Operation Iraqi Freedom2

OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM
APRIL 2003
Coalition Is Within 30 Miles of Baghdad

Source: Associated Press
Publication date: 2003-04-02
U.S.-led forces advancing on Baghdad have moved to within 30 miles of the

Iraqi capital and two of Saddam Hussein's loyal Republican Guard units "are no
longer credible forces," a top U.S. general said Wednesday.
Even so, Maj. Gen Stanley McChrystal said that planning was going forward "for
a very difficult fight ahead in Baghdad. We are not expecting to drive into
Baghdad suddenly and seize it" easily.
McChrystal, vice director of joint operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said
that resistance from Republican Guard forces defending the city was "sporadic,
but not able to stop coalition manuevers."
The highly trained forces most loyal to Saddam are "arrayed for a defense on
the southern side of Baghdad at this time, and on the flanks as well,"
McChrystal said. "Whether they intend to defend in place or just delay is just
not clear."
Allied troops were closing in on Baghad from two directions - Army forces from
the southwest and Marines from the southeast - in what could become the
fiercest combat of the war.
Two of the Republican Guard's six units - the Medina and Baghdad divisions -
are "no longer credible forces," said McChrystal.
Asked whether the allied offensive was the start of the battle for Baghdad,
McChrystal said that U.S. forces are "threatening Baghdad, threatening the core
of the regime."
"We've moved to within 30 miles of Baghdad, but there remains tough fighting
ahead," he said.
McChrystal said there was no way to tell, at this point, whether the city's
defenders were trying to lure allied forces into the heart of Baghdad to engage
in street-by-street combat.
Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said that risks were increasing that Iraqi
forces would use chemical weapons as coalition troops closed in on the capital.
"The likelihood ...is in front of us," she said.
The Pentagon is still hoping that Saddam's regime will collapse before troops
are drawn into bloody urban warfare.
Republican Guard forces are the main military forces standing between
American invading troops and Saddam's centers of power in the capital of more
than 5 million.
"The dagger is clearly pointed at the heart of the regime," Brig. Gen. Vincent
Brooks told a news conference Wednesday at the war's command center in
Qatar. Asked if troops would enter the city, he said they would "approach
Baghdad" but didn't elaborate.
Brooks said the Baghdad Division of the Guard had been destroyed by Marines
fighting near the city of Kut. At the time, Army units were still battling the
1
APRIL 2003
Republican Guard's Medina and Nebuchadnezzar divisions near Karbala to the

west.
Days of thunderous airstrikes, artillery barrages and skirmishes with U.S. armed
reconnaissance units have weakened the Guard.
"They're being attacked from the air. They're being pressured from the ground.
And in good time, they won't be there," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld
told reporters Tuesday before the assault began.
The Republican Guard forces are the best trained and best equipped in
Saddam's military. Still, they've been in decline since losing the 1991 Persian
Gulf War and rely on Soviet-built tanks and other out-of-date heavy weapons.
At issue is whether the Republican Guard forces have some of the chemical and
biological weapons that U.S. leaders say Saddam is keeping - and whether they
could or would use them. Coalition troops searching captured Iraqi areas have
found no such weapons, but have discovered thousands of chemical protective
suits and masks as well as nerve agent antidotes and chemical
decontamination equipment.
The initial fighting is over terrain where American troops have advantages:
Open country and small towns, rather than the urban sprawl of Baghdad. Iraqi
officials have said they hope to draw the American forces into urban combat,
which is chaotic, difficult and bloody both for military forces and for civilians.
The urban environment shifts some of the advantage to the defender, who can
use smaller numbers of fighters sheltered in buildings and underground to pick
off invading troops. U.S. military doctrine on urban combat focuses not on the
street-by-street fighting that Iraq hopes to bring about but instead on grabbing
and holding key areas such as government buildings and military compounds.
11 Bodies Found With Rescued U.S. POW

Eleven bodies - some believed to be Americans - were found with prisoner of

war Pfc. Jessica Lynch when she was rescued in a U.S. commando raid on an
Iraqi hospital, a military spokesman said Wednesday.
Lynch, a 19-year-old Army supply clerk, was captured by the Iraqis more than a
week ago after her maintenance unit made a wrong turn and was ambushed in
the southern city of Nasiriyah. Twelve other members of her unit were also
feared captured; five of them are officially listed as POWs.
Acting on a CIA tip about Lynch's whereabouts, U.S. special operations forces
slipped behind enemy lines and seized Lynch from the Saddam Hospital under
cover of darkness Tuesday, American officials said.
The U.S. forces engaged in a firefight on the way into and out of the building,
but there were no coalition casualties, said Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, a U.S.
Central Command spokesman. He said ammunition, mortars, maps and a
terrain model were found at the hospital, along with "other things that made it
very clear it was being used as a military command post."
2
APRIL 2003
President Bush was informed of Lynch's rescue at 4:50 p.m. EST on Tuesday
during his afternoon call with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. "That's
great," he told Rumsfeld, according to White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.
During the rescue operation, 11 bodies were recovered in and around the
hospital. The cause of death was not immediately disclosed.
"We have reason to believe some of them were Americans," said Navy Capt.
Frank Thorp, another U.S. Central Command spokesman.
He said the military has not confirmed whether they were members of Lynch's
unit, the 507th Maintenance Company. "We don't yet know the identity of those
people," Thorp said. "And forensics will determine that."
Two of the bodies were in a morgue in the hospital, while the nine others were
buried outside the building, Brooks said. He said U.S. forces were led to the
graves by someone who had been taken into custody.
Lynch was treated for undisclosed injuries. U.S. officials in Kuwait said on
condition of anonymity that she is believed to have broken legs, a broken arm
and at least one gunshot wound.
She is being transferred to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in
southwestern Germany and was expected to arrive there about 4 p.m. EST,
said Heather Miller, spokeswoman for the 86th Airlift Wing at Ramstein Air
Base.
Brooks would not comment on her condition. But in a green-tinted, night-vision
video taken of the rescue operation and shown to reporters Wednesday, she
was carried on a stretcher from a helicopter to another aircraft.
A still photograph showed a folded American flag resting on her as she smiled
and looked at the camera.
An Iraqi pharmacist who works at Saddam Hospital told Britain's Sky television
that he treated Lynch for leg injuries but that she was otherwise healthy and
that "every day I saw her crying about wanting to go home."
The pharmacist, who gave his name only as Imad, told the TV network that
Lynch knew the U.S. troops were on the other side of the Euphrates River and
"she kept wondering if the American Army were coming to save her."
Until Tuesday, Lynch had been listed as missing in action, and her family did
not know whether she was dead or alive.
"You would not believe the joys, cries, bawling, hugging, screaming, carrying
on," Lynch's cousin Pam Nicolais said after the rescue. "You just have to be
here."
"I thought at first it was an April Fools joke," said her father, Greg Lynch Sr. "I
thought this was a cruel joke. I can put up with most things, but not that. They
assured me, no, it's not a joke."
The rescue operation included Air Force pilots, Marines, Navy SEALS, Army
Rangers - "loyal to the creed they know that they never leave a fallen
comrade," Brooks said.
"Some brave souls put their lives on the line to carry this out," Brooks said.
U.S. military officials said a battle that was going on in the Nasiriyah area at the
same time was related to the rescue. That raised questions whether the battle
was a diversionary action to allow the commandos to slip into the hospital.
3
APRIL 2003
The 507th was attacked March 23 during some of the earliest fighting in
Nasiriyah, where Saddam's Fedayeen loyalists and other hardcore Iraqi fighters
are said to have dressed as civilians and ambushed Americans.
Not long after the ambush, five of Lynch's comrades showed up in Iraqi
television footage being asked questions by their captors.
The video also showed bodies, apparently of U.S. soldiers, leading Pentagon
officials to accuse Iraq of executing some of its POWs. Officials believe the
video was made in the Nasiriyah area.
Lynch, an aspiring teacher from Palestine, W.Va., joined the Army to get an
education, her family said. She left a farming community with an
unemployment rate of 15 percent, one of the highest levels in West Virginia.
She was following in the footsteps of her older brother, a National Guardsman
based at Fort Bragg, N.C. Jessica Lynch enlisted through the Army's delayed-
entry program before graduating from high school.
Marines seized the hospital early Wednesday under light sniper fire. As soon as
they rolled into the hospital compound, civilian patients and medical staff
began emerging with their hands up. Most were allowed to leave, or to return
into the building for treatment.
"We hope your city will return to normal, and that you will no longer live in
fear," Brig. Gen. Rick Natonski, commander of the Marine's Task Force Tarawa,
told doctors gathered outside the large and relatively modern desert town
hospital, where many of the windows were blown out after days of bombing
and artillery strikes nearby. "We want to return Iraq to Iraqis."
Ancient Iraqi swamp culture drained but not dead

NEW YORK (AP) -- A swath of southern Iraq has been called many things: Land
of the swamp people. Mother of all untapped oil reserves. Scene of the worst
environmental crime in history. Cradle of civilization. Saddam's slaughterhouse.
At the moment, it is a 21st century battlefield. But the great expanse known to
scientists as the Mesopotamia Marshlands figures to be one of keys to what will
become of postwar Iraq.
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein purportedly drained these wetlands -- satellite
images show only 7 percent of the fragile ecosystem still intact -- as part of his
campaign to crush Shiite Muslims who rebelled against him in 1991.
Geologists believe fabulous sources of untapped oil percolate beneath sections
of this expanse, which was half the size of Switzerland little more than a
decade ago.
Yet some environmental engineers advocate reflooding the region to restore
the habitat, the surviving fraction of which still harbors the vestiges of rare
birds, fish and what remains of a 5,000-year-old subculture known as the Marsh
Arabs, people who live on floating islands handmade from enormous reeds.
4
APRIL 2003
In an arid, windblown region where oil means wealth but water means survival,
dueling forces stand ready to shape the fate of the Fertile Crescent that
provided the right ingredients to spawn Mesopotamia, the first civilization.
``The marshes happen to be on top of the some of the greatest untapped
reserves of oil,'' said Mark Bartolini, Middle East director for the International
Rescue Committee. `Àre we going to flood the marshes for the people who
lived there for millennia?''
The relief organization has targeted for aid the roughly 200,000 Iraqi Shiites
living as refugees in neighboring Iran. Most fled in the wake of Saddam's defeat
in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, after which Shiites in southern Iraq -- along with
Kurds in the north -- staged uprisings against what they thought was a brutal
ruler vulnerable to overthrow.
Saddam rallied his troops and crushed both rebellions, then waged a decade-
long campaign to slaughter the Shiite usurpers. Since many were from the
marshlands, human rights groups say he accelerated the draining and seeming
destruction of the bogs.
Ramadan Albadran grew up in the swamps around al Amara in a house built
from clay and reeds, a veritable vineyard growing on the roof. As a young man,
he participated in the rebellion, then fled to Saudi Arabia for his life.
``Most of my friends were killed,'' said Albadran, 39, who was granted refugee
status and now lives in Los Angeles. Yet he'd go back to the swamps if he could.
There was nothing quite like sitting on the porch in the cool morning breeze,
admiring the view of the Tigris river, eating a peach or pomegranate plucked
from the surrounding forest of fruit.
``You had to use a boat to pick the fruit,'' he said. ``But you could catch any
kind of fish without leaving the house.''
Though Saddam gets most of the blame for destroying the marshes,
neighboring Turkey and Syria have played a role by damming rivers upstream
to irrigate farms. Iran is building a huge dam that the U.N. Environment
Program believes will further drain the marsh.
Preserving the remaining 7 percent -- down from 10 percent just two years ago
-- is crucial because it provides a template for restoring much of the rest of the
marshes, said Hassan Partow, a UN environmentalist in Geneva.
The wetlands are the last redoubt for such rare species as the African darter
fish and the Sacred Ibis bird, and a pit stop for many migratory birds. Creatures
unique to the marshland might even be gone, such as the smooth-covered
otter, the bandicoot rat and the buni fish, he said.
The marsh also served a crucial role in protecting the Persian Gulf and its
vibrant fishery, said Tom Crisman, a University of Florida environmental
engineer and director of the school's Center for Wetlands.
Before Saddam used a system of dikes and canals to divert the river waters,
the intricate maze of pools, streams and marshes was a dazzling delta that
sprawled to the horizon. Refugees now describe much of it as an ocean of fetid
mud with polluted groundwater, sprinkled with garbage and land mines. Other
sections are dry and dusty, dotted with the flattened, crinkled remains of the
magnificent stands of reeds that once stood up to 15 feet tall.
5
APRIL 2003
The war is likely to leave a legacy of unexploded ordinance and other, less-
lethal, refuse of combat. Some of the heaviest fighting has taken place in the
marsh areas, particularly around the cities of Nasariyha, Basra and Umm Qasr.
In addition to being a remarkable wildlife habitat, the marshes served a crucial
role in the health and nutrition of the whole Persian Gulf region, Crisman said.
The marshes were an important source of protein, in the form of fish and water
buffalo, and served as a filter for the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers that flank and
feed it. Wetlands act as natural wastewater treatment systems for waterway
contaminants.
Now the two rivers are carrying waste from Iraq directly into the Persian Gulf,
Crisman said, posing a threat to a fishery on which the entire Gulf region
depends.
Though Iraq is second only to Saudi Arabia in proven oil reserves, 90 percent of
the country is unexplored because of 23 years of wars and global sanctions,
according to the U.S. Energy Intelligence Agency.
`Ì'm not sure how many untapped reserves lie in the marshes, but it's
certainly a prolific oil-bearing region,'' said Lowell Feld of the Energy
Intelligence Agency. ``So, it is fair to say that there's probably a lot more oil to
be found in the area.''
With the prospect of the prison-like country opening its doors, oil companies
around the world are hungrily eyeing a postwar Iraq, said Ruba Husari, London-
based researcher for the industry research firm Energy Intelligence Group.
`Èverybody is interested,'' she said.
The Russian company Lukoil signed a contract for the West Qurna field in 1997,
but Iraq voided it last December after the Russian government lobbied the
Bush administration to let the contract stand should the Americans conquer
Iraq and form a new government.
Even in January, as war appeared imminent, Russia was in Iraq, negotiating for
the rights to either the Majnoon or Nah bin Umar fields, she said. Those fields
overlap the marshlands.
Hassan said the oil production could provide the revenue needed to restore the
Mesopotamia Marshlands to some semblance of its past splendor.
Although the oil companies have wealth and power on their side, the
marshlands restoration project is backed by an Iraqi opposition group lightly
funded by the U.S. government. Crisman, a scientist on the project's advisory
committee, said at some point ``the oil companies will have to be engaged.''
Project Director Suzie Alwash said the restoration project -- called `Èden
Again'' -- has just hired its first full-time staffer and hasn't had the time or
resources to coordinate yet with the petroleum firms.
`Ìt kind of depends on which oil companies get the deals,'' she said. `Ìf it's a
Russian oil company, I don't think we're going to get much help. But if it's an
American oil company, we may be able to do something.''
But Alwash, a geologist, said there is no hard evidence that there is oil under all
the marshlands, but that the vast region could accommodate both petroleum
and paradise.
6
APRIL 2003
There are half a million Marsh Arabs, most of them displaced and many living in
refugee camps, and Eden Again's goal is to make the swamps suitable to
restore their culture -- an environmental and anthropological task of perhaps
unprecedented proportions.
`Àn ecosystem has a memory. The sediments are there from thousands of
years,'' Crisman said. ``But what about the cultural memory? It's much shorter.
Can the people, can their culture rebound? It's a whole new ballgame.''
The future of the marshlands are an example of a larger issue facing the
custodians of postwar Iraq, said J. Brian Atwood, dean of the Humphrey
Institute of Public Affairs and former director of the U.S. Agency for
International Development.
``The one thing that is crucial about the reconstruction is that the Iraqis play a
large part in the process and we pay attention to them and understand the
importance of the culture, such as these marshlands,'' Atwood said.
``The Iraqi people are not used to being listened to,'' he said, `ànd it would be
mistake to continue that attitude.''
Speculation Mounts over Iraqi Military Casualties

Source: The Boston Globe
Apr. 1--CAMP SAYLIYAH, Qatar--The Pentagon and the Iraqi military apparently
have one agenda item in common: Staying silent on the subject of Iraqi military
casualties, even as the number of Iraqi dead becomes the subject of
speculation by human-rights advocates and armchair generals alike.
The combination of the Pentagon's refusal to provide estimates and the Iraqi
silence on the issue -- except for civilian casualties, when the numbers are
invoked to make a political point -- has restricted information on one of the
most important matters of the war, its human cost.
Remembering the difficulty of trying to furnish exact numbers in the Vietnam
era, coalition military officials refuse to be drawn into what a Gulf War
commander once famously called "the body count business." The Iraqis, hoping
to maintain morale by hiding bad news, refuse to say anything. Judging by
scattered reports from the field, the count could be as low as in the thousands
and as high as the tens of thousands, a range so wide as to be almost
meaningless.
"Even as we do what we call battle damage assessment, trying to get numbers
of casualties is really inexact," US Army Major General Stanley McChrystal, vice
director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the Pentagon.
Independent observers are left to sift through battle reports for clues to the
number of Iraqi dead: Coalition forces have been relentlessly hitting Iraqi
Republican Guard units for several days, which McChrystal said had caused
"significant weakening of forces." Iraqi and coalition officials have engaged in a
running struggle over civilian casualties, with Iraq reporting at least 425 such
deaths and thousands wounded, while US and other officials refuse to
speculate without hard facts but point out that the regime has extremely poor
7
APRIL 2003
credibility. But the only soldier Iraq acknowledges losing is Ali Hammadi al-
Namani, the suicide bomber who killed four US soldiers Saturday.
Last week, when Iraqi irregular forces attacked the US Third Infantry Division,
military officials speaking on condition of anonymity estimated that 300 Iraqis
had been killed, without any allied deaths. It was virtually the only such
numerical assessment since the war began.
"It is really difficult to give any estimate of Iraqi casualties because of the
complexity of the battlefield," said US Navy Captain Frank Thorp, a spokesman
for US Central Command at Camp Sayliyah near Doha, Qatar. That's partly
because many battles and skirmishes happen at once in many different places
with information trickling slowly back to headquarters and partly because it is
hard to estimate casualties from missile and bomb strikes, he said.
But more importantly, each individual battle is "a very difficult situation in
which the priority of the commander is not to count enemy casualties," Thorp
said. "It's to take care of his own and continue to fight."
British forces were visibly proud yesterday about a battle in the Rumaila oil field
in which they vanquished an Iraqi tank battalion. And they were extremely
specific about the number of T-55 tanks they hit, 17. Yet Squadron Leader
Simon Scott, a British military spokesman, declined to say how many Iraqis
were killed out of two infantry companies the British battled. It is a practice
that dates back to at least the early days of the Gulf War, when General
Norman Schwarzkopf, who led coalition forces in that conflict, was asked about
Iraqi casualties.
"I have absolutely no idea what Iraqi casualties are, and if I have anything to
say about it, we are never going to get into the body-count business," he said.
Several military officials in the Pentagon ascribed the reticence to the public-
relations backlash against the military during the Vietnam War. Antiwar
protesters hit the Pentagon on two fronts, accusing generals of inflating military
casualties to make the war appear more successful, while downplaying civilian
losses.
"It is, in fact, still a post-Vietnam reaction which makes us purposely not count
other dead guys," one military official said, requesting anonymity. "If we walked
out today and said we think we killed 8,000, you guys would all say, 'Prove it."
And we can't. Unless we drag out 10,000 rotting corpses, you won't believe us."
U.S. Troops Attack Baghdad Airport

U.S. troops attacked Baghdad's international airport Thursday night after

pushing through the outskirts of the darkened capital.
Tracer rounds, anti-aircraft fire and artillery blasted near Saddam International
Airport, 10 miles southwest of the city center, and officers of the 3rd Infantry
Division, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the attack on the airport had
begun.
8
APRIL 2003
Large sections of Baghdad lost power for the first time since the war began
after huge explosions rocked the capital. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. Central Command has not targeted the city's
power grid.
U.S. troops from the 7th Infantry rolled down a single lane road on the southern
edge of the city earlier in the day, despite punishing heat. They fired at Iraqi
troops who tried to ambush the armored column on both sides.
One unit came within 10 miles of Baghdad's city center at one point but then
moved off in a different direction, because they were more interested in
engaging Iraqi troops than holding territory.
Thousands of U.S. military vehicles of the 7th Infantry had pushed across the
Euphrates River from the south and west of Baghdad after fighting through a
failed Iraqi attempt to hold the bridge at Musayyib, 35 miles due south of the
capital.
Elsewhere on the battlefield, at least one U.S. soldier was killed by possible
friendly fire, and reporters embedded with the troops said two Marines were
killed in or around Kut - one from bullet and shrapnel wounds, the other when
the truck he was driving struck another on a road obscured by dust clouds
kicked up by a convoy.
Three soldiers collapsed from heat exhaustion as temperatures rose about 90
degrees outdoors and over 100 degrees inside the tanks and Bradley fighting
vehicles.
U.S. tanks and Bradleys destroyed more than seven Iraqi armored personnel
carriers and more than 15 Iraqi tanks engaging both Republican Guard and
regular army troops guarding Baghdad's southern flanks.
Scores of blown up Iraqi vehicles and dozens of dead lined the roads where the
Iraqis had built fighting positions. The dead were in uniform - though it was
unclear whether they were Republican Guards or regular army units.
Dozens more surrendered. The Army was slowly shuttling the prisoners to the
rear as it pressed ahead toward the capital.
In Kut, a military town on the Tigris River southeast of Baghdad, Marines from
the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines battled Iraqis building to building. The Marines
jumped from rooftop to rooftop and went through all the rooms in some
buildings.
They fought at close range in a date palm grove, tossing grenades at each
other. Late in the battle, a small group of Iraqis with AK-47s tried a suicide
charge against a tank.
"At the end, they came charging in a human wave - 10 to 15 guys with AKs that
we mowed down," said Lt. Col. B.P. McCoy.
He said 30 Iraqis were killed in the battle, and U.S. forces destroyed seven
tanks and 20 anti-aircraft artillery.
A Sea Knight helicopter evacuated three injured Marines, and one died in the
helicopter as a doctor tried to resuscitate him. The other two had minor
gunshot and shrapnel wounds.
9
APRIL 2003
Another Marine was killed when the truck he was driving plowed into another
on a dust-obscured road. At least 10 other Marines were injured in the accident
and evacuated on a Sea Knight.
On the outskirts of Kut, Marines opened fire on a military training academy,
blowing a hole in a mosaic portrait of Saddam.
Residents said women and children had been sent out of the city in the past
days and that pro-Saddam militias had taken young men away to force them to
fight the advancing coalition forces.
"They want to give us machine guns and make us fight. We are civilians, how
can we fight?" Kut resident Kasem Fasil said. "Some people, they didn't want to
fight and they killed them."
Fasil and Ali Hussein, another Kut resident, said if the Americans go to
Baghdad, they are afraid Saddam's forces will unleash chemical weapons on
Shiite Muslim towns like theirs. Saddam rules over a Sunni Muslim regime.
The Marines say they found a cache of untouched chemical weapons protection
suits at a bunker in the area.
With coalition forces now well inside the so-called Red Zone radiating from
Baghdad, troops had breached the region in which commanders feared
Saddam's forces might resort to chemical or biological weapons. The troops
were expected to don chemical protective gear despite the heat.
So far, no such weapons have been detected. Iraq denies it still has weapons of
mass destruction, and U.S. troops have yet to locate any, although they've
found hundreds of chemical protective suits.
As they advanced, Marines stopped every vehicle they met along the main
road. Drivers and passengers got out of taxis and cars and stood by the road
with their hands in the air.
At a Baath Party building flying Iraqi flags, a small group of men sat clustered in
a grassy area around a woman dressed in a black chador and waving a white
flag of surrender.
Many Iraqis sat down by the roadside, waving and smiling at the Marines to
show they were not combatants.
American infantry troops were moving out of the desert into farm fields with tall
grass and palm trees. Small farms with rice paddies dot the banks of the
Euphrates and irrigation canals.
Iraqi soldiers had used the tall grass as cover to fire on U.S. forces, which were
forced to weave through and around irrigation canals. U.S. war planes
continued to roar overhead providing cover for advancing U.S. troops.
Around the bridge that crosses the Euphrates, hundreds of tanks, Bradley
fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers and a bridge- building unit stood
by in case the span had been blown up.
One scout vehicle was hit by a rocket propelled grenade.
"A scout just got hit by an RPG, this is serious up here," said Capt. Chris Carter
from Wakinsville, Ga.
The Marines southeast of Baghdad began the Thursday drive toward the capital
protected by withering artillery and mortar fire. A massive convoy of moved
along the main road leading to the Iraqi capital.
10
APRIL 2003
Relentless fire from 155 mm howitzers rained on Iraqi positions near the town
of Numaniyah as the Marine advance resumed. Large black plumes of smoke
could be seen rising from the town and its prized Tigris River crossing, taken by
American troops Wednesday.
The Pentagon said Republican Guard reinforcements had moved out of
Baghdad toward the approaching Americans. New groups of Saddam's best
trained and equipped fighters were dispatched to replace units shattered
Wednesday when some U.S. forces had fought to within 20 miles of the city.
But many Iraqi units quickly abandoned defensive positions and fled, leaving
behind trenches littered with everything from mortars and small arms to
teapots and bedspreads.
"When they ran, it wasn't for lack of ammo. They've got enough," one Marine
said as he examined the trenches.
Recovering Iraqi dead grim detail for soldiers

Source: Florida Times Union
Arrival time: 2003-04-04
KIFL, Iraq -- All is quiet now except for the rumble of engines in U.S. military
vehicles.
The Euphrates River silently flows underneath the bridge where those vehicles
idle.
Occasionally, a dog barks or a rooster crows.
Don't let the peaceful scene deceive.
Soldiers in the 3rd Infantry Division stop by charred cars, trucks or vans, one by
one, to pull dead Iraqis from inside. They silently lay their bloodied bodies in
bags, zip them shut and then ease the body bags onto the back of a cargo
truck.
The soldiers have very little to say.
Pvt. Jarrod Wise, a 24-year-old in the 92nd Chemical Company, held his M-16
rifle, constantly scanning a muddy stucco house for signs of snipers. Wise only
saw chickens and roosters pecking the dirt as he provided security for those
loading the bodies.
"This is something we've got to do. I think we're doing it as professionally as
possible," Wise said. "I put my faith in the Lord and He will get me through it.
He's calmed my nerves a whole lot."
Within a few hours, the soldiers had collected the remains of 23 Iraqi fighters.
Four others were charred beyond recognition and left behind.
Another four were left inside their Mercedes-Benz because soldiers feared a
booby trap, said Sgt. Raymond Nixon, a mortuary specialist with the 3rd
Forward Support Battalion. Nixon saw a wire wrapped around one man's ankle
and tied to an AK-47 rifle.
The Iraqi soldiers were killed during a battle with the 3rd Infantry Division's 1st
Brigade. The battle was fought for control of the bridge, and it will be part of
the division's path toward Baghdad.
11
APRIL 2003
Most of the dead were not from the town of Kifl, said Col. Will Grimsley, 1st
Brigade commander. Instead, they were sent south by Saddam Hussein's Baath
Party to fight the Americans.
During the battle, the brigade's tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles would block
intersections and roadways. The Iraqis attacked by loading three to five men in
cars, vans -- even a dump truck -- and driving full steam ahead toward the
tanks and Bradleys, Grimsley said. The Iraqis fired their weapons as they drove.
"We'd shoot a machine gun at them and they wouldn't stop," Grimsley said.
"We finally just had to shoot them before they ran into something."
A few Iraqis launched sniper attacks from canoes in the river, Grimsley said.
"This is ungodly," he said.
Grimsley stood in the middle of the town's main road, where empty shell
casings littered the streets. He pointed out a girls' school where Iraqis had built
fighting positions on the roof by using grain bags that had been intended as
food aid.
After three and a half days of fighting, the 1st Brigade took control of the
bridge and prepared to move out from there.
"We hope this is over," Grimsley said. "We've had enough of this right here."
Infantry and armor soldiers rested under the shade of palm trees and leaned
against the dusty stucco walls of buildings in town. Few local people walked the
streets. When they did, soldiers searched them for weapons.
The U.S. military cleans up the bodies to prevent diseases from being spread
after they decompose, Nixon said. The body bags were laid in rows of five on a
shaded roadside so that the deceased's heads faced Mecca, the holy city for
Muslims. Later, the Red Cross will recover the bodies and try to identify the
dead, he said.
Nixon was recovering bodies because it is his job. Commanders assigned most
of the others to the job.
Look who the Iraqis are cheering

Source: Scripps Howard
They remind you of Holocaust deniers. With a deeply prejudiced refusal to

accept unwanted truth, some Arab, European and even American opponents of
the Iraqi war continue to insist the people of that viciously oppressed land
would be better off under the Saddam Hussein regime than they will be when
liberated.
As various news accounts show, many of the Iraqi people have no such illusion.
When it appears to them that Saddam and his vile thugs can get revenge on
them, they keep their mouths shut. But as Americans surround cities and
villages and as Saddam's demise comes to be certain, they start opening up,
and while they have trepidations about the security Americans will provide in
the future, they rejoice.
"You have saved us, you have saved us from him," cries a man driving a truck
out of Baghdad, The New York Times tells us. A woman says to U.S. soldiers, "I
12
APRIL 2003
love you." Others pouring from the city cheered Americans and shout an
American name, "George Bush." In the south in Najaf, people cry out, "Thank
you, this is beautiful."
Army engineers topple a statue of Saddam on a horse in that city, and
residents raise their voices in approval.
In the north, Saddam's forces are also in retreat, forced to flee by air strikes.
"George Bush, we thank you," says a painter quoted by the San Francisco
Chronicle.
Meanwhile, we learn about Mohammed, the only name he would give. He is a
33-year-old lawyer, and he's the one who told the U.S. military the whereabouts
of POW Jessica Lynch. He had seen her slapped, and was outraged, and he
risked his own life to aid in her rescue. "Believe me, I love Americans," he told
The Washington Post.
The foremost Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issues a fatwa telling Shiites
they should not resist the Americans, but it is true that some Shiites remain
unsure about the United States. In 1991, after the first Gulf War, Shiites rose up
against Saddam, expecting American help. The help did not come, and the lost
lives numbered in the tens of thousands. That cannot be allowed again, and it
won't be.
Saddam does have his faithful followers, but they are a minority in Iraq, and it's
an absurdity when a Jordanian political scientist tells a reporter that Americans
face another Vietnam because they cannot ultimately win against Iraq's
population of 27 million people.
That tormented population is mostly not against America, as events are
proving.
From friends to foes, Iraqi-U.S. relations span decades

Source: U-WIRE
(U-WIRE) LAWRENCE, Kan. -- As constant war updates flood newspapers and

television, viewers are inundated with images of bombings and bloodied
bodies.
Josh Robison, Wichita, Kan., senior at the University of Kansas, said he had
stopped paying attention to every piece of breaking news -- even news he
helped report.
Robison works as a production assistant for Channel 6, and is continuously
surrounded by war updates. Over time he has become desensitized, he said.
"I would say most people like to pretend they care about the war," Robison
said. "But it's so far removed from my day-to-day life."
Robison said he didn't know much about the background of the war with Iraq,
which may be one reason he had become so complacent.
War coverage can be confusing for students who know little about the history
between the United States and Iraq.
13
APRIL 2003
What follows is the early history of Saddam Hussein's rise to power and the
United States' struggle to bring him back down. The information is a summary
of a timeline featured on pbs.org.
Hussein was born in 1937.
In the 1950s, Hussein joined the Ba'ath Party, an underground Arab nationalist
party that planned to assassinate Iraqi leader General Abdel Karim Kassem.
Hussein was wounded in a 1959 assassination attempt but managed to flee to
Cairo, Egypt.
In 1963, Kassem was assassinated by the Ba'ath Party. Hussein returned to
Baghdad as a Ba'ath interrogator and torturer but was jailed when his party
was overthrown.
In 1968, the Ba'ath Party again seized power in Iraq under Hussein's cousin
Ahmad Hassan Al Bakr. Hussein became Bakr's right-hand man, but Hussein
had his eyes on the presidency.
Hussein staged a palace coup in 1979, and Bakr resigned for health reasons.
Hussein assumed the presidency.
In 1980, Saddam sent 200,000 troops to attack Iran.
Ronald Reagan became president in 1981 and endorsed a policy stating that
neither country would emerge from the war with additional power.
Fearing Iraq might lose the war, the United States helped Iraq gain information
about the Iranian fronts in 1982.
In 1986, Reagan agreed to sell arms to Iran in exchange for the release of U.S.
hostages held by terrorists in Lebanon. Hussein found out about the deal,
known as the Iran-Contra scandal, and vowed never to trust the United States
again.
Iraq attacked the town of Halabja, Iraq, in 1988, killing 5,000 Kurds. The United
States condemned Iraq's use of chemical warfare. A cease-fire was declared in
1988.
In 1990, Iraq was billions of dollars in debt and officials were angry with its Arab
neighbors about the low price of oil, its primary source of cash. In July, Iraq
amassed 100,000 troops at the Kuwaiti border. President George Bush warned
Hussein that he would not allow Iraq to be a bully. Hussein refused to remove
his troops by Jan. 15, the U.N. deadline, and Bush declared war.
The air war lasted six weeks, ending on Feb. 28, 1991.
After the cease-fire, Bush encouraged Iraqis to rise against their leader. Shia
Muslims in the south took up arms against Hussein. U.S. troops were ordered
not to intervene, and tens of thousands of Shia Muslims were killed. In the
north, Kurdish forces also tried to rebel, but were decimated.
In April 1991, the United Nations passed Resolution 687. It allowed Saddam to
stay in power but ordered him to destroy his weapons and allow inspections of
all weapons facilities. Iraqi deception over weapons of mass destruction began
shortly thereafter.
In 1993, President Bill Clinton ordered a bombing on Iraqi intelligence
headquarters in response to a recent assassination attempt on former
President Bush while he was visiting Kuwait.
14
APRIL 2003
In 1995, Hussein Kamel, Hussein's son-in-law, told U.N. officials where the
weapons of mass destruction had been hidden. Inspectors discovered Russian-
built fermenters used to produce anthrax and substances used to grow
biological toxins. Kamel accepted Hussein's invitation for a safe return nine
months later, but after crossing the Iraq border, Kamel and his brother were
captured and killed.
In 1998, Saddam ends cooperation with inspectors and accuses the United
Nations of espionage. President Clinton ordered Operation Desert Fox, a four-
day bombardment of key Iraqi military installations.
The World Trade Center and Pentagon are attacked by al Qaeda. President
George W. Bush announced on Sept. 11, 2001, that the U.S. would "make no
distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who
harbor them."
Bush's State of the Union speech addressed the "axis of evil" that included Iraq,
Iran and North Korea. Bush said the United States would act pre-emptively to
deal with such nations.
In November 2002, the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1441, which
threatened "serious consequences" if Iraq did not offer unrestricted access to
U.N. weapons inspectors. After four years, the United Nations resumed
weapons inspections in Iraq.
Hussein repeatedly refused to meet U.N. deadlines for destruction of long-
range missiles. Bush declared war on March 17 after Hussein and his sons
refused to leave Iraq within a 48-hour deadline.
COLUMN: Burning the future of Iraq's environment

Source: U-WIRE
HANOVER, NH -- While environmental protection is often forgotten in times of

war, the damage done in battle can be tremendous, with the impact lingering
long after the last troops have withdrawn. While some questions of the
environmental impact of the war on Iraq are answerable, many effects are
unknown at this point.
The major environmental outcomes of this war are likely to be the result of oil
spills and fires and the refuse of depleted uranium shells. The devastation of
the Iraqi infrastructure during the war will contribute to the environmental
destruction and hamper clean-up efforts.
In the Persian Gulf War Iraqi troops set oil rigs ablaze as they retreated from
Kuwait. Some of these fires burned for eight months. Within the immediate
vicinity of these fires, the health hazards are just as dangerous as chemical
attacks.
Millions of barrels of Kuwaiti oil went up in black, carbon-filled smoke. Some
fires burned oil at a faster rate than had been mechanically pumped prior to
the Gulf War. Some thought that the immense amounts of smoke would cause
15
APRIL 2003
global climate change. Although the massive climate change did not
immediately occur, the burning oil undoubtedly hastened global warming.
Saddam said that he would set his own oil fields ablaze if troops entered Iraq.
Already Saddam has ignited fields near Baghdad in an attempt to shield the
city from bombardment with thick black smoke as well as setting ablaze several
wells in southern Iraq. Unfortunately, Iraqi oil fields have significant differences
from Kuwaiti oil fields that will only increase negative consequences to the
environment.
According to an MSNBC interview with Red Adair, who in 1991 headed a team
that extinguished 117 oil fires in Kuwait, Iraqi oil fields are spread apart and in
rough mountainous and swampy terrains. In Kuwait Adair had been able to use
water to extinguish many of the fires, whereas in arid Iraq, fires could take up
to a month to put out. In contrast, following the Gulf War over 700 fires in
Kuwait were extinguished in only nine months.
Adair added that Iraqi oil has high amounts of hydrogen sulfate in it. When it
burns it will produce sulfur dioxide, a compound very harmful to the respiratory
system. Four to five million people in Baghdad are now breathing hazardous air.
The environmental and health affects caused by these oil fires will be
tremendous.
In the Gulf War, Iraqis created an oil spill in the Persian Gulf totaling
approximately 8,000,000 barrels. That's an amount approximately 20 times
that of the Exxon Valdez wreck. Four hundred miles of shoreline were slicked.
Migratory birds and sea life were the most affected by the spill. Intense
measures had to be taken to insure safe drinking water in Kuwait, Iraq, and
Saudi Arabia. Now, as U.S. forces seal off Iraq's sea access in the South, it is
less likely that a spill of such magnitude will occur, however pipelines can
easily be opened up across the Iraqi countryside.
At least 300 tons of high density depleted uranium shells were used in the Gulf
War to destroy heavily armored vehicles, including Iraqi tanks. The U.N.,
through the sanctions maintained at the insistence of the U.S., barred Iraq from
cleaning up their destroyed tanks out of fear that Iraq would either rebuild or
recycle their tanks.
The result was lots of radioactive material seeping into the groundwater. While
depleted uranium is harmless outside the body, (its alpha and beta rays are
blocked either by clothes or skin and the concentration of gamma rays is too
small impact humans) plants, animals, and indeed some humans drank this
water. The compound worked its way into the food chain. Others were
contaminated through inhalation and even open wounds. While it is unlikely
that depleted uranium munitions are a cause of the Gulf War syndrome found
in American veterans of the first Iraq war, its effects on Iraqi health have been
tremendous. Congenital diseases sky-rocketed, and previously absent
radiation-related diseases became commonplace. The Pentagon maintains that
the depleted uranium is not responsible for these health problems but
recommends that its own soldiers wear protective clothing and respirators
when in proximity to equipment struck by the shells.
16
APRIL 2003
The munitions are being used again, just as they were in Yugoslavia and
Afghanistan. In 2002, a U.N. subcommission found usage of DU munitions in
violation of over 10 international treaties and conventions, including the
Geneva conventions.
The Italian Defense Ministry, after six of its Kosovo peacekeepers died of
leukemia less than two years after their return, initiated a study to determine if
depleted uranium could be a cause. Many claim there is no conclusive proof
either way at this point. As a British member of Parliament pointed out, this
ought to be enough of a reason to shelf the shells in a conflict that the U.S. and
U.K. have insisted is being fought in a way that will keep civilian casualties to a
minimum.
The environment is the forgotten factor in this war, one that deserves a good
deal of attention. It is unlikely that this administration, with its peacetime
domestic and global environmental record, seriously weighed environmental
outcomes in the calculus of war. Both U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians in harm's
way will bear the costs, subjected not only to bullets but also to burning oil
fields and radiation.
Right now, oil rigs burn near Baghdad and over 4 million people in the city are
subjected to hazardous air. Whether it is shoreline being devastated by oil
spills, hazardous air caused by burning oil fields or a radioactive ecosystem
caused by depleted uranium, the environment will suffer due to this war. The
Iraqi people, the vast majority of whom will have no choice but to remain in
Iraq after the occupation is over, will breathe the air, drink the water and eat
the contaminated food for generations. Even when the war against Saddam is
won, the Iraqi people will suffer the environmental consequences for years to
come.
Kurds gather forces in the south of their autonomous region

SOZ BLAKH, Iraq (AP) -- A buildup of Kurdish forces has begun near the
southern edge of their autonomous region near the Baghdad-held oil city of
Khaneqin, 135 kilometers (85 miles) north of the capital.
The number of Kurdish forces along the front line has increased from fewer
than 400 several weeks ago to around 1,500 and 1,800, and it is to grow to
about 3,000 in the next couple days, said Mola Bakhtiyar, a Kurdish political
and military leader, as well as a Khaneqin native.
The ethnically mixed city lies 20 kilometers (12 miles) down a country road
from the agricultural village of Soz Blakh. At certain points along the shifting
demarcation line between Kurdish and Baghdad-controlled territory, Kurdish
forces have reached to within five kilometers (three miles) of the city, Bakhtiyar
said.
With little fanfare, both Kurds and Americans have been edging ever closer,
building up Kurdish ground forces and sending teams of American spotters to
coordinate coalition air strikes.
17
APRIL 2003
On Friday afternoon, an orange truck full of Kurdish guerrillas known as

peshmerga, or ``those who face death,'' drove along the road to the front that
separates Kurdish and Baghdad-controlled forces. Two vehicles carrying U.S.
Special Forces troops headed the same way.
The Kurds, oppressed by President Saddam Hussein's regime, established an
autonomous region in 1991 under the protection of U.S. and British air patrols.
Under a policy of Arabization, the Baghdad government has for years forcibly
displaced Kurds, Turkomans and Assyrians living in oil-rich areas in order to give
such regions an Arab character. The Kurds say they long to return to their lost
homes and villages.
``We're ready to take Khaneqin with our blood,'' said Qarib Abdullah, who lost
his brother in a failed 1991 Kurdish uprising against Saddam. ``We are waiting
for American forces to strike and then we will immediately liberate Khaneqin.''
Bakhtiyar has not visited Khaneqin since he left 28 years ago to avoid arrest as
a member of the Kurdish opposition underground. He said many peshmerga
warriors would soon be coming here.
`Ìf I had 10,000 Kalashnikovs I'd have 10,000 more fighters,'' he said.
Kurds lead in looting and fighting ; BATTLE FOR MOSUL

Source: Evening Standard; London (UK)
KURDISH troops and civilians are "looting the battlefield" while allied warplanes
hammer northern Iraqi strongholds.
Nearly anything of value - from shoelaces to wooden poles to metal sinks - has
been carried away after the Iraqi retreat from hilltop positions.
Walking gingerly through unexploded shells and possible minefields, one
Kurdish boy walked home today with a green-andwhite Iraqi Airlines umbrella.
Another carried a torn stretcher.
On the road to Kalak, thousands of Kurds swarmed through abandoned Iraqi
bunkers and barracks in a looting free-for-all. Boys raced to grab helmets and
gas masks.
Men used pickaxes to pull a cistern from its foundation. In a cinderblock hut, a
man tried on discarded Iraqi military boots until he found a pair that fitted.
Ishmail Hasan loaded his motorcycle and sidecar with plastic chairs, cooking
pots, car batteries and a plastic foam cooler. "I'm keeping some and selling the
rest," he said. "Thank you, Saddam."
Hamid Aziz Mohammed joyfully loaded sheets of corrugated metal onto his
truck. "I stared up at these soldiers for more than a decade," he said "Now they
are gone and I'm taking what I want.
God is great."
With fewer than 2,000 US troops in the Western-protected Kurdish zone, the
Kurds are spearheading the coalition push through the north.
In the past week, Iraqi forces near the Kurdish zone have faced relentless air
attacks and pulled back toward the two main northern districts in Baghdad's
18
APRIL 2003
hands: the commercial hub of Mosul and the important oil centre around
Kirkuk.
The latest retreat left Kurdish and US forces less than 18 miles from Mosul.
Last night, however, about 100 Iraqi soldiers tried to retake a bridge on the
road to Mosul seized by the Kurds two nights earlier. US special forces called in
air support while about 150 Kurds engaged in small arms fire from around the
bridge 12 miles northeast of Mosul.
US forces said 50 Iraqis were killed with no casualties among the Kurds or
Americans. The other Iraqi soldiers fled.
Though coalition forces are pleased with their advance, they remain wary.
Several prisoners have warned that Iraqi troops are being withdrawn from the
north to help defend Baghdad.
The Iraq conflict: As immigrant Arabs flee, Kurds start to go home;

NORTHERN FRONT
Source: "Independent, The; London (UK)"
THOUSANDS OF Arab families are fleeing their villages in northern Iraq, leaving
behind only a few sheep dogs and donkeys, as the Iraqi army retreats and
Kurds return to land from which they were expelled.
The exodus, started by the disintegration of Iraqi government control, may be
among the largest in the Middle East for many years as 300,000 Kurds,
deported or forced to leave their homes in Kirkuk and Mosul provinces, go
home.
"I feel happy the Arabs have left our land," said Mahmoud Ramazan, the
mukhtar or village leader of Gurilan village east of Mosul. For 30 years there
have been two Gurilans, a shabby Kurdish village and a more modern Arab
settlement of the same name.
Mukhtar Mahmoud, a grizzled 48-year-old in Kurdish uniform, said: "My father
and grandfather farmed this land, though I have not seen it since we were
expelled in 1974. They replaced us with Arabs from al-Jezira near the Syrian
border. They took away all their furniture, but the last left this morning and
they shot at us."
The Arabs had built their own village on Kurdish-owned land. Yesterday its little
white-painted mosque and the school were shuttered and deserted. The local
Kurdish government, fearful of Turkish intervention, has told people to await
instructions before going home. They have forbidden their peshmerga to head
for Mosul or Kirkuk. But Mr Mahmoud and the other Kurdish villagers were
armed and looked as if they knew how to use their sub-machine-guns. One
villager said: "We don't need anything except that Saddam Hussein should
leave us alone."
The Iraqi army has been falling back, from a broad swath of territory, north of
the road linking Mosul and Kirkuk. A few soldiers remained in the town of Bahra
on the western approaches to Mosul.
19
APRIL 2003
Twenty miles from Gurilan Amir Sheikani was at another empty Arab village,
Shamanar, south of the Kurdish capital, Arbil. He said: "I left in 1987. Iraqi
forces came and chased us out. Then the Arabs came and built this one."
The abandoned Arab houses of Shamanar looked very different from a Kurdish
village, each with a little tower to give ventilation and access to the roof. "We
will not live in their houses," Mr Sheikani said. "We are 160 families now and
when we return we will live in tents."
It will be difficult to prevent the Kurds returning to their lost lands despite the
efforts of the Kurdish government, the United States and the Turks to stop
them. Peshmerga checkpoints make little difference because the country is
criss- crossed by dirt tracks used by smugglers bringing cheap fuel from Iraq.
A real crisis may come over the fate of Kirkuk, which Turkey considers a red
line. Kurdish leaders have promised the US they will not try to take the city, but
if the Iraqi army disintegrates Kurds in north Kirkuk city will inevitably return
and Arabs, living in the south, may flee.
Patrick Cockburn is the co-author, with Andrew Cockburn, of `Saddam Hussein:
An American Obsession'
Marines pick up casualties along devastated road south of Baghdad

ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Marine casualty and evacuation

helicopters ranged across a panorama of destruction south of Baghdad on
Saturday and carried a wounded Marine, injured children and at least one Iraqi
fighter disguised as a civilian to medical care.
The pilots of Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 364 flew over crumpled
bodies, charred tanks, collapsed buildings and a burning date forest on
repeated missions to the outskirts of Baghdad. They took the war wounded to
emergency medical centers to the south.
One helicopter carried a 5-year-old boy whose face had been blown away by
shrapnel. His father, who had been wounded in the shoulder, held the IV as the
Marines loaded them both on the helicopter.
On another run, six Iraqis were loaded on board. A Marine cut open the clothes
of one Iraqi. Underneath his outer clothing was a military uniform.
At the medical center, that Iraqi was made to squat on the ground, naked,
while the other five wounded, all civilians, were processed. Wary of possible
suicide attacks, U.S. forces searched all Iraqis -- even the wounded.
Toward the end of the day, the helicopter picked up a Marine who had been on
a reconnaissance mission. He had taken four shots, one to the shoulder, one to
the leg and two in the other leg.
Despite his injuries, the Marine was talking and very energetic.
Unlike the Marines on the ground, helicopter pilots do not sleep in the dirt. They
go back to base, where they sleep on the cots meant for the dead and
wounded.
20
APRIL 2003
Mindful of the discomfort of their comrades on the ground, the squadron's

pilots and crew, part of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing and also known as the
Purple Foxes, each chipped in $10 to $20 to buy cigarettes, candy and sodas
for the Marines in the ground force.
On Saturday morning, at an airfield about 10 miles (15 kilometers) south of
Baghdad, they unloaded the goodies, which were promptly stuffed into a
Humvee to be taken to Marines at forward positions.
``We get to go back and have a shower and hot chow. These guys are stuck out
here,'' said Sgt. Chip Jacoby, 23.
As they flew over Highway 6, the scene below was not totally dismal. Many
vehicles, including a tractor, flew white flags, some made from towels or T-
shirts. Many people waved.
`Èither they are happy to see us or they don't want to get lit up,'' said Capt.
Andrew Lamont, 31, using a slang term for fired on.
Civilian vehicles, piled high with belongings, headed south away from the
fighting. When the drivers heard the artillery, they tried to drive faster and get
away.
Convoys of U.S. tanks and armored personnel carriers pushed north all day
along the same road toward the Iraqi capital.
When night fell, the pilots stayed alert, the crew and medics ready for another
flight. The work of the 364th was not yet done.
Marines Pursue Iraqi Army, Shoot Shadows

They knew the remnants of an Iraqi army division were out there. But in a
three-day pursuit that brought them within four miles of Baghdad, all the
Marines found were wrecked trucks, abandoned uniforms and frightened
civilians.
The men of the 1st Battalion, 5th Regiment, 1st Marine Division moved so
quickly - the lights of Baghdad could be seen from where they stopped
Saturday - that none of them slept for three days.
They were very short on water; on Saturday, the temperature hit 104 degrees.
Their mission is to hunt down the Al Nida division of the Republican Guard and
keep it from getting into Baghdad to reinforce Iraqi troops waiting there for the
U.S.-led coalition.
The Marines have come under sporadic mortar fire, but rarely see Iraqi troops.
21
APRIL 2003
As darkness fell Friday, the unit gathered into a defensive formation. Connected
by radio, sentries manning guns atop their Humvees check in with each other
periodically in hushed voices: "Gun 1, this is gun 2. What do you see?"
One gunner in a Humvee thinks he's seen about 20 Iraqis jump into a trench,
and opens fire. Several other gunners start pounding the same area. After
several minutes, shouts of "Cease fire, cease fire!" come across the radio.
They've been shooting at shadows.
On the road Saturday, the Marines come across an Iraqi armored personnel
carrier that had been hit by a Hellfire missile from a U.S. attack helicopter. The
hull was ripped open like a tuna can and inside were the melted barrels of
several AK-47 assault rifles. But there were no bodies.
The quick move has left food supplies low and the Marines were forced to tap
their emergency supplies Saturday. One Marine, Lance Cpl. Michael Gary, took
two bottles of water from a truck in the convoy. A sniper, Gary had been out all
day hunting the Iraqis that had been hitting the unit with mortar fire.
"Hey, I'm desperate, I'd steal from my mother," Gary said.
Shortly afterward, Gary was approached by an Iraqi man and his young
daughter who looked far worse off. He made eye contact with the girl, and
handed over one bottle.
Late Saturday, an elderly Iraqi approached the Marines, pointed at a lieutenant
and said, "Good, good."
Asked if he was afraid of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, he gestured toward
Baghdad and said: "Saddam - he's still there."
Tortured and shot hundreds of Iraqi dead discovered at military base

British soldiers also investigate punishment cell where Royal
Engineers are believed to have been held prisoner before their alleged
execution
Source: "Sunday Telegraph, The; London (UK)"
THE MUTILATED remains of hundreds of people - possible victims of Saddam

Hussein's regime -have been discovered by British soldiers at an abandoned
Iraqi military base.
Skulls with broken and missing teeth and bundles of bones in plastic bags were
heaped in stacks of unsealed coffins in a warehouse near what appeared to be
an execution ground.
The discovery of what may have been an Iraqi death camp is the grimmest
evidence coalition troops have found so far of atrocities committed by
Saddam's regime. Officers of the 3rd Regiment of the Royal Horse Artillery
sealed the site to preserve its contents for detailed investigation by forensic
scientists.
A neighbouring building contained cells, equipped with rusting metal hooks
hanging from overhead racks, and meticulously compiled catalogues of
photographs of the dead - both men and women - most of whom had gunshot
wounds to the head.
22
APRIL 2003
Some were mutilated beyond recognition, their faces burnt and swollen in the
faded black and white photographs. The young soldier who stumbled on the
grim scrapbook was horrified. "Bloody hell," he whispered. "These are all
executions. You can see the bullets, shots to the head."
A label attached to one of the bodies suggested that it was the remains of an
Iraqi soldier killed in the war against Iran. There was no guarantee, however,
that this was the case.
In a nearby courtyard was a tiled, foot-high plinth with the brickwork behind it
riddled with bullet marks and a drainage ditch beyond. One soldier described it
as "a makeshift shooting gallery".
An artillery unit had moved its AS90 guns to the abandoned base on the
outskirts of the southern town of Zubayr on Friday night. Soldiers found the
bodies - all of which appeared to have lain there for several years - during a
security check on what they had presumed to be a disused warehouse early
yesterday morning.
Capt Jack Kemp, the first man into the building, said he believed that there
were more than 200 coffins, with hundreds of plastic bags filled with the
remains.
Inside the warehouse, one of the bags contained an identity card written in
Arabic, while green military webbing - worn by the Iraqi army - and boot soles
were visible in others. Human skulls stared out from some of the bags.
"Each of the bags is labelled and there are human remains inside them," said
Capt Kemp, 40. He said the remains were "obviously years old" and were not
from the current conflict.
Each coffin carried an Arabic inscription and the bags had been scrawled on
with marker pen. Some bags left outside the coffins had split, their contents
spilling over the dirt floor, revealing bones and scraps of clothing. Among the
paperwork was one document which dated from 1985.
A few miles away a suspected torture chamber in a grim Iraqi state security
office is at the centre of an investigation into a more recent suspected atrocity -
the disappearance and alleged execution of two British soldiers in Zubayr.
The Sunday Telegraph has learnt that Army forensic scientists are examining
clear plastic sheeting which lined the walls and floor of a cramped, unlit cell for
clues as to the fate of Staff Sgt Simon Cullingworth, 36, and Sapper Luke
Allsopp, 24.
The two Royal Engineers bomb disposal experts are believed to have been held
in the two storey white-washed building. Last week a foot patrol from 1 Light
Infantry discovered British Army equipment in a cupboard. A radio kit and
engineering pamphlets were found similar to those the men would have been
carrying when their Land Rover was ambushed on March 23.
Elsewhere in the building the patrol found a bleak stone cell, entirely covered
with plastic sheeting. The material bore no apparent marks but was taken for
examination. The only furniture in the 6ft by 8ft room was a metal table. A
stone ledge served as a seat or bed and there was no window. The corner of
the building housing the cell reeked of excrement, according to the soldiers
who found it.
23
APRIL 2003
Local people have told British forces that Saddam's security agents sometimes
lined rooms in which they tortured prisoners with clear plastic to make it easier
to remove evidence of their brutal activities.
Tony Blair has said that Sgt Cullingworth and Sapper Allsopp were tortured and
executed before their bodies were dragged through the streets of the militia
stronghold of Zubayr in gruesome scenes broadcast by al-Jazeera television.
Although many Iraqis fear reprisals from militiamen if they are seen talking to
occupying British troops, reports are emerging of what happened to the men
after their capture. Military intelligence believes that they may have been held
for three days and then paraded through the streets before being executed by
the Ba'ath Party militia. They have the names of local political and tribal chiefs
believed to be responsible. A sheikh's son suspected of involvement in the case
was detained in an Army swoop on Friday, but later released pending further
investigation.
The bodies of the missing soldiers are believed to have been buried in the
foundations of a new government building on the edge of Zubayr.
Many militiamen are believed to be still active in Zubayr and, as we discovered
on Friday afternoon, the district around the security building remains extremely
hostile. An angry mob rapidly surrounded our vehicle and kicked and hit the
bodywork as we reversed and drove away.
'We'll cross the river and barbecue his ass' With this rallying call to
destroy Saddam, US troops surged deep into the Iraqi capital
yesterday, report Adam Lusher, with the Third Infantry Division
outside Baghdad, and Andrew Alderson
Source: "Sunday Telegraph, The; London (UK)"
AS HUNDREDS of triumphant American troops had their first glimpse of

Baghdad's historic city centre yesterday, they pledged that it would only be a
matter of time before they "barbecue Saddam's ass".
The fighting talk came as the coalition forces braved "sporadic but lively"
resistance from the Republican Guard when dozens of tanks made a daring
daylight surge into the city centre.
The sight of dozens of burning vehicles and dead and injured Iraqi troops
greeted the Americans as they advanced into urban areas of the capital to
"liberate" its citizens. Occasionally they let loose with tank and heavy
machinegun fire if anyone dared oppose their advance.
"It was hell," said Kamal, an electrician from the Yarmuk district in south-west
Baghdad, about six miles from the centre. "The firepower was incredible. There
was no let-up in the firing for three hours - machinegun fire, light artillery and
RPGs [rocket- propelled grenades]," he said. "We were on a battlefield."
As the US troops speared up from the south of the city deep into Baghdad - a
home to five million people and known in the Arab world as the City of Peace -
Capt Dan Hubbard, 34, a tobacco-chewing commanding officer from Tennessee,
gave a rallying call to his men in his lazy but powerful southern drawl.
24
APRIL 2003
"We are in hot pursuit of the enemy," said Capt Hubbard, of the Third Infantry
Division and a veteran of Desert Storm during the Gulf war. "Saddam's forces
are being destroyed at a rapid rate, and we are going to exploit the situation,
cross the river and barbecue his ass."
The mission appeared not to have any intrinsic military value - beyond proving
to the Iraqis that the Americans could move about with impunity. One US
colonel, Will Grimsley, described the foray into Baghdad as a classic case of "let
me poke you in the eye because we can - and you can't do anything about it".
As the fighting in and around Baghdad reached a new intensity, the
propaganda war also became more fierce yesterday. Mohammed Said al-Sahhaf
, the Iraqi information minister, defiantly told a press conference: "The
Republican Guard is in full control of Saddam International Airport. We have
defeated them, in fact we have crushed them. We have pushed them outside
the whole area of the airport. The whole trend has been changed. The
operation is moving in our interests and I think we are going to finalise [it]
soon."
Mr Sahhaf said Iraqi forces had destroyed four armoured personnel carriers,
had shot down an American warplane and a Cobra helicopter. US commanders
acknowledged that a Cobra helicopter had come down in Iraq, with the loss of
two aircrew. US officers also said that a tank commander was killed and two
other service personnel wounded in a dawn drive into the heart of Baghdad
from the airport.
Mr Sahhaf's claims, however, about recapturing the airport were ridiculed by
the Americans, who said that their soldiers were in fact busy rebuilding the
airport runway. "The only Republican Guard soldiers I've seen are either dead or
captured," said Capt Andrew Valles, spokesman for the 1st Brigade of the US
army's 3rd Infantry Division.
Iraq also said yesterday that it had fulfilled its pledge on Friday to carry out
"non-conventional" acts on US forces which seized Baghdad's main airport.
American military officials could not confirm the attack: if it had been
attempted, they suggested, it had not left any coalition casualties.
Early yesterday, black smoke poured into the sky over parts of Baghdad from
fires which had been lit to obscure targets. Loud explosions were heard
throughout the morning, punctuated by bursts of machinegun fire.
As the US forces advanced, other parts of Baghdad took on the look of a city
under siege, with troops loyal to Saddam digging trenches and foxholes along
the main roads leading south.
James Wilkinson, a Central Command spokesman, said yesterday that the sight
of tanks in Baghdad will encourage locals who want to get rid of Saddam. "Now
they see tanks in their streets and these types of visuals That's a very big,
deep and not-so-good psychological impact for the regime."
Ron Martz, a journalist with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, who is travelling
with the 3rd Infantry Division, was with the US tanks when they rumbled into
Baghdad.
He told CNN that there had been a "significant amount of resistance" on the
way into Baghdad and fighting had been "heavier than I expected". He said,
25
APRIL 2003
however, that the advance had been successful and that troops had travelled
through the centre of Baghdad "near as I could tell". He said two US soldiers
had been wounded, but their injuries were not life-threatening.
The number of American soldiers in the city may, however, run to only a few
hundred. A Reuters correspondent who drove freely and extensively around the
sprawling city yesterday said that he saw no signs of US forces in areas he
visited: "I went to the southern outskirts - south-east, south-west, the
presidential palaces, the main security buildings. I saw no American troops."
Walter Rodgers, a correspondent for CNN, was, however, more buoyant about
the US presence in the capital. "It is true that the US now has pretty well
freedom of movement in the Iraqi capital," he said. "The army is seeing more
and more Iraqi units and army trucks fleeing - fleeing west on the highway
which goes towards Jordan and north-west towards Syria.
"It appears that a good many of the Ba'athist Party members, as well as some
of the Iraqi officers, are on board those army trucks. They integrate the army
trucks into civilian convoys so that the air strikes cannot be called in on them.
"Repeatedly over the past 24 hours we're hearing that Iraqi soldiers are fleeing
the area, many of them with bags and suitcases full of Iraqi money, which
probably won't have much value in the coming days."
Long before sunrise yesterday, bumper-to-bumper traffic
snaked out of the city into northern Iraq. Osama Jassim, who with his three
brothers and their families had loaded flour and trunks into their truck, said:
"When it is calm, we will come back. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next month, only
God knows.
Many civilians fleeing the city took mattresses and coarse blankets, pots and
pans, suitcases, televisions, jerry cans filled with gas, and stoves perched in
trunks. Mufid Jabouri, 70, watched the traffic as he smoked a water pipe, sitting
on the curb. "The war is here," he said.
Reporters embedded with units to the south-east of Baghdad reported that at
least some of the Shia populace inside the city welcomed the US troops, while
hundreds of other citizens were seen fleeing in cars, some packed with money.
On the south-eastern edge of Baghdad, Rick Tomkins, of United Press
International, reported steady artillery fire directed deeper into the city as
helicopter gunships and planes bombed and attacked. The 5th Marines
regiment cut through Iraq's al Nida division, eliminating another bulwark of
Baghdad's defences, he said.
It appeared that parts of southern Baghdad had been secure enough to enable
helicopters to provide close air support to ground troops already in Baghdad.
Frank Thorp, a spokesman at Central Command in Qatar, said: "I think the
reason we are seeing what we are seeing is a strategy that has been
particularly well planned and perfectly executed."
There was fierce fighting, too, in other areas of Iraq yesterday. US army troops
are expecting further resistance in the central city of Kerbala, after they fought
street battles with Iraqi paramilitaries yesterday aimed at protecting the
"backs" of US forces moving into Baghdad, 70 miles north.
26
APRIL 2003
Iraqi fighters took up positions on rooftops in the narrow streets of the Shi'ite
shrine city and opened fire with rocket propelled grenades and assault rifles. US
aircraft and troops hit back with laser-guided bombs, artillery and heavy-arms
fire.
"It's freaky in there. Lots of bullets flying around. It's pretty scary," said one
young soldier who was evacuated after being hit by fragments from a hand
grenade.
Outside Baghdad, and after a day of substantial progress in the war, some US
troops were enjoying "the fireworks" as the battle raged in the city. Over the
radio, Capt Hubbard sang a few bars of the American anthem to his men and
said that all that was needed was a case of Budweiser to "enjoy" the night
properly. Meanwhile on the horizon, bright multi-coloured flashes appeared
accompanied by the boom of the exploding ammunition.
Some soldiers even began to talk of going home, but Sgt Silas Allen, 42,
cautioned against such early optimism. "Don't go getting complacent now.
Don't think the war is over. Don't go thinking you are safe until that plane takes
you out of Iraq."
U.S. infantry troops encounter Iraqi suicide paramilitary in

NEAR BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- U.S. Army soldiers killed six Iraqi fighters wearing
the same type of head bands and clothes as Islamic suicide attackers in a fight
to the death on the southern outskirts of Baghdad Sunday.
At least three U.S. soldiers from the 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment were
slightly injured in the fight, which began as the Iraqi civilians returned to their
homes following fierce fighting overnight in the area, about eight kilometers
(five miles) from the Baghdad city limits.
As the unit went on a routine patrol, U.S. Army intelligence officer interviewed a
civilian man who warned of suicide bombers dressed in black on the road
toward Baghdad.
As the column of 10 Bradley fighting vehicles rolled north, six men dressed in
dark, civilian clothes with red and white checkered scarves on their heads
scrambled into the brush.
Within minutes, they fired two rocket propelled grenades from a tree line near
the road, striking the lead vehicle just above the driver's hatch and sending a
cloud of hot white gas and shrapnel into the turret and passenger
compartment.
``There was a big boom and a white flash that didn't go away, I thought it was
a fire,'' Spc. Kenneth Clark said.
The soldiers bailed out of the damaged vehicle into a hail of small arms fire,
scrambling for cover by a mud wall. Three of the infantrymen were hit by
shrapnel, mostly scratches, except for the driver who had a wound near his
eye. None of the injuries were life threatening.
27
APRIL 2003
The company commander, Capt. Chris Carter, gave the men a quick pep talk
next to the damaged Bradley. The infantrymen were traveling without the
normal protection of tanks taking the lead, leaving the less well armored
Bradleys vulnerable to rocket propelled grenade ambushes. Some soldiers
complained tanks should have accompanied the patrol.
``This is our job, not the tanks' job,'' Carter said.
The RPG-7, a Soviet-era weapon similar to a bazooka, launches a rocket with an
armor-piercing grenade on the tip. Two men usually work as a team with an
RPG -- one man to shoot it, another to identify targets and to defend the
shooter.
`Ì'm tired of being an RPG magnet,'' said Staff. Sgt. Thomas Slago, whose
Bradley had been hit by an RPG in an earlier battle.
The Bradleys rolled forward again near where they had seen the Iraqi fighters
run away and soon RPGs were flying at the Bradleys again.
U.S. troops returned fire with the armored vehicle's 25mm cannon and 7.62
coaxial machine gun. Two Iraqis carrying RPG launchers were killed in the hail
of explosive cannon shells.
The Iraqis used a complex of canals, irrigation ditches and levees for cover. On
one levee, they had built a bunker.
The back ramp of one of the platoon's Bradleys opened and six men ran out in
full combat gear. They dropped behind a berm and took up firing positions,
peppering the levee in front of them with bullets from their assault rifles.
Throwing grenades in every culvert, the soldiers worked their way up to the
levee, tossing grenades over the side where they had last seen the Iraqi
fighters.
Sgt. Paul Ingram, the squad leader, said he saw one dead Iraqi fighter in the
reed-lined marsh on the other side of the berm, dressed in a black traditional
Arab gown.
Carter then spotted two men using a culvert to sneak up on the Bradleys, using
the dark green water to camouflage their movements. Standing in Bradley
turret, he threw grenades into the water, which kicked up plumes of green
water flew up, but did not stop the Iraqis from moving.
Carter grabbed the 12-gauge shotgun he keeps in the turret and blasted into
the water where he saw the fighters duck. One stood up with a Kalashnikov
rifle.
Carter shot him in the head.
``Kif, kif, kif,'' Carter shouted at the other, using the Arabic word for ``Stop.''
The second fighter, now about five meters (15 feet) from the Bradley stood up
with an RPG launcher ready to fire. Carter shot him in the chest.
The two men in the ditch carried six RPG rounds in a white flour bag, one
launcher and one assault rifle. The bearded men, in their early 20s, had red
head bands with `Àllah Akbar'' written in black marker across the front, the
traditional insignia of a suicide fighter, or self-described martyr, who have
appeared on Iraqi television in recent weeks pledging to fight the U.S. troops
advancing on Baghdad.
28
APRIL 2003
Until now, the troops of A Company had only seen soldiers and Republican
Guard fighters.
The combat had never been so close.
``They are hard fighters, but not smart fighters,'' Carter said.
Bomb assemblers' slogan is 'handle with care' Deep within aircraft

carrier
Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
WAR AGAINST IRAQ

Bomb assemblers' slogan is 'handle with care'
Deep within aircraft carrier, 'Wolf Pack' puts final touches on deadly weapons
By SANDY BAUERS Knight Ridder News Service
Sunday, April 6, 2003
Aboard the USS Harry S. Truman in the eastern Mediterranean -- When the
bomb builders go to work, they don't just walk down a passageway to a little
room like most others on this aircraft carrier.
Instead, they climb into a round hatch and down a ladder about 30 feet,
passing warning signs and a logo with the nickname of their unit, "Wolf Pack."
Then down another ladder. And another. Finally, they step into the bomb
assembly area, deep inside the ship, as protected as they can be against
attacks from the outside.
Stacked in high rows on one side of the room are bombs.
Arrayed on trailers in front of them are bombs. In other storage units both
above and below are bombs.
"The first time I came down here I was like, 'Damn, what did I get myself into?'
" said Airman Sean Kelly, 18, of Buffalo, N.Y.
This is the "bomb farm," the place where bombs are put together, or "grown,"
before being loaded onto the 70 warplanes that fly from the carrier.
Until Kelly and other members of the Wolf Pack work on them, the bombs are
simply big shells loaded with explosives. The crew adds fins, fuses and
guidance units.
Their days are spent within inches of devices that can demolish a building. The
bombs weigh from 500 to 2,000 pounds each.
Lt. Lester Hood, 42, rests his foot nonchalantly on a ledge near the bombs.
"These are smart bombs," he said, meaning they've been equipped with
guidance systems that rely on satellites to direct them.
He gestures toward a different pile. "These are dumb bombs. No guidance. Just
freefall, and boom."
The bombs are stable as long as they're not hooked up to a fuse. The bomb
builders worry more about their size and heft.
"Instead of thinking, 'Wow, this could blow up,' you're thinking, 'Wow, I don't
want to drop this on my toe,' " said Airman Daniel Leubbert, 19, of Jefferson
City, Mo.
29
APRIL 2003
Still, there's no room for error, for a bomb not going off when it's supposed to
or vice versa. "We can't afford to get it wrong," Hood said. "Everything we do
has to be perfect, every time."
The first attacks from this carrier, in the Mediterranean Sea, were carried out by
19 warplanes, including F-14 Tomcat fighters and FA-18 Hornets carrying 2,000-
pound satellite-guided bombs and Sidewinder air-to-air missiles.
"It's everyday to us now," said Airman Katie Grace, 23, of San Diego.
"They (the bombs) are definitely a good thing, an instrument for getting us to
where we need to be, to take the wrong people out of power."
Iraqi military spokesman discusses activities near Baghdad

Source: BBC Monitoring Middle East - Political
Iraq has fired five missiles at US-led troops on the outskirts of Baghdad, a
military spokesman has said. Reading a statement issued by the General
Command of the Iraqi Armed Forces, Maj-Gen Hazim Al- Rawi also detailed
losses inflicted by Iraqi troops south of Baghdad: 50 deaths and the destruction
of six tanks, he said. He also spoke about activities of the Al-Quds Army and
Saddam's Fedayeen, whom he said had also destroyed further enemy vehicles
in the south. The following is the text of a recorded statement "rounding up the
military activities of our valiant sectors for the past 24 hours", dated 6 April,
read by Al-Rawi, broadcast by Iraqi satellite TV on 6 April; subheadings inserted
editorially:
And We shall try you until We test those among you who strive their utmost and
persevere in patience. [Koranic verse] No force on earth can defeat people
supported by God. No force on earth can defeat the sons of the nation of the
Koran, who are racing to win one of the two good endings: Either victory of
martyrdom. With the help of God and the resolve of men, weariness and
disappointment have begun to appear among the remnants of the aggressors
and their commanders. This is one of the heralds of victory, God willing.
The activities of the people's armed forces for last night and today have been
as follows:
Baghdad
1. Enemy units tried to approach the southern boundaries of Baghdad
Governorate. A reference to this was made in our Communique No 17, issued
yesterday, 5 April. Following the violent response to that enemy attempt,
combat groups from the Republican Guard began to keep the violent impetus
and decisive response to that attempt by artillery fire and missiles on the night
of 5-6 April. The following enemy losses could be seen:
A. Six tanks were destroyed and 10 others were disabled.
B. Over 50 villains were killed and scores wounded. The enemy was witnessed
evacuating them clumsily and in panic by paramedical aircraft from the site.
C. A large number of spare parts, a large number of stretchers for carrying the
wounded and field bandages were found left behind by the enemy after fleeing
30
APRIL 2003
following yesterday's battle on the boundaries of the Saddam International

Airport. Our heroic men will remain swords cutting the necks of the aggressors.
Saddam's Fedayeen activities
2. The men of sacrifice from the heroic Saddam's Fedayeen formations carried
out the following activities last night and today:
A. They destroyed two Apache helicopters near Al-Tamim village.
B. They destroyed three tanks and one personnel carrier near Al- Salam village.
C. They destroyed one APC and one bulldozer on the airport road.
D. They destroyed two tanks near Khan Zari.
E. The destroyed two armoured personnel carriers in the Abu Bunaysir area.
3. Subsequent to the military spokesman's communique last night, the
fedayeen youths have carried out the following activities:
A. At 2200 [1800 gmt] on 4 April, four enemy tanks were destroyed and all their
occupants of the enemy scoundrels were killed at the outskirts of Baghdad.
B. At 0830 on 5 April, three armoured personnel carriers were destroyed at the
approaches of Baghdad.
C. At 1800 on 2 April, a combat patrol of Saddam's Fedayeen advanced behind
enemy lines in Abu al-Khasib, stormed enemy headquarters, blew up an arms
depot and set it ablaze.
D. At 2200 on 2 April, a combat patrol advanced towards the food warehouses
in Al-Quzayzah area. Two armoured personnel carriers were destroyed and their
occupants were killed.
E. At 1000 on 3 April, three detachments of Saddam's Fedayeen were
dispatched to the Fifth Mile area. They destroyed six tanks, an armoured
personnel carrier and a Land Rover.
F. At 1030 on 4 April, a combat detachment advanced towards Al- Zubayr
Bridge and destroyed a tank near the bridge. May God bless you O unique
righteous men while you are defending the homeland and its chaste soil.
4. A criminal enemy US force tried to approach the Al-Qurnah area. The heroes
of our valiant Armed Forces confronted it, set ablaze two tanks with their
scoundrels, and forced them to retreat.
Al-Quds Army activities
5. The heroes of Al-Quds Army carried out the following activities:
A. At 0600 on 3 April, the criminal US enemy tried to attack the positions of Al-
Miqdad Brigade, the Babylon Division-Al-Quds Army. The Al-Quds Army
brigade's men confronted it. A fierce battle took place and the enemy was
forced to stop and retreat, sustaining heavy human and material losses. The
visible losses were as follows: The destruction of two tanks and three armoured
personnel carriers.
B. The US enemy used three helicopters in an attempt to land troops in the
area of Hay al-Turath yesterday. The landing attempt was against the sector
manned by the 1st Regiment of the Al-Quds Army's Babil Brigade. The men of
the regiment confronted the troops and forced them to flee.
C. The enemy tried to attack the sector manned by the Al-Fida-Al- Karkh
Division of the Al-Quds Army. A fierce battle erupted with the enemy's villains.
One of the mujahid groups managed to destroy a hostile tank with those inside.
31
APRIL 2003
North
6. The US-Zionist enemy tried to use several agents, backed by its failed herds,
to attack our valiant units in the area of Debagha in the northern sector. The
heroes of the 1st Mechanized Infantry Division confronted them and forced
them to flee disappointed, accursed and disgraced under the fire of the heroic
mujahidin.
Missile strikes
7. The heroic men of the missile force this morning, 6 April, launched fatal
missile strikes against the criminal enemy's concentrations, which had dared to
approach the outskirts of Baghdad, firing five Ababil missiles at them.
Meanwhile, the men of the missile force fired an Al-Ra'd missile at the failed
enemy's concentrations in the Central Euphrates Sectors.
Blessed be your arms, O heroic men of the missile force.
Tally
The enemy's losses are as follows: [Destroying] 27 tanks and 13 armoured
personnel carriers, disabling 10 tanks, destroying a Land Rover vehicle and
engineering equipment, shooting down two Apaches, killing 50 enemy villains,
wounding scores, and seizing a large number of military spare parts and
hardware.
God is greater, God is greater, God is greater. Praise be to God, the protector of
the patient, mujahidin believers.
[Signed] The General Command of the Armed Forces.
City Battles Will Boost Growing Civilian Toll

Apr. 7--UNITED NATIONS--Baghdad hospitals yesterday were flooded with

civilian casualties, stoking renewed fears that the toll of Iraqi civilian dead will
soar as US forces battle for control of the city of nearly 5 million.
Up to 100 casualties per hour were reported arriving in Baghdad's hospitals as
bombardment and fighting intensified yesterday, according to Roland Hugenin-
Benjamin, a spokesman for the International Committee for the Red Cross in
Baghdad.
Hundreds more civilian casualties -- both dead and wounded -- are likely in the
days to come, analysts say, given the deadly nature of urban combat and the
Iraqi leadership's strategy of mingling paramilitary forces with civilians.
While aerial bombardment appears to be responsible for those Iraqi civilian
deaths recorded so far, ground battles may ultimately claim far more. "It's
more likely that for civilians, the air war casualties have been overestimated
and the ground war casualties underestimated," said Sarah Sewall, a former
deputy assistant of defense now at Harvard University's Carr Center for Human
Rights.
The growing worry is the fate of the 5 million civilians inside Baghdad. Brigadier
General Vincent Brooks, deputy director of operations at the US Central
Command, warned that as the final act is played out, it will become more and
32
APRIL 2003
more difficult to distinguish friend from foe as the remnants of the regime seek
to use human shields to protect themselves from the coalition.
"We will continue to be selective and seek precision in all we do," Brooks said
yesterday in Qatar. "But it is clear at this point that the risk is increasing to the
civilian population because of decisions made by regime leaders."
Avoiding civilian casualties has been a key aim of Washington's campaign to
oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. As bombs have pounded targets in
Baghdad, the rapid US military thrust northward has kept many American
troops from the urban combat that claims civilian lives.
Yet in this war of instantaneous coverage, it is impossible to know with any
certainty how many Iraqi civilians have been killed or wounded and by whom.
On Friday, the government of Iraq said 1,252 civilians have been killed and
5,103 injured. But hostilities prevent any independent tally from being carried
out on the ground. Iraq Body Count, a Britain-based research group that draws
on media reports, yesterday put the number of deaths at a minimum of 876
and maximum of 1,049.
But the ever-escalating toll of civilian dead has prompted repeated warnings
from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and international humanitarian aid
groups. "The reports for Baghdad, Karbala, and Hillah are very worrying
indeed," Iain Simpson, a spokesman for the World Health Organization, said
Friday.
Since the war began, civilian casualties have been reported in nearly all of
Iraq's major cities, from the south to the north.
Analysts warn that a full accounting of civilian casualties is essential if the
United States hopes to have any sway in a post-war Iraq. "I don't want to
understate how loudly these civilian casualties will reverberate once it is all
over," said William M. Arkin, a military analyst and fellow at Johns Hopkins
School of Advanced International Studies. Accounts of civilian casualties by
reporters, aid workers, and peace activists cannot provide a full picture of the
civilian dead in Iraq. But a review of dozens of accounts written over the past
two weeks provides at least a glimpse into how civilians are dying in the US-led
war.
Several reports tell of how US forces appear to have accidentally killed civilians.
American soldiers are trained to respect the difference between civilians and
combatants, but in Iraq, soldiers have been disguised as surrendering civilians
and irregular troops have mixed with civilian crowds.
According to the Times of London, last Sunday US Marines were lured into a
deadly firefight by Iraqi soldiers in civilian garb using women as their scouts.
Sixteen Iraqi soldiers were killed in the battle and so were 12 civilians.
"One man's body was still in flames," wrote reporter Mark Franchetti. "Down the
road, a little girl, no older than 5 and dressed in a pretty orange and gold dress,
lay dead in a ditch next to the body of a man who may have been her father."
As a tearful US Marine Lieutenant Matt Martin told Franchetti: "It really gets to
me to see children being killed like this, but we had no choice."
The Orange County Register's Gordon Dillow, embedded with Alpha Company,
First Battalion, Fifth Marines, last week described how Marines shot a speeding
33
APRIL 2003
civilian truck that failed to halt, killing three men -- only to find bags of rice and
no weapons inside. "I feel so sorry for those guys," Lance Corporal Jeff Guthrie
said.
In and around Baghdad, growing numbers of civilian casualties are reported
from bombing raids, even of small targets. Newlywed Nada Abdallah, 16, was
spending her honeymoon in a farmhouse on Baghdad's outskirts, when a bomb
slammed into it last Monday. She and two others were killed.
"I heard the blast, turned around and saw the top floor crumble and debris
flying in a cloud of dust," 17-year-old Ahmad Ajmi, told members of the Iraqi
Peace Team, visiting scenes of civilian casualties in Baghdad. "Then I heard the
shrieks."
Arabs Appalled by U.S. Troops in Baghdad

Arabs throughout the Middle East reacted with dismay and disbelief Monday to
television images of U.S. tanks rolling through the heart of Baghdad, and some
rushed to sign up for a holy war against the U.S.-led forces.
Others were just saddened by the ease with which U.S. troops entered the Iraqi
capital.
Few Arabs believed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime could hold out
indefinitely against an allied onslaught, but many had expected Baghdad to put
up a bloody fight.
Over a breakfast of croissant and coffee at a cafe, Saudi accounting instructor
Haitham al-Bawardi said he was having a hard time believing the reports.
"How can we know this is for real and not just coalition propaganda?" the 30-
year-old said. "We had hoped Saddam would inflict as many casualties on the
invaders as possible to teach them a lesson and make them think twice before
striking another Arab country."
In Cairo, Egypt, the news made some more determined to join the fight in a
jihad, or holy war, alongside the Iraqis. The Lawyers' Syndicate, known for
organizing people to join the war in Iraq, began filling up with volunteers
shortly after the news was broadcast.
"As Arabs, we cannot see this and not move," said a man in his early 30s who
would not give his name for fear of government retribution. "We are selling
ourselves for a higher cost, for God, not for Saddam."
Another volunteer, Abdelfattah, 41, a worker in a regional city council, said the
reports were "all lies."
"It is a psychological war," said Abdelfattah. "If it is true, then it is only a
military strategy, to lure the American forces into a trap."
Abdelfattah insisted that "Saddam himself will fight until the very end. ... He
will remain standing until he dies while fighting for Iraq."
Amjad Mohammed, a 23-year-old Syrian hairdresser, said he felt "very sad."
"The Americans can never stay in Baghdad," Mohammed said. "Baghdad is
noble Arab land."
34
APRIL 2003
Ali Oqla Orsan, head of the Arab Writers' Union, described the U.S. incursion as
a "propaganda parade," and said he hoped the allied troops would face "total
defeat."
"They are practicing terrorism against a sovereign country," said Orsan, a
Syrian. "If the allied forces occupy Iraq, it would signal the beginning of a
liberation war against the colonialists."
In Muscat, Oman, scores of men watched the news from Baghdad with angry
and resentful faces. One shouted, "Where is your army, Saddam?" Another, not
believing the television images, grumbled, "These Americans are relying on
false propaganda!"
In Lebanon, most citizens stayed close to their TV sets or radios to follow the
news. Many refused to believe the reports, opting instead for Iraqi Information
Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf's version of events, in which he denied
that Americans had entered the capital.
"Sahhaf said they were not yet in Baghdad, didn't you hear him?" said Hisham
Moniyyeh, 27, who runs a currency exchange shop in the southern port city of
Sidon. "The Americans have been lying a lot since the beginning of this
campaign so I don't believe them."
Merhej Shamma, a 39-year-old Lebanese architect, was shocked at how easy it
has been for the Americans to enter Baghdad. "I thought some of the fiercest
fighting was supposed to take place in Baghdad. Where are the Republican
Guards?" he asked.
"I hope they are preparing for a counter attack that would turn the tables once
again," he said.
A Saudi university student echoed those sentiments.
"The Iraqi people will resist and turn Baghdad into another Vietnam for the
Americans, a trap from which they will not emerge alive," said Saleh al-Nuaim,
20.
Hussein's Elite 'Melt' As Britons Grab Basra

Source: Chicago Tribune
Apr. 7--BASRA, Iraq--Hundreds of British troops and dozens of tanks and

armored fighting vehicles pushed into the center of Basra on Sunday, sending
Iraqi military and Baath Party officials fleeing but also setting off a looting spree
in the newly lawless city.
After bombarding southern Iraq's largest city for much of the 17-day war, the
British army met little resistance in taking "large parts" of Basra from Saddam
Hussein's forces, who apparently "melted away" or fled north, officers said.
Beside the main road into this city of 1.3 million, some residents cheered.
Others rode the highway out of town--many of them looters stealing anything
they could tow. Some were Baath officials attempting to sneak away.
A line of tanks and armored troop carriers reached Baghdad Street, near the
city's center, initially prompting panicked residents to flee. But by Sunday
evening, many were headed home again.
35
APRIL 2003
"It's finished," said Kalaf Hassan, a butcher in the city. "Now it's safe."
Careful to avoid house-to-house fighting that might bring high casualties,
British commanders had ordered a series of probing attacks in the last two
weeks, seeking to identify enemy positions.
Sunday's attack began as a similar probe, but when British forces encountered
light resistance, they decided to move in more forcefully, officers said.
In securing the southern half of Basra on Sunday afternoon, no allied casualties
were reported, and the British said they were expecting the entire city to fall in
the next day or so.
The attack began Sunday morning when helicopters swept over the city,
attacking a Baath Party headquarters and parts of the north end of the city,
residents said. On the ground, soldiers seized a military hospital at the center
of Basra and surrounded a group of Baath leaders in a government house,
according to an Iraqi army soldier who deserted his unit Sunday morning in the
face of the British push.
"They have four big men of the government surrounded," Muhaned Hussein,
25, said as he fled past an allied checkpoint out of the city. "I saw it just now as
I was trying to get out."
Witnesses said Baath Party officials and Iraqi militia members were throwing off
uniforms and trying to escape by foot and bicycle. Some Iraqi fighters in civilian
clothes shot at residents trying to flee the city, Hussein said.
Most Baath Party officials had vanished, and residents insisted that foreign
fighters brought in to back the Iraqis--including Syrians--had fled their
positions.
"There's nothing left of the soldiers or the Baath now," said one man who
declined to give his name. "They have changed clothes and run away."
Families escaping Basra said looters had taken to the streets as Iraqi forces
fled, breaking into a supermarket and other shops.
Trucks headed out of the city Sunday afternoon carried groups of young men
atop piles of new truck tires, still in their wrapping.
Other trucks emerged from the city laden with water pipes, air conditioners and
auto parts. One man in a tractor was seen exiting the city several times with a
different car in tow each time.
"Everyone is stealing everything they can find. People are destroying the city,"
said Ali Mohammed, an Arabic language student at Basra University. He said
looters had also broken into the university and were carting away classroom
contents.
"How will we go to school now?" he asked. "The U.K. soldiers are the ones
attacking, but it is the people who are destroying the city.
"This war needs to get over soon."
Many residents said they were grateful that allied forces were seizing Basra,
and said they hoped that control would quickly extend to Baghdad. But they
said they were disappointed at the lawlessness that had come with the military
push.
"My heart breaks when I see my city destroyed," said one man, carrying a load
of fish out from the port city. "I don't like Saddam Hussein, but this is not right."
36
APRIL 2003
One well-dressed man, who stopped along the road out of town, complained
bitterly that Iraqi religious leaders needed to speak out on television and radio
and appeal for calm and a stop to looting in Basra.
"I can't believe what's happening in this city," he said.
In the back of his aged white pickup, however, were two window air-
conditioning units and a copy machine.
Asked where they had come from, he shrugged. "My family will eat from these
machines," he said.
As allied helicopters swept low over central Basra, the sound of low explosions
echoed in the distance. Cars bearing Iraqi government plates were among
those rushing out of the city. Many passed with hands protruding from the
windows, waving white pieces of fabric.
Travelers leaving the city said residents had broken into the main prison and
freed everyone.
Along the highway into the heart of Basra, trucks and streetlights lay destroyed
beside crater blasts. The straight desert roadway into the city's south end
offered a bleak palette of grays and charcoals in a place renowned for how its
waterways transform desert crust into lush greenery this time of year.
In a park of palm trees near an intersection with Route 6, the back of a
whimsical sculpture of a leaping 20-foot dolphin was blown off.
A block away, tall black smoke rose from an explosion near a mosque
surrounded by several British armored Warrior vehicles.
At one British checkpoint in the highway median, an Iraqi man about 30 years
old sent soldiers scrambling as he came near in a car. They escorted him inside
an armored vehicle, where he complained about a stolen vehicle. They quickly
sent him off --after ensuring the car he arrived in was free of possible bombs.
Unlike the lush roadside marshes filled with songbirds on the outskirts of Basra,
the city's interior contained long stretches of lifeless lots where nothing grew in
black pools of oil or stagnant water. Outside one factory, an oil fire apparently
set by Iraqi militia to screen their firing positions drenched the air with filth.
But for the first time since the war began, residents began cheering and
gesturing thumbs-up. Hussein's enforcers had battered and punished those
who publicly supported the invading U.S. and British forces, but that
atmosphere largely vanished Sunday.
"Very good, Mr. Bush!" said one man driving his wife and children in an orange-
and-white cab that was converted to a family vehicle, a common Iraqi practice.
In recent days, Hussein reportedly had dispatched some of his better-prepared
forces from the Republican Guard to defend Basra.
But by Sunday evening, two British battle groups, with a third in reserve, were
advancing block by block in a pincers movement within Basra. They had yet to
face the house-by-house guerrilla warfare they had feared.
On Sunday, with the British on the offensive, a clear sense of optimism already
had begun to settle in.
"All the regime of Iraq has run away," one man yelled from a passing car on his
way out of town. "We are free now. We hope Baghdad will be next."
37
APRIL 2003
Armed with Their Teeth ; TIME reporters witness hope and fear, joy
and tears, and above all the death rattle of a regime
Source: Time
NAJAF JIM LACEY

It may have been the most unusual directive of Gulf War II. "Soldiers of 2nd
Battalion," ordered Lieut. Colonel Chris Hughes. "Smile!" With that, infantrymen
of the 101st Airborne Division, armed to the teeth, began flashing their
choppers at a crowd that had grown restless as the soldiers approached the
mosque at the Tomb of Ali in Najaf, one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest sites. The tactic
helped win over a crowd that had more questions than answers. Were the
soldiers going to storm the mosque, as some agitators were shouting? Were
they liberators? Or conquerors? Were they really going to kill Saddam Hussein
this time?
Najaf's civilians watched with hope and concern last week as the 101st made
repeated incursions into the city, rooting out the remnants of regular and
irregular Iraqi forces. After four days of cautiously advancing--sometimes
fighting house to house, sometimes guided by civilians who pointed out the
positions of Saddam's men-- the Division's 1st Brigade gained control of the
area on Wednesday. The following day Najaf had the feel of a liberated city.
Smiling citizens crowded every street around the American positions. There
was a constant stream of people willing to give information and loudly
condemn Saddam. American soldiers who a day before had been in close
combat were now basking in the cheers and applause, their arms tired from
returning friendly waves.
There were women and children in the crowds, but only the men did any
talking. They would say the word Saddam and spit. Or run up to U.S. soldiers
and shout "George Bush good." Said Sergeant Reuben Rivera: "The American
people, particularly the movie stars against us being here, need to see this.
These people need us. Look how happy they are." The locals at last seemed
convinced that Saddam could not reach back and hurt them, as had happened
after Gulf War I. "All they ask is, When will the Americans kill Saddam?" said a
Kuwaiti translator traveling with the 101st. "They say it over and over, as if I did
not hear them. I tell them that the Americans will kill him and not to worry."
But the euphoria was almost lost over the mosque incident. It began when the
local imam, who had spent 20 years under house arrest until the city fell and
his captors fled, asked American soldiers to protect him and the mosque. He
neglected to explain this, however, to the crowds outside. As the soldiers of
Bravo Company of the 2nd Battalion, who had formed a tight perimeter on the
street, began heading toward the mosque, citizens started shouting and
moving forward. With rabble rousers (later identified by Iraqis as Baath Party
members) shouting, "The Americans are storming the mosque," the crowd
began to chant and shake their fists. That's when Hughes made his move.
Grabbing a microphone he calmly announced over a loudspeaker, "Second
38
APRIL 2003
Battalion soldiers, take a knee and point your weapons at the ground." Seconds
later every one of the men was on a knee, and not a single weapon was
pointing at the crowd. Then he gave the smile order.
It worked. Hughes kept his men like that for about five minutes and then
returned to the microphone. "Soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, we are going to
stand up and then walk slowly back to base. You will not point any guns at the
crowd, and you will smile at everyone." A minute later the Smilin' Second was
walking away from the mosque, and the Iraqis began intermingling with them,
patting them on the back and giving them thumbs-up signs again.
By midday, however, citizens began to raise more pressing concerns. People
stopped praising Bush and began asking for water. The brigade brought in
1,000 gallons, but that wasn't enough to meet the need. U.S. military
engineers, meanwhile, set to work to restore power and the water supply. But
the people still seemed overjoyed, if thirsty. The biggest problem U.S. soldiers
faced was keeping the crowds away from them as they tried to patrol the
streets.
The Americans were further encouraged when a group of local Shi'ites said
they wanted to join the fight against Saddam. Both sides agreed to convene at
the city center, and tanks were sent to secure the area. The site, it turned out,
was dwarfed by a giant statue of Saddam on horseback. Lieut. Colonel Ben
Hodges, the brigade commander, got an idea. After confirming that the statue
really was of Saddam, he had engineers wrap the base with explosives. Then
he waited.
A few hours later about 30 Shi'ite fighters arrived. They were wearing new
military vests and carrying Russian-made weapons. Not an army, said a special-
forces soldier, though he added, "It's a start. Tomorrow we will have 10 times
this number." The Shi'ite leader, who did not wish to be identified, was beaming
as he approached the U.S. troops. He told the soldiers how he hated Saddam
and how all the people in Najaf hated Saddam. He went to great pains to make
clear that his was a self-financed outfit, independent of the U.S. army. Asked
the name of his group, he replied, "The Coalition for Iraqi National Unity." U.S.
commanders tried to tell him which sectors his men should avoid, fearing cases
of mistaken identity. But it became apparent that the leader was in no mood to
discuss technical details, and was more interested in making sure everyone
understood that there was now an uprising against Saddam--and that he was
leading it.
The Shi'ite leader accepted the honor of detonating the explosives ringing
Saddam's statue. With a thunderous blast Najaf's most visible symbol of
Saddam's regime toppled in a heap of twisted metal. People ran from the side
streets cheering and climbing over the wreckage, enjoying the giddiness of the
moment. One Iraqi approached Brigadier General Benjamin Freakley, assistant
commander of the 101st Airborne. "Kill Saddam," he said, and spat on the
ground. Then he added, "Now we can have satellite TV."
Into the Fire with Warrior McCoy KUT SIMON ROBINSON
Having carefully brushed his teeth, checked his ammunition and then looked
over a map with his men, U.S. Marine Lieut. Colonel Bryan P. McCoy, 40,
39
APRIL 2003
announces the day's activity as if he were running a fishing club. "We're going
chumming," he announces. "We're going to throw some bait into the water and
see if the sharks will come out."
The sharks are an estimated 3,000 Iraqi soldiers in Diwaniyah, a city of 300,000
people 75 miles southeast of Baghdad, where the 1991 southern Shi'ite
rebellion against Saddam Hussein first started.
The Marines are the bait. Why bring the enemy out in the open so far from
Baghdad? McCoy's battalion is waiting farther back in order to clear out pockets
of resistance and secure supply lines. "We want to keep the enemy on their
heels," he says. So as the rest of the 7th Marine Regiment pushes north toward
the capital, 3/4 Battalion plans to pick a fight at the rear of the convoy. "It's just
a good opportunity to kill these guys," McCoy says. "I don't say that with a lot
of bravado, but we're here to break their will. I don't want to sit on our asses all
day with the enemy just over there."
As a rooster announces daylight, battalion vehicles line up along the highway,
pointing in every direction so as not to give away the point of attack. Then the
tanks, amphibious tractors and humvees head west toward the outskirts of
Diwaniyah. The chum is now in the water, and the Iraqis rise immediately to
take it, pinging the Marine armor with small-arms fire. A tank crewman
answers, firing his coaxial machine gun into an enemy bunker. Over the radio
comes a play-by-play: "Yeah baby," says a voice. "He just ate coax for
breakfast," says another. But the sharks were already on hand, and in numbers,
when the Marines arrived, and they seemed to fill up the palm-studded field in
front of the Americans. McCoy calls for artillery support as his soldiers fire TOW
missiles.
The Marines are now spilling out of amtracs and charging at the Iraqis. The idea
is to push the infantry out quickly enough to stop the enemy from establishing
bases of fire. It's a tactic McCoy deployed successfully just days ago in a battle
at nearby Afak and one that defines him as a commander. "Go in there as if you
own the place," he says later. That sense of supremacy now takes the form of
artillery shells that are pounding Iraqi positions. Another TOW missile hits a
large building, which sheds dust as if someone had beaten it with a stick.
The Marines reach the edge of town, and more Iraqis surrender. An old man
strips off his jacket and waddles toward a Marine position in a dirty white
singlet. "There are militia on every corner in the city," he says, unfolding a now
familiar story in the Shi'ite south. "They tell us to fight or they will kill our
children. They say if we are captured, the U.S. will tie us up and leave us in the
desert, and when Saddam returns, he will kill us."
McCoy and his humvee team--a driver, a gunner, a radio operator and a TIME
correspondent--drive across a scrub-filled field and stop on a small dirt patch
between two bunkers. McCoy jumps out and shoots into the bunker on his side
of the humvee. His gunner takes the other. Both turn out to be empty. But
McCoy's aggressiveness is classic Marine, and the men like it. "He's the first
one into battle and the last one out," says a Marine. "He's not like other
battalion commanders sitting in their humvees at the back." And McCoy clearly
revels in being a warrior. "I'm in my happy place," he says.
40
APRIL 2003
The tank company pushes through the field, flushing out the enemy and
destroying two "technicals"--white pickups, one with an antiaircraft gun and
one with a machine gun mounted in the back. The tanks hold the east of the
city, while infantry pushes up from the south toward the tanks. The 3/4
Battalion skirts the city's edge. The Marines don't want to be drawn into street
fighting, and it appears that dozens of Iraqi soldiers managed to withdraw into
the city. Still, the chumming gambit is a success for the Marines. They have
killed 92 Iraqis and taken 44 prisoners, and not one Marine has been injured.
Says McCoy: "Let's quit pussyfooting and call it what it is. It's murder, it's
slaughter, it's clubbing baby harp seals."
The next time could be different, though, and McCoy knows it: "As casual as we
talk about it, taking human life is not to be taken lightly. Without getting all
heavy and syrupy about it, it's a big deal. Sooner or later they're going to get
one of us, or two of us, or five of us or more. It's just not our time yet. But odds
are it's going to happen."
Two days later, in fact. Fresh from battle, McCoy's unit reverses course and
heads east, crossing the Tigris over a bridge captured earlier. We pass under
the gates of Kut and into the town. To the north of the road is open ground,
dotted by a few houses. To the south, a large palm grove, thick with grass.
Suddenly, gunfire rings out. "Baynes, Baynes, three o'clock," shouts McCoy to
the gunner atop his humvee. Small-arms fire pesters the convoy from the palm
grove and buildings to the southeast. An RPG round hits the side of an armored
vehicle. The Marines pour out of their amtracs and charge into the grove,
driving forward, taking bunkers, hiding behind berms. A Marine goes down, a
kid, a bullet through his stomach. Bullets fly over the hood of McCoy's humvee.
For a few minutes this grove seems like the hottest place on earth. There are
smoke and explosions and bullets and cries.
And then it is over. The Marines push through, destroying weapons, capturing
prisoners. An injured Iraqi soldier is dragged up to the road, his right leg twisted
at the knee so that his foot faces backward. Another lies down next to me.
"Don't kill me," he says in English. "Please, I can't fight. My arm, don't twist it
left or right. It's broken." The Marines have destroyed 10 tanks and 14
antiaircraft guns and killed 78 Iraqis. As the Marines withdraw from town,
thousands of Iraqi civilians, mostly men, are waiting at the gates to go in, as if
they were working in a factory, taking over for the death shift.
The Marines have suffered one dead and three wounded. By the scorecard of
battle, that's a huge victory, but "all that's not worth a Marine's life," says
McCoy. "These are my boys. They did it for me. I went to the injured, and they
said, 'We got them, sir.' They're still thinking of approval even then. They're
good kids. Only they're not kids anymore."
Lamenting a Civilian Casualty KARBALA ALEX PERRY
No matter how many times they played it over afterward, the soldiers all
agreed that the farmers had it coming. Even with razor wire across the road,
four Bradley fighting vehicles, and 12 soldiers leveling M-16s and M-4s, their
dump truck kept rolling toward the checkpoint. Even with Sergeant George
Lewis waving it down. Even with a first, then a second warning shot.
41
APRIL 2003
So when the truck was maybe 100 feet away and still approaching, Red Platoon
opened up. Six or seven men shot a continuous M-16 volley of warning shots
into the air for three or four seconds, then some fired at the truck, and Lewis
launched a .203 grenade at the right front tire. "Now they got the message,"
said Sergeant Robert Jones. The truck stopped, the driver slammed into reverse
and, attempting a wild U-turn, careered into a ditch. The doors on both sides
popped open, and three men leaped out and sprinted away.
Charlie Rock Company's First Sergeant William Mitchell and Red Platoon
gingerly approached the cab. Out of that hail of fire, a single shot had shattered
the bottom of the windshield, and another had passed through the passenger
window. The engine was still running. A soldier rounded the open door and
jumped back. "We got a KIA," he shouted, meaning killed in action. "How do
you know he's KIA?" Mitchell asked. "Well, look at him," said the soldier.
The Iraqi man was lying across the cab with his feet hanging out the passenger-
side door, his head snapped back, a diamond-shaped entry wound just below
his right eye; the fourth finger on his right hand had been shot off, and there
was a large patch of blood under his right arm. Judging from the empty truck
and the bundles of onions and garlic in the nearby fields, the soldiers figured he
was a farmer collecting vegetables to sell in Karbala, the Shi'ite city on the
horizon that the checkpoint was meant to seal off.
Private First Class Damon Young, a good-looking 25-year-old from Idaho, said he
was sure it was his round that hit the windshield. "That was me then," he said.
"I probably killed him." Lewis asked, to no one in particular, "Why do they make
you do that? They don't want to f___ing listen, goddammit." Young paused. "It's
just stupid to have to shoot people who are not armed," he said. "This language
barrier really sucks."
America promises freedom for the Iraqi people, but the price so far has been a
regrettable number of civilian casualties--the best guess is 600 dead and 4,500
injured--and a rapidly expanding gulf of mistrust between civilians and U.S.
forces on the ground. Language is just the first problem--there's not a single
frontline soldier outside the special forces who speaks Arabic. "You try signing 'I
give you freedom and democracy within the paramount parameters of my own
security,'" sighed a lieutenant at a checkpoint last week.
At the core of the civilian casualty crisis is the decision by Iraqi forces to decline
both of the two options coalition war planners are offering them: surrender or
obliteration. Instead, those Iraqis still fighting have, according to an American
officer, "turned matador," changing into civilian clothes, sidestepping the full
might of advancing forces only to reappear later to inflict cut after cut in the
Americans' flanks with guerrilla strikes on convoys or suicide bomb attacks. In
this atmosphere every civilian is suspect, and the longer the conflict lasts and
the more innocents that are sacrificed, the less welcome the Americans may
be. The recent suicide bombing, in which four 3rd Infantrymen were killed,
swiftly followed by the 3rd Infantry Division's killing of seven women and
children at a checkpoint, was the perfect one-two for Saddam Hussein's
desperate endgame.
42
APRIL 2003
Before the conflict started, combat trainers stressed the priority of avoiding
civilian casualties. But that changed with the first guerrilla-style attacks. On
Day 2, the order came to assume all Iraqis were hostile unless proved
otherwise--an assumption that many of these young soldiers had made anyway.
Since receiving their new instructions, the soldiers have dropped their message
of liberation for one of mistrust and irresistible force. Checkpoint squads have
arrested hundreds of Iraqis who are unable to communicate their reasons for
traveling, while detaining others carrying AK-47s as "terrorists," even though
Iraqis carry AKs the way Texans do handguns.
To a man, it seems, the U.S. soldiers are unhappy about their rising civilian kills.
And many are smart enough to realize that every death backs up Saddam's
claim and the Arab world's suspicion that they are occupiers and conquerors,
not liberators. "They didn't do anything wrong," said Mitchell of his men. "But it
bothers me to hell that the guy is innocent."
Mitchell argues that according to U.S. rules of engagement, the soldiers carried
out their primary mission: "to eliminate the threat." Iraqis, however, are
following a different set of compulsions. A few hours after the killing, Major
Dean Shultis reported that his battalion had collected 69 prisoners of war over
the previous 24 hours. He said he had tried to warn the Iraqis that approaching
American checkpoints now was dangerous. They're not listening. "We're
hungry," replied a prisoner. "And we're not going to stop coming."
Enveloped in Smoke and Fear BASRA TERRY MCCARTHY
The fear that hangs over Basra is as thick and evil-smelling as the canopy of
black smoke reaching across the sky from the burning oil trenches around the
city. "In Basra everything is horrible for us," says Osamah Ijam, 23, a medical
student who left town on Friday morning. "We see our future burning."
Others tell of a city where bands of young Fedayeen Saddam militia patrol in
white trucks, shooting anyone who defies them. Residents talk of their fears of
anarchy and looting and of the terror at the sounds of mortars, rockets and
gunfire that crack day and night across this city of 1.3 million. Underneath it all
is the unfathomable, almost irrational fear that Saddam Hussein could still
survive this war and return to wreak terrible vengeance on anyone who turns
against his regime, as he did after U.S. forces left in 1991.
Tahsin, 26, a laborer, has just left the city by foot after the arrest of his brother,
whom he saw militiamen beat down with the butts of their guns. Working off his
fear, Tahsin says vehemently, "They are shooting people who are saying
anything against them, and you don't know who they are because they are all
dressed like civilians." He says the Baath Party members and militia fighters
use civilians' houses as refuges. And some have mounted mortars on the backs
of pickups that can move quickly after firing. The British are wary about
returning fire into civilian areas.
In the past 24 hours, the frontline British checkpoint has advanced to about a
mile inside Basra's southern border. Standing behind several Challenger II tanks
and a Warrior APC are Captain James Moulton and soldiers of his company of
Irish Guards. They check those coming down the road for weapons and then
hand them leaflets promising that this time, the coalition forces will stay as
43
APRIL 2003
long as it takes--and asking for assistance in pinpointing the enemy. "Now they
are getting more used to us Brits being around," says Moulton. "A lot more
people are offering information about the situation inside Basra and where the
Fedayeen positions are." But still the British are cautious, advancing little more
than half a mile a day into the city.
Yet the fear is palpable even 5 miles south of Basra in the town of Zubayr,
which the British captured earlier in the week. The director of the hospital
there, Dr. Abdul Hussein, points to the two holes made by an antitank round as
it passed straight through the walls of his office while he stood there. What he
is afraid to admit--and a local resident and a British medical officer later
confirm--is that the militia had been using his hospital as a base to fire on the
British forces.
The militia are gone from Zubayr, but Dr. Hussein is apprehensive about a
breakdown in security in the town. "It is very unsafe," he says. "There is no
police force, no administrative apparatus of any kind." The British have
instituted a 7 p.m. curfew but have few spare troops to patrol the streets.
During the day, the town appears to be getting back to normal, with foodstuffs
appearing in the market. But normality has its limits.
In a tea shop the talk among the men is about the need for the Americans and
British to supply water and electricity for the town as soon as possible.
Suddenly a middle-aged man in a checked shirt elbows his way in and
announces his support for the regime. "If Saddam is going to fall, there are
thousands of Saddams to replace him," he declares. Then he reaches down
with his hand and smears some dust from the floor with his fingers. "Foreigners
are not worthy to step on even a single speck of sand of Iraq." Then the men,
who only seconds before had been happily bantering with foreign journalists,
suddenly turn hostile and unwelcoming, afraid to be viewed as being friendly
with the infidels.
Quote: "All they ask is, When will the Americans kill Saddam?" "Let's quit
pussyfooting and call it what it is. It's murder, it's slaughter." "The soldiers
didn't do anything wrong, but it bothers me to hell that the guy is innocent."
Green Berets Wielding Guns, Good Attitude ; Holding Northern Front

`So Much Fun'
Source: Seattle Post - Intelligencer
Whoosh!
The Iraqi artillery shell hissed overhead and slammed into a field about 150
yards away with a crack, shaking the ground and spewing shrapnel into the air.
Kurdish peshmerga fighters shouted and ran for cover. Journalists threw
themselves face-down into a wheat field in this Kurdish haven in northern Iraq.
And a group of poker-faced U.S. Green Berets studied the cloud of smoke and
dust rising from the crater, casually discussing whether the 105mm Iraqi shell
could actually kill them.
44
APRIL 2003
"That was a pretty good one," Jack said in an appreciative tone. "That one was
close."
"It's best when you can hear it," responded Scott. "If you don't hear it, you're in
trouble."
The second shell from the Russian-made D-30 field gun whistled overhead and
landed a few yards closer. A few seconds later, the third shell hit so close one
could hear the debris wheeze, whirling in the sky like lawn mower blades, ready
to deliver indiscriminate death. The bitter smell of cordite filled the air.
"They got the range on that last one. If they'd aimed 100 meters to the left,
that would have been it. It'll be interesting up here when they get us
bracketed," Jack said.
"OK, why don't you guys hop in the truck," he told the journalists, pointing to
the back of a Land Rover. "It's getting hairy here. That's more story than you
wanted."
For the second day, these 10 Special Forces troops eluded death yesterday on
the hills of northern Iraq. Armed with M-16 rifles painted light green to avoid
glare and using heavy U.S. air strikes in lieu of artillery, the U.S. soldiers
commanded a small force of 99 Kurdish peshmerga guerrillas against an
estimated 2,000 Iraqi troops on a ridge two miles to the west.
As the U.S. aerial bombardment methodically pushes the Iraqi front line back
toward the oil-rich cities of Kirkuk and Mosul, small groups of Special Forces
leading Kurdish guerrillas remain the only real northern front holding the
government soldiers back.
Not a problem, Jack said. "All you need is a radio, a gun and a good attitude,"
he said, as an Iraqi mortar landed several hundred yards away.
Fleeing fierce U.S. air strikes Thursday, Iraqi soldiers had retreated about 10
miles west from the front-line positions on the Zab al-Khabir River they had
held for 12 years, leaving behind their ammunition, their fuel, their cars and
their dead.
But from their new encampment on the ridge overlooking the Khazer River,
they were now firing at U.S. soldiers and peshmerga entrenched in the
positions they had just left.
"We repelled several counterattacks with the aid of close air support," said Jack,
who, like the other soldiers, asked that his real name not be used. "Then there
was artillery all night, but nothing too close."
The Iraqis fired at the commandos with D-30 field guns, 120mm mortars,
82mm mortars, 14.5mm machine guns and Russian-made Zenit anti-aircraft
guns, Jack said. They also fired from D-20 field guns.
"Those look like a Volkswagen when they fly over you," Jack explained.
But the U.S. soldiers never seemed to lose their cool.
"We do what we do, and so far, we've been pretty good at it," one of the
soldiers said. "Not everybody gets paid to have so much fun."
Jack climbed out of his Land Rover, then climbed back in.
"We left 10 peshmerga on the ridge. I gotta get them back," he said, and drove
off.
45
APRIL 2003
The U.S. soldiers work closely with the peshmerga, Jack said, and rely strongly
on their knowledge of the region's hilly terrain. Some of the Americans wear
traditional Kurdish scarves over their uniforms.
The peshmerga "know this land like the back of their hands," Jack said. "They
are from here. They know by sight on a ridge two miles away if a guy is a
Kurdish peshmerga or an Iraqi."
Iraqis play dead to lure our forces into danger

Source: Daily Mail; London (UK)
IRAQI soldiers are using a new tactic to launch surprise attacks on coalition
forces - pretending to be dead.
Two Desert Rats were almost killed when a Fedayeen fighter who had
apparently been killed sprang up to fire a rocket-propelled grenade at them.
Irish Guards Captain Niall Brennan, 29, and Colour Sergeant Glyn Crawley, 38,
were only saved when one of their comrades spotted the Iraqi moving and shot
him.
Their unit was speeding through Basra in Warrior fighting vehicles when they
came under attack.
The 'dead man' jumped to his feet and aimed his RPG launcher straight at the
guards sitting in the Warrior's turret.
Captain Brennan was unsighted and had no idea he was the Iraqi's target - until
a burst of gunfire cut down the enemy soldier.
Lance Sergeant Alan 'Cliff ' Hanger - riding in another Warrior - had spotted the
man and felled him with his SA80 assault rifle.
Captain Brennan said last night: 'There's no shadow of a doubt that Cliff saved
my life today.
'A split second later and the Iraqi would have taken me out.
'I had no idea I was about to be fired upon until the shots rang out and I just
caught sight of the Iraqi falling dead in front of me.
'When I caught up with Cliff later I gave him a huge hug and told him I owe him
several crates of beer.
' I can only thank God he spotted the attack and acted so quickly.' Captain
Brennan, from Fulham, South-West London, is second in command with Number
One Company of the Irish Guards.
He managed to call his girlfriend, market researcher Alice Ferrero, 25, to let her
know he was safe after returning from battle last night.
Sergeant Hanger, 27, was still fighting on the frontline last night - but was
expecting a hero's welcome on his return.
Sergeant Crawley, whose wife Claudia, 37, and children Dean, 19, and Glyn Jnr,
17, are back home in Liverpool, said: 'I also owe him my life. If that grenade
had been fired, it would probably have killed me as well.
'He had the captain in his sights and was aiming at the turret. They seemed to
have learned that their weapons are useless against our armour. It was a very
46
APRIL 2003
close call.' Elsewhere in the Battle for Basra, enemy fighters were spotted
playing dead before attacking members of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards.
Their commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Hugh Blackman, 41, said: 'There
is no doubting the tenacity of the Fedayeen fighters and they are not playing
by the rules.
'A new tactic is to lie at a defensive bunker and pretend to be dead, but we are
becoming wise to that and if we are in any doubt we open fire.
'They were popping out of holes from nowhere with RPGs and hand grenades.
'One guy came at us and threw a grenade at us, which against a Challenger 2 is
a thankless task, it really is suicide stuff. As he tried to run away he was killed.'
Lt Col Blackman, who led his men into battle with a 'Lion Rampant' flying from
his tank's turret, added that there had been firm intelligence that the Iraqis had
been hiding their tanks and artillery in schools and beside mosques.
'They have been using children as human shields by picking them up when
they think they are about to be fired at,' he said.
4th Infantry Prepares for Tough Combat in Iraq

Source: Houston Chronicle
Apr. 6--CAMP PENNSYLVANIA, Kuwait -- The dazzling advances by American

troops in Iraq last week have altered the perceptions of the soldiers of Fort
Hood's 4th Infantry Division about the war in Iraq.
But they haven't changed their expectations that the division will face tough
combat before Saddam Hussein's regime is destroyed.
"A week ago when I left Fort Hood, I felt for sure everyone in the division was
headed for contact with the Iraqis," said Capt. Paul Hill of the division's 299th
Combat Engineer battalion.
"But even with what has been accomplished, I think there will be combat
operations for this division, and I think they'll be significant."
The division's soldiers left Fort Hood several days ago after receiving a series of
sobering reports: U.S. troops attacked by people in civilian clothes; Iraqis
pretending to surrender to Americans, then shooting; a suicide bomber
exploding a car at a checkpoint; soldiers apparently executed after being
captured.
That led to a rigid review of security procedures, navigational techniques and
especially the rules of engaging the enemy and self-defense.
And the reality of being in a hostile environment near the Iraqi border has
emphasized the need to absorb those lessons learned, even as the Iraqi regime
appears to be tottering in Baghdad.
"Now that we're here, you can see the oil field fires at night, and B-52s
launching Tomahawk cruise missiles. It emphasizes the need to be ready to go,"
said Maj. David Hill. "I think our soldiers are hungry to go do their mission north
of here."
47
APRIL 2003
Even before leaving Fort Hood, a division legal officer gave the troops a review
of the rules of engagement. He emphasized that soldiers must shoot to kill if
their lives are endangered.
"You are not a New York City police officer who is restricted in the force
permitted," the legal officer said. "You have an absolute right to defend yourself
by shooting to kill."
Those rules have been emphasized here in Kuwait by events at this camp near
the Iraqi border, including an incident in which a Kuwaiti drove a truck into
soldiers outside a base store. Several soldiers were injured, and the Kuwaiti was
shot to death.
Soldiers of the 4th division have gone through at least three major cycles of
expectation while waiting their turn to go to war, several GIs said.
The first was in the immediate aftermath of the war's beginning, when most
soldiers assumed that "the first week would be the only week," as Hicks said.
Then, for a few days, it appeared Saddam's Fedayeen and other Iraqi irregulars
would stall the war and require the 4th division to break the deadlock. But
expectations shifted again last week when U.S. forces neared the center of
Baghdad.
"The bottom line," said Hill, is that "none of us knows what the situation will be
when we go into Iraq. But we do know this place will remain dangerous for
American soldiers for a long time.
"The overt threat may lessen," Hill said, "but we still have to be cautious about
the things that have hurt us so far."
That has made the lessons learned from watching the progress of the war so
far invaluable for the division.
"I've told my guys to be prepared to go into a fight with people who fight dirty,"
said one senior division officer. "I'm going to do my best to limit any contact
with the civilian population as much as possible."
Lt. Col. Gian Gentile, the executive officer of the division's 1st Brigade, said,
"We've paid very close attention to what the 3rd Infantry and the Marines have
gone through. We've concentrated on rear-area security, and on securing lines
of communication when we go north (into Iraq)."
"Especially after the suicide bombing (that killed four American soldiers) we
started emphasizing the rules of engagement and what rights of self-protection
they give soldiers."
Other officers echoed the notion that soldiers went through an emotional
transformation in the early days of the war.
"In the first day or so the thinking was, the war is on and we're not there," said
Capt. James Blain of the 299th Combat Engineers. "That faded pretty quickly.
When we saw what was happening, we started thinking hard about convoy
security and things like that."
Blain said the officers have talked about how to lessen the inevitable fatigue of
drivers, to prevent accidents and incidents such as the one involving the Fort
Bliss maintenance company that got lost in the desert and drove into an
ambush.
48
APRIL 2003
"We began to appreciate how difficult it was going to be to do things in

blackout conditions, or in a sandstorm," Blain said.
Hicks said that even before the war started, soldiers in the division had been
working through what-if scenarios.
One example: A soldier is manning a checkpoint in the middle of the night
when a vehicle aggressively approaches at high speed.
"That was an easy one," Hicks said. "If a vehicle is speeding toward you,
assume hostile intent." Hostile intent is a trigger to shoot to kill.
A tougher episode involved what soldiers here call the Black Hawk Down
scenario of enemy combatants moving on to the division's position behind a
screen of women and children. The ugly but necessary answer, Hicks said, was
to try to hit the enemy soldiers, but not to hold fire for fear of killing civilians.
Military analysts said it was not surprising that the 4th Infantry Division was
taking a hard, sober look at what had happened to other units entering Iraq,
and emphasizing self-preservation.
"The big lesson to be learned so far is in the area of force protection and
security," said Dale Davis, a former counterintelligence officer with the Marines
who now teaches at Virginia Military Institute. "Your dealings with Iraqi civilians
are going to have to be very limited and careful."
He also said that the officers are likely reinforcing the findings that many of
those killed and injured in combat zones are victims of accidents and friendly
fire.
"Beyond that, I'm sure they are getting field reports from the 3rd Infantry about
little, unexpected things -- what is causing vehicles to break down, what
equipment they needed that got left behind," he said.
"They may be finding out that they need fewer spare tires but more fan belts,
little things like that," Davis said.
W. Patrick Lang, a former special operations forces officer and Middle East
expert, said, "Once they cross the border into Iraq, they cannot afford to
assume anybody is friendly.
"The Iraqis are a nice enough people under normal circumstances," said Lang,
who spent time as a Pentagon analyst in Iraq. "But right now you are dealing
with a wounded snake."
The 4th Infantry's soldiers said they hope to strike into Baghdad within a few
days and relieve any strain on the soldiers and Marines who have carried the
battle so far.
As to the division's exact role, and what its personnel will face, most soldiers
seemed resigned to wait and see.
"It is hard to know what to expect," Hill said. "We'll get ready and do what they
want us to do. But our expectations have changed five times in the past week."
Iraqis Loot Basra As British Take Control

49
APRIL 2003
BASRA, Iraq (AP) - Iraqis went on a looting rampage Monday, hauling furniture
and carpets out of the state bank and a western hotel as British troops took
control of Iraq's second largest city after weeks of patient siege.
The 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment took up foot patrol in the city center
after a massive convoy of British infantry started rolling into Basra from the
southern outskirts early Monday.
The troops appeared to be in the midst of a major move to secure the old
section of the city, the last substantial pocket of resistance. The convoy of
British light-armored infantry consisted of 50 to 75 vehicles and 700 troops.
Basra residents were seen streaming out of the Central Bank of Iraq with their
arms full of looted items - chairs, tables, carpets and other items out of the
building and loading them onto donkey- and horse-drawn carts, or stuffing the
goods into cars.
At the nearby Sheraton Hotel, people loaded up carts, junked vehicles and any
other transport they could find with chairs, sofas - even the grand piano that
had been in the hotel lobby. Residents were seen pushing the piano by hand
down the street.
A jubilant crowd of about 100 people surrounded two British tanks sitting side
by side near a Saddam Hussein mural and started cheering the soldiers inside
and giving the thumbs-up sign. One soldier was handed a small bunch of yellow
flowers.
Some buildings were on fire, black smoke poured into the sky.
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.
British officials said they had managed to set up base at a former college inside
Basra's city limits, but did not yet control the city of 1.3 million. The Defense
Ministry said three soldiers were killed Sunday, bringing the total number of
Britons killed since the start of war to 30.
Group Capt. Al Lockwood, spokesman for British forces in the Persian Gulf, said
the advance was designed to "reassure the people of Basra that we're there
and we're coming to liberate the city."
"Their days are limited," Brigadier Graham Binns, commander of the 7th
Armored Bridage, or the Desert Rats, told the Press Association. "Our
intelligence tells us that morale is low among the defenders of the city, that the
population can't wait to see us and the opposition, such as it is, is
uncoordinated."
50
APRIL 2003
British and Iraqi forces have been locked in a battle for control of the southern
Iraq city since the war began. Until Sunday, coalition forces had largely limited
their efforts to raids and sorties from the outskirts of town.
According to British press pool reports, commanders said the bulk of Iraqi
forces may have fled Basra a full 48 hours before the latest incursion.
"We can safely say that the conventional military force has departed, although
not completely from the region. We've still got a little bit more of that to deal
with further north," said Maj. Gen. Peter Wall, the chief of staff of British forces
at Central Command.
The Desert Rats killed an unknown number of paramilitary fighters and took
others prisoner as the unit pushed in from the west. They were joined by troops
from the 3rd Armored coming up from the south.
Lockwood said troops intended only to set up checkpoints inside Basra. But
they pressed on deep into the city with a column of more than 40 armored
personnel carriers and tanks after finding "the level of resistance was low."
Lockwood told reporters the decision to move into Basra was based partly on
Arab press reports that Basra leaders wanted to surrender the city. He also said
reports of looting - a sign of weakening Baath Party control - prompted the
British to act.
Lockwood said it appeared local Baath leadership had collapsed.
Royal Scots Dragoon Guards spokesman Capt. Roger MacMillan said troops had
also blown up a headquarters of the Fedayeen paramilitary group. The fighters
have become infamous for organizing such battlefield ruses as posing as
civilians and faking surrenders.
Another British officer, who requested anonymity, said Fedayeen fighters were
breaking into homes to hide and to use them as cover.
The commander of Britain's forces in the gulf, Air Marshal Brian Burridge, said
troops had taken their time before entering Basra in order to "shape the battle
space" in the coalition's favor and ensure minimum civilian casualties.
He said it was necessary to attack "without risking inordinately the lives of the
population - knowing where the irregulars are, knowing where the militia are
and being in a position to deal with them with as much precision as possible,"
he told British Broadcasting Corp. radio.
Hussein Appears on Iraqi TV as U.S. Forces Fortify Control of Baghdad

Airport
Source: Knight Ridder Washington Bureau
Apr. 5--BAGHDAD INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, Iraq--His airport now renamed and

under U.S. control, his citizens streaming out of his capital, Saddam Hussein
suddenly reappeared Friday and urged loyalists to resist U.S. forces with "heroic
confrontations."
Saddam's appearance, broadcast by Iraqi television but unseen by most
residents of a capital without electricity, ended days of silence by the Iraqi
51
APRIL 2003
leader. One reference suggested that he survived a war-opening missile attack

on his quarters.
"Perhaps you remember the valiant Iraqi peasant and how he shot down an
American Apache with an old weapon," Saddam said, grimly reading from what
appeared to be handwritten notes.
As he spoke, U.S. Army soldiers fortified their control of the airport west of
Baghdad. U.S. Marines engaged in their heaviest fighting of the war and seized
a key crossroad southeast of the city. And U.S. commanders pondered their
next move.
"We're there," said Lt. Col. Dave Pere, a senior Marine operations officer. "We're
the dog that caught the car. Now, what do we do with it?"
A senior administration official said U.S. forces would continue to apply
pressure on enemy forces in Baghdad and the remainder of Iraq not already
under allied control.
The plan for the next phase of the battle of Baghdad remained unclear, though
it appeared that U.S. troops would remain outside the capital for some time,
perhaps launching isolated probes to root out paramilitary soldiers and Baath
Party enforcers.
As neighborhoods are "disinfected," the senior official said, coalition forces and
a new Iraqi interim government will begin to provide food, water, electrical
power and health care, taking over the work of Saddam's government.
"We will move on Baghdad at our pace, when the battlefield is at our
advantage," said Navy Capt. Frank Thorp, a U.S. military spokesman. "We
expect the fighting will get tougher as we get closer to the heart of the city."
Danger remained tragically manifest on Friday.
In another suicide bombing, three U.S. soldiers died when a car carrying two
women -- one of them apparently pregnant -- exploded at a checkpoint in
northwest Iraq. The U.S. military death toll rose to at least 65.
Information Minister Saeed al Sahhaf threatened that Iraqi forces would launch
a major "unconventional" attack on U.S. forces, but he insisted that it would not
involve chemical or biological weapons.
U.S. officials said Saddam's repetition of an Iraqi claim that a villager shot down
a U.S. helicopter on March 24 did not constitute conclusive proof that he was
still alive, but strongly suggested it. Military officials said the helicopter incident
remained under investigation.
Iraqi television later showed a videotape of what it said was Saddam walking
through a crowd of cheering Iraqi citizens, a highly unusual event for a man
known to be obsessed about his personal security. It could not be determined if
the person shown was Saddam or one of his purported doubles.
U.S. analysts said both videotapes could have been made days ago.
They also said that Saddam might have fled during the electricity blackout that
cloaked Baghdad in darkness Thursday night as U.S. forces reached the
outskirts of town. The blackout persisted Friday through much of the city.
"The tape does not give us firm conclusions one way or the other," said White
House spokesman Ari Fleischer. "We don't know, and in the bigger scheme of
things, it doesn't matter."
52
APRIL 2003
Meanwhile, U.S. Marines and Army troops engaged in continuing combat with
pockets of Republican Guard divisions and other Iraqi soldiers.
Southeast of Baghdad, the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force fought the Nida
division of the Republican Guard in a pitched, two-hour tank battle on the road
from Kut.
Eight Marines were wounded when one of their 70-ton Abrams tanks was
destroyed and two other tanks were hit by rocket-propelled grenades. Two
Cobra attack helicopters were hit by ground fire and forced to make emergency
landings, but returned to their bases in southern Iraq, officers said.
Near Kut, Marine units accepted the surrender of 2,500 members of the
Republican Guard -- believed to be Iraq's best-trained forces.
A small force from the Army's 101st Airborne Division, after securing the south
central city of Najaf, moved to secure a bridge north of the city of Karbala and
prevent reinforcements from reaching Baghdad from the south.
Farther south in Samawah, 82nd Airborne Division troops pushed across the
Euphrates River, flushing Iraqi paramilitary units from the north side of the city
and moving closer to the division's goal of clearing out the coalition's main
supply route.
West of Baghdad, soldiers from the Army's 3rd Infantry Division consolidated
their control of the airport, which was seized overnight after a fierce, six-hour
battle. It no longer is known -- at least to U.S. forces -- as Saddam International
Airport.
"The airport has a new name now -- Baghdad International Airport -- and it is
the gateway to the future of Iraq," said U.S. Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks.
Officials said U.S. military forces suffered only light casualties during that
battle, which raged only 10 miles from the center of Baghdad. One 3rd Infantry
soldier was shot in the elbow and two others received light shrapnel wounds.
Nevertheless, "It's been a pretty scary day," said Maj. Frank McClary, 39, of
Andrews, S.C., an infantry operations officer.
Another U.S. soldier and Washington Post columnist Michael Kelly, who also
served as editor-at-large of The Atlantic Monthly magazine, died when their
Humvee flipped into a canal during the advance on the airport, officials said.
Throughout the day, U.S. troops continued to clear the terminal and other areas
in and around the airport, but the airfield remained securely under U.S. control,
said Army Col. John Peabody, engineer brigade commander for the 3rd Infantry.
The airport's defenders were mostly Iraqi conscripts, not the more experienced
Republican Guard, President Bush was told during his daily war briefing,
according to a senior administration official who requested anonymity.
Although the Iraqis attacked U.S. forces vigorously, the thrusts were
uncoordinated, amateurish and ineffective, said the official, who added: "It's
almost sad."
The capture of the airport probably prevents Iraq's leaders from fleeing by air.
The 101st Airborne Division may base helicopters at the airport to conduct
raids in the Baghdad area, officials said.
53
APRIL 2003
The nature of the resistance at the airport concerned top officials because it left
open the possibility that Saddam's best soldiers withdrew to Baghdad for a
campaign of urban warfare.
In coming days, the senior official said, U.S. forces also could find themselves
fighting remnants of the Republican Guard in Karbala, Kut and Tikrit, as well as
Baghdad.
Many thousands of residents of that city joined in a mass exodus Friday, fleeing
to the north and northeast as U.S. forces strengthened positions south and
west of a city still hammered by air strikes.
City residents reportedly filled cars, trucks and buses and created six-mile
traffic jams, particularly in the direction of Diala, a province northeast of the
capital.
Remaining defiant, al-Sahhaf, the information minister, said the airport would
be a "graveyard" for coalition troops.
"We will do something which I believe is very beautiful," he said, referring to an
attack he said would be accomplished "in an unconventional way."
Would that involve weapons of mass destruction?
"What I meant are commando and martyrdom operations in a very new,
creative way," al-Sahaff said.
It was not known if he was referring to car bombings like the one that claimed
three more U.S. soldiers Friday at a checkpoint about 11 miles southwest of the
Haditha Dam and about 80 miles east of the Syrian border.
The car stopped, and a woman who appeared to be pregnant emerged and
screamed in apparent distress, according to Brooks, the U.S. general. As U.S.
troops approached, the car blew up, killing the soldiers, the woman and the
driver. Four U.S. soldiers were killed in a similar attack at a checkpoint south of
Baghdad last week.
In other developments Friday:
--U.S. troops searching the Latifiyah industrial complex south of Baghdad found
thousands of boxes of white powder, nerve agent antidote and Arabic
documents. The discovery alarmed commanders, but subsequent examinations
suggested that the white powder was a conventional explosive, officials said.
A spokesman for a U.N. team that inspected the plant before the war said it
was part of "an enormous industrial complex" that produces a wide range of
substances.
--Fleischer said the president will travel Monday to Northern Ireland for
discussions with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, their second meeting since
the start of the war. It will focus on the war's progress, humanitarian and
reconstruction efforts and the role of the United Nations, he said.
--Two Marine pilots were killed in the crash of their AH-1W "Super Cobra"
helicopter in central Iraq about 12:19 a.m Saturday morning local time, the
defense department reported. It appeared the crash was not caused by hostile
fire. The cause was under investigation.
--A soldier from the Army's V Corps was killed by friendly fire after being
mistaken for an enemy soldier as he investigated a destroyed Iraqi tank.
54
APRIL 2003
--Some U.S. soldiers collapsed from heat exhaustion as the temperature rose to
about 90 degrees -- more than 100 degrees inside tanks and armored
personnel carriers.
Marines Warned About Suicide Attackers

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - U.S. tank commanders were warning their troops Monday
that Iraqis in civilian vehicles could ram their tanks in potential suicide attacks
and ordered them to destroy any suspicious vehicles heading toward them.
The warning came after some tank drivers reported seeing secondary
explosions when tanks fired at cars attempting to ram them. The secondary
explosions were believed to b bombs planted in the cars.
Just outside Baghdad, Marines in the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines were warned of
possible attacks by suicide bombers in ambulances. They were told that if an
ambulance came speeding toward them and refused to stop, to shoot it.
Marines also were warned about booby traps that may have been set by
Saddam's Fedayeen.
Since two suicide attacks and an open threat by the Iraqi regime that such
tactics would be "routine military policy," American troops have been wary of
approaching civilians.
On Monday, U.S. Marines, who came under heavy fire just outside Baghdad,
began firing two warning shots when approached by cars and pedestrians,
then, if they failed to respond, opening fire to kill them.
In one case, an old man with a cane who appeared disoriented was shot and
killed after he failed to respond to warning shots.
Two vehicles, a taxi and a van, also failed to heed warning shots and were
attacked with automatic weapons until all movement inside stopped. No
casualty figures were available for the shootings south of Baghdad.
The U.S. Army fears Republican Guard soldiers and paramilitary militants may
have discarded their uniforms and will try to carry out suicide attacks disguised
as civilians.
On Sunday, U.S. soldiers killed six Iraqi fighters wearing the head bands and
clothes of Islamic suicide attackers on the southern outskirts of Baghdad.
On Thursday, two Iraqi women blew themselves up in an attack on U.S. forces,
killing three American soldiers in western Iraq.
In the first suicide attack against American forces, a bomber posing as a taxi
driver pulled up to a roadblock north of Najaf, waved to American troops for
help, then blew up his vehicle up as they approached, killing four. Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein rewarded the attacker with a posthumous military
promotion, two medals and a financial reward for his family.
British Troops Move into Basra

55
APRIL 2003
Apr. 7--BASRA, Iraq--The Ba'ath Party was giving up its last stronghold in
southern Iraq, jubilant residents reported yesterday, as coalition forces seized
territory within the city for the first time.
After a two-week bombing and shelling campaign from the city's outskirts,
British troops moved into central Basra. The attacks have targeted the Ba'ath
party leadership, but reportedly killed dozens of civilians.
British officials said that they had not yet taken the city, but that they had
decided that it was safe enough to secure an area where some troops would
stay the night and plan their next move.
"Saddam is past!" said a 23-year-old student as he waved his hands at a soldier
from the Royal Scotch Dragoons Guards.
Less than a mile from the center of Basra, men celebrated. Some had just
finished looting buildings and warehouses.
"Two hours ago, the authorities dropped everything and went back to their
homes," said a teacher who identified himself as Mohammed. "The fire station,
the police station are empty. They've taken off their uniforms because they do
not wish to shoot people."
Most regular Iraqi army troops pulled out before dawn, Basra residents said,
leaving behind some units of Ba'ath Party militia and Saddam Fedayeen.
After two overnight raids determined that Ba'ath militias and other armed
groups were offering little resistance, troops from the Seventh Armored Brigade
approached from the west and elements of the Three Commando approached
from the southeast, in tanks and armored vehicles.
"It would be wrong to say that Basra's now safe or secure," said Simon Scott, a
British military spokesman at US Central Command in Doha. "Things are
looking good."
The troops did not encounter large groups of paramilitary fighters, military
officials said, but the raid was not without a price: Three British soldiers were
reported killed in action.
Other towns in the south, such as Umm Qasr, Al Zubayr, and Safwan, have
been declared secure for weeks. Skirmishes with Ba'ath are continuing,
however.
Based on the coalition's slow progress into Basra, it is expected that the
transformation will be gradual. While the coalition might take control of the
city, fighters loyal to the regime are likely to continue fighting, sniping, and
launching artillery attacks.
"There are still Ba'athists and Saddam Fedayeen out there," said a British
soldier manning a tank.
Yesterday morning, British soldiers destroyed an Iraqi army building at the edge
of central Basra. And after a firefight, they captured a university complex where
fedayeen members had set up a position, witnesses said. Flames roared
yesterday next to the Iraqi barracks, which had apparently been hit by mortars.
56
APRIL 2003
The road into the city is riddled with charred Iraqi tanks, scattered munitions,
and half-destroyed trucks. As British tanks rumbled toward the city center,
people flowed in the opposite direction, with looted booty in tow.
One man at a traffic circle near the university made a plea for coalition forces
to restore order to the city, which he said had been in chaos for two weeks.
Yesterday, with Ba'ath party rulers apparently gone and no fixed British troop
presence, Basra residents were taking advantage of near-anarchy to steal
everything they could.
"Please ask the coalition forces to guard the public buildings like the schools
and hospitals, because those places belong to the Iraqi people and should be
preserved," one man said.
Six men drove toward downtown crammed in the cab of a two-seat, six-wheel
Renault rig they said they had stolen from a government warehouse.
"Better that we take it than leave it to burn," the driver said, jumping from the
truck at a railroad crossing cratered from mortar fire. He smiled and gave the
ubiquitous thumbs up. "We'll use it to bring water."
A man named Karim was pushing an air compressor and an air-conditioning
unit still in its box. The label indicated the air conditioner had been ordered
from Saudi Arabia by the Ministry of Oil, Basra South Division.
"We never got our fair share of oil revenue," Karim said. "Now we can take our
share."
Then he drew a serious note.
"Watch out for the Saddam Fedayeen," he warned. "They are dressed as
civilians, and some of them are hiding in houses in my neighborhood."
Karim also said Egyptian and Syrian fighters had joined Ba'ath Party and
Fedayeen forces to defend the city.
Key developments in the war against Iraq

DOHA, Qatar (AP) -- Key developments in the war in Iraq:

-- The British infantry pushed into Iraq's second-largest city, Basra, in what
appeared to be a major move to secure the old section of city. Basra residents,
meanwhile, went on a looting rampage, hauling furniture, carpets and even a
grand piano from one hotel.
-- U.S. troops stormed into the heart of Baghdad on Monday, seizing Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein's New Presidential Palace on the Tigris River in a
brazen daylight raid. U.S. tanks also briefly surrounded the Information Ministry
and the landmark Al-Rashid Hotel.
-- Coming in on the western side of the Tigris, U.S. troops encountered
moderate Iraqi resistance. Iraqi troops fled along its banks and some jumped in
the water. An ammunition depot was on fire.
--Four or five U.S. Marines were killed when their vehicle was struck by an
artillery shell at a canal near the southern outskirts of Baghdad. The 3rd
Battalion, 4th Marines eventually crossed the bridge on foot into Baghdad.
57
APRIL 2003
-- British officials said Ali Hassan al-Majid, dubbed ``Chemical Ali'' by opponents
of the Iraqi regime for ordering a poison gas attack that killed thousands of
Kurds, apparently was killed by a weekend airstrike on his house in Basra.
-- According to U.S military field reports, a group of armored personnel carriers
in southern Baghdad was hit by rockets. Six U.S. soldiers were missing and
others were wounded.
-- Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf denied his city had
been stormed. ``There is no presence of American infidels in the city of
Baghdad, at all,'' he said.
-- U.S. troops at the Baghdad airport killed about 100 Iraqis in a seven-hour
firefight that stretched into early Monday. Inside a VIP building at the Baghdad
airport, troops found a lavish hideaway believed to have been used by Saddam
Hussein.
-- U.S. Marines pulled intelligence from a shattered Republican Guard
headquarters after a night of fiery bombardments, and they searched a
suspected terrorist training camp, finding the shell of a passenger jet believed
to be used for hijacking practice.
-- Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the
Republican Guard's main weapons systems are gone and the force probably
cannot assemble more than 1,000 men in any one place.
-- A statement on Iraqi state television in Saddam's name urged soldiers who
had been separated from regular units to join up with any unit they could find.
Half of U.S. Troop Deaths Said Accidental

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - Since the war began in Iraq, one American soldier has
been electrocuted, at least two others have drowned and nine more have died
in automobile wrecks.
All appear to be victims of accidents, which so far are responsible for about half
the fatalities among U.S. troops sent to the Middle East for the war.
"Just because you sign on the dotted line and serve with Uncle Sam doesn't
mean you're immune from accidents," said Patrick Garrett, an analyst with the
public policy group Global Security.org in Alexandria, Va.
Of the 108 coalition troops reported dead in Iraq as of midday Monday, 53 had
been killed in action, according to military reports. Of the remaining 55,
helicopter accidents had killed 28 and 14 others died in land accidents,
according to a casualty database maintained by The Associated Press.
Non-hostile deaths - defined as deaths that are not the direct result of fighting
the enemy or friendly fire - have been a part of warfare for centuries. The
Defense Department considers those killed by friendly fire combat casualties.
Duke University's Alex Roland believes the U.S. military is suffering too many
non-hostile deaths in Iraq, particularly given the high levels of training and
technology involved.
58
APRIL 2003
There will be accidental deaths "simply because of the pace of operations," said
Roland, a Marine who served in Vietnam. But "something's wrong here. We're
taking more than we should."
Another retired Marine sees the numbers differently.
"This coalition has been very successful in terms of reducing the loss of life
across the board," said Phil Anderson with the Center for Strategic &
International Studies in Washington.
A military spokeswoman said efforts to train servicemen and officers to reduce
risks are paying off.
"You train how to fight and accidents are going to happen," said Diane Perry
with the Defense Department. "We try our best to minimize them and learn
from these tragic errors."
While wrecks, accidental shootings and suicides remain problems, other causes
of non-hostile war deaths have been addressed. For example, modern medicine
has helped cut back on diseases that ran rampant among Civil War troops.
In World War II, Korea and Vietnam, the large majority of servicemen killed died
from enemy fire. Ninety-one percent of U.S. casualties in Korea came in
combat.
But in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, 235 of the 380 deaths, or 62 percent, were
considered non-hostile, according to Defense Department statistics. Some
experts attribute the large percentage of non-combat deaths to fighting a quick
ground war on uncertain terrain.
The Army and the Marines have suffered all but a few of the U.S. military's
fatalities in the latest war.
The Army said it has reduced accident rates since the late 1980s by teaching a
five-part "risk-management strategy."
Maj. Pete Janhunen kept a laminated card listing the five steps in his wallet
when he led a platoon a decade ago. Reviewing it helped take "some of the
instinct and emotions out of a decision," Janhunen said.
The challenge, military officials say, is keeping soldiers focused on driving and
handling weapons safely even as their lives are under threat from the enemy.
"Things happen so quickly," Perry said.
City Battles Will Boost Growing Civilian Toll

Apr. 7--UNITED NATIONS--Baghdad hospitals yesterday were flooded with

civilian casualties, stoking renewed fears that the toll of Iraqi civilian dead will
soar as US forces battle for control of the city of nearly 5 million.
Up to 100 casualties per hour were reported arriving in Baghdad's hospitals as
bombardment and fighting intensified yesterday, according to Roland Hugenin-
Benjamin, a spokesman for the International Committee for the Red Cross in
Baghdad.
59
APRIL 2003
Hundreds more civilian casualties -- both dead and wounded -- are likely in the
days to come, analysts say, given the deadly nature of urban combat and the
Iraqi leadership's strategy of mingling paramilitary forces with civilians.
While aerial bombardment appears to be responsible for those Iraqi civilian
deaths recorded so far, ground battles may ultimately claim far more. "It's
more likely that for civilians, the air war casualties have been overestimated
and the ground war casualties underestimated," said Sarah Sewall, a former
deputy assistant of defense now at Harvard University's Carr Center for Human
Rights.
The growing worry is the fate of the 5 million civilians inside Baghdad. Brigadier
General Vincent Brooks, deputy director of operations at the US Central
Command, warned that as the final act is played out, it will become more and
more difficult to distinguish friend from foe as the remnants of the regime seek
to use human shields to protect themselves from the coalition.
"We will continue to be selective and seek precision in all we do," Brooks said
yesterday in Qatar. "But it is clear at this point that the risk is increasing to the
civilian population because of decisions made by regime leaders."
Avoiding civilian casualties has been a key aim of Washington's campaign to
oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. As bombs have pounded targets in
Baghdad, the rapid US military thrust northward has kept many American
troops from the urban combat that claims civilian lives.
Yet in this war of instantaneous coverage, it is impossible to know with any
certainty how many Iraqi civilians have been killed or wounded and by whom.
On Friday, the government of Iraq said 1,252 civilians have been killed and
5,103 injured. But hostilities prevent any independent tally from being carried
out on the ground. Iraq Body Count, a Britain-based research group that draws
on media reports, yesterday put the number of deaths at a minimum of 876
and maximum of 1,049.
But the ever-escalating toll of civilian dead has prompted repeated warnings
from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and international humanitarian aid
groups. "The reports for Baghdad, Karbala, and Hillah are very worrying
indeed," Iain Simpson, a spokesman for the World Health Organization, said
Friday.
Since the war began, civilian casualties have been reported in nearly all of
Iraq's major cities, from the south to the north.
Analysts warn that a full accounting of civilian casualties is essential if the
United States hopes to have any sway in a post-war Iraq. "I don't want to
understate how loudly these civilian casualties will reverberate once it is all
over," said William M. Arkin, a military analyst and fellow at Johns Hopkins
School of Advanced International Studies. Accounts of civilian casualties by
reporters, aid workers, and peace activists cannot provide a full picture of the
civilian dead in Iraq. But a review of dozens of accounts written over the past
two weeks provides at least a glimpse into how civilians are dying in the US-led
war.
Several reports tell of how US forces appear to have accidentally killed civilians.
American soldiers are trained to respect the difference between civilians and
60
APRIL 2003
combatants, but in Iraq, soldiers have been disguised as surrendering civilians

and irregular troops have mixed with civilian crowds.
According to the Times of London, last Sunday US Marines were lured into a
deadly firefight by Iraqi soldiers in civilian garb using women as their scouts.
Sixteen Iraqi soldiers were killed in the battle and so were 12 civilians.
"One man's body was still in flames," wrote reporter Mark Franchetti. "Down the
road, a little girl, no older than 5 and dressed in a pretty orange and gold dress,
lay dead in a ditch next to the body of a man who may have been her father."
As a tearful US Marine Lieutenant Matt Martin told Franchetti: "It really gets to
me to see children being killed like this, but we had no choice."
The Orange County Register's Gordon Dillow, embedded with Alpha Company,
First Battalion, Fifth Marines, last week described how Marines shot a speeding
civilian truck that failed to halt, killing three men -- only to find bags of rice and
no weapons inside. "I feel so sorry for those guys," Lance Corporal Jeff Guthrie
said.
In and around Baghdad, growing numbers of civilian casualties are reported
from bombing raids, even of small targets. Newlywed Nada Abdallah, 16, was
spending her honeymoon in a farmhouse on Baghdad's outskirts, when a bomb
slammed into it last Monday. She and two others were killed.
"I heard the blast, turned around and saw the top floor crumble and debris
flying in a cloud of dust," 17-year-old Ahmad Ajmi, told members of the Iraqi
Peace Team, visiting scenes of civilian casualties in Baghdad. "Then I heard the
shrieks."
U.S. invaders find surprises in Karbala WAR IN IRAQ: Hints of a sinister

past
Source: International Herald Tribune
To the strangers who arrived by tank and helicopter and Humvee, this city
began to reveal itself Sunday, in hints of a sinister past in captured military
archives, in glimpses of people feeling liberated enough to help themselves to
chickens from a farm connected to Saddam Hussein's family, and in
conversation with residents asking Americans to limit their use of lethal force.
Led by the 2d Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, U.S. military forces
effectively occupied the entire city on Sunday morning, the start of the second
day of a lopsided battle against scattered paramilitary forces. One American
soldier died late Saturday from a gunshot wound, and seven others were
wounded. No count of Iraqi dead was available. By late Sunday, the percussion
of artillery strikes had eased. Across the city, people emerged from their
homes, and some shops reopened. Inside a bombed military headquarters,
soldiers found strips of film negatives showing images of people who appeared
to have met violent deaths. The images, shown to a reporter, appeared to
document injuries on the bodies of three different people. Scores of other
negatives kept in the same cabinet appeared to show ordinary work scenes.
Down the hall was a room with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of dossiers, with
61
APRIL 2003
photographs stapled to each one. Someone had made an unsuccessful effort to

burn the files before fleeing. In still another room was electronic equipment
that could be used for eavesdropping, explained Captain Jim Phillips, as he led
a reporter through the remains of the building. During the day, four Iraqis came
forward to tell soldiers that they had been held prisoner in a jail inside the
compound, Phillips said. Other prisoners apparently were held inside the
military headquarters. He pointed to a false wall, and rooms in the basement.
"One guy says they would cram 100 people in those rooms," Philips said. Along
rural roads east of town, a procession of people on foot, bicycle and donkey
cart all carried the same cargo: fistfuls of live, though not lively, chickens. A
few of the travelers even used the birds as white flags, waving them to
American troops. Chickens that expired in the heat it hit 41 degrees centigrade
(106 degrees Fahrenheit) on Sunday were discarded by the dozens along the
roads. The spectacle was mildly baffling, with more than a few Americans
assuming that transporting live chickens was some sort of custom on Sundays.
Not at all, one of the residents explained to military officials. "He told us that
one of Saddam Hussein's sons owns a chicken farm or something down the
road, and the people went in there and liberated themselves some chickens,"
said Colonel Joe Anderson, a commander of the brigade that led the invasion of
town. In a spectacle that was slightly more familiar because it was staged just a
few days ago in the city of An Najaf, American troops all but demolished a
prominent statue of President Hussein. They cut the legs off the statue and tied
ropes to it, and locals pulled it down. In An Najaf, the soldiers had tied
demolition explosives to a similar statue, then stepped aside to permit a former
colonel in the Iraqi Army to detonate the bombs. The greeting in the city for the
troops was often warm, but once again included demands that the Americans
restart the electrical plants and make sure that water can again flow. A group of
residents petitioned for a meeting with military commanders to discuss law and
order in the city.
10,000 Cheer, `Saddam Is No More!'

Apr. 7--KARBALA, Iraq--About 10,000 people gathered in the public square

Sunday and pulled down a 20-foot-high bronze statue of Saddam Hussein, a
move that symbolized for many the end of a tyrannical regime.
The event also marked the end of a battle that raged for five days and
culminated with armored battalions firing the last shots Sunday afternoon. The
battalions destroyed five tanks and a dozen pieces of Iraqi artillery on the
outskirts of the city. Dozens of prisoners were taken.
In Karbala, a Shiite Muslim city about 40 miles southwest of Baghdad, the Army
routed several hundred Fedayeen Saddam fighters with air strikes, artillery,
armor and infantry fire. After pounding Karbala on Saturday, the 2nd Brigade of
the 101st Airborne Division massed six companies Sunday morning to sweep
through a final stronghold.
62
APRIL 2003
Many who assembled in the city square chanted "Saddam is no more!" and
"Saddam is dead!" as they pulled on a rope, yanking the Hussein statue from
its perch. Once the statue tumbled, many in the crowd jumped up and down,
struck their chests and wept.
The statue was erected shortly after Hussein came to power decades ago,
according to Karbala residents, and seeing it fall was a moment many would
never forget.
"We have been living in fear for so many years, and we have been taught in the
schools that Saddam would never die," said Hassan Muhammad, 20, as he
helped pull on the rope. "This is a historic day, and we will celebrate this day
always."
Muhammad, a devout Muslim, said that a few days before U.S. tanks rolled into
Karbala, Hussein's secret police killed 20 Muslims for holding a religious
celebration in public. The event was to mark the death of Imam Hussein, the
grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.
"They told us we could hold a ceremony, then when we celebrated, Saddam's
police came, and they took away 20 people," Muhammad said.
"The bodies came back to us with bullet holes. And then the police left the city."
Commanders of the armored battalion spent the day guiding the cleanup of the
last vestiges of an Iraqi war machine, destroying tanks and large pieces of
artillery.
During the rally, U.S. tanks were parked about 100 feet away. Many members
of the tank crews thrust their fists in the air as Karbala residents toppled the
statue.
"This is one of the most exciting days of this war for me," said Sgt. Mario
Hodge, standing next to an M1 tank.
"Seeing the Iraqi people do this helps me understand just how much they were
oppressed," said Hodge, 32.
The war's toll on Karbala has been severe. Its schools are closed, and blocks of
its commercial district are bombed out. Its primary roads look like Swiss
cheese, with 20-foot-wide craters every few hundred yards.
The stores that are not damaged do not have much to sell; merchants stashed
goods to keep them from being looted.
There are hundreds of acres on the outskirts of town that are mined, and
nobody knows when those areas, often used for grazing sheep and goats, will
be cleared.
There has been no electricity or running water for 10 days, and many say food
is in short supply. Children often beg U.S. soldiers for food and water.
"I don't care about all the problems here," said Ahmed Saheb, 35. "I remember
being ordered to stand . . . here to celebrate Saddam coming to Karbala in
1997. I didn't want to do it, but it was either celebrate or be put in jail."
.S. Troops Move About Baghdad At Will

63
APRIL 2003
WASHINGTON (AP) - American troops pressed the point again Monday with
raids into Iraq's capital: They can move in and out of Baghdad at will.
For the third time in as many days, an Army column roared into the heart of the
Iraqi capital, this time storming Saddam Hussein's newest palace and briefly
surrounding the Information Ministry and the Al-Rashid, probably the city's best
known hotel. And this time, Marines joined in the incursion, coming at the city
in a strike to the east of the Army force.
The show of massive force is part of a plan to eliminate resistance from
Saddam's forces piece by piece, in hopes of avoiding an all-out battle for
Baghdad, home to some 5 million Iraqis.
At the Pentagon, senior defense officials said the assault was meant to
demonstrate that invading troops can go where they want, when they want.
They said it was not an effort to occupy the city, or even a piece of it. Rather, it
is a message to Iraqi forces that their resistance is futile, one official said. To
the population, it can serve to counterbalance regime propaganda, in which
officials continued to insist Monday morning that they were repelling invading
forces.
One difference in the latest thrust into the capital, following forays Saturday
and Sunday, is that Americans might stay a bit longer, one official said, adding
it might be a matter of hours, not days. Officials stressed that the commander
on the ground had the ability and mobility to decide what he will do next -
move around the area, or move along.
"I think ... the military commanders will slowly but surely take on various parts
of the city, go in and clean it out and make it safe for the Iraqi civilians that
want to live there," Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, had said hours before Monday's assault.
On Sunday, troops began flying into the captured international airport outside
Baghdad, destroyed a Republican Guard headquarters and began to deploy a
force of Iraqi exiles and dissidents who are to make up the core of a new
national army.
U.S. soldiers and Marines surrounded Baghdad to try to prevent regime leaders
from getting out and Iraqi troops reinforcements from getting in, Pace said in a
round of television interviews Sunday. He acknowledged it wasn't "an
impenetrable cordon" around the city.
"It is certainly true that we have huge amounts of combat power around the
city right now, and that we have over a thousand 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."
Asked what tactic commanders planned in the coming battle to unseat
Saddam, he said it was essentially more of the same but in a smaller space.
Air power will shape the battlefield and destroy Iraqi forces and equipment;
ground troops will force Iraqi fighters to move, then air strikes will attack again,
Pace said.
"They feed on each other," he said. "It is similar tactics, air and ground
coordination, but in a much more confined space."
64
APRIL 2003
He said the airlift of several hundred soldiers from the opposition Iraqi National
Congress brought people who could help fight the regime.
INC officials said the force also could help distribute humanitarian aid, serve as
a bridge between coalition troops and local populations and help root out
paramilitaries who have been fighting U.S.-led forces and terrorizing civilians.
U.S. Central Command reported that 2,000 to 3,000 Iraqi fighters were killed in
the first thrust - a sweep Saturday by the 3rd Infantry Division through the
city's southwestern industrial section.
So far, Pace said, coalition forces have destroyed two Republican Guard
divisions that were guarding approaches to the capital and half of the tanks,
artillery and armored personnel carriers of the country's other four divisions.
Divisions that numbered between 6,000 and 12,000 men each, now probably
can put together only about 1,000 people in any one location at any time, he
said.
"But that does not mean they're finished," he said. "There's still fight left in
them, potentially, and there's still a potential for a more difficult combat before
this is finished."
Contacts continue with Iraqi commanders to try to get them to surrender,
including "letters directly from" U.S. war commander Gen. Tommy Franks, Pace
said. "But as of yet, we have not had a senior official in these divisions and
corps surrender."
Official have said American forces might stop short of storming Baghdad and
instead isolate it while the makings of a new national government are put in
place. They have described the plan as neither an all-out fight for the city, as
many have predicted, nor a conventional siege.
Over time, the thinking goes, Saddam and his inner circle would completely
lose their ability to communicate with their remaining military forces, and
would be unable to control anything except their own defenses.
Meanwhile leafleting and broadcasts to Iraqi troops and civilians would keep
sending the message that the invading force - not Saddam - is in control,
further weakening support for the regime.
Although the main coalition force remains outside the city, the regime is still
vulnerable to special operations troops inside the capital who are hunting for
leadership figures, pointing out bombing targets and possibly persuading Iraqi
soldiers not to fight.
U.S. forces storm into Baghdad, British advance in Basra; Blair and
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- U.S. forces thundered deep into Baghdad on Monday,
the third straight day that American troops entered the city. In the south, British
troops thrust to the center of Basra, ``delivering liberation'' to Iraq's second
largest city, a British commander said.
65
APRIL 2003
The coalition advance on both fronts ``reinforces the reality that the regime is
not in control of all of the major cities,'' said Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, a
spokesman for U.S. Central Command in Qatar.
With machine gun fire providing cover, U.S. Marines grabbed planks, poles and
twisted rails as they surged into Baghdad on Monday across a shattered bridge
over a Tigris River tributary.
The assault -- which marked the first entry by U.S. Marines into the Iraqi capital
-- opened the way for thousands of Marines to move in from the southeast
while the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division marched in from the southwest.
American forces also stormed a presidential palace and briefly placed tanks
outside the Information Ministry, a message to the remnants of President
Saddam Hussein's regime that coalition forces could enter the Iraqi capital at
will.
Iraqi officials remained defiant.
``Be assured Baghdad is safe, secure and great,'' Information Minister
Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf said at a dust-blown news conference on the roof
of the Palestine Hotel. ``There is no presence of American infidels in the city of
Baghdad, at all.''
Iraqi television and radio broadcast patriotic songs and slogans as well as
footage of Saddam meeting with his son Qusai and top officials. The footage
was not accompanied by sound.
Three adjoining houses in Baghdad's upscale al-Mansour area were destroyed
Monday afternoon in what neighbors said was an allied missile attack. Two
bodies have been recovered, but the toll may be as high as 14, rescue workers
said.
Casualties were arriving by the dozens at al-Kindi hospital in Baghdad's
working-class district of al-Nahda. Most of the injured suffered from gun shot
wounds, burns and shrapnel. A hospital official said at least 75 wounded
civilians had been brought there during the day.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said Monday that overwhelmed
hospitals in Baghdad are running out of drugs and anesthetics and are short of
water and electricity.
``There is no doubt really that the resources and staff of these places are really
stretched to the limit,'' said Florian Westphal, an ICRC spokesman.
In several other Arab countries, people expressed dismay and disbelief over
television images of U.S. tanks in the heart of Baghdad, speaking to reporters
with The Associated Press. Some dismissed the news as American propaganda
while others volunteered to fight for Iraq.
U.S. attacks on the northwest side of Baghdad have prevented reinforcement of
Iraqi fighters in the city, Brooks said at a Central Command briefing Monday.
``The regime does still have some capability,'' he said. ``What we're not seeing
is an overarching structure of control.''
In the south, British ``Desert Rats'' went into Basra with more than three dozen
tanks and armored cars but found resistance weaker than expected. They
fought into the core, where they were met by hundreds of cheering citizens. At
least three British soldiers were killed.
66
APRIL 2003
Air Marshal Brian Burridge, commander of British forces in the Gulf, called the
advance ``historic.''
`Àfter decades under the heel of Saddam's brutal regime, U.K. forces are in
the process of delivering liberation to the people of Basra,'' Burridge said.
British officials also said Monday they found the body of Ali Hassan al-Majid, the
Iraqi general known as ``Chemical Ali'' for ordering a poison gas attack that
killed thousands of Kurds in 1988. Officials said al-Majid apparently was killed
Saturday in a coalition airstrike on his villa in Basra.
Al-Sahhaf, Iraq's information minister, denied that al-Majid had been killed,
according to Al-Jazeera television, which did not show footage of the minister.
Two Polish reporters -- Marcin Firlej, 27, with the private TVN24 news channel,
and 31-year-old Jacek Kaczmarek, with Polish state radio -- were abducted by
armed Iraqis at a checkpoint near Hillah, 130 kilometers (80 miles) south of
Baghdad on Monday afternoon, their editors said.
U.S. infantry entered Baghdad early Monday with more than 70 tanks and 60
Bradley fighting vehicles. A few hours later, U.S. Marines entered from the east
after incurring heavy fire on the city's outskirts.
By Monday afternoon, Marine tanks and amphibious assault vehicles stood in
miles-long (kilometers-long) lines at two bridges, waiting to float into Baghdad
on heavy military rafts or cross on makeshift bridges.
On another road into Baghdad, Marines drove by a swarm of Iraqis going in the
other direction, each one pushing a shiny new red motorcycle. Others pushed
orange shopping carts filled with new black-and-yellow generators or drove
new minibuses loaded with looted goods.
Two U.S. Marines were killed and two wounded when their armored troop carrier
was hit by an artillery shell. Six American soldiers were reported missing and
many were wounded after rockets hit U.S. armored personnel carriers.
U.S. war commander Gen. Tommy Franks visited coalition troops Monday in
three locations inside Iraq, said Capt. Frank Thorp, a Central Command
spokesman. He gave no details.
The question of how Iraq will be rebuilt once hostilities cease has divided
advisers to President George W. Bush, as well as the United States and Britain.
Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were to meet in Belfast, Northern
Ireland, Monday to discuss reconstruction and the progress of the war. Blair is
said to want deeper U.N. involvement in postwar Iraq than does Bush, who
seeks a transitional governing authority consisting of Iraqi exiles and people
living in the country now.
Special Forces, Intelligence Units Target Hussein Cronies

Apr. 5--WASHINGTON--Initial forays by U.S. forces into central Baghdad are

expected to deploy Special Forces and intelligence units to search for Iraqi
67
APRIL 2003
leader Saddam Hussein, his sons and a small clutch of loyalists who help
Hussein sustain his totalitarian hold on power.
Hussein remains the primary target, and a televised speech and public
appearance on Friday, reportedly by Hussein, seemed to dampen speculation
that he was killed or injured in the missile strike on the war's first day.
But Iraq experts say Hussein rules through a group of about a half-dozen
trusted subordinates, some of them family members, others longtime and
exceedingly loyal players in his Baath Party and military establishment.
To remove Hussein's regime from power, analysts say, these others--known as
the murafiqin, or "companions"--must be killed or captured.
"It's group solidarity, common bloodlines and complicity in knowledge of the
regime," said Michael Eisenstadt, an Iraq expert at the Washington Institute for
Near East Policy.
Pressure on Hussein and his aides has increased steadily over the past 48
hours. With U.S. Army forces in control of the international airport to the
southwest of Baghdad and Marines on the southeastern outskirts of the capital,
the U.S.-led coalition is positioning itself to begin exerting control over the city.
U.S. military leaders have suggested that they will not try to attack Baghdad
with a massive assault. Rather, they are expected to consolidate their forces at
first; take control of the roads, water, and electrical and communications grids,
and begin what may be an extended period of raids into the city to neutralize
Hussein's forces and his ability to govern.
"We certainly anticipate that there are forces that are inside of Baghdad that
will seek to fight us at the time we choose to enter Baghdad," said Gen. Vincent
Brooks at U.S. Central Command headquarters in Qatar. "We'll develop
intelligence. We'll develop our target set. And we'll be very, very deliberate
about the work that we do. There will be absolutely no randomness associated
with the way we make our approach."
U.S. commanders have talked often of "decapitating" Hussein's regime, but
removing Iraq's official officeholders will not get that job done. The regime is in
a sense a small government operating within a larger one, experts say, with
trusted Hussein family members from his native area of Tikrit placed carefully
to ensure Hussein can wield authority.
"These people in the public positions of government don't matter," said Phebe
Marr, author of "The Modern History of Iraq." "That's what you have to
understand. This is a clan business. They have laced family throughout the
government, and they protect him."
Over the last decade, each of the so-called companions has risen into a job
designed to buttress Hussein's power.
U.S. intelligence officials believe that some of the regime's leaders were inside
a complex struck by cruise missiles and U.S. bombs on March 20. Hussein was
the intended target, though it is unclear whether he was injured or killed.
Hussein's sons, Qusai and Udai, may also have been in the complex, and their
whereabouts are unknown.
Iraq analysts say Qusai is deputy commander-in-chief of the Iraqi armed forces
and is in charge of the feared Republican Guard.
68
APRIL 2003
Although U.S. military officials say two of the guard's six, 8,000-soldier divisions
have now been rendered inoperative, and the others have been heavily
attacked, Qusai also commands the Special Republican Guard within Baghdad.
That group is believed to be particularly loyal to Hussein, and its estimated
15,000 to 25,000 troops apparently have yet to be put into combat.
Qusai also directs the Special Security Organization, a presidential police force
of an estimated 2,000 men who U.S. commanders expect will fill out the Iraqi
troops defending Baghdad.
Udai, Hussein's eldest son, is known less for his state service and more for the
random murders he has reportedly committed and the lucrative cigarette- and
oil-smuggling network he has operated to avoid United Nations economic
sanctions.
Udai runs a major daily newspaper called Babel and he was chairman of Iraq's
Olympic Committee, although he reportedly used that post to torture people.
U.S. troops recently discovered what they believe is a torture chamber in the
committee's offices.
Next in the chain of command is Abid Hamid Mahmud, a cousin who serves as
Hussein's personal secretary. He oversees presidential security and decides
who gets to see Hussein. By that authority alone, analysts say, he is one of
Iraq's most powerful men.
Izzat Ibrahim is also a mysterious insider. His daughter is married to Udai, and
he has a long history as a Hussein supporter. Deputy chairman of Iraq's
Revolutionary Command Council, he is considered Hussein's second in
command. In 1999, an attempt was made to try Ibrahim on war crimes charges
during a visit to Austria, but the attempt failed.
Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, another member of the inner circle,
has become the regime's public face during the war. A longtime Baath Party
loyalist, he is commander of the People's Army, a militia force that could fight if
U.S. forces enter Baghdad. After a suicide car attack March 30 killed four U.S.
soldiers, it was Ramadan who held a news conference and warned of more
"martyrs" to come.
Tariq Aziz, Iraq's deputy prime minister, may be the face among Hussein
loyalists most familiar to Westerners. During the 1991 war, Aziz served as Iraq's
foreign minister and was seen often on television arguing against that war.
Today he is the only Christian in the regime's top ranks.
A final inner-circle member may be the most sought after, if only because of
the damage he could do to U.S. troops inside Iraq. Ali Hassan Majid, better
known as "Chemical Ali," is an old-line Baath Party member, former defense
and interior minister and now commander of all forces in southern Iraq.
Majid, analysts say, was in charge of chemical-weapons attacks on Kurdish
villages in 1988. Majid is Hussein's cousin, and before the war he maintained a
palace outside the southern city of Basra.
Once U.S. troops encircle Baghdad, one major challenge will be locating these
figures. U.S. military and intelligence agencies are expected to use information
from defectors, cooperating Iraqi military officers and technical evidence --
69
APRIL 2003
photographs from drones and intercepted messages and phone calls -- to try to
locate Hussein's inner circle.
They will then use precision weapons or ground forces to conduct raids into the
parts of Baghdad where those leaders are located, attack them and retreat,
according to military officials.
Failing to find Hussein and his top aides, analysts say, could pose significant
problems for U.S. troops in the short term, although some experts say their
notoriety makes that unlikely.
"They'll be found if they go underground," said Khidhir Hamza, a top official in
Iraq's nuclear weapons program who defected to the U.S.
"These guys will be found wherever they go, although they'll probably already
be getting out through Syria. They are six, seven moves ahead when it comes
to their own interests."
Another significant challenge, though, may be sorting those who have served
just under this top level of Hussein's government. After 23 years and three
wars, discontent within the ranks of Hussein's party and government has been
simmering, and the removal of Hussein and his cronies alone might not ensure
stability.
"There are a lot of people who hate these guys and who will say, `Look what
you've brought down on our heads,'" said Eisenstadt. "I don't think it's the top
guys who will lead an insurgency. I think it's the level just below the top, and
we really don't know their names
U.S. Brigade Attacks in Heart of Baghdad, Capturing Key Palaces

Apr. 7--CAMP SAYLIYAH, Qatar--A major US force, including more than 100
armored vehicles, entered the heart of Baghdad today and seized key facilities.
Supported by low-flying A-10 Warthogs and pilotless drones, the Second
Brigade of the Third Infantry Division rumbled into the city near dawn and
secured two presidential palaces, including Saddam Hussein's most modern
facility, according to Reuters.
"We're attacking right down in the center of the city. The other day was just an
incursion," Major Michael Birmingham of the US Third Infantry said, referring to
a 25-mile raid Saturday that reportedly killed 2,000 Iraqis. "This is for real."
A US spokesman confirmed today's attack but would provide no details.
The battle came a day after US forces secured positions around the capital. US
officials, still warning that difficult fighting lies ahead in Baghdad, confidently
described the capital as nearly encircled. As the first transport plane landed at
the US-controlled international airport outside Baghdad, thousands of Baghdad
residents fled to the north. In the south, coalition troops seized territory in
Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, and pushed into the center of the Shi'ite holy
city of Karbala.
The US forces encountered several setbacks, however. Kurdish officials said a
"friendly fire" strike by US warplanes killed 18 of their fighters in the north.
70
APRIL 2003
Knight Ridder reported last night that US soldiers evacuated a captured Iraqi
military compound southeast of Baghdad yesterday after tests confirmed
evidence of sarin nerve gas. In addition to the soldiers sent for
decontamination, a Knight Ridder reporter, a CNN cameraman, and two Iraqi
prisoners of war also were hosed down with water and bleach.
In today's dawn attack, Bradley fighting vehicles and tanks encountered
moderate resistance, including small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades.
As the column rumbled forward, Iraqi soldiers fled along the river, some
jumping in the water.
The operation "has been highly successful so far. What we are trying to gauge
is what his (Saddam Hussein's) response is," said Lieutenant Colonel Pete Bayer
of the Third Infantry Division.
He said there were no reports of any casualties so far among US forces. He
added that US forces were now probing the northwest districts of the Iraqi
capital.
The surprise incursion followed a day of firefights around the capital. Just 2
miles outside Baghdad, the Third Infantry Division was ambushed in a scene
witnessed by Globe reporter Brian MacQuarrie. Snipers also fired on a unit near
Baghdad that is accompanied by Globe reporter Scott Bernard Nelson. By the
day's end, US soldiers had seized Highway 1 and nearly completed the cordon
around Baghdad. One US engineer was killed and several soldiers were
wounded in the advance.
An Iraqi official, reading a statement purported to be from Saddam Hussein,
called on soldiers to join any available unit to defend against the Americans.
More details were revealed about the armored column incursion Saturday
through Baghdad, the first time coalition troops had had entered the city in
force. US Brigadier General Vincent E. Brooks said yesterday that about 2,000
Iraqi defenders were killed in that incursion.
In northern Iraq, in what allied Kurdish guerrillas called one of the deadliest
friendly fire episodes of the war, US warplanes struck a convoy carrying Kurdish
fighters and American special forces toward the front. A senior Kurdish official
said at least 18 people were killed and more than 45 wounded, including
several Kurdish commanders and the brother and son of Massoud Barzani, head
of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which runs the western half of the Kurdish
autonomous zone.
Nearly a dozen charred and mangled vehicles littered the road at the site,
between the village of Pier Daood and the strategic crossroads town of
Dibegah.
Hoshyar Zebari, the KDP's senior adviser on foreign affairs, said the "tragic"
bombing indicated how combat along the northern front had begun to intensify,
as Kurdish fighters backed by US troops and warplanes have begun engaging
retreating Iraqi forces.
"There is more tension as this front becomes more active in order to put more
pressure on the Iraqi side," Zebari said.
71
APRIL 2003
The bombing cast a shadow over the capture yesterday of the town of Ain Sifni,
about 20 miles north of Mosul, by US special forces and more than 1,000
Kurdish militiamen.
In the south, after two successful raids into Basra's outskirts last night, British
forces entered the city in their strongest push yet, said Squadron Leader Simon
Scott, a military spokesman. Tanks and armored vehicles rolled into the city
from the southeast and the west and by last night had secured territory for the
first time.
The move into Basra held nearly as much symbolic importance as the US foray
into Baghdad. Coalition leaders have long hoped that Basra would be the first
domino to fall, launching a Shi'ite uprising against the minority Sunni
government.
Yesterday, troops were passing out leaflets stamped with the British flag,
asking the population not to carry guns on the street and to comply with
coalition forces. The leaflets promised, "When our work is done, we will leave."
British troops also allowed residents to loot Ba'ath Party headquarters in what
Scott called "an indication of the influence of the regime weakening."
The British were searching for evidence on the fate of Ali Hassan Al Majeed, a
cousin of Saddam Hussein who is known as "Chemical Ali" for his role in using
chemical weapons against Kurds in northern Iraq. Coalition aircraft bombed his
home Saturday and his bodyguard's remains were positively identified, officials
said.
Troops from the 101st Airborne Division, dripping with sweat in 90-degree
weather, led a push into the center of Karbala, where heavy fighting Saturday
and yesterday morning against paramilitary groups had mostly subsided by
afternoon. US troops tore down a Hussein statue there with the help of local
residents, the Associated Press reported.
US forces stepped up leafletting and radio broadcasts in Baghdad, said Brooks,
the brigadier general. Civilians were told to stay away from the airport, where
the United States now has several thousand troops, and to comply with
instructions at checkpoints.
On Baghdad's southeastern outskirts, US Marines continued to battle the Nida
Division of the Iraqi Republican Guard after cutting through its lines the day
before, according to Major Rumi Nielson-Greene, a Central Command
spokeswoman. Several other Guard divisions remained intact north of Baghdad,
but have not been seen moving south in large numbers, she said.
In Salman Pak, a town close to Baghdad's southeastern edge, Marine tanks
from the Third Battalion, Seventh Marines attacked a Republican Guard
headquarters and destroyed what Brooks said was a training camp for "terror
tactics."
US officials said yesterday that three US troops were killed and five wounded in
a "possible friendly fire incident" when an F-15E Strike Eagle accidentally fired
on them. They were still investigating the apparent friendly-fire attack at 4:15
this morning in northern Iraq, about 30 miles southeast of Mosul, near Kalak.
72
APRIL 2003
At Deserted Iraqi Base, Questions Linger

Apr. 7--NEAR MOSUL, Iraq--The deserted Iraqi base bore all the signs of an
overwhelming assault, crushing defeat, and sudden flight.
The Kurdish fighters and US special forces who entered the base yesterday
found pillows, blankets, and clothing scattered across the primitive barracks
and training grounds. Boxes of unused ammunition and chemical weapons gear
spilled out of storerooms.
Everywhere, documents blew in the wind, bearing the names of the Iraqi
soldiers who fought, were defeated, and retreated toward the outskirts of the
major northern city of Mosul, only 9 miles to the west.
Somewhere, among the burnt-out Iraqi vehicles and hastily abandoned
fortifications, Najis Mohamed Yunis Mohamed's fate was decided.
Mohamed, 26, was not supposed to be here, at the center of the devastation
US airstrikes have wrought on Saddam Hussein's army in northern Iraq. His
draft card, found at the base, says that Mohamed was conscripted in 1995 for
what should have been three years of service.
It is unclear why he stayed in the army for five extra years. Perhaps other jobs
are scarce in Tell Afar, his provincial hometown 40 miles west of Mosul. Perhaps
an Iraqi soldier's pay of $5 a month was the best salary available.
Iraqi deserters have said that soldiers are forced to extend their hitches during
wartime. And it has always been wartime in Hussein's Iraq.
Whatever the reason, Mohamed was still stationed at his post on the Iraqi front
lines 20 miles west of Mosul four days ago, when the US jets attacked. What
happened next is unclear.
The best thing Mohamed could have done was run. If he did, he may still be out
there.
Or maybe Mohamed was huddling yesterday along the new Iraqi lines close to
Mosul, where large explosions rumbled all day from airstrikes directed by US
Special Forces.
If he stayed and fought, Mohamed could have been one of the Iraqi soldiers
killed in a clash near the village of Kanilan. The Iraqis had a 106mm cannon
and a 14.5mm machine gun mounted on trucks. The Kurds and Americans had
jets. The incinerated remnants of the trucks surrounded by charred munitions
bore grim witness to who won that battle.
Someone with a morbid sense of humor had affixed a bumper sticker
advertising a Florida shooting range on one of the trucks. Kurdish fighters said
that as many as 200 Iraqis died there, but the retreating troops took the bodies
with them.
The remains of Mohamed's base suggested that the Iraqi soldiers lived in
primitive conditions. To comfort them, they had plenty of images of Hussein,
which the Kurdish fighters, whose people suffered under the Ba'ath regime,
tore up and trampled with mirthless abandon.
73
APRIL 2003
The base also had a chemical warfare room, with boxes of gas masks and
rubber boots and vials marked in Arabic: "skin disinfectant," "eye disinfectant,"
and "reviving antidote."
Unmarked glass ampules of clear liquid at first drew little interest from Kurdish
fighters, who threw them against piles of unused mortar rounds and rocket-
propelled grenades and watched them shatter, their mysterious liquid causing
a slightly sweet vapor to waft up.
A US special forces commando was more circumspect. He asked a reporter to
hand him one of the ampules, which he promptly stuck in his shirt pocket.
The American requested that the name and exact location of the base remain
confidential, to avoid endangering those who had occupied it. "This place is not
secure," said the commando, who also asked that his name not be used. "The
Iraqis shell everything here every day."
Back at the chemical warfare room, the Kurdish fighters were reconsidering
their attitude toward possible chemical attacks.
"We think the Iraqis have vaccinated themselves against chemical weapons
and may use them if they are cornered," said Yusuf Homoandi. "We have no
defenses against this at all."
Zedan Nuri, another Kurdish fighter, was trying on a mask he had found. Then
he realized it was missing a filter. He decided to keep it anyway, "as a
souvenir."
U.S. forces storm into Baghdad, seize Saddam's New Presidential

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- U.S. forces thundered into the heart of Baghdad on
Monday, storming a presidential palace and briefly placing tanks outside the
Information Ministry, a message to President Saddam Hussein's faltering
regime that coalition forces could enter the Iraqi capital at will.
U.S. tanks briefly surrounded Al-Rashid Hotel, where Iraqi snipers fired on U.S.
soldiers. U.S. tanks returned fire with their main guns and .50-caliber machine
guns.
Late Monday, the city continued to be rocked by explosions from areas on the
west bank of the Tigris. Most of the city was without power or water and city
streets were nearly deserted after nightfall.
U.S. Army Col. David Perkins, a brigade commander, estimated between 600
and 1,000 Iraqi fighters had been killed in fighting Monday.
``We can basically go wherever we want, whenever we want, even if Saddam is
still alive. He has become irrelevant,'' Perkins said.
Tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and hundreds of soldiers with Army's 3rd
Infantry Division made the lighting thrust in the city, with tank-killing A-10
planes and pilotless drones flying overhead.
At the city's southern edge, Iraqi fighters battled Marines and Army troops in
bloody fighting.
74
APRIL 2003
Two Marines were killed and two wounded when their armored troop carrier was
hit by an artillery shell at a bridge spanning a canal. The Marines advanced into
the capital by foot after the Iraqis blew apart the bridge.
Also, a group of U.S. armored personnel carriers in southern Baghdad was hit
by rockets, according to field reports. Six American soldiers were reported
missing and a large number were wounded.
There was no estimate of Iraqi casualties from the raids, but at Baghdad's
international airport, southwest of the city's center, more than 110 Iraqis in
military uniform were killed in fighting that extended overnight into Monday.
An official at the al-Kindi hospital said at least 75 wounded civilians had been
brought in since morning, most suffering from gunshot wounds, burns and
shrapnel.
Three adjoining houses at the upscale al-Mansour district were destroyed
Monday afternoon in what neighbors said was an allied missile attack. All that
was left of the houses was a heap of concrete, mangled iron rods, ruined
furniture and clothes.
The attack left a crater yards deep and the force of the blast broke windows
and doors as far as 274 meters (300 yards) away from the site. Three orange
trees that grew on the sidewalk outside the houses were uprooted.
U.S. troops with the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines approaching the city from the
southeast passed a group of Iraqis, each one pushing a shiny new red
motorcycle. Others pushed shopping carts filled with brand-new electric
generators. Some drove new minibuses filled other looted goods and many
waved as the Marines passed.
Navy Lt. Mark Kitchens, a U.S. Central Command spokesman, said the Baghdad
raid Monday was a ``different kind of mission'' than Saturday's drive through
the city.
`Ìt proceeded on a much slower pace and did a lot more activity than we did in
our previous entry,'' he said.
Asked if troops might stay in Baghdad, `Ì think that would be a possibility.''
In the heart of Baghdad, U.S. soldiers who reached the gold-and-blue-domed
New Presidential Palace used the toilets, rifled through documents in the
bombed-out compound, and looted ashtrays, pillows, gold-painted Arab
glassware and other items. The Americans also blew up a statue of Saddam on
horseback in the center of the city.
`Ì do believe this city is freakin' ours,'' boasted Capt. Chris Carter.
The troops secured the main roads in the area, leaving soldiers at every
intersection. They made forays to the Al-Rashid and to the bombed-out
Information Ministry, but unlike the palace, they did not stay to occupy them.
Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf declared, `Ì reassure you
Baghdad is safe.''
``They are beginning to commit suicide at the walls of Baghdad,'' al-Sahhaf
told reporters in a hastily called news conference outside the Palestine Hotel,
where many foreign journalists are staying. ``There is no presence of the
American columns in the city of Baghdad, none at all.''
75
APRIL 2003
Iraq radio broadcast a religious sermon exhorting Iraqis to fight and denouncing
the United States and Britain. Iraqi TV broadcast patriotic songs, footage of
Iraqis chanting slogans in support of Saddam and archival material of the Iraqi
leader firing a gun and greeting crowds.
As U.S. Army columns moved northeast to the newest and main presidential
palace on the river, some Iraqis -- some nearly naked -- were seen fleeing along
the river banks. Some jumped into the water. Witnesses said some Iraqi
soldiers at a camp swam to the west bank of the river to flee advancing U.S.
soldiers. An ammunition depot across the river was on fire.
U.S. troops set up a prisoner of war collection point in the palace compound. As
Iraqis were captured in street fighting outside, they were brought to the palace
for processing before being sent behind U.S. lines. At one point, a group of nine
Iraqis surrendered after hearing on loudspeakers that if they did so they would
live.
U.S. troops had to pass through a 400-yard (meter)-long minefield to approach
the area. About 200 anti-tank mines that had been scattered on the road were
pushed aside by U.S. armor fitted with devices to move them without
detonating them.
U.S. forces briefly surrounded the Information Ministry and Al-Rashid Hotel,
which was used by foreign reporters as a base during the 1991 Gulf War. At the
time, the U.S. government alleged that the building housed a military
communications center.
As U.S. troops penetrated the city, members of Saddam's Fedayeen
paramilitary at one point helped security men prevent journalists from leaving
the Palestine Hotel. Later, the security men left, and the Information Ministry
organized journalists' bus tours of areas where fighting took place.
The Monday raid followed a weekend of incursions by U.S. forces in tanks and
armored personnel carriers.
U.S. officials have said that up to 3,000 Iraqi fighters may have been killed in
that initial incursion Saturday.
Opposition Forces Send 700 Fighters for Southern Iraqi Front

Apr. 7--KUWAIT CITY--Seven hundred Iraqi opposition fighters and the man
considered the Pentagon's top choice to lead postwar Iraq have been flown by
the Air Force into the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah in recent days, according
to the US military and the Iraqi National Congress.
An official with the INC, the most powerful group of exiled Iraqis, said the arrival
of the Iraqi opposition forces and opposition leader Ahmed Chalabi marks a
vital shift in military strategy.
"It was the mistake of the coalition forces not to integrate the Iraqi forces from
the beginning," said Feisal Chalabi, spokesman for the INC in Kuwait and a
relative of Ahmed Chalabi. "You cannot have Iraqi liberation without Iraqis, so
this is a great day for us."
76
APRIL 2003
The vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the 700 to 1,000 men, flown
to southern Iraq from the Kurdish-controlled north, are the beginning of a post-
Saddam Hussein Iraqi military.
"These are Iraqi citizens who want to fight for a free Iraq, who will become
basically the core of the new Iraqi army once Iraq is free," General Peter Pace
said on ABC television, even as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told
Fox News it may be six months before the United States is ready to turn control
of Iraq over to an Iraqi authority.
While the arrival of an Iraqi opposition force provides potent symbolism for the
"liberation" of Iraq, it probably is not a development that will be cheered by all
with a stake in postwar Iraq. Competing elements of the exiled Iraqi community
are expected to see it as potentially threatening.
Also, even as the Pentagon has championed the Iraqi National Congress as the
best answer to Iraq's future, the State Department has been far more skeptical
about Chalabi's leadership.
Pace dismissed suggestions that the INC will gain an advantage through this
mobilization.
"I'm comfortable that once we free Iraq and give it to the people in Iraq, that
they will be able to decide for themselves who should be their leaders and who
should not," Pace said.
The troops will be known as the First Battalion Free Iraqi Forces and serve under
US command, according to an INC statement.
"The war of national liberation which Iraqis have waged for 30 years is now
nearing its end," Ahmed Chalabi said in the written statement. "We call on the
Iraqi people to join with us in removing the final remnants of Saddam's
Ba'athist regime."
The opposition forces that have descended on Nasiriyah include defectors from
Hussein's army all the way up to the rank of general, according to Feisal
Chalabi. They carry only light arms and do not have armor, but will coordinate
with more heavily armed units of coalition forces, he said, adding that they will
work closely with US special forces.
The INC said their men will be able to use their knowledge of language and
culture to carry out humanitarian operations, but will also be directly involved
with winning the war.
"These forces might be liberating Baghdad like Paris was liberated by the
French free forces," Feisal Chalabi said.
While most of the INC supporters who have descended on Nasiriyah are
soldiers, Chalabi said they also include civilians.
Nasiriyah was secured by US forces a few days ago, but these Iraqi exiles say
locals appear eager to work with the newcomers.
Already, 3,000 people from the community have come forward to offer their
help, said Salem Chalabi, a nephew of Ahmed Chalabi who is affiliated with the
INC. And local tribal leaders have been welcoming, according to Feisal Chalabi.
Salem Chalabi said the Iraqi National Congress has at least 2,000 more troops
still waiting in northern Iraq.
77
APRIL 2003
U.S. Finds Possible Chemical Weapons Site

The U.S. military is testing samples from a site in Iraq where soldiers found
metal drums containing possible chemical weapons, defense officials said
Monday.
Tests at laboratories in the United States have to be completed before the
presence of chemical weapons would be known, the officials said.
Soldiers from the Army's 101st Airborne Division found the suspicious material
in a compound near the Iraqi city of Hindiyah, about 60 miles south of
Baghdad. Video of the search taken by CNN showed soldiers in gas masks using
handheld chemical weapons detectors to investigate metal drums.
"This could be either some type of pesticide, because this was an agricultural
compound," Gen. Benjamin Freakly told CNN. "On the other hand, it could be a
chemical agent, not weaponized."
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld acknowledged reports about the site
Monday but said first reports often are incorrect.
"We have to take our time and look at it," Rumsfeld said, adding that getting
samples back to the United States and completing testing can take days.
A Knight Ridder News Service journalist traveling with the unit said initial tests
of samples from the facility were inconsistent. Some tests did not indicate
chemical weapons, while others indicated the presence of G-class nerve agents
- which include sarin and tabun - and mustard agent, a blistering chemical first
used in World War I.
Sophisticated tests are needed to confirm the presence of chemical weapons
because nerve agents are chemically very similar to many pesticides.
The Knight Ridder reporter, Tom Lasseter, also reported that he and several
soldiers were decontaminated after some of the soldiers felt ill while searching
the compound. Officials at the Pentagon said they did not have any information
about anyone getting sick.
Freakly told CNN that the soldiers were suffering from heat exhaustion, not
chemical exposure, and all are doing fine. He said the soldiers were given
showers to cool them down, not decontaminate them.
If the discovery was confirmed, it would be the first find of chemical weapons
during the war. Finding and eliminating Saddam Hussein's chemical and
biological weapons is a goal of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and finding such
weapons of mass destruction could mute international criticism of the war.
Earlier reports about possible chemical weapons finds have turned out to be
false alarms. Last week, for example, troops searching the Qaa Qaa military
78
APRIL 2003
complex south of Baghdad found a white powder that was found to be an

explosive.
Iraq acknowledged making 3,859 tons of sarin, tabun, mustard and other
chemical weapons, though United Nations inspectors suspected Iraq could have
made much more. Iraq used mustard and sarin against Iran during the 1980-88
Iran-Iraq war and is believed to have used the chemicals against Kurdish Iraqis.
Sarin and tabun are related nerve agents that can kill when absorbed through
the skin or inhaled as a gas. They kill by causing convulsions, paralysis and
asphyxiation.
Mustard agent begins dissolving tissues on contact and is particularly harmful
to eyes and lungs. It does not usually kill but causes painful injuries that can
linger for a lifetime.
To fight, flee or die: Saddam's last gamble

Source: Scotland on Sunday
WILL Saddam fight to the death? Will he flee? Or will he, like the Great Dictator
Hitler, end it by committing suicide in a bunker?
As the grand finale to the war on Iraq approaches, these questions will soon be
answered.
Meanwhile, international Saddam-watchers are divided in their attempts to
read the Iraqi leader's mind as he approaches the awful moment when he
realizes that all is lost.
"Saddam knows that exile would simply be a postponement of his execution,"
said Dan Plesch, fellow of the London-based Royal United Services Institute.
"The Americans would just go in and kill him wherever he took shelter. It would
also be ignominious for someone who seeks to portray himself as an Arab
hero."
Gerrold Post, a psychiatry professor at George Washington University, who has
written profiles of Saddam for the CIA, also thinks that voluntary exile is
unlikely. "Saddam's last stand could be ugly, assuming he still has a stash of
chemical and biological weapons at his disposal. He can bob and weave, but he
becomes dangerous when he is backed into a corner."
However, Post considers the Iraqi leader to be "a quintessential survivor, not a
martyr". As a wily survivor of half a dozen assassination attempts, a CIA-
sponsored coup and popular uprisings by the Kurds in the north and Shi'ite
Muslims in the south, he might just believe he can still outfox the Americans.
"It's possible that he could view exile as a temporary retreat, from which he
could return to power," he says.
Martin Rudner, an analyst with the Canadian Centre of Intelligence and Security
Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, thinks Saddam would rather be taken
prisoner than die a "martyr" at the hands of an American-led enemy.
"That way he could continue in his role as the self-anointed champion of the
Arab people, battling against the infidels. He sees himself as a Saladin," Rudner
79
APRIL 2003
said, referring to the legendary Muslim warrior who evicted the Crusaders from
Jerusalem in 1187 and who, ironically, was a Kurd. "He sees himself as the
great steadfast mobiliser of all Arabdom against exogenous threats."
Plesch raises the possibility of Saddam being totally divorced from reality, like
Hitler in the Berlin bunker. Sitting in an underground command centre, Saddam
may be refusing to use the phone, for fear of being traced by the CIA, and
sending out hand-written messages to his commanders and video tapes
recorded in advance to be broadcast on Iraqi TV.
"There is a question in my mind as to what Saddam actually knows about what
is going on in the battlefield," Plesch said. "How much are the commanders in
the field telling him ?
"Early in the war, the Iraqi news announcements were pretty accurate, but they
are not now. It seems that a lot of military people are lying low without telling
Saddam as commander-in-chief how bad the situation really is."
However, Saddam's appearance on the streets of Baghdad on Friday -
assuming it really was him and not a double - appears to have put paid to the
Pentagon's attempts to spread the idea that he has already disappeared from
the scene, one way or another.
A number of countries have been named as potential exile destinations for
Saddam. One is Belarus, whose authoritarian president Alexander Lukashenko
is shunned by Western leaders because of his poor human rights record, and
who maintains good relations with the Iraqi regime. Lukashenko denies US
accusations that he sells arms and military equipment to Baghdad in violation
of a US embargo. But he has urged the US and Britain to make an "honourable
exit" from Iraq.
Libya, a possibility during the last Gulf War in 1991, is ruled out because
nowadays Colonel Gadaffi has not the slightest intention of provoking the wrath
of the Bush administration. At one point, secret negotiations were reported that
might send Saddam to Mauritania.
The most persistent report, put out by the Jerusalem-based website
Debka.com, is that senior Iraqi leaders and their families have taken refuge in a
luxury hotel on Syria's Mediterranean coast.
Baghdad is alleged to have "pre-paid and chartered" the upmarket Hotel Cote
d'Azur De Cham resort in the port city of Latakiya, near the family villa of
Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
Top Iraqi officials have been hiding there since March 23, four days after the
US-led invasion began, under the protection of a Syrian commando unit and
with Syrian naval missiles securing the port, the web-site said, quoting
unnamed intelligence sources.
The Debka site has a patchy reputation for accuracy. But the report is one of a
number that point to Syria as the last remaining safe harbour for the leadership
of the besieged regime. Since the war broke out, President Assad has been
outspoken in his support for Saddam, and the US has accused Syria of
supplying arms to the Baghdad regime.
80
APRIL 2003
Iraqi opposition sources said last week that "influential people related to
Saddam Hussein" had fled to Syria in a convoy of 60 official cars. The exodus
was spotted en route to the Syrian border from the northern city of Mosul.
Last week, Saddam's office denied the reports that Saddam's family had fled,
although his sons Uday and Qusay are understood to have stayed. "The small
family of our leader Saddam Hussein is part of the extended family that is the
Iraqi people. The fate of his family cannot be separated from that of the
extended family," a spokesman for the president's office said.
Organising a safe exodus for his family this time would pose practical problems
for Saddam in addition to the damage it would do to his self-promoted image as
the defender of the Arabs against invading infidels.
He and his intimate cronies all have large extended families. If they tried to
leave in one large VIP convoy, it would be instantly spotted from the air and
attacked. Even a retreat for a final battle at his ancestral home of Tikrit to the
north of Baghdad would now seem to be impossible, since coalition special
forces control that road.
If the retreat were on the basis of "every man for himself" and the order was
given to leave piecemeal, all sorts of personal nastiness could break out.
Saddam's inner circle is not just united by criminal complicity and family ties, it
is held together with fear.
If discipline were to break down, old scores would be settled. Saddam has
removed a large number of his relatives from the power circle, and some also
from this world.
Even if, against all the odds, Saddam decided to flee and succeeded in finding
a safe haven, he would never have a chance to enjoy his fortune. The
Americans are after that too. US agencies are about to make a fresh effort to
trace Saddam's assets using existing economic sanctions and new powers
granted to the administration under the USA Patriot Act passed by Congress in
the wake of the September 11 terror attacks.
According to Forbes magazine, Saddam is the third-richest man in the world
after the Sultan of Brunei and King Fahad of Saudi Arabia.
US intelligence sources say they believe that some of Saddam's personal
fortune from kickbacks on oil deals remains under the control of associates of
the Saddam family still living in the Geneva area.
At one time, Barzan al-Tikriti, Saddam's brother, may have had control of
substantial sums. Until a few years ago, he was Iraq's representative to UN
agencies in Geneva.
If they are successful, American officials say that they will use Iraq's resources,
including Saddam's fortune, to rebuild Iraq.
But there will be other claims to the money. At least two American law firms
have filed lawsuits against Saddam and his cronies alleging Iraqi involvement in
international terrorism in general and September 11 in particular. Even after
Saddam, the fighting will go on.
U.S. Forces Meet Resistance in Baghdad

81
APRIL 2003
U.S. forces barreled into the heart of Baghdad with a dramatic show of force
Monday and met pockets of fierce resistance. British officials said troops found
a body in southern Iraq that they believed was the notorious Iraqi general
known as "Chemical Ali."
Missiles screamed over the Iraqi capital just after dawn and thunderous
explosions shook buildings as the 2nd Brigade of the Army's 3rd Infantry
Division moved north into the city and seized a presidential palace.
In southern Baghdad, Iraqi rockets struck a group of Army personnel carriers at
the brigade's field headquarters, according to a military report. Two soldiers
and two journalists - one Spanish and one German - were killed, and several
others were wounded.
To the south of Iraq, British troops gained control over much of Basra, the
country's second-largest city, and were pressing into the old city where the last
paramilitary fighters had retreated. Some Basra residents cheered the British,
while others went on a looting rampage, streaming out of the Central Bank of
Iraq and the bomb-damaged Sheraton Hotel with chairs, tables, carpets and
other goods. Some civilians lashed out at Saddam loyalists, killing several
militiamen and a policeman.
In a sign of growing confidence on the part of the coalition, the U.S. war
commander, Gen. Tommy Franks, visited troops inside Iraq, including soldiers in
the holy Shiite city of Najaf. Central Command Spokesman Capt. Frank Thorp
said Franks made three stops in Iraq on Monday, but gave no details.
U.S. troops in Baghdad stormed Saddam's New Presidential Palace and set up a
prisoner of war holding pen inside the elaborate compound on the west bank of
the Tigris, a winding river that divides the city. The ruling Baath Party
headquarters nearby was completely destroyed.
The troops secured the main roads in the area, leaving soldiers at every
intersection. They made forays to the state-owned Al-Rashid Hotel and to the
bombed-out Information Ministry, but unlike the palace, they did not stay to
occupy them.
Up the river at the Old Palace, the sound of explosions and heavy fire could be
heard. In the center of the city, U.S. forces used explosives to destroy two
statues of Saddam.
Iraqi snipers later fired on U.S. soldiers from rooms inside the Al-Rashid Hotel.
U.S. tanks returned fire with their main guns and .50 caliber machine guns,
according to military radio reports. Iraqi forces also took up positions in the
University of Baghdad, across the river from the New Presidential Palace, and
fired heavy machine guns. U.S. troops called in mortar fire and air support. The
Tigris at this point is about 1,200 feet wide.
The drive into Baghdad was meant to send a strong signal about the coalition's
ability to enter at will. The resistance encountered along the way was "worthy
of respect," Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said Monday, though the Iraqi fighters,
"may be dying for a regime that does not have a future."
82
APRIL 2003
Iraq's command structure is so badly damaged, he said, there is only a small

amount of communication between Saddam's remaining forces.
"What we don't see is an overarching structure that can order action from north
to south and east to west, throughout the country. Only the coalition has that
capability right now," Brooks said at Central Command. "And as each day
passes, there's less and less that the regime can do to order action by their
forces."
Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, standing on the roof of
Baghdad's Palestine Hotel, denied his city had been invaded. Sirens could be
heard as he spoke and clouds of dust blew past - remnants of a sandstorm and
smoke from oil fires set by the Iraqis to obscure targets.
"They are sick in their minds. They say they brought 65 tanks into center of
city. I say to you this talk is not true," al-Sahhaf said. "There is no presence of
American infidels in the city of Baghdad, at all."
Armed militiamen and Iraqi soldiers patrolled the street outside the Information
Ministry. Most Iraqis stayed indoors, but some shops were open and public
buses were running. Iraqi TV and state radio stayed on the air, broadcasting
patriotic songs, religious sermons and archival footage of Saddam.
On the southern outskirts of Baghdad, two Marines were killed and two others
were injured when their vehicle was struck by an artillery shell at a bridge over
a canal. The 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines fought for the highway bridge that leads
into the city Sunday, and were trying to cross it when they were hit Monday
morning, Lt. Col. B.P. McCoy said.
The Marines quickly worked to repair the bridge while others crossed on foot to
secure the opposite side of the canal, wary of booby traps that may have been
set by Saddam's Fedayeen militia.
Troops everywhere have been warned of possible suicide attacks, including by
bombers in ambulances. There were also reports from the field that Iraqis in
civilian vehicles, possibly carrying bombs, had attempted to ram coalition
tanks.
It's not clear how many Iraqis have been hurt or killed in Baghdad. The
International Committee of the Red Cross said Sunday that hospitals in the city
have stopped counting the number of people treated.
In the southern port city of Basra, British forces consider their biggest threat to
be militia fighters still roaming the city. But with the suspected death of Iraqi
Gen. Ali Hassan al-Majid, Iraqi fighters and Baath Party militants may be
rudderless.
British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon said he had not yet confirmed that al-
Majid had been killed, though the evidence was strong. Al-Majid, a cousin of
Saddam, gained the nickname "Chemical Ali" for ordering a poison gas attack
that killed thousands of Kurds in 1988. His home was targeted in coalition
airstrikes over the weekend.
His death should show the people of southern Iraq "that the regime is finished,"
said Group Capt. Al Lockwood, spokesman for British forces.
Also to the south, U.S. forces took control of the center of the holy city of
Karbala, the Army Times newspaper reported Sunday.
83
APRIL 2003
At Baghdad's airport, members of the 101st Airborne Division fought Iraqis in

military uniform in a prolonged overnight battle, and fended off sporadic raids
Monday. At least 150 Iraqi fighters were killed. The attacks followed the
coalition's first use of the airport's runways. A C-130 transport plane landed
there Sunday, foreshadowing a major resupply effort for U.S. troops, dependent
until now on a tenuous line stretching 350 miles to Kuwait.
Also Monday, President Bush arrived in Belfast for a meeting with British Prime
Minister Tony Blair. The coalition partners will discuss peace efforts in Northern
Ireland and the Middle East, but their summit is primarily meant to review war
progress and to iron out differences about how Iraq will be rebuilt and governed
when hostilities end.
Several opposition leaders have slipped into southern Iraq in recent days.
Ahmad Chalabi, who has lobbied to head a transitional government, arrived in
the southern town of Nasiriyah on Sunday with 700 supporters. A spokesman
for his Iraqi National Congress said the group went in unarmed and will take
orders from the U.S. military. The group's members may fight, work as
translators and provide other aid, U.S. Defense Department officials said.
The Iran-based Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the largest
opposition group, also plans to return. It claims to have 10,000 fighters, and
has rejected the idea of having the allies form a new government in Iraq.
In addition to the two journalists killed, armed Iraqis abducted two Polish
reporters at a checkpoint some 80 miles south of Baghdad on Monday, their
editors said.
.S. May Use Speed, Surprise to Take Iraqi Capital amid Confusion
Apr. 6--WASHINGTON--With Baghdad in their sights, U.S. military commanders

could choose a traditional deliberate strategy and wait two weeks for
reinforcements.
But this isn't the traditional military, and so far in the war against Iraq there has
been nothing deliberate about it.
The armored U.S. military convoy that drove in and out of Iraq's capital city
yesterday was the latest example that the U.S. war plan designed to overthrow
Saddam Hussein's regime will use quickness and surprise to create confusion in
the opposing side and then try to exploit that.
The Baghdad drive-through of more than three dozen vehicles acted as a very
public, very strong probe, but much of what is being done now is not so visible,
U.S. military officials and analysts say.
The attack plan yesterday, for instance, included 24-hour air sorties over
Baghdad; on-the-ground reconnaissance missions by special forces and CIA
officers; integrated air-ground attacks in which U.S. ground forces called in
airstrikes and then moved forward; and the tightening of a cordon around
Baghdad on the major routes leading out of the city.
84
APRIL 2003
The Baghdad strategy also will continue to rely on bombings and missiles, such
as the one dropped yesterday near a downtown hotel.
Since the war began 18 days ago, speed has been the overriding theme of the
plan now being executed by General Tommy R. Franks, mostly as a way of
throwing the enemy off-balance and capitalizing on mistakes.
"They are not being deliberate in military terms at all," said Owen R. Cote Jr.,
associate director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Security
Studies Department. "They could wait outside Baghdad for the Fourth Infantry
Division, get their ducks in a row. But ... they like to roll the dice. Let's keep
hoping they continue to get double sixes."
The Fourth Infantry, which originally was expected to build a second front in
northern Iraq, has been rerouted to Kuwait and is expected to support troops
near Baghdad, but U.S. officials say that could take at least two weeks.
Many things still can go wrong. "If it doesn't look like an open city, then the
crunch on the number of forces might manifest on the need to hold up for a
while," said Richard K. Betts, a national security specialist at the Council on
Foreign Relations.
Iraqi troops may unleash chemical or biological weapons that could cause a
high number of casualties. The apparent dispersal of Republican Guard
divisions around Baghdad may mean that resistance will occur in residential
pockets of the city, creating potentially bloody urban battles.
In addition, the opposition may not be so easy to identify, ranging from
irregular forces in pickups to Special Republican Guards in organized groups.
Iraq also may use human shields around key military installations.
Asked how US military commanders would react to human shields, Air Force
Major General Victor "Gene" Renuart said, "I'm confident the commanders on
the battlefield are able if they see something like that to make the right
decisions to preserve lives and yet allow them to defend themselves."
But Renuart said yesterday's blocks-long column of armored U.S. vehicles
passing through Baghdad was a good start. He said it "put an exclamation
point" on the arrival of U.S.-led forces.
"It was, I think, a clear statement of the ability of coalition forces to move into
Baghdad at times and places of their choosing and to establish a presence
really wherever they need to in the city," Renuart said. "Those operations will
continue."
Yesterday's incursions were met with stiff resistance from Iraqi troops, officials
said, adding that at least 1,000 Iraqi fighters were killed in the clashes. One
U.S. tank driver was killed.
The hope now is that enough regime leaders will conclude that the fight is over
and either overthrow or kill Hussein and then surrender. "On the battlefield,
messages are critical to your strategy," Renuart said. "It's as important to
demonstrate control of Baghdad as it is to demonstrate support for the people."
Meanwhile, the pressure increases for residents remaining in this city of 5
million people.
The Air Force said it had begun round-the-clock close air support for troops
around Baghdad -- a strategy that poses challenges of its own. Air component
85
APRIL 2003
commander Michael Moseley said yesterday in a telephone interview from

Saudi Arabia that low-flying missions are trying to drop bombs close to their
own troops without killing them or civilians, while also facing danger from
enemy antiaircraft artillery.
Marines are searching the southern suburbs of Baghdad for weapons caches,
blowing them up before Republican Guards and others can retrieve and use
them, defense officials said.
Special forces troops spread out over more territory in the north and monitored
control of the roads leading north from Baghdad. Officials said the aim is to set
up a armored cordon around the city loose enough to let civilians come and go
and to bring humanitarian aid into the city, but tight enough to prevent regime
leaders from leaving.
U.S. commanders now hope in the coming days or weeks to begin securing
parts of the city, bring in humanitarian aid, even take over Iraqi television and
radio. Despite the dramatic gains demonstrated yesterday, few observers
expect the road ahead to be easy.
"They are going to be aggressive in their probing to find out what areas of the
city they go in and secure," MIT's Cote said. "That is manpower intensive, and
one thing they are not blessed with is manpower. So I think they will be very
careful in taking over big chunks of the city. It will be a really fluid situation."
Saddam's Palace Has No Homey Ambiance

The U.S. Army took the war to Saddam Hussein on Monday - to the heart of his
capital city, to the dusty remains of his opulent palace, to his hot tubs and
barbecue pit.
With little organized resistance, the Army's 3rd Infantry Division rolled through
Baghdad, taking over major roads and settling into the New Presidential Palace.
There, they found gold-painted faux French furniture, fabulous views of the
Tigris River and a television in every room.
Homey, it's not.
"This used to be a nice place, they should make it like a Six Flags, or
something," said Spc. Robert Blake, 20, of State College, Pa., and the 3rd
Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment.
Saddam has many palaces, and the Americans visited two on Sunday, including
another about two miles away.
This one, constructed recently near his Baath Party headquarters, apparently
was built as a residence and for entertainment, though it is unclear how much
time the Iraqi president spent there. Troops found no personal effects, no "to-do
lists" on the refrigerators, no needlepoint pillows on the beds.
What they found, instead, was a building that had all the ambiance of a luxury,
five-star conference center. And they immediately put it to use as a mobile
command center, setting up a prisoner of war collection point in the palace
compound.
86
APRIL 2003
As Iraqis were captured in street fighting outside, they were brought to the
palace for processing before being sent behind U.S. lines.
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said troops were
looking for intelligence - leads to other regime targets, documentation of
weapons of mass destruction.
He said there were no immediate reports that such material was found.
But he gave at least one other reason why the palace was captured: to send a
message that "we're in there ... that this regime is gone."
They left no doubt that they were "in there." Soldiers used Saddam's toilets (for
many the first indoor plumbing they'd seen in four months), rifled through
documents, helped themselves to ashtrays, pillows, gold-painted Arab
glassware and other souvenirs.
At sundown, some troops plugged one of Saddam's televisions into a portable
generator and watched a state-run broadcast. They scoffed at a segment on an
old man, wearing a turban and clutching an assault rifle.
"That looks awfully like the Taliban to me," said one soldier.
Occasionally, some Iraqis would approach the walls of the compound. The
Americans would fire warning shots, and the Iraqis would run away.
"I do believe this city is freakin' ours," boasted Capt. Chris Carter of
Watkinsville, Ga.
The main building, of sand-colored brick, is topped with a dome of blue-and-
gold ceramic tile, now covered with cement dust. There are two huge holes in
the roof and the front of the building from U.S. cruise missiles or laser-guided
bombs in the past; the blasts knocked off the facade, collapsed floors and
scorched walls.
Where fire had not destroyed the interior, plaster trimming and false ceiling
had collapsed. Shards of hundreds of glass chandeliers and mirrors lay on the
ground, crunching under the boots of American soldiers.
On the top floor, there once was an indoor pool, with windows looking out on
three sides of the building. What was left of an elaborate, mosaic ceiling littered
what was left of the bottom of the pool - the water drained into basement and
first floors, which were flooded.
Much of the building seemed like an empty hotel, never occupied.
The bedrooms, all large, each had bathroom with a Jacuzzi-like tub. There were
hotel-quality beds and tables; most of the shelves and drawers were empty. A
lone children's room had four beds.
In the industrial kitchen, everything had been put away and carefully cleaned.
There was no food in the refrigerators or pantries.
The building boasted a sophisticated audio-video system, with several music
channels and a closed-circuit television channel.
In one cabinet was an assortment of pirated movies, some with the titles in
English. Saddam, or his guests, had a choice of movies like "Hanoi Hilton," "The
Assassination of Trotsky," "Les Miserables" from the many Arab titles in the
collection.
87
APRIL 2003
There were several copies of the Quran, with dozens of commentaries on its
meaning, all in Arabic. There were also audio cassettes of the Quran and of
Egyptian pop music.
Outside, curtains from the building were strewn across the lawn, along with
decorative, wrought-iron gates that had covered bulletproof glass.
Behind the building, by the Tigris, there was a grill and an elaborate water
garden with man-made pools and babbling brooks.
If not for the distant sound of tank and machine-gun fire, you could almost say
it was idyllic.
U.S. and Kurdish troops continue northern advance ; Planes from

carrier in Mediterranean hit Iraqi concentrations
Source: "Record, The; Bergen County, N.J."
SOZ BLAKH, Iraq - American forces supporting Kurdish fighters against

President Saddam Hussein's army took up positions in the no- man's land south
of the Kurdish autonomous region and in the north, where U.S. warplanes hit
Iraqi positions near the commercial center of Mosul.
The combination of American airstrikes and Kurdish ground attacks in the north
has driven Iraqi government forces back from the Kurdish frontiers toward the
two main northern districts in government hands: Mosul and the important oil
center around Kirkuk. The Kurds are now less than 20 miles from each city.
Saturday night and today, about 60 fighters, fighter-bombers, and support
aircraft from the USS Theodore Roosevelt flew strike missions over northern
Iraq. Officers aboard the carrier in the eastern Mediterranean said targets
included Iraqi troop concentrations, artillery, tanks, and armored vehicles.
Iraq's information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, speaking to Al-Jazeera
Arabic television as U.S. forces moved into Baghdad on Saturday, was
dismissive of the Kurdish gains.
In the north, he said, moving a position here and there "does not mean a
thing."
"We have different calculations for the northern region. It does not worry us at
all," he said.
In the southeast, where the autonomous region runs along the Iranian border
and reaches down to within 100 miles of Baghdad, Kurdish fighters have been
massing along the frontier within striking distance of the oil city of Khanaqin.
U.S. Special Forces have joined them, apparently to lend the kind of support
they have in the north - calling in airstrikes on Iraqi positions. They could be
seen Friday and Saturday in the no-man's land between the sides, an area
about 35 miles from Khanaqin.
The Kurds' troop strength along their southern front has risen from less than
400 several weeks ago to between 1,500 and 1,800 now. Mola Bakhtiyar, a
Kurdish political and military leader, said it would rise quickly to about 3,000.
88
APRIL 2003
The Kurds, long oppressed by Hussein's regime, established an autonomous

region in the north in 1991 under the protection of U.S. and British air patrols.
In the northwest near Mosul, U.S. aircraft carried out a sustained attack
Saturday on Iraqi positions outside the village of Khazer, where Kurds seized an
important bridge on Friday. The front line appeared to have moved several
kilometers west into territory formerly held by the Iraqis.
A large convoy of soldiers from the U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade took up
positions less than 10 miles to the east of Khazer and about three miles east of
Kalak, where the Iraqis had abandoned a large position on Thursday.
The 25 vehicles carried 250 soldiers - about a fifth of the paratroopers dropped
into the Kurdish north on March 26. One group of 14 vehicles took up position
on a ridge outside Kalak in pastures and freshly plowed fields.
At the town of Fida, about 25 miles north of Mosul, eight to 10 Special Forces
troops and about 150 Kurdish fighters came under intermittent artillery fire and
heavy machine gun fire during a coalition reconnaissance mission.
The fire came from a hill overlooking an Iraqi army barracks, which the U.S.
soldiers believed to house several hundred government troops. It also
apparently came from an estimated 100 Iraqi troops within the town of Fida.
The allied forces destroyed two T-55 Iraqi tanks at the scene of the fighting,
which continued Saturday night.
Regaining control of Kirkuk, in particular, is a long-held dream of the Kurds. The
Baghdad government has for years moved Kurds and other minorities, such as
ethnic Turks and Assyrians, out of the oil- rich areas in order to consolidate
control and give the regions an Arab character.
The United States, which has protected the Kurdish zone with air patrols since
its foundation, has allowed Kurdish militiamen to advance unchallenged, but it
keeps intact a U.S. pledge to Turkey to block any independent Kurdish
offensive.
The story of a bridge

Source: Scripps Howard
IRAQ -- The mission started with lines drawn in the sand, and ended with a back
door supply route that skirted enemy-infested Nasiriyah and could hasten the
end of the war.
The U.S. military needed a bridge over the Saddam Canal. They called the
Seabees.
It is the longest bridge built by Seabees, a construction unit of the U.S. Navy,
since World War II.
This is the story of the bridge, and the men and women who built it.
Friday, March 28
Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 4 commanding officer James Worcester
climbs atop a 4-foot-tall electricity generator to address the Seabees about
their mission.
The 600-member Battalion 4 is based at Port Hueneme, Calif.
89
APRIL 2003
There are two main supply routes from Kuwait to Baghdad. One is Highway 1
and the other Highway 7. U.S. forces were using 7, but were getting ambushed.
So the forces decided to push the supplies up 1 to the west, then cut over to 7
past Nasiriyah. To do that, they needed a bridge; this Seabee bridge.
They have the parts to make a 60-meter bridge, but the Saddam Canal is 95
meters wide. They have to get equipment to the other side of the canal, but
there's no road or bridge crossing within 50 miles.
And the Army and Marines need the bridge done now.
March 30, 3 p.m.
The convoy of 40 vehicles arrives at the canal. The site is dominated by a large
concrete bridge that the Iraqis started before Desert Storm and abandoned.
The white concrete columns stick out of the canal like gravestones.
Battalion leaders decide to build a dirt pier into the canal to fill the 35-meter
gap between their bridge and the canal width. To protect the pier, they start to
pull apart 5-foot-long 100-pound steel culvert halves that are tightly spooned
together. They bolt them into full circles and put three together to form 15-foot
cylinders. The cylinders will be placed around the pier to divert the water so it
doesn't eat away the dirt.
As the Seabees work, Iraqis in scarves and long robes gather across the bank.
They do not move. They simply watch.
March 31, 6 a.m.
More Iraqis arrive. Seabees continue to put together the culverts and push dirt
into the canal to create a pier.
The bridge will be built on the south side of the canal where they are camped
and snaked across to the north side where the Iraqis sit and watch. But the
Seabees need equipment and bridge parts on the north side of the bridge
before they can push the bridge across. They decide to put the equipment on a
barge just down the river and pull it across.
April 1, 8 a.m.
The earthen pier, made with 3,000 cubic yards of hard-packed earth from the
river bed, is sticking nearly 35 meters into the canal. Sixty culverts are tied into
groups of three. They are dumped into the water, smashed down into the canal
bed, and then filled with dirt. They look like giant beer cans discarded after a
wild party.
They begin to build the bridge on top of wooden braces. The atmosphere is
exuberant.
The first step involves laying out the rollers the bridge will be placed on to
launch it across the canal. The rollers must be straight and level or the bridge
will fly off-track when they try to push it across the canal.
Once the rollers are laid out, the bridge is fully built on the south side of the
canal, before they push it across.
April 1, 2 p.m.
The road crew goes a half-mile down a dirt path to talk to the Iraqi man who
operates a barge. The man agrees to take their equipment across for a box of
12 MREs.
90
APRIL 2003
Two Humvees successfully cross the canal as the Seabees and Marines pull on
the line, but when they try to take the grader onto the barge, it tips. They
salvage the grader, but the idea of how to get the equipment across is shot.
Battalion leaders call for Marine helicopters to take their equipment across, but
hedge their bets and also ask for assistance from Navy LARKS — Light
Amphibious Resupply Cargo craft. In the meantime, the Seabee Underwater
Construction Team begins to ferry lumber and bridge parts piece by piece
across the canal in a small Zodiac power raft.
April 1, 5 p.m.
The Seabees chain the last beam of the bridge to an excavator. Equipment
Operator 1st Class Butch Shimota, 29, of Veseli, Minn., nudges the edge of the
bridge with his boom. The bridge slides smoothly out across the canal 10
meters. Shimota flashes a grin and gives a thumb-up.
Later that night, the bridge is nearly halfway across the river.
April 2, 8:45 a.m.
The bridge hangs 50 meters over the canal like a giant unbalanced teeter-
totter. Although the north end of the bridge is bent with an upward hook, the
bridge dips towards the rushing water in the middle.
But the Seabees still have a problem.
They can't land the bridge on the north side of the canal.
There's no landing pad. No rollers. Nothing to stabilize the outstretched arm.
By 9 a.m. the bridge itself is complete. But it's still not touching the north bank.
April 2, about noon
There is no helicopter, but a LARK starts taking bridging materials across the
river. They are boats on wheels that can drive from the bank of camp, power
through the canal like a boat, and then drive up the other side.
At the same time, the Zodiac is also taking people across.
The bridge is nearly to the north shore of the canal. It looks poorly balanced.
But the Seabees set up the rollers on the north side to receive the bridge.
After some adjustments, the rollers meet the bridge in a perfect line.
But there's still much more to do before the bridge will carry tanks and
ammunition trucks. They must take it off the rollers and put it on manmade
steel platforms on each bank that will anchor the bridge in place.
April 3, 10 a.m.
The first vehicles roll across the bridge.
The $1.9 million bridge will carry 70 tons without complaint. Unlike the tactical
bridges built in times of intense combat, it is expected to last at least 25 years.
Worcester looked on with pride. Not only will this help the war effort, but it will
help the people of Iraq for many years to come, he said.
Comment: WITHOUT PREJUDICE: A time for friends: Betrayed by the

West, slaughtered by Saddam, now let the oppressed Kurds find a
home at last
Source: "Observer, The; London (UK)"
91
APRIL 2003
IN A MEMO TO the League of Nations in 1930, an astonished Foreign Office

official said that the idea the great powers should be made to keep their
promises was 'a conception which is almost fantastic'. The Kurds appeared to
have been promised their own state in the Treaty of Sevres after the First World
War. But there was a catch. Buried in the small print was the requirement that
the League must be convinced that they were 'capable' of independence.
Our men at the FO implied that the Kurds were Kipling's 'White Man's Burden' -
'fluttered folk and wild/Your new-caught sullen peoples/Half devil and half child'.
It was preposterous to think that they might be capable of governing
themselves.
'Although they admittedly possess many sterling qualities, the Kurds of Iraq are
entirely lacking in those characteristics of political cohesion which are essential
to self-government. Their organisation and outlook are essentially tribal. They
are without traditions of self-government or self-governing institutions. Their
mode of life is primitive, and for the most part they are illiterate and untutored,
resentful of authority and lacking in any sense of discipline or responsibility. [In
these circumstances] it would be unkind to the Kurds themselves to do
anything which would lend encouragement to the sterile idea of Kurdish
independence.'
Being cruel to be kind to Kurds has become a habit since. They are the largest
people on earth without a state of their own. Spread across Iraq, Iran, Syria and
Turkey - and oppressed in all four countries - their fate in the twentieth century
was to be played with and persecuted.
In the early 1970s, the Iraqi Baathist regime was getting too close to the Soviet
Union for America's liking and threatening the Shah of Iran, a US client. Henry
Kissinger and Richard Nixon encouraged the Iraqi Kurds to revolt. Saddam
Hussein responded to the pressure and came to terms with Washington.
American, Israeli and Iranian advisers pulled out of Iraqi Kurdistan. Saddam
sealed the borders and slaughtered. The standards of the Cold War were lax,
but America's betrayal of an ally was still shocking. The Congressional select
committee on intelligence said that 'the President, Dr Kissinger and the Shah
hoped that [the Kurds] would not prevail. They preferred instead that the
insurgents simply continue a level of hostilities sufficient to sap the resources
of [Iraq]. The policy was not imparted to our clients, who were encouraged to
continue to fight. Even in the context of covert operations, ours was a cynical
exercise.'
In 1988 Saddam killed somewhere around 100,000 Kurds in the 'Anzal'
campaign to Arabise northern Iraq. The scale of the killing was such that no one
knows the precise death toll, but for once, the overused word 'genocidal' was
an accurate description of his policy. After the 1991 Gulf war, the Kurds along
with the rest of Iraq took George Bush senior at his word and rose up when he
called on the 'Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own
hands'. They were massacred again. In 1996, they fought among themselves.
92
APRIL 2003
Kurds being wiped out was a staple of international relations. The truth of the
Kurdish proverb, 'we've no friends but the mountains', was indisputable.
The change in the Iraqi Kurds' fortunes since 1996 has been remarkable. It's
foolish to make predictions in such fluid times, but it does look as if history is at
last being kind to the Kurds. Consider their position. Despite the enmity of
Turkey, Saddam, Iran and Islamic fundamentalists, they managed to build a
reasonably decent autonomous government in the no-fly zone of northern Iraq.
At the start of the war, it looked as if the Turks would occupy their mini-state to
stop its own Kurds getting the idea in their heads that they might govern
themselves. But because Ankara refused to cut a deal with Washington, the
threat has receded and American troops have become the Kurds' protectors.
The clever Kurdish leadership has put its guerrillas under US control to
emphasise that the Kurds at least are an ally America can rely on. Fear that
they will be attacked with poison gas again is receding as the Iraqi regime
weakens. Every day last week, there were small reports of the Kurds retaking
villages which had been ethnically cleansed by Saddam.
It's as if the Palestinians were to wake up and find that the world's only
superpower was on their side and land they thought they had lost forever was
back in their possession. The comparison isn't meant frivolously. What
Baathism has created in northern Iraq is a West Bank, and even friends of the
Kurds are worried about what will happen when the regime falls and the
ethnically cleansed go home.
IT'S HARD TO SEE the war as a 'war on Islam', and not only because Saddam
has dedicated his career to killing Muslims. Baathism drew its inspiration from
the worst of Europe: fascism and commu nism. Saddam's fondness for Stalin is
well known, but he also has a thoroughly fascist obsession with racial purity.
The city of Kirkuk, with its rich oil fields, has been 'Arabised' for decades. The
purges increased after the last Gulf war and Kurds, Turks and Assyrians have
become rarities in what was once their city. Earlier this year, Human Rights
Watch interviewed the victims. Their stories could have come from Milosevic's
Yugoslavia. There's the same pattern of demands for bribes, followed by
threats, followed by expulsion, followed by the erasing of evidence that the
impure ever existed.
Asad Karim Salah, a Kurd, who was expelled from Kirkuk last year, described
how it worked. First Baath party officials and secret policemen put pressure on
him to abandon his identity and pretend to be an Arab. One of his two sons was
instructed to spy on fellow students. When he refused he was thrown out of his
university. Then the family was told that both boys must go into the army. One
fled north to the Kurdish safe haven. The authorities who wanted him as a sol
dier demanded that he return or else. When he didn't comply the family was
stripped of its possessions and forced into exile.
Human Rights Watch and the Kurdish authorities estimate that 120,000 people
have been driven from the Kirkuk area since 1991. The government confiscated
documents proving the ownership of property. As far as the paperwork is
concerned they never lived in Kirkuk and have no rights. It seems a matter of
basic justice to allow the exiles to return, but their houses have been taken by
93
APRIL 2003
Arab families, some of whom have been in Kirkuk for two or three generations
and know no other home.
As the fighting neared Kirkuk last week, it appeared that the regime was as
keen to use the threat of execution to keep Arab families in the city as to keep
conscripts from deserting from the army. There were reports, which were
impossible to confirm, of Arabs who had fled from the city being forced to go
back. Kirkuk will fall soon, it may even have fallen by the time you read this,
but there have been no preparations by the Americans and British to manage
the aftermath.
In March Iraqi opposition leaders and the Turks discussed setting up a
commission to ensure the return of displaced people and the peaceful
settlement of disputes. Ten days ago, Human Rights Watch warned that nothing
had been done and Kirkuk was 'a disaster waiting to happen'. If 'a plan for the
gradual and orderly return of these displaced civilians is not drawn up soon and
implemented before the ground offensive begins, there is a real possibility that
the city will erupt into inter-ethnic violence'.
I spoke to Hania Mufti, the organisation's officer in Kurdistan, last week. She
said the warning had had no effect whatsoever. The leaders of the Kurdish
parties have tried to placate the Turks by promising that their forces won't
annex Kirkuk and include it and its oil wells in the Kurdish zone.
But, reasonably enough, they said there was little they could do to stop families
going back to their houses and confronting the people who had 'stolen' their
property.
The 'untutored' Kurds are no different from anyone else. If you found someone
else in your home, you would demand they left and become aggressive,
possibly violent, if they refused because they had nowhere else to go. The
Kurds may have got lucky for the first time since the First World War, but
they're not out of the woods yet.
Baghdad Betrays War Scars Despite Siege

A wounded Iraqi militiaman spits in disgust and uses a profanity to describe

Americans. A father makes his injured son flash the "V-for-victory" sign. A
Syrian volunteer recalls how his comrades were mowed down by allied
warplanes, then declares he's ready to return to the front.
That was Baghdad on Monday - a city in the throes of war.
At al-Kindi Hospital, there were declarations of defiance, tales of the horrors of
war - and all too many casualties. Since morning, a hospital official said, at
least 75 civilians had come to the emergency room with gunshot wounds,
shrapnel injuries or burns.
In the upscale al-Mansour neighborhood, three houses were destroyed by what
neighbors said was a coalition missile; up to nine people were killed. All that
was left was a heap of concrete, mangled iron rods, ruined furniture and
clothes.
94
APRIL 2003
Armed militiamen were on the streets of Baghdad in large numbers, taking

positions behind barricades and deserted apartment blocs.
Two militiamen, approaching a car a reporter was traveling in, loaded the clips
of their Kalashnikovs before asking him and his driver to show identification.
Much of the city has been without electricity and water for a week. Telephone
lines also have been hit, forcing some residents to wait for hours Monday
outside the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross to call
relatives abroad.
"This service will be temporarily suspended if the situation deteriorates," read a
sign on the office gate.
At al-Kindi Hospital, body bags filled with victims of the daily bombings were
stacked outside the morgue. Ambulances kept arriving, unloading the wounded
- civilians caught in the fighting between the U.S. forces and Baghdad's Iraqi
defenders.
A couple who arrived in the afternoon had burns on their arms, feet and heads.
They came from the southern district of al-Doura, which has taken a large share
of the recent fighting.
Inside, Hazem Mohammed Jabeel, 37, carried his injured 7-year-old son, Ayman.
Seeing reporters and news photographers, he nudged his son, who could barely
open his left eye, to make the "V-for-victory" sign.
Haitham Abdel-Hussein had a tattoo on his right arm commemorating a brother
killed in the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran. "My brother Alaa," it read.
Abdel-Hussein, 33, had a brush with death himself Monday afternoon when his
house was destroyed, he said, but his wife and three children escaped
unscathed. He was severely burned on his left arm and right elbow. He spoke
as a nurse bandaged him in a scene repeated over and over again in the
hallways and treatment rooms of al-Kindi Hospital on Monday.
Haroot Manouk, a 32-year-old fighter with a pro-government militia, grimaced
in pain from a wound in his left foot, suffered in an allied air raid Monday
morning.
He spat in disgust and grunted a profanity to describe Americans. "We'll show
them, you'll see, all of you will see."
Mohammed Haili, a Syrian, arrived in Iraq on Thursday as a volunteer, joining
thousands who Iraq says are participating in the jihad, or holy war, against U.S.
and British forces. On Sunday, he had a first hand experience of the horrors of
war.
He said he and some 100 other Arab volunteers charged U.S. forces stationed
on a bridge in the al-Taji area north of Baghdad, firing at them as they chanted
"Allahu Akbar," or "God is great."
"They retreated as we charged," he recalled. "Minutes later, three jets bombed
us and scores of us were killed instantly."
"The army commanders behind us started shouting 'fall back, fall back,'" Haili
said, before being cut short by a bearded Iraqi doctor who admonished him to
stop talking to reporters.
"You're saying too much, you must be careful," the doctor snapped.
95
APRIL 2003
Haili, 30, who works at a printing press in Aleppo, northern Syria, said his
joining the war was a calling and he was ready to fight again.
"The Prophet Muhammad appeared to me in a dream and beckoned me to
come," said Haili, his shirt stained with the blood of the wounded he helped
from ambulances to the emergency ward.
Marines Battle for Bridge, Enter Baghdad

Under cover of rattling machine-gun fire, Marines grabbed planks, poles and
twisted rails Monday and surged across a shattered bridge over a Tigris River
tributary into Baghdad.
"Go! Go! Build that bridge!" an officer screamed, slapping troops as they ran
under thundering fire, grabbing more scrap to patch a 6-foot hole the Iraqis had
blown in the span.
With its repair job and dramatic on-foot push across the Tigris, the 3rd
Battalion, 4th Marines became the first Marines to penetrate the Iraqi capital.
They needed bridges able to support 70 tons to cross with their tanks and
amphibious armored vehicles. The broken bridge could hold only infantry - but
infantry would be enough to secure the other side for Army and Marine
engineers to work on the makeshift spans.
The crossing Monday opened the way for thousands more Marines advancing
from the southeast, as the Army's 3rd Infantry Division marched in from the
southwest.
But the long-awaited entry was bittersweet: Just an hour earlier, the battalion,
trained at Camp Pendleton, Calif., suffered its heaviest loss of the skirmish-
heavy two-week drive toward the capital.
Two Marines died and two were wounded in an artillery assault on their
armored amphibious assault vehicle - an "amtrak" designed to float in 12-foot
waves but used mainly inland in Iraq.
The Marines had been guarding the American-held south bank of the reed-lined
Tigris tributary. As U.S. artillery whistled overhead and slammed into targets on
the far bank, an incoming shell tore into the top of the green, metal amtrak.
The impact peeled back the steel like paper and blew the Marines out. Fellow
Marines gathered the dead, treated the wounded, and collected bulletin boards,
photos and scrawled notes.
"Take care of it," a gunnery sergeant said, passing down a cardboard box
scrawled in markers. "That's something for the families."
The assault left the Marines grimfaced. Before, they had spoken of nothing but
taking Baghdad - seeing that as the first step to the trip home.
Entry into Baghdad "means we can get at 'em. They can't hide behind a river
anymore," battalion commander Lt. Col. B.P. McCoy said, adding that his unit
had been planning its infantry assault since Sunday night.
As it was, crossing into the capital found the battalion mourning newly dead
friends instead of feeling elated.
96
APRIL 2003
The battalion had to cross on foot, because Iraqis had blown up the Tigris
bridge and another one about 3 1/2 miles to the east - trying to block the
Marines where Iraqi rockets and Kalashnikovs had failed.
Two companies of the 3rd Battalion rattled across, led by those whose
colleagues had died in the amtrak.
They ran past a dead Iraqi sprawled on the bridge, a bullet hole in his head.
They stormed across the mound of debris patching the 6-foot gap. "You can
run. It'll hold," a Marine shouted at each passing comrade.
Smoke, flames and Iraqi automatic weapons fire greeted them on the other
side. Corpses of Iraqi men lay on the route, bodies slumped over steering
wheels or out the doors of bullet-riddled vehicles.
Marines moved quickly to secure hundreds of walled homes and graceful date
palm groves around the bridge - all the time alert for more of what have been
repeated suicide attacks against U.S. forces.
The battalion gave the few pedestrians and vehicles it encountered at least two
warning shots. If people and vehicles kept coming, Marines unleashed a volley
of American automatic weapons fire.
"After you give the final warning shot, shoot them dead," an officer instructed.
A Marine machine gunner lay sprawled behind his tripod, left foot jiggling as he
watched the road.
An old man approached, disoriented and alone, faltering forward with his cane
after three warning shots. Finally, U.S. weapons burst and he fell dead.
Two vehicles ventured slowly, a red van and an orange-and-white taxi. They
didn't stop. Marines fired, bullets sending sprays of powdered glass and smoke
through the windshields, until the vehicles rolled to a slow halt. A man rolled
out of the driver's door of the taxi. He crawled. Marines kept shooting until he
stopped.
By afternoon, the vehicles still sat in the no-man's land of as-yet-unsecured
territory. The Marines would find out later whether the occupants had been
attackers or confused civilians.
Calm returned. Young men ventured out and were frisked before being allowed
to move on.
Old men came out of their courtyards, drawn to a riverside site where U.S.
bulldozers - ferried over the Tigris earlier Monday - leveled the banks of the 65-
yard-wide tributary.
The ground was being prepared for the Marines' tanks and amphibious assault
vehicles to float into Baghdad on heavy military rafts or to cross on bridges,
once they were ready.
Marines reassembled, crunching through broken glass and slogging back across
the patched bridge to regroup as a battalion.
They passed a mosaic at the foot of the bridge of a triumphant, young Saddam
Hussein on a white horse, Iraqi soldiers fording rivers and cheering crowds.
Mortars and machine-gun fire exploded around them.
"Yep," said Staff Sgt. Jack Coughlin of Boston, his face caked in dust. "We're in
Baghdad."
97
APRIL 2003
Late in the afternoon, the first Marine tanks rolled across a ribbon bridge with
an American flag tied to it.
Engineers of the 8th Engineer Support Battalion said they had been working on
the bridge since early morning, providing covering fire when their bulldozers
took incoming fire from the opposite bank.
"The best sight of the day was those infantry guys going across the bridge so I
didn't have to listen to incoming," said Staff Sgt. James Voy Detich, of Hot
Springs, Ark.
British Tighten Their Grip on Basra

British forces took control of the heart of Basra on Monday, met by few pockets
of resistance and greeted by hundreds of people who shook their hands and
welcomed them to Iraq's second-largest city.
Royal Marine commandos seized a vacant, pink-hued marble palace belonging
to President Saddam Hussein. Elsewhere in the impoverished city, there was
widespread looting in the city's narrowing streets, and even reports of some
retaliatory attacks by Iraqis against militiamen still loyal to Saddam.
"The last 48 hours have been historic for Basra. After decades under the heel of
Saddam's brutal regime, U.K. forces are in the process of delivering liberation
to the people of Basra," Air Marshal Brian Burridge told reporters in Qatar.
"There will be some difficult days ahead, but the Baathist regime is finished in
Basra."
For two weeks, the British had held off from storming the city of 1.3 million
people to avoid civilian casualties in what they feared would become bloody
urban fighting against Saddam's Fedayeen fighters and other loyalists.
Commanders also had hoped to use the time to gain the trust of local
residents, mainly Shiite Muslims, who had been crushed by Saddam's Sunni
government after an uprising at the end of the 1991 Gulf War.
But local resistance to allied forces weakened and, in an airstrike Saturday in
Basra, one of the most brutal members of Saddam's inner circle, Ali Hassan al-
Majid, was believed to have been killed in his home. He had been dubbed
"Chemical Ali" by opponents for ordering a 1988 poison gas attack that killed
thousands of Kurds.
"While it would have been more satisfying to see al-Majid answer for his crimes
in an international war crimes tribunal, the hundreds of thousands of victims of
his genocide campaign must be finding some solace in his death," said a
statement from Barham Salih, prime minister of the eastern half of the Kurdish
98
APRIL 2003
enclave in northern Iraq. "Al-Majid lived by the sword - killing tens of thousands
of innocent civilians - and he has died by the sword."
In Basra, troops broke down the doors to Saddam's ornate palace, finding
carved teak woodwork, marble floors, vaulted ceilings and stained-glass
windows. The palace, which apparently had been unoccupied for months, was
empty except for a flock of doves.
At the Central Bank of Iraq, Basra residents streamed out carrying chairs,
tables and carpets. A group of looters targeted schools and shops and one man
walked with a chandelier under his arm. And at the Sheraton Hotel, people
loaded chairs and sofas into horse-drawn carts. Some even wheeled the hotel's
grand piano down a street.
Military officials said they were more concerned that ammunition would be
looted and used in the sporadic fighting that continued as they tightened their
grip on the city.
Gunfire could be heard throughout the day and a half-dozen attack helicopters
buzzed overhead. Inside Basra's College of Religious Literature, which British
troops seized Sunday, more than 250 mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and
machine guns were found.
"We know local militia have been ordered not to wear their uniforms. There are
arms caches everywhere. They fire at us, lay down their arms, wave a white
flag, and move on," said Capt. Niall Brennan of the Irish Guards.
The success of the troops saw a brutal response from some civilians. Several
militiamen were seen being killed by throngs of civilians, Press Association said.
A British soldier was also told that civilians had killed a policeman, according to
British press pool reports.
On Sunday, British officials made a massive push into the city.
The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards advanced in Challenger 2 tanks and the Black
Watch invaded in armored vehicles, while the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers
pushed in from the southwest, and Royal Marine commandos came in from the
south, according to Press Association.
The original objective was to take the outskirts but resistance was found to be
light, so the British forces advanced quickly.
The 7th Armored Brigade, or the Desert Rats, killed an unknown number of
paramilitary fighters and took others prisoner as the unit pushed in from the
west. Commanders said the bulk of Iraqi forces may have fled 48 hours before
the latest incursion, according to British pool reports.
The Defense Ministry said three British soldiers were killed Sunday.
On Monday, the 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment took up foot patrol in the city
center after a massive convoy of British infantry started rolling into Basra from
the southern outskirts earlier in the day.
The paratroopers had been warned that resisters would use balconies,
alleyways and hidden alcoves of the old town to mount surprise attacks. But as
they walked into old Basra, they saw the area was clear.
"Saddam destroyed everything. He destroyed the water, he destroyed the
people. The people of Basra are very happy today," said one man, who refused
to give his name, giving a thumbs up to a passing soldier.
99
APRIL 2003
Hundreds of people poured out to welcome and shake hands with the soldiers.
Women in chadors hovered in the background, and soldiers talked and joked
with civilians and let some boys look through their gunsights.
The humanitarian situation remained bleak, with many residents desperate for
fresh water.
"All the citizens are very thirsty," said a man who would only identify himself as
Ali. He was holding his year-old daughter.
"I feel very afraid for her, and for my friend's baby," he said. "I've been without
water for three days."
U.S. Troops Storm Baghdad, Seize Palace

American troops and tanks rumbled through downtown Baghdad with

unstoppable force on Monday, seizing one of Saddam Hussein's opulent
palaces, toppling a 40-foot statue of the Iraqi ruler and pushing his regime to
the brink of irrelevance.
Some Iraqi soldiers jumped into the Tigris River to flee the advancing column of
more than 100 armored vehicles. About a dozen others were captured and
placed inside a hastily erected POW pen on the grounds of the bombed-out,
blue-and-gold-domed New Presidential Palace.
An estimated 600 to 1,000 Iraqi troops were killed during the operation, said
Col. David Perkins. "We had a lot of suicide attackers today," he said. "These
guys are going to die in droves ... They keep trying to ram the tanks with car
bombs."
Tank-killing A-10 Warthogs and pilotless drones provided air cover as Americans
briefly surrounded another prominent symbol of Saddam's power, the
Information Ministry, as well as the city's best-known hotel, the Al-Rashid. Tanks
rolled briefly up to another one of Saddam's many palaces.
It was the third straight day the Army penetrated Saddam's seat of power. This
time, though, there were plans to stay. Rather than withdrawing at nightfall, as
units did over the weekend, members of the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry
Division hunkered down for the night at the sprawling, splendored New
Presidential Palace where Saddam once slept.
Several miles away, two soldiers and two journalists were killed in a rocket
attack on the 3rd Infantry Division south of Baghdad, the U.S. Central
Command reported. Another 15 soldiers were injured in the attack on an
infantry position south of the city.
100
APRIL 2003
On the other side of town, Marines encountered tough fighting as they entered
Baghdad for the first time, coming under machine gun fire. Lt. Col. B.P. McCoy
said two Marines were killed and two were injured after an artillery shell hit
their armored personnel carrier.
Marines crossed into Baghdad from the east, their engineers deploying a
temporary pontoon bridge over a canal at the southern edge of the city after
Iraqis rendered the permanent structure unsafe for heavy, armored vehicles.
Hours later, the sound of occasional American artillery split the night air.
The regime, its brutal hold on a country of 24 million slipping away, denied all
of it. "There is no presence of American infidels in the city of Baghdad, at all,"
insisted Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf.
The Iraqi government maintained its hold over state-run television and radio -
arguably its most important remaining levers of control over the country - and
broadcast emotional appeals to resist U.S. forces. Also shown were images of
Saddam meeting with key advisers.
The American military flexed its muscle in downtown Baghdad while British
officials said one of the regime's most brutal leaders, Ali Hassan al-Majid, had
apparently been killed in a weekend airstrike in the southern city of Basra.
A cousin of Saddam, al-Majid was dubbed "Chemical Ali" for ordering a poison
gas attack that killed thousands of Kurds in 1988.
Defense officials also said testing was underway on samples taken from a site
where soldiers found metal drums possibly containing nerve gas or another
type of chemical weapon. A local commander said it was possible the
substance was a pesticide, since it was found at an agricultural site near
Hindiyah, south of Baghdad.
After a two-week siege, British forces claimed control over Basra, a city of 1.3
million. Hundreds of civilians, women in chadors and barefoot children among
them, poured into the street to welcome the invaders. Some handed pink
carnations to the British troops in appreciation.
American and British troops advanced in Iraq as their political leaders were
meeting in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For President Bush and British Prime
Minister Tony Blair, it was the second summit since the fighting began.
"The hostilities phase is coming to a conclusion," Secretary of State Colin
Powell told reporters. Without elaboration, he said the U.S. government is
sending a team this week to Iraq to begin laying the groundwork for an interim
authority.
In the war zone, Americans felt confident enough for Gen. Tommy Franks,
overall commander of Operation Iraqi Freedom, to visit troops in Najaf and
elsewhere. The four-star general wore camouflaged body armor and a black
beret as his Black Hawk helicopter carried him on his tour.
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, said all but "a couple
of dozen" of the Iraqi military's tanks had been destroyed in less than three
weeks of combat.
Senior officials at the Pentagon said the Army assault into Baghdad was part of
an attempt to persuade Iraqi forces that further resistance was futile. The
101
APRIL 2003
military would like to avoid an all-out urban battle in Baghdad, with its 5 million
inhabitants.
"We can basically go wherever we want, whenever we want, even if Saddam is
still alive," said Perkins, who commanded the Army troops inside the city.
Missiles screamed overhead and explosions shook buildings inside the city as
more than 70 Army tanks, more than 60 Bradley fighting vehicles and an
estimated 3,000 troops pushed their way into the heart of Baghdad.
Iraqi snipers fired on soldiers from rooms in the al-Rashid hotel, and tanks
returned fire with their main guns and .50 caliber machine guns.
Across the river from the New Presidential Palace, Iraqis took up positions
around the University of Baghdad, firing heavy machine guns across the 400-
yard width of the Tigris River. Americans responded with mortar fire and close
air support to rout the Iraqis.
The New Presidential Palace showed the effects of recent U.S.-led bombing.
Even so, once inside, Americans found creature comforts undreamed of in a
country where more than half the population is dependent on international food
assistance.
Beneath the dust, the imitation French Baroque furniture was painted gold. The
palace had numerous swimming pools, and troops rifled through documents
and helped themselves to ashtrays, pillows, gold-painted Arab glassware and
other souvenirs of war.
The palace had been stripped of most personal items, but the building boasted
a sophisticated audio-video system. Troops looking in one cabinet found a
collection of pirated movies, "Les Miserables" among them.
On a parade grounds nearby, GIs cheered as a statue of Saddam on horseback
was toppled.
At sundown, some troops carried a television from the palace, plugged it into a
portable generator and mocked the Iraqi state-run broadcast. "That looks
awfully like the Taliban to me," said one unidentified soldier, watching a
segment of an old man, wearing a turban and clutching an assault rifle.
It's not clear how many Iraqis have been hurt or killed in Baghdad. The
International Committee of the Red Cross said Sunday that hospitals in the city
have stopped counting the number of people treated.
Americans have twice been victimized by suicide bombers, and among the
newly dead was an old Iraqi man. Disoriented and alone, he moved ahead with
aid of his cane despite three warning shots. "After you give the final warning
shot, shoot them dead," an officer ordered. The rifleman did.
Northern Front Campaign Is Cautious

102
APRIL 2003
On a scrap of paper, a Kurdish commander drew a line representing the

northern front. Isolated slash marks showed the main points of attack against
Iraqi forces.
Then Majid Harki wrote a single word that he repeats often to his front line
fighters: "suber" - patience.
"We pick the time and place to strike," Harki said Monday after helping U.S.
Special Forces pinpoint Iraqi gunners near a strategic crossroads 55 miles
southwest of Mosul. "We want to be a sharp blade, not a bulldozer."
This has become the battlefield doctrine in the north - a low-intensity push
heavily constrained by diplomatic priorities. Only now, with U.S. forces
operating inside Baghdad, is the northern campaign looking more aggressive.
From Kuwait, coalition forces in southern Iraq have pushed relentlessly for
territory from the first moments of the war. But in the Kurdish north, it was
several days before U.S. soldiers even announced their presence.
The reason for difference is something stronger than U.S. firepower: sticky
regional politics.
The Pentagon originally planned to send up to 60,000 ground troops into the
Kurdish zone from Turkey to squeeze Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from two
directions. But anti-war sentiments in Turkey swayed its parliament to reject
Washington's proposal.
With the air the only option, about 1,200 paratroopers dropped into northern
Iraq on March 27 to join the special forces already in the region. More troops
have arrived, but their strength is too limited to launch serious ground assaults
against the heavily defended cities of Mosul and Kirkuk.
The estimated 70,000 Kurdish fighters insist they are ready any time. But
Turkish leaders object to any Kurdish move on Kirkuk, Iraq's No. 2 oil region.
Turkey worries that stronger and richer Iraqi Kurds could stoke aspirations for
independence among Kurdish groups elsewhere - especially Kurds in Turkey.
An ethnic Turkish minority in Kirkuk also looks to Turkey as its historical
protector.
Turkey had threatened to send troops into northern Iraq to guard its interests.
Kurds warned they could fight back. A diplomatic blitz led by Washington
averted what some commentators called a brewing "war within a war."
The northern front plans, meanwhile, have been left hobbled.
Airstrikes first concentrated on fortifications around Mosul and Kirkuk. In the
past week, they have shifted to front-line Iraqi units, which are often conscripts
whose only defense is retreat.
103
APRIL 2003
At many key points, Iraqi forces have withdrawn toward Mosul and Kirkuk.
Kurdish fighters have advanced with hardly a shot, but generally stop before
attacking the new Iraqi positions.
This keeps Washington's promise to Turkey to contain any Kurdish rush south.
"You must understand this is all America's war," said a Kurdish commander,
Farhad Yunus Ahmed. "Our leaders have decided to do it America's way. This
means we cannot decide anything on our own."
The Pentagon's control was on clear display last week during a battle for an
important bridge on a main road to Mosul.
U.S. Special Forces directed airstrikes from F-14 Tomcats and B-52 bombers.
Kurds moved forward to claim the bridge at Khazer as Iraqis fled. Hours later,
however, U.S. commanders ordered the Kurds to pull back over the bridge.
Airstrike spotters wanted to use the river as a dividing line for attacks to avoid
friendly fire casualties. On Monday, the bridge remained in no man's land.
When a group of Kurdish military and political leaders visited a front-line post
near Khazer, there was no Kurdish officer to greet them.
"Who's in charge here?" yelled Brusk Nouri Shawez, a Kurdish political boss.
Kurdish militiamen gestured toward American soldiers on another hill.
With coalition forces in Baghdad, the sluggish northern front has shown signs of
becoming more aggressive.
Coalition aircraft hit an ammunition dump in Mosul on Monday, Kurdish officials
said.
On Sunday, U.S. troops fought alongside Kurdish militiamen to push Iraqi forces
out of Ain Sifni, 25 miles north of Mosul. At another point along the northern
front near Dibagah, a U.S. warplane mistakenly bombed a convoy of U.S. and
Kurdish forces during what Kurds called "serious fighting." The friendly fire
killed at least 17 Kurdish fighters and a translator for the British Broadcasting
Corp.
"There is more tension as this front becomes more active in order to put more
pressure on the Iraqi side," said Hoshyar Zebari, a senior member of Kurdish
leadership.
Zebari has suggested U.S.-Kurdish special operations are in progress "behind
enemy lines," but he declined to offer details. "Not everything on this front is
visible," he said.
The apparent hope is that Iraqi resistance in the north will crumble with
Saddam's regime. But not everyone is predicting a bloodless finale.
Kurdish intelligence sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Iraqi
forces have withdrawn tanks and heavy armor into residential areas of Mosul
and Kirkuk and have barred civilians from fleeing. The information could not be
independently confirmed.
Kirkuk is a particular worry. Iraqis have not set fire to the oil wells - a scenario
predicted before the war. But Ares Abdullah, a Kurdish commander 12 miles
from Kirkuk, said the wells might be rigged with explosives and mines.
"We hope the cities will fall from Saddam's grasp without a fight," he said. "Do I
believe this will happen? Unfortunately, no."
104
APRIL 2003
U.S. Troops Penetrates Heart of Baghdad

Apr. 7--DOHA, Qatar--U.S. troops struck in the heart of Baghdad early Monday,
entering at least one of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's main palaces, the Al
Rashid Hotel and possibly the Information Ministry.
It was the first significant strike in the center of the capital, which U.S. troops
say they have encircled. The Pentagon said the incursion was a "show of force"
to test the Iraqi military's response.
According to the Reuters news agency, 65 tanks and 45 Bradley Fighting
Vehicles were involved in the raids, which were unleashed after dawn local
time. Witnesses said Iraq's Republican Guard were defending the ministries
with rocket-propelled grenades.
Huge oil trenches were lit by Iraqi forces, cloaking the skies above Baghdad
with gray clouds. Small arms fire and some explosions echoed on the virtually
empty streets of the city of 5 million.
U.S. military officials said the raids were intended to find members of Hussein's
leadership and to secure buildings in the capital against sabotage or further
destruction.
"It is part of our ongoing mission to seek out members of the Iraqi regime, and
we are working to preserve the treasures of Baghdad, its palaces, hospitals and
things, for the Iraqi people," said Navy Ensign David Luckett, a spokesman for
U.S. Central Command in Qatar.
The main presidential palace is a sprawling compound on the Tigris River and is
considered the seat of Hussein's regime. It occupies a central location in
Baghdad. The Information Ministry is also a key lever for the regime.
The Al Rashid Hotel is an Iraqi landmark and an irritant to some U.S. officials
because the Iraqi owners have created an unflattering likeness of the first
President George Bush in tile on the floor so that visitors walk on his image.
"Saddam Hussein says he owns Baghdad. We own Baghdad. We own his
palace. We own downtown," a 3rd Infantry Division officer told Fox News in a
live interview from the presidential palace.
The deepest penetration of the capital yet came a day after allied forces had
seized all major roads in and out of the city and began landing supplies at
Baghdad's airport.
On Sunday, Baghdad's streets crawled with gun-toting teenagers and Fedayeen
militia, the armed loyalists of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, as U.S. officials
warned that "significant combat" could lie ahead.
A hulking C-130 transport plane arrived Sunday night carrying undisclosed
cargo and the promise of a faster, safer way to resupply troops arrayed around
Hussein's shrinking base of power.
British troops and tanks easily seized control over half of Basra, southern Iraq's
largest city. They killed hundreds of Iraqi fighters but avoided the block-by-
block street battles they had feared during a more than two-week siege of the
city. Allied commanders hoped the British surge into Basra would encourage
105
APRIL 2003
resistance to Hussein in Baghdad as well by demonstrating that his

government is fast losing control of major population centers.
A disturbing allied error also marked the intense day of battles.
American aircraft mistakenly attacked a convoy of U.S. Special Forces and
allied Kurdish troops. Kurdish officials said at least 18 people were killed and 45
wounded, which would make it the worst friendly fire incident of the war. At
least one member of the Special Forces was wounded, according to U.S. Central
Command.
The incident took place on a day when allied troops grabbed Shir Khan, the first
sizeable northern town to be taken from Hussein's retreating army.
Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said incursions
Sunday through portions of the Iraqi capital involved "significant numbers of
coalition tanks and armored personnel carriers," and that they destroyed "all of
the enemy vehicles and personnel with whom they've come in contact."
A day earlier, U.S. officials said, the 3rd Infantry Division's first armored foray
into southwestern Baghdad killed 2,000 to 3,000 Iraqi fighters.
Pace said the strength of the Iraqi defenses around Baghdad, including the
diminished Republican Guard, remains unclear. "Some of the soldiers certainly
have just decided to go home," he said. "Some may have moved to other
places on the battlefield."
Pace called on the remaining Iraqi generals to surrender, urging them to "give
you and your troops a chance to be part of Iraq's future and not Iraq's past."
Iraqi leaders remained defiant. In a statement attributed to Hussein that was
read on Iraqi TV, he urged troops separated from their combat squads to join
other fighters in fending off the Americans--a possible indication of disarray
among Iraq's soldiers.
The escalation of firefights in the capital was taking its toll on residents. At the
al-Kindi hospital in a working-class neighborhood of the city, scores of people
with shrapnel wounds began arriving Saturday night.
The ground combat around Baghdad also damaged the already strained
relations between the U.S. and Russia. On the same day that President Bush's
national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, arrived in Moscow to smooth those
relations, a Russian diplomatic convoy got caught amid shelling and gunfire on
Baghdad's outskirts as it fled toward Syria. At least five people were injured.
U.S. military officials said initial field reports showed no allied forces operating
in that area, west of Baghdad. But a reporter for Russian TV who was in the
convoy said it appeared the caravan had driven into the middle of a fierce
firefight between U.S. and Iraqi troops.
About 20 miles southeast of the capital, in Salman Pak, U.S. Marines discovered
an old passenger jet and speculated that it was used for hijacking practice.
They also found a full obstacle course at the camp, which Hussein's regime has
said was used for anti-terrorism training for Iraqi special forces.
In a surprise move, the United States began airlifting hundreds of members of
an Iraqi exile group into the southern Iraq city of Nasiriyah--lead elements of
what the Pentagon said would form the basis of a new Iraqi army.
106
APRIL 2003
The exile group members arrived as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz
said it probably will take the United States more than six months to cede power
in postwar Iraq, first to an Iraqi-led civilian authority and eventually to a
permanent representative government.
U.S. soldiers evacuated an Iraqi military compound after tests by a mobile
laboratory confirmed evidence of sarin nerve gas found at an agricultural
warehouse and a military compound, according to a Knight Ridder reporter
embedded with the soldiers.
Earlier, more than a dozen soldiers of the Army's 101st Airborne Division were
sent for chemical weapons decontamination after they exhibited symptoms of
possible exposure to nerve agents. A Knight Ridder reporter, a CNN cameraman
and two Iraqi prisoners of war also were hosed down with water and bleach.
The evacuation of dozens of soldiers Sunday night followed a day of tests for
the nerve agent that came back positive, then negative.
Additional tests Sunday night by an Army mobile nuclear, biological and
chemical detection laboratory confirmed the existence of sarin.
Pentagon and Central Command officials said they had no information on the
report of chemicals found.
In the holy Shiite city of Karbala, the 101st Airborne won a lopsided two-day
battle in the crowded neighborhoods against Iraqi paramilitary forces. An
estimated 400 Hussein loyalists were killed, military officials said, while one
U.S. soldier was killed and seven others wounded.
NBC News correspondent David Bloom, one of the network's most prominent
young stars and a near-constant television presence reporting from the Iraqi
desert, died from an apparent blood clot.
The 39-year-old co-anchor of the weekend "Today" show was about 25 miles
south of Baghdad and was packing gear early in the morning when he
collapsed.
U.S. military officials disclosed that they had attacked the country house of Iraq
Gen. Ali Hassan Majid, known as "Chemical Ali" for his alleged role in gassing
Iraqi Kurds in 1988. The attack in the southern town of Al Berghisiah was based
on information that he had entered the house, but only the body of Majid's
bodyguard was found.
Allied commanders said they could not say whether Majid had been killed, and
Iraqi government officials denied it. "As to Chemical Ali himself, I think time will
tell," U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said at a news conference at Central
Command headquarters in Qatar.
Despite the continued fighting on Baghdad's outskirts, U.S. officials declared
the city cut off from the rest of Iraq.
"We do control the highways in and out of the city and do have the capability to
interdict, to stop, to attack any Iraqi military forces that might try to either
escape or to engage our forces," Pace said.
Brooks said attacks by the Army's 5th Corps on the city's west and the 1st
Marine Expeditionary Force from the east continue "to isolate Baghdad,
denying any reinforcements or any escape by regime military forces."
107
APRIL 2003
The Marine attack on the training camp southeast of Baghdad in Salman Pak
was prompted by "information that had been gained by coalition forces from
some foreign fighters we encountered from other countries, not Iraq," Brooks
said. "We believe that this camp had been used to train these foreign fighters
in terror tactics. It is now destroyed."
The Salman Pak raid, which also destroyed a small number of tanks and
armored personnel carriers, is just one of a number of examples where such
training centers have been found in Iraq, according to Brooks.
"It reinforces the likelihood of links between his regime and external terrorist
organizations, clear links with common interests," he said, alluding to the Bush
administration's efforts to link Iraq to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network.
U.S. commanders have been reluctant to give precise numbers on Iraqi soldiers
killed in battles.
But Brooks said that based on "the amount of force that was encountered [and]
the types of systems that were involved in the action," the U.S. sweep through
southwestern Baghdad on Saturday killed "on the order of 2,000."
"Frankly," he added, "if we are going to be honorable about our warfare, we are
not out there trying to count up bodies."
A Brief Overview of the Battlefield

Following a series of quick, violent raids inside Baghdad's perimeter, U.S. Army
and Marine forces staked out territory to hold in the city center Monday, going
so far as to set up a makeshift American camp in one of President Saddam
Hussein's palaces. Far to the south, British forces laid final claim to Basra, Iraq's
second largest city.
Here's a summary of recent information from units in those positions, followed
by other battlefield developments. The reports are culled from official
assessments and from journalists of The Associated Press and member news
organizations traveling with American units in Iraq.
IN AND AROUND BAGHDAD
- At least 2,000 U.S. Marines and 500 or more Army soldiers entered Baghdad
to stay Monday despite encountering tough fighting in southeastern sections of
the city. Lt. Col. B.P. McCoy said two Marines were killed and two were injured
after an artillery shell hit their armored personnel carrier.
108
APRIL 2003
Army Col. David Perkins of the 2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division estimated his
troops killed 600 to 1,000 Iraqis, often defending against suicide attacks.
Several miles to the south, two soldiers and two journalists were killed in a
rocket attack. Fifteen other soldiers were injured in the attack.
But back in Baghdad proper, Marines surged across a tributary of the Tigris
River, opening the way for thousands more to move in from the southeast.
By Monday afternoon, tanks and amphibious assault vehicles stood in miles-
long lines at two bridges, waiting to float into Baghdad on heavy military rafts
or cross on jerry-rigged bridges.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said the number of casualties in
the Iraqi capital is so high hospitals have stopped keeping count.
BASRA
- After weeks of surrounding Iraq's second largest city, British troops swept in
and were greeted by huge welcoming crowds.
"There are no areas of the city that we are now concerned about," Col. Chris
Vernon at field headquarters told a British pool reporter from The Sun. Asked
where the pro-Saddam Fedayeen fighters had gone in the previous 24 hours,
Vernon replied: "Most of them are dead or taken prisoner."
British soldiers of the 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment patrolled Basra on foot
and secured the city center a day after armored columns cleared the way.
Coalition forces had held off storming the city of 1.3 million people to avoid
civilian casualties.
Air Marshal Brian Burridge told reporters in Qatar: "There will be some difficult
days ahead, but the Baathist regime is finished in Basra."
IN THE NORTH
- Coalition warplanes struck Iraqi positions again Monday in the fight to
advance on the two main northern cities still in Iraqi control: Mosul and oil-rich
Kirkuk.
Bombs also pounded military targets on southern routes toward Baghdad.
American soldiers and Kurdish fighters took the town of Dibagah, near the site
of a U.S. friendly fire incident that killed 17 Kurdish fighters and a translator a
day earlier.
But Iraqi soldiers still stood between the Kurdish forces and Mosul and Kirkuk.
At Khazer, due east of Mosul, Iraqis held a position west of a strategic bridge
they lost to the Kurds last week, and the Kurds pulled back east of the bridge to
clear the way for airstrikes.
Meanwhile, Kurdish intelligence sources, speaking on condition of anonymity,
said Iraqi forces have drawn tanks and heavy armor into residential areas while
barring civilians from leaving. The information could not be independently
confirmed.
Franks Visits Frontline Troops in Iraq

109
APRIL 2003
Wearing camouflaged body armor and a black beret, U.S. war commander Gen.
Tommy Franks made his first visit to front-line troops in Iraq on Monday.
Franks left his headquarters outside Doha, Qatar, in a military jet bound for
Kuwait. There, he boarded a Black Hawk helicopter flanked by machine gunners
for ride across the border into southern Iraq, at times skimming the Euphrates
River.
He took in several towns, including Basra and the Shiite holy city of Najaf where
a suicide bomber killed four U.S. soldiers last month, according to a senior
official at U.S. Central Command.
On the ground, the four-star general greeted troops with slaps and hugs. Franks
took photos with some, pinned Bronze Star medals on two sergeants from the
101st Airborne, and dug into battlefield rations, the plastic-wrapped MREs, or
meals-ready-to-eat.
"I think it would be almost impossible for anyone to see those kids and
recognize where they came from and what they've done over the last two
weeks and look at their mental state and morale and not feel pretty good about
it," Franks said.
U.S. Central Command described Franks' trip, his first to Iraq since the start of
the war, as a morale booster for the troops. But the one-day sweep also
underscores the growing sense of control and security felt by U.S.-led forces as
they march into Baghdad.
Franks had a pistol tucked under his belt and kept a chemical weapons suit by
his side throughout the trip. But at one point, the coalition commander drove in
a Humvee through the streets of Najaf, where scores waved and blew kisses to
his motorcade - despite his vehicle's blacked-out windows.
Among the fighters Franks met were those of the 1st Marine Expeditionary
Force, the Army's 101st Airborne Division and the British 1st Armored Division
outside Basra. While greeting the 101st outside Najaf, he presented Bronze
Stars to the unit's Sgt. James Ward and Sgt. Lucas Goddard. Their hometowns
and details about why they were receiving the award were not released.
Franks did not go to Baghdad. He stayed overnight at the Persian Gulf nation of
Bahrain, where he met the king, Sheik Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.
Field commanders briefed Franks on the capture earlier in the day of one of
Saddam Hussein's palaces in Baghdad, the status of seized weapons, and the
humanitarian plight of Iraqi civilians.
He was told that 110 schools in the Najaf area had been used as weapons
depots by Iraqi troops and that drinkable water, not food or medicine, was the
top humanitarian need of civilians.
Franks said the progress reports he heard gave him a better sense of how long
it would take to restore peace and stability in Iraq. But he didn't share any
forecasts.
"It was encouraging," Franks said.
People in Baghdad wait anxiously for the end When will the Americans
storm the capital? WAR IN IRAQ: An unthinkable notion
Source: International Herald Tribune
110
APRIL 2003
After being subjected to two weeks of relentless bombing that has destroyed
many of the power centers of Saddam Hussein's government, the Iraqi capital
found itself on Sunday deep into the ground battle that promises to be the
decisive phase of America's war to topple the Iraqi leader. From the heart of the
capital, a new cacophony of battle signaled the shift from a war fought
primarily from the air to one where the outcome will depend increasingly on
American ground troops. The earthshaking devastation of bombs and missiles
was mostly stilled on Sunday, overtaken by the more distant sounds of artillery
and rocket fire, by the staccato of machine-gun and rifle burst, and by the
scream of American jets flying what appeared to be low-level ground support
missions. Most of the fighting appeared to be concentrated away to the
southwest of the city near what was Saddam International Airport until it was
captured by American troops Friday. Now stripped of the Iraqi leader's name by
the Americans, the airport has become a magnetic point on the personal
compass of almost everybody in this city of 5 million people, whether the hard
core of loyalists to Saddam or the increasingly venturesome Iraqis, numerous if
not yet demonstrably a majority, who have begun to shake off decades of fear
and to whisper hauntingly that they wait anxiously for the end. Up to now the
Saddam government has held to its official line, even after the capture of the
airport: the Americans, the information minister has repeated with a cherubic
air at daily news conferences, have fallen into the Iraqi trap by advancing to
the gates of the city. But for those listening for shifts, for the minor notes that
rise even as the major ones pound out the familiar theme, there have been
hints of a wavering certainty. On Sunday, the minister, Mohammed Said
Sahhaf, was no longer claiming, as he did Saturday, that the Americans had
been routed from the airport by an Iraqi counterattack, and divided into
isolated pockets where they were surrendering en masse. Instead, he said at a
news conference, the Republican Guards were "tightening the noose around
the U.S. enemy in the area surrounding the airport," having killed 50 American
soldiers and destroyed six American tanks. This appeared to be a subtle but
important shift, an acknowledgment that American forces really are close by
and ready to fight. As for the citizens of Baghdad, the question being posed by
many was this: When will American tanks and infantry attempt to storm the
city, not as they did for a few hours early Saturday, but in earnest, with intent
to seize Baghdad's heart, to haul down the Iraqi flag that still flutters atop the
Republican Palace? To Saddam's diehard supporters, the very notion that the
Iraqi ruler's days might be numbered remains unthinkable, or at least
inadmissible. But Sunday, the information minister's talk of the "scoundrels"
and "villains" and "criminals" who have invaded Iraq was in a lesser key,
subordinated to more pressing, more practical concerns. Iraqis, he said, should
be on the lookout everywhere for the enemy, and "should not ignore" sightings
of American units, or fail to report them to the Iraqi military. From the official
Iraqi standpoint, Sahhaf has made himself the media star of the war, if anybody
other than Saddam would dare claim that distinction for himself. A sort of Iraqi
111
APRIL 2003
Donald Rumsfeld, with the rhetorical flourishes of Soviet-era Moscow, he likes

to muse on stage, developing his thrusts, amusing himself with a caustic wit at
the Americans' expense. But he was in a distinctly more sober mood Sunday. In
a statement read on state television, he said Iraqis should not be prey to
"rumors," especially of a kind that suggested that American forces were gaining
the upper hand. The allies, he said, "might attempt to release rumors, believing
that they can cause confusion and tell lies, asserting that there is a landing
here and there." At about the time this statement was being broadcast, Iraqis
who had filled up at a Baghdad gasoline station were reporting that drivers
arriving from points west and northwest of the city were telling of seeing
American paratroops descending from the sky alongside the access roads that
American commanders, in Qatar, were saying they were seizing in order to
tighten the encirclement of Baghdad. There was no way of knowing if these
sighting were merely the work of the imaginations of the drivers. Sahhaf had
other words of advice, and warning. Iraqi fighters, he said, should refrain from
firing their guns in Baghdad "for no reason," as many appear to have done
through the prolonged heavy bombing, conducted from an altitude that made
the endless rattle of anti-aircraft guns and automatic rifles seem more like a
reaffirmation of vulnerability more than a meaningful act of defense. But if this
sounded like an appeal for conserving ammunition, there was an intriguing,
slightly menacing, counterpoint. With the enemy in Baghdad, Sahhaf said, it
was the duty now for "anybody who wants to do so to use his weapon," and
anybody who failed to do so would be considered "cursed." Violators, he said,
will not be treated leniently.
Baghdad-Area Ambush Shatters Sense of Ease

Apr. 7--NEAR BAGHDAD, Iraq--Before dawn yesterday, advance parties for the
Second Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment's four gun batteries moved to scout
what they figured might be the unit's final location of the war. As the convoy
rolled through the eastern Baghdad suburbs, the Marines shared a sense of
relief that the end of their piece of the war seemed near.
Then, just as the sun came up, the Marines drove into an ambush.
"I saw flashes coming from a building on the right," said Lance Corporal Kevin
Kurlas, 26, of Columbus, Ohio. "I saw First Sergeant [Terry Jones in the vehicle
ahead] getting off rounds, tearing into the wall. Then somebody yelled there
was shooting on the left."
The Marine unit had just moved north out of a congested part of the suburbs
into an agricultural area, with farms and fields and relatively few buildings. The
only ominous sign was the sight of dozens of blown-up Republican Guard tanks
and armored personnel carriers along the road within a few miles.
The Marines and a Boston Globe reporter traveling in the armored Humvee with
Jones, just ahead of Kurlas and roughly in the middle of the battalion convoy,
112
APRIL 2003
heard a single rifle shot, and scanned the surroundings for the source of the
gunfire.
Then, the reporter noticed muzzle flashes coming from the lower right corner of
a window in a squat building about 60 yards away. Several bullets skipped off
the road between our vehicle and the next Humvee forward. The reporter
pointed out the source of the gunfire for Jones, who was in the turret operating
the .50-caliber machine gun.
The 19-year veteran fired at the building with bullets that carry enough force to
go through the mud wall, anybody inside, and out the other side. Jones, 39,
fired nearly 100 rounds , and no more muzzle flashes came from inside.
Behind the convoy, other minidramas were unfolding. On the left side of the
road, two militia members fired AK-47s from behind trees, and on the right
more fired from inside the buildings.
The Iraqis had been smart about the ambush, waiting until the heavily armored
reconnaissance vehicles at the head of the convoy passed before shooting at
the more vulnerable Humvees and 7-ton trucks. Fortunately for the Marines,
the Iraqis' aim was less precise than their planning.
One bullet glanced off the Humvee I was riding in; no one was wounded in the
American convoy. The Marines, though, opened up with all the firepower they
had on the buildings and the trees.
Three vehicles away, Lance Corporal Kiki Coleman, 22, of Cleveland, Miss., said
he saw a bullet fly into one window of his Humvee and out the other side.
"It just barely missed taking [the driver's] face off," Coleman said. Sitting in the
back seat, Coleman leaned as far back as he could to make a smaller target,
and unloaded two magazines of bullets from his M-16 into the buildings on the
right.
Kurlas said he shot 400 rounds from his Squad Automatic Weapon, or SAW.
Elsewhere, Marines emptied clips of ammunition from their M-16 rifles, dropped
the clips, and reloaded.
Corporal Corey Brown, 21, of Milwaukee, riding four vehicles back in an open-
backed Humvee, lobbed a colored-smoke grenade into the building as soon as
the firing started. When the militiamen answered with AK-47 rounds and green,
Russian-made tracer rounds, the convoy recognized enemy fire.
Brown shot another colored-smoke grenade -- a different color this time -- to
mark the target and the Marines opened up on the buildings. Brown fired three
high-explosive grenades into the buildings on the right as the convoy passed
by.
Afterward, other Marines congratulated him for calmly marking the target.
"I just did what I'm supposed to do," Brown said. "With grenades, you just have
to get close, in the general area."
Meanwhile, Marines on the left let loose on the men they saw ducking and firing
from behind trees.
"There's part of you that was scared of being killed, and part of you that loved
the adrenaline rush," Corporal Mysael Santolaja, 21, of Glendale, Calif., said of
the ambush.
113
APRIL 2003
He said he fired about a dozen rounds from his truck's M-240 machine gun
before it jammed. He dropped it, picked up his M-16, and fired another dozen
rounds before it, too, jammed. By the time he cleared the weapon, the fight
was over. The whole fight had lasted less than a minute.
"It sucks that somebody had to die, but better him than me," Santolaja said
afterward. "I'd do it again."
U.S. Forces Bomb Reported Saddam Location

The question of whether Saddam Hussein was alive or dead hung over the
capital Tuesday after a U.S. warplane dropped four bunker-busting bombs and
blasted a crater 60 feet deep at a spot where he was believed to be meeting
with his sons.
At least three buildings were destroyed Monday afternoon in the attempt to kill
Saddam. The airstrike in the upscale al-Mansour section of western Baghdad
broke windows and doors up to 300 yards away, ripped orange trees out by the
roots and left a heap of concrete, mangled iron rods and shredded furniture and
clothes.
Iraqi rescue workers looking in the rubble for victims said two bodies had been
recovered and the death toll could be as high as 14. They did not release any
names.
"A leadership target was hit very hard," said Marine Maj. Brad Bartelt, a
spokesman for U.S. Central Command in Qatar.
He said he could not comment on casualties or say how long it would take to
determine the damage. Battle assessment typically involves ground
reconnaissance or satellite imagery, though Bartelt would not say what method
was being used.
The attack was carried out by a single B-1B bomber, which dropped four 2,000-
pound bunker-penetrating bombs on a residential complex after U.S.
intelligence was tipped that Saddam, sons Odai and Qusai and other top Iraqi
leaders might be meeting there, U.S. officials said.
Those close to Saddam have said the Iraqi leader is so obsessed with security
that very few people would know about his movements. He maintains dozens
of residences and uses doubles to keep people guessing.
An exiled dissident told The Associated Press that only two people are kept
posted about Saddam's whereabouts - Qusai, who commands the Republican
Guard and heads the president's security, and his private secretary, Abed
Hameed Hmoud, a member of Saddam's Tikriti clan. Even Odai is thought to be
out of the loop because he is considered too reckless.
Group Capt. Al Lockwood, spokesman for British forces in the Persian Gulf, said
coalition forces were looking for solid evidence that Saddam was indeed killed.
114
APRIL 2003
The airstrike was ordered on the basis of "a very good intelligence report last
night that indeed Saddam Hussein and some of the leading members of his
regime were meeting in a particular building," he said.
The strike came on a day when U.S. forces also occupied two of Saddam's
palaces southwest of the target zone and knocked down a statue of the Iraqi
leader as they tried to wrest control of Baghdad from his regime.
Seif Hatef, 21, said some of his friends were among the victims of the attack on
the three buildings. "Such attacks will make Iraqis more determined to resist.
Iraq will remain and this war will never finish," he said.
Workers at a nearby mall swept the glass and other debris from the sidewalk.
"When this war will end? It depends on that scum Bush," said Amer Hamad
Abdullah al-Jabouri, who works at the complex.
Coalition strikes have aimed at top Iraqi leaders from the very start of the war.
On March 19, the opening night of the war, President Bush authorized a strike
on a suburban Baghdad compound where Saddam and his sons were thought
to be staying. But U.S. intelligence officials suspect he survived.
Earlier Monday, U.S. and British officials said they believed Saddam's top
commander in southern Iraq, his first cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, had been
killed in a U.S. airstrike at a house in Basra. Al-Majid, considered one of the
most brutal and loyal members of Saddam's inner circle, was known as
"Chemical Ali" for his role a 1988 poison gas attack that killed tens of
thousands of Iraqi Kurds.
A video clip of the U.S. attack on the Basra house was shown at the Pentagon
on Monday.
"We believe that the reign of terror of Chemical Ali has come to an end. To
Iraqis who have suffered at his hand, particularly in the last few weeks in that
southern part of the country, he will never again terrorize you or your families,"
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said.
Iraqis Launch Counterattack in Baghdad

Iraqi forces staged a major counterattack Tuesday morning, sending buses and
trucks full of fighters over the Tigris River in an attempt to overrun U.S. forces
holding a strategic intersection on the western side of Baghdad.
At least 50 Iraqi fighters were killed, said Capt. Philip Wolford of Marysville,
Ohio, commander of A Company, 4th Battalion, of the Army's 3rd Infantry
Division. Two U.S. soldiers were reported wounded, one seriously, by snipers on
rooftops.
U.S. troops strafed the Iraqis from A-10 Warthog attack planes and opened up
with artillery and mortar fire. About an hour after the firefight began, Wolford
moved his tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles forward again and retook the
intersection.
Wolford's unit then began pursuing the remaining Iraqi defenders.
115
APRIL 2003
The counterattack began shortly after dawn, when more than 20 buses and
trucks dropped off dozens of Iraqi foot soldiers firing assault rifles and rocket-
propelled grenades at U.S. tanks blocking an intersection leading to a bridge
over the Tigris, Wolford said.
Two A-10s strafed the building tops and the street with 30mm rapid-fire cannon
that reverberated across the city. Wolford asked if the jets could also hit
bunkers built in a city park.
"If they can hit that bunker complex. we'll be set to go back in," Wolford told a
flight controller, who was directing the pilots.
"Two ships are coming in hot," Capt. Todd Smith, the controller, replied. "How
are they are working for you?"
"They're a beautiful thing," Wolford said, after two strafing runs.
The A-10s had to leave to refuel, but soon British Tornado fighter jets were
overhead with precision-guided bombs. Wolford called for those to hit the
buildings occupied by snipers.
Iraqi fighters also appeared to be probing U.S. defenses in other areas, with
short exchanges of fire in other areas. American troops showed no signs of
pulling back.
Around daybreak, troops with the Army's 101st Airborne Division launched an
attack on an eight-story former Republican Guard headquarters about half a
mile from the airport. Two Iraqis were reported killed in the gun battle. There
were no U.S. casualties.
The Army had come under fire from fighters in the building in previous days.
Explosions, the thud of shells landing, anti-aircraft and machine-gun fire and
the drone of aircraft filled the air in Baghdad at midmorning Tuesday.
For the first time since the war began, residents of the capital could see, rather
than just hear, allied aircraft. A lone fighter jet flew over Baghdad, swerving,
diving and, at times, causing a boom that rocked the city.
The Arab TV network Al-Jazeera reported that a U.S. plane attacked its office on
the banks of the Tigris River, killing a reporter.
Most residents were hunkered down in their homes, with very little traffic on
the streets.
State television went off the air around mid-morning.
Marines Cross Tigris River in Amphibious Assault Vehicles

Source: Knight Ridder Washington Bureau
Apr. 8--OUTSIDE BAGHDAD -- After hundreds of miles of highway travel, U.S.

Marines Monday finally used their amphibious assault vehicles the way they
were intended -- floating across a tributary of the Tigris River to take up
positions near Rashid Airport, east of downtown Baghdad.
Like a row of giant, olive-green elephants, the amphibious Amtracs roared down
the muddy banks of the Diyala River, splashed into the water and lumbered out
on the other side.
116
APRIL 2003
"Usually we do it in the ocean," said Amtracker Lance Cpl. Casey Mattox, 22, a
reservist from Foley, Ala.
More than 10,000 Marines crossed the Diyala, a 100-foot-wide ribbon of water
that joins the Tigris south of Baghdad, becoming the second major U.S. force on
Baghdad's outskirts. On the opposite side of the Iraqi capital, the Army's 3rd
Infantry Division controls the international airport and has made forays into
Baghdad neighborhoods.
Opposition was light to the Marines' advance, though two Marines were killed
when an artillery shell struck a vehicle as it rolled across a bridge. It was
unclear who fired the shell.
The Marines' advance toward Baghdad was halted Monday when engineers
discovered mines along the road. The mines are expected to be cleared
Tuesday and there was little doubt of the troops' destination.
"We're going to keep pushing northwest toward the center of the city," said
Capt. Joseph Bevan, executive officer for K Company.
Marines found hundreds of discarded Republican Guard uniforms along the
roadway, apparently tossed there by Iraqi deserters fleeing ahead of the
advance. They also found weapons and ammunition, including a large surface-
to-surface missile.
In a military building that had been booby trapped by the Iraqis, members of
the 1st Battalion, 4th Marines found bunkers filled with anti-tank and anti-
aircraft weapons. They also seized 30 prisoners of war, including some who
carried Baath Party membership cards or wore military uniforms.
Many of the Marines crossed the Diyala over bridges, but others were tucked
inside nearly submerged Amtracs that had brought them hundreds of miles
along contested Iraqi roads and through towns where they met fierce
resistance.
Marine infantrymen were uncertain of their vehicles' water-worthiness. The
aluminum vehicles leak when plunged in water.
"They were wondering if we would sink," said Lance Cpl. Zachary Schudrowitz,
20, a Marine reservist, college student and part-time Wal-Mart employee.
The vehicles, each of which is equipped with four bilge pumps that can remove
440 gallons of water per minute, leaked copiously but none sank.
"The bilge pumps are the only thing that keep these thing from sinking," said
Lance Cpl, Brent Rishel, an Amtrac crew chief from Long Beach, Miss.
Marines of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines began the day about six miles from
the heart of Baghdad. Artillery destroyed several tanks and about a dozen gun
emplacements across the river.
The artillery fire also damaged a bridge Marines had planned to use to enter
the city. Engineers preparing a portable bridge were attacked by light arms.
When the firefight was over, a bulldozer got too close to the water and slipped
in.
The Marines made the crossing while not wearing padded chemical protective
suits, which had become stifling in the 90-degree weather. Iraqi citizens, who
had been sullen and suspicious, appeared friendly on Monday, waving and
cheering for Marines who headed toward the center of the city.
117
APRIL 2003
But some Marines were grumbling. The entire 1st Marine Division had been
ordered to clean trash and debris from the roadsides and fields where they had
stayed.
Commanding Gen. James Mattis was said to be "furious" about the conditions of
sites where Marines had stopped, leaving behind MRE wrappers and human
waste.
"I agree. It's disgusting. Instead of the highway of death, it looks like the
highway of trash," said Gunnery Sgt. Craig Morris, referring to an incident from
the first Gulf War, in which allied aircraft killed hundreds of Iraqi soldiers as
they fled Kuwait on the highway to Iraq.
Peterson reports for the Biloxi (Miss.) Sun Herald. Contributing were Andrea
Gerlin of The Philadelphia Inquirer with the 1st Battalion, 4th Marines, and Juan
O. Tamayo of The Miami Herald from Marine Combat Headquarters in Iraq.
Iraqi Military Death Toll Still a Mystery

The death toll of Iraqi soldiers is in the thousands, but precisely how many have
died is anyone's guess.
The Pentagon isn't doing estimates. The International Committee of the Red
Cross says hospitals in Baghdad - where "one emergency arrival follows the
other" - have gotten too busy to count the wounded.
Military analysts are divided: One says more than 10,000 uniformed Iraqi
soldiers will be dead at war's end. Another suggests the death total will be half
that. Others won't venture a guess.
"These are extremely rubber numbers," said Dana Dillon, a senior analyst and
retired Army major at the Heritage Foundation. "It's difficult to verify, especially
when you're dropping bombs on people and you don't go back and count
bodies."
Adding to the confusion are claims by Iraq's minister of information,
Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, who says American and British soldiers are the
ones being killed. They're so demoralized, he said, that they're "beginning to
commit suicide at the walls of Baghdad."
U.S. and British military officials say 91 American and 30 British troops have
died in the war.
Most information about Iraqi troop casualties has dribbled out after individual
fights or suicide bombings.
"We can't keep count of how many we've killed," Col. David Perkins with the 3rd
Infantry Division inside Baghdad said Monday. He guessed his troops killed
between 600 and 1,000 Iraqi soldiers on their way into the capital on the west
side of the Tigris River.
"We have had a lot of suicide attackers today," Perkins said. "These guys are
going to die in droves."
That assault on Baghdad followed weekend incursions into the capital - a show
of force that the Pentagon says left 2,000 to 3,000 Iraqi fighters dead.
118
APRIL 2003
"It's a pure guesstimate," said Dan Goure, a military analyst at the Lexington
Institute. He said the Pentagon issued the number to convince Iraqi fighters
that the battle was lopsided and they should put down their weapons.
"It may never be known how many Iraqis were killed by coalition forces," Goure
said. "It would have to be over 10,000 uniformed Iraqis and more if you include
the irregulars."
Before the war began, government officials and independent military think
tanks estimated Iraq had 389,000 full-time, active-duty military, including
about 80,000 members of the Republican Guard. Iraq also was believed to have
650,000 reserve troops and 44,000 to 60,000 paramilitary and security forces.
William Arkin, a private analyst and expert on the Iraqi military, said the
estimates, particularly about the Republican Guard, could be misleading.
"They were undermanned as we saw by the ease with which we went through
them," Arkin said.
Arkin would only say that the Iraqi military losses would be in the "many
thousands." But he predicted the total would be lower than in the first Gulf War
when 10,000 to 15,000 Iraqi military deaths occurred.
In the Gulf War, 300,000-plus Iraqi soldiers exiled in the desert were bombed by
U.S. and coalition forces for 39 days with 10 times as many weapons as have
been used so far in this war, he said.
"There is no way to do the math and get to the number (of Iraqi soldiers) killed
in 1991," he said.
Still, Arkin believes the Iraqi military death toll will be higher than expected,
and the number might have postwar implications for the Bush administration.
The coalition has worked to strike military targets and minimize civilian
casualties, Arkin said. But if Iraqis perceive that their troop losses are
disproportionate to the number of American and British soldiers killed, they
may think "the United States was bloodthirsty" in its efforts to change the
government in Iraq.
"This is very important politically because the whole point of this war is to
topple Saddam Hussein's regime with minimal cost," Arkin said. "Every one of
those military casualties is going to be equally a problem in the postwar period.
These are angry families."
119

Operation Iraqi Freedom2

Încărcat de

Informații document

Drepturi de autor

Formate disponibile

Partajați acest document

Partajați sau inserați document

Opțiuni de partajare

Vi se pare util acest document?

Este necorespunzător acest conținut?

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

Operation Iraqi Freedom2

Încărcat de

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM

Coalition Is Within 30 Miles of Baghdad

U.S.-led forces advancing on Baghdad have moved to within 30 miles of the

Republican Guard's Medina and Nebuchadnezzar divisions near Karbala to the

11 Bodies Found With Rescued U.S. POW

Eleven bodies - some believed to be Americans - were found with prisoner of

Ancient Iraqi swamp culture drained but not dead

Speculation Mounts over Iraqi Military Casualties

U.S. Troops Attack Baghdad Airport

U.S. troops attacked Baghdad's international airport Thursday night after

Recovering Iraqi dead grim detail for soldiers

Look who the Iraqis are cheering

They remind you of Holocaust deniers. With a deeply prejudiced refusal to

From friends to foes, Iraqi-U.S. relations span decades

(U-WIRE) LAWRENCE, Kan. -- As constant war updates flood newspapers and

COLUMN: Burning the future of Iraq's environment

HANOVER, NH -- While environmental protection is often forgotten in times of

Kurds gather forces in the south of their autonomous region

On Friday afternoon, an orange truck full of Kurdish guerrillas known as

Kurds lead in looting and fighting ; BATTLE FOR MOSUL

The Iraq conflict: As immigrant Arabs flee, Kurds start to go home;

Marines pick up casualties along devastated road south of Baghdad

ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Marine casualty and evacuation

Mindful of the discomfort of their comrades on the ground, the squadron's

Marines Pursue Iraqi Army, Shoot Shadows

Tortured and shot hundreds of Iraqi dead discovered at military base

THE MUTILATED remains of hundreds of people - possible victims of Saddam

AS HUNDREDS of triumphant American troops had their first glimpse of

U.S. infantry troops encounter Iraqi suicide paramilitary in

Bomb assemblers' slogan is 'handle with care' Deep within aircraft

WAR AGAINST IRAQ

Iraqi military spokesman discusses activities near Baghdad

following yesterday's battle on the boundaries of the Saddam International

City Battles Will Boost Growing Civilian Toll

Apr. 7--UNITED NATIONS--Baghdad hospitals yesterday were flooded with

Arabs Appalled by U.S. Troops in Baghdad

Hussein's Elite 'Melt' As Britons Grab Basra

Apr. 7--BASRA, Iraq--Hundreds of British troops and dozens of tanks and

NAJAF JIM LACEY

Green Berets Wielding Guns, Good Attitude ; Holding Northern Front

Iraqis play dead to lure our forces into danger

4th Infantry Prepares for Tough Combat in Iraq

Apr. 6--CAMP PENNSYLVANIA, Kuwait -- The dazzling advances by American

"We began to appreciate how difficult it was going to be to do things in

Iraqis Loot Basra As British Take Control

Hussein Appears on Iraqi TV as U.S. Forces Fortify Control of Baghdad

Apr. 5--BAGHDAD INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, Iraq--His airport now renamed and

leader. One reference suggested that he survived a war-opening missile attack

Marines Warned About Suicide Attackers

British Troops Move into Basra

Publication date: 2003-04-07

Key developments in the war against Iraq

DOHA, Qatar (AP) -- Key developments in the war in Iraq:

Half of U.S. Troop Deaths Said Accidental

City Battles Will Boost Growing Civilian Toll

Apr. 7--UNITED NATIONS--Baghdad hospitals yesterday were flooded with

combatants, but in Iraq, soldiers have been disguised as surrendering civilians

U.S. invaders find surprises in Karbala WAR IN IRAQ: Hints of a sinister

photographs stapled to each one. Someone had made an unsuccessful effort to

10,000 Cheer, `Saddam Is No More!'

Apr. 7--KARBALA, Iraq--About 10,000 people gathered in the public square

.S. Troops Move About Baghdad At Will

Special Forces, Intelligence Units Target Hussein Cronies

Apr. 5--WASHINGTON--Initial forays by U.S. forces into central Baghdad are