Iraq's vice president on Saturday threatened more suicide bombings against coalition troops, saying a bomber who killed four U.S. soldiers outside the Iraqi city of Najaf was a noncommissioned army officer.
At a news conference, Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan identified the bomber as Ali Jaafar al-Noamani, a father of several children. A detailed statement on the bombing would be issued later, he said.
Asked whether suicide bombings will now become a policy of the Iraqi military, Ramadan said: "It will be routine military policy. We will use any means to kill our enemy in our land and we will follow the enemy into its land."
Yes, I'd say that Iraq is planning terrorist attacks in the US.
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I've caught myself wondering again and again this week what my feelings would be - and more importantly, what actions I would take - if I were a resident of Baghdad. I started on this train of thought right after the street bombing in that city, when I heard a journalist report that, aside from what he called the '_pro forma_ dancing and singing in praise of Saddam', the people seemed calm, and, bizarrely enough one might think, even friendly toward him as an American. Later reports from others added to the confusing picture - one reporter described 'young men running through the street brandishing a severed hand and screaming 'Is this your liberation?!'' Such a reaction at least made sense - considering the state of frenzy many of our young (and not so young!) men seem to be whipped into these days, it makes sense to me that those actually in the fray would be somewhat hysterical.
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Armored columns of the Army's Third Infantry Division swept past the city of
Karbala and passed a major obstacle on the road to Baghdad.
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The Jordanian authorities have arrested a handful of Iraqi agents in connection
with a botched plot to poison the water supply that serves American troops,
officials said today.
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When Iraqi commanders send soldiers disguised as
noncombatants to fire on American troops, the real goal is
to turn the Americans against Iraqi civilians.
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In Najaf, people rushed to greet hundreds of U.S. troops today, crying out
repeatedly, "Thank you, this is beautiful!"
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To read the Arab press is to think that the entire Arab world is enraged with the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and to some extent that's true. But here's what you don't read: underneath the rage, there is also a grudging, skeptical curiosity ? a curiosity about whether the Americans will actually do what they claim and build a new, more liberal Iraq.
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The Bush administration has intensified a campaign to sow
doubts about whether President Saddam Hussein is still
alive and in control.
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One of the most important moves so far in the war was the
American effort to stop the Republican Guard from entering
Baghdad.
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The seizing of a bridge across the Euphrates cleared the
Third Infantry Division's last geographic obstacle to
Baghdad.
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When American troops from the 101st Airborne Division
marched into Najaf on Wednesday, they were greeted by
urgent requests for water.
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With American forces beginning their assault on Baghdad, their commanders would do well to take a close look at the hard-learned lessons of Israel's experience with urban combat.
Operation Defensive Shield, the Israeli antiterrorist strike last spring, generated plenty of controversy, but it also supplies a good model for military tactics. After a series of Palestinian suicide bombings, the Israel Defense Forces entered several densely populated West Bank cities, including Nablus and Jenin. Within just a week, Israel gained control of each of them.
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Four Western journalists spoke for the first time publicly on Wednesday about
their incarceration in the Baghdad government's most notorious prison.
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Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said that at least initially, the United
States and Britain have "to play the leading role" in postwar Iraq.
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The assault on the Saddam International Airport placed
American troops about 10 miles from the heart of Baghdad.
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The U.S. strategy at this point is to maintain the military
momentum and the psychological pressure on Saddam Hussein.
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It was a picture of Arab grief and rage. A teenage boy glared from the rubble of a bombed building as a veiled woman wept over the body of a relative.
In fact, it was two pictures: one from the American-led war in Iraq and the other from the Palestinian territories, blended into one image this week on the Web site of the popular Saudi daily newspaper Al Watan.
The meaning would be clear to any Arab reader: what is happening in Iraq is part of one continuous brutal assault by America and its allies on defenseless Arabs, wherever they are.
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Geraldo Rivera, the moustachioed former daytime TV presenter turned war reporter, has been kicked out of Iraq after "compromising" army operations. He was de-accredited by the US military for reporting Western troop movements in the war, the Pentagon said on Monday. "He was with a [US] military unit in the field and the commander felt that he had compromised operational information by reporting the position and movements of troops," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told Reuters.
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Peter Arnett, the CNN reporting star of the 1991 Gulf war, has been accused of "kowtowing to the enemy" by a US Republican politician who has branded an interview by the reporter on Iraqi television as "nauseating". Peter Arnett, who is based in Baghdad but who now works for NBC News and National Geographic Explorer, told Iraqi state TV on Sunday that his reporting about Iraqi civilian casualties "helps those who oppose the war". The allied war plan, he said, "has failed because of Iraqi resistance".
The 1st Amendment protects his right to say it, but it also protects mine to call him an asshole for saying it.
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Whatever one may think of Russia's political opposition to
the war in Iraq, no one denies Moscow's right to it.
Supplying arms to Iraq is something else.
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Residents escaping Basra described a city under strict control of supporters of
Saddam Hussein.
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U.S. covert teams have been operating in urban areas in Iraq, trying to kill members of President Saddam Hussein's inner circle, including Baath Party officials and Special Republican Guard commanders, according to U.S. and other knowledgeable officials.
The covert teams, from the CIA's paramilitary division and the military's Special Operations group, include snipers and demolition experts schooled in setting house and car bombs. They have reportedly killed more than a handful of individuals, according to one knowledgeable source. They have been in operation for at least one week.
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How do you admit you were wrong? What do you do when you realize those you were defending in fact did not want your defense and wanted something completely different from you and from the world?
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Thirteen soldiers were injured today, none of them critically, when an unknown
man plowed into a line of soldiers waiting in line for the base store at this
military camp.
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After a week of aerial bombing, a 5,000-member brigade of
the Third Infantry Division began engaging the Republican
Guard.
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