.
At the same time, As-Sadr noted that he won't negotiate with the murderers of Iraqi citizens.
I want to say "No" once again to direct talks with the United States, As-Sadr added. As before, our main pre-conditions are as follows - the anti-Iraqi aggression must stop in all parts of the country; moreover, foreign forces are forbidden to enter the holy cities of An-Najaf and Kerbela. (The tombs of Prophet Mohammed's son-in-law Caliph Ali, who is particularly revered by Shiite Moslems as the first Imam, and his son Hussein, whose mother is Prophet Mohammed's daughter Fatima, are located in these holy cities - Ed.) The Al-Arabiya TV-satellite channel quoted As-Sadr's aide Abdel Karim Al-Anzi April 14 as saying that As-Sadr had renounced his demands, and that he will now be guided by specific Shiite-clergy decisions.
My demands to the occupation administration reflect the demands of all Iraqis to stop the occupation and not to hinder the establishment of Sharia law (Islamic legislation) in Iraq, As-Sadr noted. I want no more than the Iraqi nation itself wants, he stressed.
All I want to ask of the Iraqi nation, in case the Americans manage to kill me, is that it should not renounce the struggle for independence, freedom and the subsequent spread of the Islamic doctrine, As-Sadr noted.
US forces, which have come a long way into Iraq, didn't intend to liberate our country from Saddam Hussein. In real life, they strive to do away with local Islamic values and traditions, to ensure Israel's all-out control in this region and to establish complete control over Iraqi oil, As-Sadr believes.
In his words, every Iraqi citizen shares As-Sadr's opinion to the effect that the United States doesn't intend to withdraw from Iraq, after suffering substantial financial losses and casualties as a result of Iraq's occupation; this apparently won't happen even after that long-awaited transfer of power to Iraqi authorities.
With this in mind, the occupation regime has chosen suitable Iraqi politicians well in advance; such politicians will zealously defend US interests in Iraq, As-Sadr claims.
That's why the United States declares all honest Iraqis, who oppose the occupation of their homeland, to be enemies threatening them. Consequently, occupation authorities became really alarmed when the Mahdi Army, i.e. a military formation, which comprises As-Sadr's armed supporters, and which is named after the "hidden" 12-th Messiah Imam, whose coming will herald the victory of good over evil, tried to occupy its befitting place in the new Iraqi society, As-Sadr noted.
According to the Shiite leader, the occupation of Iraq would end completely, after nationwide elections are held, and when the last US soldier leaves Iraq.
A future Iraqi state must be based on Sharia principles, As-Sadr pointed out.
We strive to establish a just Islamic state for the people, As-Sadr noted, while replying to a question about his idea of a future Iraq's ideal political system.
That future state, which won't distinguish between Shiites, Sunnis and Christians, must, nonetheless, hinge on Sharia principles, the Shiite leader stressed.
Talking about the Iraqi state system, As-Sadr said he was sure that federalism would lead to Iraq's disintegration.
Iraqi federalism would serve to divide the country; that's why we emphatically oppose any project for imposing a federative-state system on Iraq, As-Sadr stressed.
According to the Shiite leader, the people of Iraq had voiced their attitude toward federalism a few months ago by holding massive protests in different Iraqi provinces.
Those, who support federalism in Iraq, are genuine enemies of the Iraqi nation, As-Sadr said. We perceive a plan stipulating a federative-state system for Iraq as yet another version of the secret Sykes-Picot agreement for the partition of the Ottoman empire's Asian regions (May 1916). The sorry fate of war-torn and ruined Palestine highlights Iraq's possible future; the same may happen to Iraq, if those, who merely call themselves Iraqis, but who really care about their own mercenary interests alone, take over, As-Sadr went on to say.
Replying to a question about Russia's role in solving the Iraqi problem, As-Sadr noted that the Russian position had matched the Iraqi nation's interests for many consecutive years.
I personally want to say that, first of all, I'd like Russia to play a substantial role in countering the insolence of US leaders, who can destroy the world, As-Sadr, said.
Russia, which remains a superpower, can provide tremendous assistance to Iraq, As-Sadr noted. Russia, which is also a permanent member of the UN Security Council, can influence the position of that international organization for the sake of opposing dangerous US plans, the Shiite leader went on to say.
Talking about the evacuation of Russian specialists, As-Sadr said he regretted an incident when three Russians and five Ukrainians from Russia's Inter-Energo-Service company were taken hostage in Baghdad in the evening of April 12. All of them were subsequently released in the afternoon of April 13.
In this connection, we have already condemned the taking of hostages, As-Sadr stressed, noting that this, among other things, concerned Russian citizens, who had rendered substantial aid to the people of Iraq until the last moment.
As-Sadr's supporters and coalition forces have been clashing for more than a week now.
Coalition authorities have issued a warrant for As-Sadr's arrest; consequently, the Shiite leader was forced to go into hiding.
Lack of blood, bruises and dirt give hint that army 'abuse' pictures were staged.
The Times ^ | May 03, 2004 | Richard Mills
The photographer Richard Mills tells why 'the evidence' does not add up.
THERE are a significant number of inconsistencies with these pictures that leave me convinced that they have been staged. The subjects in each image are remarkably still; it is hard to accept that the “victim” would not be moving at all.
There is no explanation why the pictures are in black and white. If they were taken with a digital camera, as has been suggested, the photographer would have to switch deliberately into “mono” mode rather than the default colour.
Most striking is the lack of any form of identification on the soldier in each picture shown “abusing” the Iraqi. There are no badges on his uniform, no markings on the rifle and neither does he have any rings, tattoos or identifying marks on his skin.
Rifle to head. The rifle is said by some observers to be the Mark 1 model of the SA80, which was not issued to troops in Iraq. More suspiciously, there are no markings whatsoever on the weapon and it looks too clean. It also lacks a new method of strapping around the muzzle that I saw troops using.
Urinating. The soldier shown urinating on the prisoner is wearing the wrong webbing belt, which is used to carry ammunition, water and other essentials. Troops in Iraq were issued “Soldier 95” webbing.
The picture has been taken at night, as there is black in the gap between the truck canopy and tailgate on the right-hand side of the image.
If the truck was actually in Iraq, it would be filled with sand and dirt, but its floor is almost spotless. This suggests that they could have been taken either at Catterick Garrison, North Yorkshire, the Army’s largest base, or in Cyprus, where The Queen’s Lancashire Regiment is stationed.
The “victim” does not have the physique of many Iraqi youths from the impoverished south of the country: rather, he has the muscle tone typical of a British soldier.
Stamping on neck. The shirt being worn by the victim is part of the Iraqi national football team kit and could not be that clean and unstained if he had been subjected to several hours’ beating. It depicts the flag of Baathist Iraq, and it is unlikely that anyone would wear this in public in the Shia south of the country.
His thighs are very broad and muscular and again uncharacteristic of an Iraqi. There are no visible injuries to back the Mirror’s claims that the victim was tortured and beaten.
The soldier’s boots are laced in an unusual way and appear to be brand new; they are certainly far too clean to have been worn in Iraq. He also lacks a bungy cord around his trousers that soldiers often wear to keep sand out of their boots.
Rifle in groin. Anyone having a rifle thrust into their groin would be curled up in a foetal position and not have their legs open. It is also quite likely he would have lost control of his bladder.
Kick in face. The so-called victim in this picture is not tensed, as he would be if he was really being kicked in the face. Again, there are no injuries, which would be visible had the victim been subjected to an eight-hour ordeal.
The four-tonne truck in which the pictures have been taken is another cause for concern. They are not used in Iraq, as they are considered to be sitting ducks for insurgents. Armoured vans that had been used in Northern Ireland were shipped there for that reason.
Richard Mills was a Royal Air Force photographer from 1987 to 2000 and now works for The Times. His pictures of British troops in Iraq won the What The Papers Say Awards Photographer of the Year 2003
Could it be that all photos are fake, have you fvckers heard of special effects?? The photo above GIVES IT ALL AWAY!!!
Why shouldn't we believe it was some liberal, who hates bush, produces pornmovies, made a deal with some liberal journalists and arab journalists??? Have you people seen Wag the Dog???
"After being caught in a scandalous situation days before the election, the president does not seem to have much of a chance of being re-elected. One of his advisors (DeNiro) contacts a top Hollywood producer (Hoffman) in order to manufacture a war in Albania that the president can heroically end, all through mass media."
THIS is how Arabs look!
That woman above who is being "raped" is WHITE, she looks european, she could be irish, belgian, slovak, italian whatever but not DARKIE-ARAB, period!
LIVE Now: Baghdad skyline
