The 3/7th Cavalry was outnumbered by over 2:1 in a battle on the 4th.
After 10 minutes, it was all over.

From Wednesday's Washington Post, all is not quiet on the northern front:

ANKARA, Turkey, April 8 -- Gen. Hilmi Ozkok, chief of the Turkish armed forces, receives a briefing every day about the position and strength of Iraqi Kurdish militias advancing slowly toward the oil cities of Kirkuk and Mosul in northern Iraq. With the help of U.S. airstrikes and Special Forces, these pesh merga fighters have moved within 20 miles of both cities in recent days.

Turkey considers Kurdish control of the Iraqi oil fields a security threat, and if the Kurds enter either city, Ozkok will face the most important decision of his 44-year military career: whether to order an invasion of northern Iraq that could lead to clashes between his troops and those of the United States and its Kurdish allies.

In theory, Turkey's elected leaders have the final say over any deployment into Iraq. But the politically vulnerable and relatively inexperienced government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan almost certainly will defer to the judgment of the military, which has a long tradition in Turkey of intervening even in matters unrelated to national security.

Whether that should be of comfort or concern to the United States now is a matter of quiet debate in Washington and Ankara, where diplomats and others have been scrutinizing Ozkok's background and public statements for clues to what he might do in a crisis. Several thousand Turkish soldiers are already based in northern Iraq, and about 40,000 more are massed along the border awaiting orders....

Despite weeks of diplomacy, including a tense meeting last week between Ozkok and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Turkey has not ruled out a move into northern Iraq. Instead, it agreed to consult the United States before taking any action. Turkey has also warned that any move into Kirkuk or Mosul by Kurdish groups, even unarmed civilians, would trigger a military response. With the Kurdish fighters gradually seizing ground abandoned by Iraqi soldiers -- and the U.S. deployment in the north still too small to take the cities alone -- this is the scenario most likely to cause a crisis, Turkish and U.S. officials say.

"The closer the Kurds get to Kirkuk, the more worried we become," said one senior Turkish official, who asked not to be identified. "We've made our position very clear to the Americans. It's up to them what happens next."...

Updating an earlier post is an article from USA Today.

MARINE COMBAT HEADQUARTERS, Central Iraq — U.S. Marines raiding an Iraqi military prison in Baghdad found bloodstained uniforms belonging to at least two American prisoners-of-war, officers here said Tuesday.
...

Battling through platoon-sized units of Iraqi paramilitaries, the Marines found the tops of two Army chemical protective suits with the names of two of the POWs. Some unnamed desert camouflage uniform trousers also were found. "Some of the uniform items appear to have been shot," said Lt. Col. Nick Morano, 41, senior watch officer at the Marine command post here in central Iraq.
Used syringes and spent antibiotics packages were found alongside the uniforms, which officers believe indicates that the POWs received some medical care.
Elements of the 1st Marine Division are continuing to search the facilities at Rashid airfield, which include a military hospital, military prison, and a headquarters for the Saddam Fedayeen paramilitaries. "It's conceivable they may be nearby," said Morano, referring to the POWs.

British Intelligence believe Saddamescaped, according to Sky News.

A fan sent me two clips of some "raw feeds" from Iraq. The report is suppose to be about the dead and missing journalists in last night's attack. In fact the person on the tape spent more time thinking about his appearance.

A trust fund has been set up for the two children, ages 4 and 3, of Army Pfc. Lori Piestewa of Tuba City, AZ. Pfc Piestawa was one of eight soldiers whose bodies were found during the rescue of Pfc Jessica Lynch; their unit, the 507th Maintenance Company, was ambushed on March 23 near Nasiriyah.

Piestewa was the first American servicewoman, and first American Indian, to be killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom. She was a single mother; her children are living with her parents in Tuba City.

From the Sydney Morning Herald

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 pictures, 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 American reports, opting to believe Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf's version of events.
"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."

Poor communication and the U.S. military's failure to address decade-old concerns over safety and training may have contributed the to the spate of "friendly fire" deaths in the Iraq war - already approaching one-quarter of the U.S. and British combat-related deaths so far, military experts said Tuesday.

Even before the war, military officials had identified such potential problems after accidental shootings in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the Afghanistan conflict, but they said the armed services had failed to completely correct them.

The latest disastrous instance of American forces shooting accidentally at allied troops occurred Sunday with a U.S. bombing that killed 18 people and wounded 45 others in northern Iraq.

(SanLuisObispo.com)

Shepard Smith: Rick is patrolling airstrip..got transfered to another bunch...out of breath
Rick Leventhal checks in: Infantry group on patrol 1st Division 2nd BN 23rd Marines..mostly this is on foot.. looking for resistances.. trying to draw fire... another unit was out had 9 casualties.. lots of fire around.. locals staying inside as marines walk by..

Smith: Where?
Leventhal: East of the center of Baghdad

Smith: near yesterday's bombing
Leventhal: Don't know... saw some large fires... seen Bath loyalasts.. they had sniper fire last night.. put it down.. walking the streets.. haven't been hit.. 9 marines medivaced.. only 1 was serious...

Smith: initial impression?
Leventhal: Arrived last night... 12 hrs ago... drove from one place to another.. road blocks.. one bridge was blown up.. arrived at dusk... thick smoke... like a war movie... that's what my photog kept saying... unsettling... first look at the city... hearing explsions that I think is marines artillary... these guys are reserves.. activated shortly after 9-11 have been in active duty for along time... cops.. data processor...

The misison is to walk the streets to draw fire so that they can flush out the enemy.. wild...

Smith: is this like US civil war where people pull up a chair and watch
Leventhal: Lots of people watching... like a parade.. lots of smiles..thumbs up... saw that in the farmland as well.. on our way here we saw widespread evidence of looting.. people taking what they could from RG HQ's farm machinery.. 4 guys pushing an 18 wheeler...

Brett Baier: Snipers?
Leventhal: Lots of that... many soldiers were taking off their uniforms... using civilians as shields... see someone without a gun... fine.. with a gun.. a target

Baier: How are you walking
Leventhal: couple of compaines out here... fanned out... some cases defensive positions.. other times...private vehicle drove up... being sent away... people with radios

Smith: now we have Greg Kelly -- any questions for Rick?
Greg Kelly: Hey Rick, be carefull.. I came in on an armored vehicle..

Smith: Alot more to accomplish w/Fedayeen?
Kelly: Not the unit I'm with.. looking for someolne to surrender... but feeling that the bulk of mission behind them...

The road led to what looked like a carport -a really long one, but a carport nonetheless. At the rear, though, was something far more interesting to U.S. forces.

A door. And behind it, lined with moss, a cave entrance - another mysterious, potentially dangerous gateway into the murky world of Baghdad Underground.

Was this a path to one of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's notorious hideouts? Were booby traps - or, worse, Iraqi soldiers lurking inside?

"We wanted to know if there was enemy in there. We thought there was enemy in there," said Lt. Col. Lee Fetterman, commander of the 101st Airborne's 3rd Battalion, 3rd Brigade.

(AP)

An update to Troops, journalists undergo cleanup for nerve gas exposure

From the Charlotte (NC) Observer/Knight-Ridder

SOUTH OF KARBALA, Iraq - Four soldiers from the 2nd brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, with red sores on their faces and hands, were sent by ambulance to a rear MASH unit Tuesday. They were told they would be examined for possible contact with nerve or blistering agents.

Ollie North, checking in live via Fox news is reporting that equipment the Marines are shooting up today has been Unmanned.

He also reports that the Fedayeen bodies being found contain a lot of apparently non-Iraqis. Syrians, Jordanis, Saudis, Yemenis.

Local Iraqis are turning in the Fedayeen left and right.

Relates an incident of Fedayeen (Jordanians) using a Red Crescent Ambulance in a Suicide bombing attempt. Ollie opines that the Fedayeen are not being centrally controlled, their actions appear to be personal initiative acts of terrorism.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein likely survived a US airstrike aimed at killing him and his two sons, London newspapers said, quoting British intelligence sources.

"He was probably not in the building when it was bombed (on Monday)," The Guardian quoted a source as saying.

The Times said Britain's foreign intelligence service, MI6, told the US Central Intelligence Agency that it believed Saddam left the targeted building in Baghdad just before it was bombed.

"We think he left the same way he arrived in the area, either by a tunnel system or by car, we're not sure," the paper quoted a British intelligence source as saying.

(AFP)

(UPDATE: -- Here is The Guardian's report.)

Fox Embed Greg Kelly standing outside Saddam's palace: Bombs still falling...but feeling that fighting is settling down...troops near all prominent landmarks..unit believes that their mere presence is helping regime crumble...hold this palace and another down the block... curiousity ... some scouting for an Iraqi provisional gov't

Greta: Any civilians around?
Kelly: 1st day it was a ghost town... now some looting.. organized looting

Greta: Surprises?
Kelly: That we've made it here so fast -- plan seemed too ambitious...some officers expressed concerned... has worked out well

Greta: Pictures of Saddam all over?
Kelly: Everywhere... even in new palace.. 4 huge busts that surround compound.. almost laughable.. charicature of a dictator..

Greta: Any bunkers?
Kelly: No.. now that fighting has subsided somewhat.. might look around.. so far was fight to be managed.. just weeding out enemy..

Greta: Special RG organized?
Kelly: Random sniping.. command and control has been obliterated..not RG, because RG would understand futility of resisting.... that;s one theory..

Greta: Surrenders?
Kelly: Several hundred EPW's..

Greta: Huminatiaran problems?
Kelly: That's some way off..need to get control first... had those efforts near Najaf... as far as UN not seen them yet

Greta: Soldiers fatigue?
Kelly: Now when you walk thru palace they knew they made history... alot of them feel lucky to be here... high morale

Greta: thank you Greg...

Widespread looting in British controlled Basra is preventing humanitarian aid from getting into the city.

Thousands of people have rampaged through Iraq's second city and British troops had to fire into the air to prevent young men from stripping aid lorries bare.

The Red Cross has entered the city, where people are desperate for clean water.

But looting has compounded the problems for British troops and prevented aid going where it is needed.

(itv.com)

Fox TV - Brett Baier has updated the item on the find of bloody US Army uniforms by the Marines at a military prison in southeast Baghdad.

The Marines assaulted the prison specifically based on intel tips that there may have been Americans there. A search of the prison only turned up the uniforms.

::More - Commentary on this issue:: is posted on the CP Op/Ed Page, and at my home blog.

In this small, dusty town in northern Iraq, diehard Communists study the works of Marx and Engels and dream of the day their party rises from the ashes.

Once the most powerful Communist movement in the Middle East, the party was brutally repressed by Iraq's government for 40 years, leaving just a few thousands members to follow the creed in the Kurd-controlled north of the country.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the Communist system in eastern Europe was a further blow.

"The collapse of the Soviet Union was a catastrophe for us," said Abdul Hamid Mohammad, a 48-year-old party member, standing outside the crumbling headquarters in Kalar, a town 165 km (100 miles) northeast of Baghdad and a Communist bastion.

(Reuters)

NYT Embed Charlie LeDuff reports that the greeting that the marines received in Qalat Sukkar was especially warm because it represented the homecoming of translator Khuder al-Emiri:

Unsure how the local residents would react to their presence, commanders of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit planned only to tear down likenesses of Saddam Hussein and rummage through a secret police headquarters this morning when they entered this town of 45,000, about 150 miles southeast of Baghdad.

But by noon it was apparent that the townspeople considered them liberators. Much of the reason, apparently, was the marines' choice of translator.

The unit's interpreter, Khuder al-Emiri, is a local hero, a guerrilla leader who was forced to flee this town in April 1991 after leading a failed uprising against Saddam Hussein. It was a serious miscalculation. Thousands were killed, and Mr. Emiri escaped to the United States. and opened a restaurant in Seattle, much of the time spent waiting for this day.

[...]

The drama began later, out on the street in the public square. Mr. Emiri's cousin recognized him and shouted his name. A crowd began to gather.
"Your brother is dead," his cousin told him. He slumped. Then Mr. Emiri's son, Ali, was produced and the man wept uncontrollably. He did not recognize the young man who was a boy when he fled. He did not recognize his other brothers, or his sister.
Word of Mr. Emiri's arrival spread through town by way of children's feet. Their hero was with the Americans and the crowd believed the marines' intentions were good. They began to chant in English. "Stay! Stay! U.S.A.!"
The euphoria nearly spilled over into a riot. Children pulled at the marines, jumped on their trucks, wanting to shake their hands, touch their cheeks. A single chicken hung in the butcher's window and still the residents wanted to give the Americans something, anything. Cigarette? Money?
"You are owed a favor from the Iraqis," said Ibrahim Shouqyk, a clean and remarkably well-dressed man, considering the abject poverty here. "We dedicate our loyalty to the Americans and the British. We are friends."

AL AMARAH, Iraq This town of an unknown quantity of people fell to coalition forces Tuesday with only two shots fired by American Marines.

The Tawara Task Force came to engage the 10th Armored Brigade, said to be the strongest unit left in the Iraqi Army. But when the Americans crossed the Tigris River on Tuesday afternoon, they discovered that the Arab warriors had fled, leaving their vehicles scattered across the country side.

"I just think they saw us coming and ran," said Colonel Richard Mills, commanding officer of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit which falls under the Task Force's umbrella. "I think that's a lot of the young men you saw on the highway this morning. They were going home."

(International Herald Tribune)

The United States and Israel agreed just eight days before the outbreak of the Iraq war that if Israel were hit by an Iraqi missile with an unconventional warhead and wanted to retaliate, Washington could veto any action that it believed would constitute a "clear and present danger" to coalition troops, diplomatic sources said.

The agreement resolved a misunderstanding that had developed between the two countries, and a last-minute effort was needed to address potential Israeli involvement in the war.

(Haaretz)

Defiant Iraqis last night ruled out surrender after US warplanes, tanks and artillery pounded Baghdad and troops pushed into the city from several directions.

"It's raining bombs," said Reuters correspondent Samia Nakhoul on Day 20 of the war when the Americans dropped four 900 kg earth-busting bombs on a building where they claimed President Saddam Hussein and his two sons were holding a meeting.

(Gulf Daily News)

Iraqis Tell of 11th-Hour Arrests and Torture

Iraq, April 8 — Saddam Hussein's agents were working until the last moment.

This morning, as thousands of American troops moved deeper into Baghdad, some marines said they happened across a building where the men of the Iraqi border police had apparently been busy interrogating suspects. Beating them, said the captives. Gouging them with wires. Burning them with cigarettes.

By the time the American convoy arrived, the Iraqi agents had fled. The captives, some still shackled and blindfolded, were set free.

"The Americans saved me," said Hamid Neama, a laborer who lives in the Amin neighborhood in southeast Baghdad. He held out his hands, which were swollen like overripe fruit. "The police beat my hands, they beat me on my body."

ElBaradei: U.N. Must Verify Iraqi Weapons Tests

Washington Post:

VIENNA -- United Nations weapons inspectors must be asked to verify any test results indicating the existence of weapons of mass destruction n Iraq, the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said on Tuesday.

Among a number of finds of suspect chemicals by U.S. forces in Iraq were 14 barrels discovered at an Iraqi military training camp on Sunday.

"Any test results would have to be verified by the United Nations weapons inspectors to generate the required credibility," Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told Reuters through a spokesman.

Plastic grocery bags are Baghdad's urban tumbleweeds.

They roll across the landscape by the thousands, hanging up in trees and on fences until they are shredded by the sunlight and friction from the dust in the wind.

As Marines moved through eastern Baghdad Tuesday, it was not just the combat that captured their attention. Sometimes it was the grinding poverty they saw around them. Sometimes it was the trash and filth. Sometimes it was the fact that every body of water seemed polluted.

"Twenty-two days without a shower and this place smells worse than I do," said Cpl. Casey Mitchell, a reservist who works for the Sheriff's Department back home in Lucedale, Miss.

(Knight Ridder)

AP (via Yahoo) reports on the destruction of pictures and statues of Saddam Hussein by coalition forces and Iraqi citizens.

Lots of very interesting assertions with no attribution (not even the obligatory "according to an anonymous source in [insert organization here]") from The Telegraph . . . Some excerpts:

"Chemical" Ali Hassan al-Majid, said to have been killed in an air strike on Basra, travelled to Syria with a suitcase stuffed with $30 million in the last few days of January to propose himself as a replacement for Saddam Hussein, The Daily Telegraph has learned.

But Majid also carried a second, personal, message of his own: he would supplement the military and oil concessions by offering himself as a replacement for Saddam. Neither offer got anywhere.

And this:

What little is known by the allies is not always shared. Despite professing for three weeks not to know whether Saddam Hussein's younger son, Quasay, had survived the March 19 attack on his father, American military officials said on Monday that they believed he was not merely alive, but was leading Iraq's security forces.

So precise is their information that they heard Iraqi military officials telling Quasay by radio that Baghdad airport was secure and that the US incursions into Baghdad had been repelled.

UPDATE: With regard to my comment regarding the lack of attribution, my thanks to feste for shedding some light on the matter with the following comment: "Actually if the Telegrapgh got the story on background from a military or intelligence source they can't source...not even the ubiquitous pseudonyms such as "unnamed White House Aid" or "Pentagon official" used in the US media. The UK has a very tough secrets act and they enforce it rigorously against the media. Publishers have been ruined."

The bombing strike Monday of a building where Saddam Hussein was believed to be marks the first time the U.S.-led coalition has had actionable intelligence on the Iraqi despot's location since the start of the war.

Officials say other leadership targets have been hit since the war's start, but since the opening strike, the intelligence is the first specifically relating to Saddam and his two sons.

(Fox News)

THE commanding officer of Britain's Desert Rats last night promised to protect private property in Basra, but said that he was "not particularly worried" about the looting of Baath Party and government buildings which has taken place since the city was captured by his troops.

Brigadier Graham Binns, the commanding officer of the 7th Armoured Brigade, the Desert Rats, said that much of the looting, which has brought chaotic scenes to the streets of Basra, amounted to "a redistribution of wealth" from the supporters of Saddam Hussein to the oppressed poor of the southern Iraqi city.

(The Western Mail)

The often unreliable DebkaFile says:

The Iraqis gained some propaganda mileage Tuesday from the US tank shell that hit the media center at Hotel Palestine in Baghdad, killing two TV cameramen and injuring two more journalists.

DEBKAfile's intelligence sources have discovered that the shell did not come from a US tank. The explosion that hurt the correspondents occurred on an upper floor and was rigged and planted by Iraqi military intelligence. To avoid a row with the press corps covering the war and nip the incident in the bud, the US command assumed responsibility and apologized before it went any further. This is unlikely to work.

They also claim that yesterday's strike on Saddam and sons did not kill them. Debka's coverage of Gulf War II has been even less reliable than usual. They wrongly trumpeted the rumour that Tariq Aziz and/or Yassin Ramadan had defected, and later claimed that Ramadan had been killed. None of those items panned out. But since every once in a while Debka scoops the press with items that are later picked up in the mainstream media I've passed this item along with these caveats.

April 9th Update: See also this report from the Guardian.

The BBC's defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan has cast doubt on whether the missile that killed two journalists in Baghdad today was fired by a US tank, speculating that Iraqi soldiers may have launched the lethal attack. The US military has admitted one of its tanks fired on the Palestine Hotel, the centre for most of the foreign media in the Iraqi capital.

However, Gilligan said reports from central command in Qatar were starting to suggest US tank fire was not responsible for the deaths of Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk and Jose Couso, a cameraman with the Spanish TV network Telecinco.

Three other Reuters journalists and an Abu Dhabi TV staff member were injured when an explosion hit their room on the 15th floor of the hotel.

"I may be right in saying we're hearing from central command that they're starting to retract their apology for this incident," Gilligan told Radio 5 Live's drivetime show.

He added that after examining the scene he concluded it was virtually impossible for the US tank to have fired on the 15th floor room.

The Telegraph reports that "intelligence sources [have] suggested" that Monday's leadership strike failed to kill Saddam.

From the Telegraph

>One allied commander said: "Saturday's attack was a poke in the eye of the regime, and yesterday's was a kick in the groin. Soon we'll go for the jugular. The aim was to engage Iraqi forces in the centre and send the message that Baghdad is not theirs, but ours."

CNN>>

The United States plans to host a conference of Iraqi opposition leaders in that nation next week to discuss the creation of an interim Iraqi authority to replace Saddam Hussein, U.S. officials told CNN Tuesday.

The conference is tentatively scheduled April 15 in the southern Iraqi town of Nasiriya, they said.

Knight Ridder>>

Maj. Gen. Sufian al Tikriti left Baghdad on Sunday in a white Toyota sedan, in uniform and alone except for a chauffeur.

Just outside the city, the Republican Guard general came upon a Marine Corps roadblock, where he died.

His sudden death, and a great deal of other evidence, suggests how little Iraq's military knows about the whereabouts and movements of the U.S. and British soldiers who invaded their country three weeks ago.

U.N. Secretary General, Kofi Annan, has cancelled a planned tour of Europe to discuss the post-war reconstruction of Iraq.

From AFP (via Yahoo).

Reuters (via Yahoo) reporting (also being reported on FoxNews) that the pilot and weapons systems officer of the F-15E that was downed near Tikrit Sunday are still missing.

Brett Baier at the Pentagon, reporting for FOX, reported that US Marines searching a prison in the Southeast part of Baghdad found bloody US Uniforms and chem suits, possibly indicating that US prisoners may have been there.

::Update:: Here's a write up of the discovery from FOX

Just being announced now because the Pentagon wanted to ensure security for search and rescue operations ... CNN TV is the source.

From WPMI / AP:

American forces tightened their grip throughout Baghdad on Tuesday, crushing an Iraqi counterattack and seizing a military airport and a huge weapons cache.

CBS reporter John Roberts embedded with US Marines in Baghdad reports on an unfortunate reality of war. Warning: Graphic photos.

From Dayton Daily News / AP:

The United States declared air supremacy over all of Iraq on Tuesday, asserting its warplanes can fly anywhere with impunity, even though an Air Force attack plane was shot down near Baghdad.

Until now the Pentagon had said it owned the skies over all of Iraq except in the Baghdad area and over Tikrit, the hometown of President Saddam Hussein, where air defenses were the strongest.

Via Drudge comes this:

The Central Intelligence Agency issued a report last week claiming that the opposition leader airlifted by the Pentagon to Iraq over the weekend, Ahmad Chalabi, would not be an effective leader to replace Saddam Hussein because many Iraqis do not like him... Critics of the agency have questioned the report's timing and motives.

The previous post "Chalabi calls for uprising as he joins exiles in Iraq" contains this quote: "After the war, the Iraqi people ''will be able to decide for themselves who should be their leaders,'' [Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] said."

[Comment: Perhaps Chalabi's call is meant as a bit of a trial balloon to judge his popularity.]

Also see "Ahmad Chalabi not interested in running for any post"

Bush Jr Would Outdo Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin

"As the evil brain Frankenstein is battling with the hideous monster it had created decades ago to hold the Iraqi people in perpetual thrall and to haunt regional states into submitting to them, Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization, is reeling under one of the most barbaric aggressions in its history."

The U.S. Central Command (Centcom) today declined to offer details on how U.S. military forces were tipped off to an alleged meeting of Saddam Hussein and his top aides yesterday. But sources indicated today that physical taps on telephone and fiber-optic landlines in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad may have played a role.

"We have a number of methods that we use to gain information," Brig. General Vincent Brooks said during today's Centcom press briefing. "A single source is never adequate, so we have multiple sources."

Bombing missions near civilian targets also require that somebody on the ground "see" the target, he said.

(Computerworld)

Independent Online (South Africa)

Cairo - More than 4 500 Egyptians have volunteered to fight the United States-British coalition which is swiftly taking control over Iraq, the national bar association which is organising recruitment said on Tuesday.

As the fall of Baghdad appeared increasingly likely, dozens of people still struggled to put their names down on forms which have been available at the offices of the lawyers' grouping since Thursday.

If you've not been reading the series of dispatches by the New Yorker's John Lee Anderson from Baghdad, you've been missing out on rich first-hand accounts of what's happening in the city. The New Yorker has posted Anderson's latest, and you can read it here.

From somewhere not far away came a steady thump-thumping sound, the noise made by artillery. The barrages got louder, and suddenly all the lights in the hotel went out. Our side of the river was completely dark. Then the whole city became black, except for the odd headlight and the flames from oil fires.

What we were hearing was the battle for the Baghdad airport.

US forces have wiped out an alleged al-Qaeda-linked group in northern Iraq with help from their Kurdish allies -- but also their Iranian foes who have sealed off the Islamist militants' only exit.

US special forces set out Tuesday from this town in Iraqi Kurdistan with Kurdish fighters to track down militants of the Ansar al-Islam group who might have survived the bombing and the onslaught on their stronghold.

(AFP)

The first sign of trouble came in the form of a red bus, loaded with a gang of men with weapons. Then came sniper fire from a warehouse. Before it was over, three Marines were wounded, at least one fatally. The warehouse lay in ruins, and the bus was a blackened hulk. Some of the men inside the bus were captured but others escaped in the fighting.

After a three-week drive from Kuwait without a single combat casualty, the 1st Battalion, 4th Marines, part of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, arrived in eastern Baghdad on Tuesday to find a battlefield.

(Knight Ridder)

Yemen Times - ...Despite the superiority of the US military, there is hope amid Yemenis and Arabs that the US forces will not be able to continue for too long. “We will do our best alongside our Iraqi brothers to find Americans face to face” said one of the Yemenis who arrived in Baghdad recently to fight US forces.

The Yemeni government however, tried to limit the number of Yemenis leaving to Baghdad as much as possible. It was reported that Yemeni authorities at Sana’a airport prevented Thursday 29 persons from leaving the country for Syria on their way to Iraq to join 30 others who have already arrived in Baghdad last Wednesday.

The volunteer fighters denounced behavior by the airport authority and even clashed with them. Some of them were arrested while others set a strike inside the airport for some hours and went back home without their passports.

Kuwait Times: The British ship Sir Perceval laden with about 250 tons of Kuwaiti humanitarian aid relief for war-stricken Iraqis arrived here yesterday.

This is the second ship arriving here within one week providing gifts of rice, flour, sugar and tea from Kuwait to the Iraqi people. British troops began unloading Sir Perceval of its cargo to be warehoused before being distributed to various towns and villages in southern Iraq.

Besides food staples the ship also carries water-purification apparatuses for instalment in a southern Iraqi town from which potable water could be piped to various towns and villages.

ABCNEWS.com : Intercept of 'Saddam's' Voice Led to Airstrike

Intercept Believed to Be of Saddam's Voice Led to Airstrike

U.S. intelligence intercepts, including one believed to be of Saddam Hussein talking to his advisers about how to flee the capital city, led to a U.S. "leadership strike" on an upscale Baghdad neighborhood, ABCNEWS has learned.

The Daily Star: A senior Hizbullah official said Monday that the organization had not sent any of its members to Iraq to carry out military operations there.
Sheikh Naim Qassem, Hizbullah’s deputy secretary-general, was answering reporters’ questions on whether any Hizbullah fighters had gone to Iraq to carry out suicide operations against US-led forces.

He was speaking after leading a delegation to a meeting with the Grand Mufti, Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Qabbani, to discuss the latest developments in the region.

“None of Hizbullah’s members has gone to Iraq to carry out operations there,” Qassem said. “We have clearly expressed our position, namely that we reject the American aggression and support the Iraqi people’s confrontation of this aggression. We also call on the Arab and Muslim world to reject this aggression through the appropriate means, but Hizbullah has not participated militarily in this battle,” he added.

Recent news reports have quoted unnamed US officials as saying that Egyptian and Syrian nationals were fighting against coalition forces.

Asked about the effects on Lebanon of the American-led invasion, Qassem said, “we may not feel direct effects on Lebanon at this stage. However, Lebanon may possibly be a focus of attention of future aggression and of American designs via the Israelis.”

“Accordingly, we must be ready and confident that we are capable of confronting challenges and dangers and that our country will not be a venue and an excursion for usurpers, whether they be Israelis or others,” he added.
Replying to a question on the importance of “warnings” to Syria and Iran, Qassem said Washington was trying to exert “psychological and moral pressure” on Damascus and Tehran to make them alter their position. “But the two countries are firm in their stand and will not be influenced,” he said.

Tehran Times: TEHRAN -- A member of the leadership council of the National Congress of Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi, expressed his view on Monday that following the overthrow of Saddam U.S. forces should stay in the country for at least two years, IRNA reported.

The Elaph Internet site yesterday quoted Chalabi as saying U.S. forces should stay in Iraq until the first election is held and a democratic government is elected to run the war-torn country.

Contrary to rumors, he insisted he is not interested in running for any post in a post-Saddam Iraqi government.

While other U.S. troops were battling Tuesday to win control of Baghdad, commanders of the 82nd Airborne Division were beginning to give another city back.

A convoy of Army Humvees rolled up to a large beige, block house on the east side of the city of Samawah, about 120 miles south of Baghdad. It was the home of Hakim al Hukeen, a sheik who had just returned from 13 years of exile in Jordan. Several hundred men and boys from his extended family crowded the sandy driveway to greet the U.S. commander, Col. Arnold Bray.

(Knight Ridder)

HEBRON (IRNA) - Palestinians have stepped up their boycott of American and British products in protest against the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Calls for stepping up the boycott have increased throughout the West Bank and Gaza in the past two weeks, particularly since the onset of the American-led aggression on Iraq. As a result, some retail dealers have reported a sharp drop in the sale of American products including soft drinks and detergents. Last week, several Palestinians set their American-made cars on fire to protest the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq.

The gruesome TV images of Iraqi civilians killed and maimed by American and British bombing have dramatically increased anti-American feelings among Palestinians.

Death, fear, grief at Baghdad bomb site but no sign of Iraqi leader

From AP via Boston.com

U.S. officials said they believed their attack in the upscale al-Mansour neighborhood had successfully destroyed the target but that they didn't know exactly who had been inside, and what their condition was.

Officials did not make clear what type of building had been targeted. Earlier, one U.S. official said the target was a restaurant where the Iraqi president and his two sons, Odai and Qusai, were believed to be meeting. The official did not name the eatery, but the popular al-Saa'a restaurant is 100 yards from where the bombs struck. The restaurant looked intact on Tuesday, except for blown-out windows and doors.

Damascus, April. 8 (SANA) - Damascus radio on Tuesday stressed that the American-British war on Iraq is condemned politically, morally and historically.

It also indicated that the United States claimed that this war aims at liberating Iraq and it is launched on behalf of peace, security and democracy but in fact it is unjustified war aims only at occupying Iraq. In its daily commentary, the radio asserted that war planners divided Iraqi wealth before the beginning of war so the United States signed contracts with many companies to rebuild Iraq which will be destroyed.

The radio also criticized Arab countries calling them to shoulder the responsibility of what is going on in Iraq because of Arab partition in both the vision and the stance.

The radio concluded by asserting that the Zionist scheme aims at subjugating the whole region, seizing its wealth and even eliminating the history of the Arab nation and he will be able to achieve his greed if Arab nation remains weak and divided.

Aid organizations are being hit with what they feel are exorbitant insurance costs as insurers and shippers worry about the safety of the port of Umm Qasr. In addition, the port has not been dredged for weeks and the only major grain mill in southern Iraq may have been sabotaged.

Reuters R.I.P. » Reuters journalist Taras Protsyuk, killed when a U.S. tank shell hit the Reuters office in a Baghdad hotel on Tuesday (...)

Newsday>>

Excerpts from an audiotape purportedly recorded by al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden that was received Monday, as translated by The Associated Press:

O Muslim Brothers, let us promise to devote our lives to martyrdom in the way of Allah. America has attacked Iraq and soon will also attack Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Sudan. You should be aware the kafirs cannot bear the existence of Muslims and want to capture their resources and destroy them.

Get up and raise your weapons against America and Britain. If you hesitated today, you will be ashamed in front of Allah. The war in Iraq has two purposes to capture the Islamic world and to secure Israel. ...

* ___

America has decided to eliminate all Islamic movements, (and) kill their religious leadership. Let us get them out of Arabs' land. For this purpose, the jihad is the only way because they have targeted Iraq after Afghanistan. You should avenge the innocent children who have been assassinated in Iraq. You should avenge the demolished houses of Palestinians. I tell you to act upon the orders of Allah, be united against Bush and Blair and defeat them through suicide attacks so that you may be successful before Allah. ...

* ___

It is a great pity that we are flattering the American troops and are apologizing for them. Beware, Afghanistan and Palestine are already in the custody of America and if this story is not given an end, we shall lose all the Muslim countries. ...

* ___

America wants to take revenge for Somalia. America is a cowardly country. If you start suicide attacks, you will see the fear of Americans all over the world. One of the slaves of America is (President Hamid) Karzai in Afghanistan because he supported non-Muslims over Muslims. Pakistan, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi are also agents of America. There is no difference between the Karzai of Riyadh and Kabul. All of them have been imposed upon you and jihad against them is your duty. ...

* ___

I ask Muslim women to join the jihad by providing food to the mujahedeen. The elders should pray for us. I am proud of those martyrs who sacrificed their lives for the sake of Islam. O God, give the Muslims success.

Environmental News Service

Of the seven southern oil wells set ablaze by the Iraqis late last month, only one is still burning, Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, Deputy Director of Operations of the U.S. Central Command, told reporters today. Contractors designated by the U.S. Army have successfully extinguished six of the seven and are working on the last one.

AP/MSNBC » In just four days, four Army brigades would sprint 50 miles and four U.S. Marine brigades nearly 100 miles to the gates of Baghdad, setting the stage for this week's assaults inside the capital.The stunning advance, at a cost of fewer than 10 U.S. combat deaths 'is something that military historians and academics will pore over in great detail for many years to come,' British Air Marshal Brian Burridge said Monday. 'They will examine the dexterity, the audacity and the sheer brilliance of how the U.S. put their plan into effect.' Already, military analysts are comparing the advance to Gen. George S. Patton's brilliant attack across northern France in the autumn of 1944.

NEW YORK (AP) -- As long as fighting continues in Iraq, cultural divides between the United States and the Muslim world will continue to deepen, Jordan's Queen Noor says.

"Muslims are seeing a very aggressive, confrontational side of American foreign policy that's not being balanced, in their minds, by a conviction that it is motivated by American principals, as opposed to economic issues," Noor said in an interview with The Associated Press.

She said it is important to involve the United Nations in the reconstruction process in postwar Iraq, where America's military presence is viewed by many in the region as imperialism.

Noor was promoting her new best-selling memoir, "Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life," about her life as the American-born wife of King Hussein. The former Lisa Najeeb Halaby changed her name and converted to Islam when she married Hussein in 1978, two years after graduating from Princeton University. Hussein died in 1999.

"Leap of Faith," an engaging if slick mix of history, international politics and personal life, was to be published last November, but was rescheduled so it would not coincide with a war against Iraq. The date, ironically, was changed to March 18 -- one day before the war began.

The book debuted at No. 2 on the New York Times list of best sellers.

This post has been moved to the Op-Ed page.

ABCNet » "After a necessary phase of establishing a secure environment, the time for reconstruction will begin, during which wisdom dictates that the United Nations play a central role", Chirac said today.

PARIS (Reuters) - The overwhelming majority of French people oppose war in Iraq but more than half want the United States and Britain to win the conflict, according to a poll released on Tuesday.
However, 54 percent of the nearly 1,000 people interviewed by pollster BVA for LCI television, weekly Paris Match and daily La Depeche du Midi said a coalition victory would have negative consequences for the fight against Islamist terrorism.

Conducted by telephone on April 4-5, the BVA survey shows 81 percent of the French population opposed to the U.S.-led conflict in Iraq, slightly down from 82 percent a week earlier. Fifty-two percent want the U.S. and British soldiers to emerge victorious, with eight percent declaring they backed the Iraqi army. Altogether, 40 percent refused to choose between the two sides or gave no answer.

BVA pollster Jerome Sainte-Marie said respondents who did not explicitly wish for a U.S. victory in previous polls had been wrongly portrayed by some quarters as backing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

He noted that although the proportion of those directly rooting for Iraq was small, the large number of those who declined to answer the question was unusual and revealed a level of embarrassment.

Despite France's high-profile opposition to the war in Iraq, which has strained its diplomatic relations with the United States and Britain, 49 percent believed a coalition victory would be positive for France's position in the world.

In a sign of growing worries about television images of the civilian toll of the war, 57 percent said they did not think U.S. soldiers were making real efforts to avoid casualties among Iraqi citizens.

AFP via Yahoo >>

Iraqi refugees are trickling into neighbouring Jordan and Syria, a UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman here said, while warning the war in Iraq was entering its "most worrisome" phase.

In Jordan, one woman with two children was admitted today, while another Iraqi woman and her teenage son entered the country late yesterday," said Peter Kessler.

"An elderly Iraqi woman suffering from a serious illness arrived earlier on Monday," he said, adding they were being accommodated at a Red Crescent site at Ruweished on the border.

Voice Of America: The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency says his inspectors should return to Iraq when the fighting stops to fulfill their mandate to ensure that the country is free of nuclear weapons.

The head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, says his agency is the only group with legal authority to verify Iraq's nuclear disarmament. In a written statement, Mr. ElBaradei said the agency's operations were disrupted because of the outbreak of hostilities. He expects the United Nations Security Council will want the agency to return to Iraq with full authority to resume its inspections after the war ends. Mr. ElBaradei said his teams made good progress after their inspections resumed last November.

Mr. ElBaradei also said any weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq will have to be verified by the United Nations to ensure that the discoveries are credible. Mr. ElBaradei's office issued the statement after he met with the president of the U.N. General Assembly, Jan Kavan, in Vienna on Tuesday.

AP: Pentagon officials said Tuesday they can't say whether Saddam Hussein was killed in the bunker-buster bombing of buildings in Baghdad, but that command orders are still being issued to key elements of Iraq's military.

"I think the end game is the end of the regime and that's much closer than people thought it was," said Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, vice director of joint operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

McChrystal told a Pentagon briefing that some key elements of Saddam's Republican Guard were still operating -- and appeared to be following orders, possibly from the Iraqi leader.

"The Republican Guard are receiving instructions, but in many cases not following them and not capable any more so they're not an effective fighting force," McChrystal said. "But he (Saddam) still controls elements of the Special Republican guard and death squads."

Asked about the importance of eliminating Saddam and his sons, McChrystal said, "As much as they can exert any kind of influence -- even if its limited to Baghdad -- we'd like to reduce that."

McChrystal also addressed questions about the deaths of journalists in Baghdad when a U.S. tank fired on a hotel where many are staying. "We are at war," he said. "Our forces came under fire, they exercised their inherent right of self defense."

Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said she had been approached by many news organizations wanting to get reporters into Baghdad. "Baghdad is not a safe place," she said she told them. "You should not be there."

McChrystal said U.S. forces were "rooting out resistance wherever we find it," adding that U.S.-led forces now hold "air supremacy over the entire country."

Thus far, 30,000 aircraft missions have been flown, not counting helicopters, McChrystal said. He also said that planes had dropped 20,000 tons of missiles and bombs and had flown 40,000 tons of cargo into Iraq since the war began.

McChrystal said he was unable to provide specific information at this time on whether Saddam had been killed in Monday's bombing raid on a building where he was believed to be meeting with his sons and other leaders. The site remained in Iraqi hands Tuesday.

The blasts caused by four one-ton bunker-penetrating bombs dropped by a U.S. warplane left a smoking crater 60 feet deep in the upscale Baghdad Mansour neighborhood.

"We characterize that strike as very, very effective," McChrystal said. "What we have for battle damage assessment right now is essentially a hole in the ground at a site of destruction where we wanted it to be, where we believed high-value targets were."

"We do not have hard battle damage assessment on exactly what individual or individuals were on site," he added.

Workers must sift through the building's rubble to locate any remains, then test them, other Defense Department officials said.

Also, U.S. ground troops raided two of Saddam's palaces and destroyed statues of the Iraqi leader in his capital.

In a telephone interview with reporters at the Pentagon from an undisclosed location in the Persian Gulf, a member of the B-1B crew that attacked the Baghdad site said the bomber had just finished an aerial refueling over western Iraq when it got the order to fly to the target. Twelve minutes later it dropped the four bombs, said Lt. Col. Fred Swan, the B-1B's weapons system officer.

Swan said they dropped two standard versions of the 2,000-pound Joint Direct Attack Munition, known as a GBU-31, and two special "bunker buster" versions that penetrate a target before detonating.

Of the intended target, he said he and the rest of the crew "knew it was important," and "might be the big one."

"We thought it was, given every thing we heard," he said.

Swan said the crew was told by an airborne air controller that directed the B-1B to its target that it might be "the big one."

He said the B1-B crew did not actually look at the target after the bombs were released from an altitude of more than 20,000 feet.

Even before Monday's bombing, Iraq's leaders were finding it difficult, if not impossible, to direct troops and other government loyalists, Pentagon officials said.

It wasn't the first time the U.S. tried to kill Saddam with bunker-busting bombs. A March 19 strike on another compound in a residential Baghdad neighborhood opened the war. Leadership targets of many kinds, including government ministries and command and control centers, have been hit numerous times throughout the campaign.

Fox News just showed video, supplied by Abu Dhabi TV, of Iraqis in civilian dress holding RPG's mingling among unarmed, out of shape, obvious civilians.

UPDATE: Reuters has the video on their site.

WRAL: WARSAW, Poland -- There was a dramatic getaway for two Polish journalists abducted by armed Iraqi secret service members south of Baghdad. The Polish radio and TV reporters were detained at a checkpoint south of Baghdad Monday afternoon as they traveled with journalists.

Other reporters in the convoy got away but managed to tape the incident. Iraqis interrogated the men at a school and suggested they were spies. The men finally escaped when a teacher at the school returned the keys to their jeep and motioned for them to make a run for it during an artillery barrage.

The pair drove off and later found U.S. troops who helped them to safety.

TEHRAN, April 8 (Reuters) - A rocket, apparently fired in the war in neighbouring Iraq, killed one person in southwestern Iran on Tuesday, Iran's student news agency ISNA reported.

ISNA, quoting a local official in the city of Abadan, said the rocket had hit a residential district outside the city, killing a teenager.

A stray rocket from the battle in southern Iraq hit an oil refinery depot in Abadan late last month, injuring two people. Iran, which has taken a neutral stance in the war, played down the incident and said it was a natural consequence of living next to a war zone

BBC: UK security sources tell the BBC that they do not believe Saddam Hussein is dead.

Elie Wiesel says Iraq war justified

From AFP:

"If some European countries put as much pressure on Saddam Hussein as on (US President George W.) Bush, there would have been no war," he told a press conference in Montreal.
"Saddam Hussein had to be disarmed (and) there were no other means," said the Nazi concentration camp survivor and author who was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1986 for his message "of peace, atonement and human dignity."

This story on the Russian convoy which was shot at after leaving Baghdad contains the following:

The business daily Kommersant reported Tuesday that the Russian diplomats had departed from Baghdad only after Secretary of State Colin Powell "repeatedly and persistently" demanded their evacuation... Kommersant quoted an unidentified Russian Defense Ministry official who said Washington had demanded they leave the embassy because it suspected a global positioning system jamming device was located on the Russian grounds and was deflecting U.S. precision weapons.

Moscow denied the existence of such a device, the newspaper said. The Defense and Foreign Ministries declined to comment on the report... A U.S. Embassy spokesman said, "We're not aware of any GPS jamming equipment being on the territory of the Russian Embassy in Iraq."

See also "Iraq may have set up Russian convoy attack", "The Russian ambassador attack according to Rossia/LeMonde", and "Powell expressed deep regret on the attacked Russian convoy".

Ha’aretz: Today IDF’s Intelligence Chief Brigadier General Aharon Ze'evi estimated at the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meeting that around 1000 Iraqi tanks have been destroyed till now by the coalition forces.

Ze'evi said the Americans are trying to leave as much of the Iraqi army intact so they’ll be able to use it the day after Saddam. He also said that 80% of the suspected biological/chemical weapons sites in Iraq (mostly in Baghdad and north of it) have yet to be checked yet by coalition forces.

From this: The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said Tuesday that Pavarotti and Bono will sing together in a benefit concert May 27 in Modena, northern Italy... the concert's funds will be earmarked to help the United Nations deal with the humanitarian emergency sparked by the Iraq war.

From "Chretien wishes coalition well in Iraq, but won't change government position":

Prime Minister Jean Chretien spoke out firmly Tuesday in defence of Canada's decision not to join the U.S.-led war on Iraq, saying such weighty considerations must be based on principle rather than friendship...

And he wished the coalition forces a speedy victory, telling the House of Commons that Canada cares about the outcome of the war even if it is not participating... "Close friends can disagree at times and can still remain close friends," Chretien said. "Neither country has ever been in the business of economic retaliation over disagreements on issues of foreign policy... "This is not what our relationship is all about..."

His position drew criticism from opposition leaders, including the Alliance's Stephen Harper, who said the prime minister was exercising damage control in the face of growing public support for the American campaign... Harper said the government motion was "just another communications strategy, another cynical motion, another image repositioning" introduced after it became evident the United States would be successful in Iraq.

Children freed from youth prison:

More than 100 children held in a prison celebrated their freedom Tuesday as US marines rolled into northeast Baghdad amid chaotic scenes which saw civilians loot weapons from an army compound, a US officer said...

"The children had been imprisoned because they had not joined the youth branch of the Baath party," he alleged. "Some of these kids had been in there for five years."

The full transcript of the Press conference: PM Tony Blair and President George W. Bush.
(also see this earlier CP- entry)

BBC's Paul Reynolds analysis: Three stages to a new Iraq.

For an overview of today (Tuesday) read

• Reuters: snapshot + slide shows


• BBC: at-a-glance
• GlobalSecurity: Iraq special weapons news
• CentCom: news releases + multimedia
• DoD: headlines
• White House: updates and briefings

IFJ website: "There is no doubt at all that these attacks could be targeting journalists. If so, they are grave and serious violations of international law," said Aidan White, General Secretary of the IFJ. "The bombing of hotels where journalists are staying and targeting of Arab media are particularly shocking events in a war which is being fought in the name of democracy. Those who are responsible must be brought to justice". At the same time the IFJ condemns what appears to be Iraqi tactics of using civilians and journalists as a "human shield" against attack. "The Baghdad authorities are just as culpable with their reckless disregard for civilian lives," said White.

Forces report heavy bombing from the air and artillery. Iraqi defectors and intelligence indicate defections by military men and officers. Coalition ground forces have not yet been ordered to advance.

Reuters

Kicking down doors and smashing windows with their M-16 rifle butts, about 40 Marines filtered through housing on the edge of a military base on Tuesday, checking for Iraqi soldiers.

"This is a sniper's paradise," said Cpl. Alex Cruz, 22, an urban warfare instructor with the U.S. Marine's Lima Company as Marines patrolled a narrow street in the estate, about 10 km (six miles) from the center of Baghdad.

"Everything here is a danger zone," he said.

Around him, Marines checked rooms and climbed stairs in the modest buildings, even lifting the lids on septic tanks full of sewage, and peering inside.

Marines expect to be doing more of this MOUT work -- Military Operations in Urban Terrain -- as they move closer to Baghdad center, where they say they might have to clear pockets of resistance in built-up areas.

WSBTV>>

Iraqi forces staged a major counterattack Tuesday morning, sending buses and trucks full of fighters across the Tigris River in an attempt to overrun U.S. forces holding a strategic intersection on the western side of Baghdad. A U.S. Army commander says at least 50 Iraqis were killed during the battle, which apparently was Iraqi retaliation for a U.S. airstrike on a residential complex that U.S. intelligence indicated may have held senior Iraqi leadership, including Saddam Hussein and his sons. The fate of Saddam remains unclear.

Op-Ed From Le Figaro

After the War, Let Us Join Our Allies Again!

[ April 08, 2003 ] (I'm helping Babel a bit here)

We were hitherto only one group of members of Parliament to publicly worry about the French attitude in the Iraqi crisis, opposite in particular one of our our traditional allies. We said simply that it was necessary to combine our efforts in a common pressure, diplomatic and military, in order to disarm Iraq without resorting automatically to the war, but without excluding it either.

We also said that declaring in advance and in all circumstances that France would refuse to support war would only encourage Saddam Hussein to continue to play for time. We said, finally, that such an attitude would not prevent the war, but would only lead to a war waged outside the auspices of the UN: exactly opposite of the objective sought by the French diplomacy.

To have spoken this language, it is true solitary good, to have pointed out the million deaths caused by Saddam Hussein itself, we were considered, sometimes like the "Atlantic ones", sometimes like the partisans of abominable "a camp of the war". The started war, we saw breaking an incredible misinformation, aiming at making to France the herald of the "camp of peace" vis-a-vis the inhuman action of the Américano-British. We saw ravelling in the streets of Paris of the streamers Iraqi to the cries of "Sharp Saddam, died to the Jews".

We saw our diplomacy, made yesterday national independence but of solidarity with our allies, caricatured tinted neutralism of pacifism and violent one relents of anti-Americanism. We also saw, with our great shame, a third of the French to wish the victory of Saddam in the surveys, and others still to profane under particularly wretched conditions the British military cemetery of Etaples, in the north of France.

Extremely fortunately, a salutary crushing argument was given to such drifts. The president of the Republic wrote to the Queen Elizabeth for him to say the debt of France with regard to the British soldiers fallen on our ground; the Prime Minister has these last days clearly taken position for the democracy against the totalitarianism of the mode of Saddam Hussein. And of the accents of prompt reconciliation with these allies of always start to reappear in the press.

It is true that the majority of the media did not spare their sorrow since the beginning of the war, almost three weeks ago. With hearing them, to see them or to read them, the Americans encountered a strong and unexpected Iraqi resistance, their plans appeared false, the raised losses, the world public opinions increasingly revolted. In short, the world was going to undergo the consequences of the madnesses of the Bush clan. One forgot to specify that the military strategy of the coalition consisted in at the beginning as much as possible avoiding any aggression of civil, therefore the terrestrial attacks of the cities, slowing down voluntarily the catch of the urban centres. And that thus such a war would not be gained in eight days. One forgot to say that thirty years of dictatorship did not predispose the populations oppressed to rebel without being sure of their safety, especially after the first war of 1991, where they felt betrayed with the final cease-fire. One forgot to say that the United States was not alone since the governments British, Spanish, Italian, Danish, Dutch, Canadian, Australian, Japanese support them, that 72% of the Americans approve the decision of their president.

It is not however any more time of épiloguer on the responsibilities for the ones and others in the diplomatic failure which led so that everyone feared: the war without the downstream of UNO, carried out by those which had of them the means, accepted without the statement by those which do not want, rightly, of the victory of Saddam Hussein, and thus indirectly of that of the integrist islamists.

It is time, on the other hand, to affirm how much are irresponsible those, too many still in our country, which, quite quiet in front of their television, after having hoped in secrecy that the coalition américano-British would fail in Iraq, awaits today the "libanisation" of Iraq, a kind of gigantic Gaza which would make this country new urban Vietnam for America.

We think as for us, once again, that the scenario of worst is not most probable. Cut down Saddam, the Iraqi people will be likely finally to live in peace and to build federal and democratic institutions. With us to help it there.

By then, it should obviously be done everything so that this war finishes quickly with the minimum of victims. It is necessary obviously that France, Europe, NATO and UNO are fully associated the rebuilding of democratic Iraq, and of the Middle East of the post-war period. In that, we fully join the objectives expressed by our diplomacy. But the surest way with this intention, just like our national interest orders it to us, with us French, it is to join again as quickly as possible with the fundamental alliance which binds us with those to which the values morals and humanistic are closest as of ours, i.e. those of the liberal gasoline countries, those of the coalition in war. Because, even if we are different, even if we do not have to blindly follow the United States or others, we will have nevertheless to resist together in the future with the integrism, the terrorism and to the proliférateurs of any hair.

In the same way, they is together that we will have to install peace in the Middle East and in the world, in a multipolarity of influences where those of the United States and Europe will have to be balanced, allied and dominating. But, so that this multipolar world exists beyond the speeches made on the international estrades, it is essential that we quickly conclude a construction of Europe which results in a common vision of our future, by the existence of a foreign politics of European defense, based on average soldiers with the height of 450 million European citizens. Such a recon struction there too implies the reconciliation with Great Britain initially, Spain, Italy, Portugal, without forgetting the ex-countries of Eastern Europe a little meurtris by our attitude.

Even if our friendships can evolve/move, their hard core must remain that which has joined together us for more than two centuries, and which enabled us to overcome the Nazism and Communism, and not that, adventurous, which would have sat on tactical or economic considerations not very in conformity with our values morals and cultural. We will require for this Western alliance in the future, in a world definitely more chaotic and dangerous that the stability to which we had been accustomed during one half-century of cold war.

* Deputies UMP of Paris, of the Indre-and-Loire, of Drôme and the Alpes-Maritimes.

Le Figaro.fr

Le Figaro Editorial Extract

Translated by Babel and me.

...[cooperating with Britain] is the only way that remains open if France wants to avoid the constant higher bid of the Pentagon, where those extremists will have the wind in their sails after the military triumph in Baghdad. This is the only way that can reunify a Europe split by the debate of the pre-war period.

For France, that implies that it leave behind its excessive anti-war attitude. To support the British in their efforts after Saddam is not a way of approving of the past, but is a new start in the battle to help the Middle East. It is in any case the only hope to excapte the isolation in which certain Americans want to lock us up.

John Keegan, writing in the Telegraph, explains that not only have coalition forces performed admirably, Saddam seems to have ignored every rule of warfare, including ignoring his country's natural defenses. A good read for those who enjoy military history and analysis.

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--The strongest resistance to U.S. troops in the eastern
half of Baghdad is coming from foreign fighters, including a few hundred members of the Palestine Liberation Army, MSNBC reported Tuesday, citing reporting by one of its reporters embedded with the U.S. Marine Expeditionary Force. MSNBC cited Israeli sources as saying some of the foreigners were probably recruited in Lebanon and then sent to Baghdad via Syria. There are members of the Palestinian Liberation Organization among them, and some may be members of Hezbollah, MSNBC said.

-By Steven C. Higgins, Dow Jones Newswires; 1-201-938-4378;
hbsglobaldesk@dowjones.com

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. B-1 bomber that aimed to kill Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in Baghdad dropped four satellite-guided bombs only 12 minutes after receiving orders that "this is the big one," the plane's weapons officer said on Tuesday.

Basra :: Caroline Wyatt :: 1450GMT

There seems to be an orgy of looting going on. We saw someone looting a fire engine yesterday, which is rather a large thing to get away with. And on the way to the outskirts tonight, donkeys absolutely overloaded with furniture.

In one case we did see the British Army intervening when a crowd had started stoning another crowd of looters, trying to stop them taking furniture from a building.

BBC Reporters' Log

Obituary of a madman from The Telegraph

Within two years, and with the Iran-Iraq war under way, al-Majid had become one of Saddam's closest military advisers and head of the Mukhabarat, the state security service. In 1983 he directed operations in the "collective punishment" of inhabitants of the town of Dujail, in the Balad district of Iraq, after an assassination attempt on Saddam. The whole town was razed to the ground.

Sky News>>

Two cameramen have died after an American tank fired on a Baghdad hotel used by the international media.

Reuters said Taras Protsyuk, 35, from the Ukraine, died and another three of its journalists were injured.

Jose Couso, a cameraman with the Spanish television channel Telecinco, died later from his injuries.

The Palestine Hotel is where many international media companies are based, including the Sky News team.

The US said the tank had fired a single round at the hotel in response to incoming rifle and rocket fire.

US Marines have rescued a wounded Iraqi bus passenger after the vehicle he was in came under fire.

Full story in pictures.

Ananova

The Navy says it has switched off News 24 aboard HMS Ark Royal after complaints by the crew. Sailors believe the news organisation places more faith in Iraqi reports than information coming from British or Allied sources.

One senior rating said: "The BBC always takes the Iraqis' side. It reports what they say as gospel but when it comes to us it questions and doubts everything the British and Americans are reporting. A lot of people on board are very unhappy."

Ark has replaced the BBC with rival broadcaster Sky News.

Ananova

via Instapundit

Reuters has details of "recent casualties in the Iraq war as announced by U.S., British and Iraqi authorities or independently confirmed by Reuters correspondents" here.

U.S. soldiers who pushed into Baghdad on Monday reported finding several kinds of unconventional defenses. Rocket-propelled grenades had been rigged to fire when triggered by passing vehicles and cars and trucks booby-trapped with makeshift bombs had been left at some intersections. U.S. forces have reported little organized resistance to their push into the Iraqi capital. They say they are moving into the city from several directions.

The U.S. military has accused Iraqi forces of using civilians as shields during the war, and of concealing soldiers in civilian areas. "The regime uses places like the Palestine Hotel for other regime purposes," Brooks said. "They try to achieve a degree of protection from other activities that occur there."

Reuters

From Reuters>>

U.S. Marines swept through parts of east Baghdad on Tuesday, receiving a mixed welcome -- from waving Iraqis to occasional sniper fire.

This Reuters correspondent, travelling with a unit of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, saw some locals clearly looting what appeared to be government offices, abandoned after the U.S.-led assault on President Saddam Hussein's capital.

From BBC>>

US citizens are turning to the internet in record numbers to find out about the war in Iraq, a survey has found. According to a report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project 77% of Americans have used the net to find out about the conflict.

From IRNA>>

Saying he expected the United Nations to play an important role in post-conflict Iraq to bring 'necessary legitimacy', with Iraqis controlling their own political future, Secretary General Kofi Annan Monday named a special adviser to draw up a framework for UN involvement and also prepared to visit key players in the crisis, said the United Nations Information Center in a press release here on Tuesday.

Palestine Hotel update

Some senior Iraqi officials appeared to have abandoned the hotel where they took up residence during the first 20 days of the war in an apparent attempt to find safety for themselves in a building they assumed would be immune from bombing and ground fire. Journalists tempted to leave the immediate area were ordered to remain.

Still Descends on Iraqi Capital After Raging Street Battles

At the Palestine Hotel, a thousand yards away, sounds of fire were heard and flashes from tanks were seen lighting up the gates and gardens of the palace. At dawn, the Americans moved north from the palace which lies on a bend in the Tigris up the riverbank toward the rest of the presidential compound, crossing through areas that have been heavily bombed in the past 18 days. The toll on Iraqis appeared to have been severe, and senior Iraqi officials at the Palestine Hotel were seen clutching each other with tears rolling down their faces, whether for concern about their personal safety or about the pounding being taken by Iraqi forces could not be known. That pounding includes a devastating assault Monday that targeted Saddam Hussein and his two sons at a large residential compound in the Mansour district.

April 8, 2003

JOINT STATEMENT BY PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
AND PRIME MINISTER TONY BLAIR ON IRAQ

The future of Iraq belongs to the Iraqi people. After years of dictatorship,
Iraq will soon be liberated. For the first time in decades, Iraqis will soon
choose their own representative government.

Coalition military operations are progressing and will succeed. We will
eliminate the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, deliver
humanitarian aid, and secure the freedom of the Iraqi people. We will create an
environment where Iraqis can determine their own fate democratically and
peacefully.

We are grateful to our men and women in uniform, as well as to the brave troops
of Australia and Poland, and to forces contributed by other members of the
Coalition. They have demonstrated enormous bravery and professionalism in the
face of great danger. We mourn for the members of the Armed Forces who have
sacrificed their lives, and extend our deepest sympathies to their families.

We also grieve for the loss of civilian life in Iraq. Coalition forces take
great care to avoid civilian casualties. The Iraqi regime has done the opposite.
It has deliberately put Iraqi civilians in harm's way, and used women and
children as human shields. It has sent execution squads to kill Iraqis who
choose freedom over fighting for a brutal regime. We condemn Iraqi regime
forces' attacks in civilian clothing, false surrender, and mistreatment of
prisoners of war. These acts are an affront to all standards of human decency
and international law.

We are taking every step possible to safeguard Muslim holy sites and other
protected places in Iraq that are important to the religious and cultural
heritage of Islam and of Iraq. We have no confidence that the Iraqi regime has
done the same, and are deeply concerned by reports that it is deliberately
endangering such sites and using them for military purposes.

The Coalition is delivering food, medicine, and other humanitarian assistance to
the Iraqi people. This flow will increase as more of Iraq's territory is
liberated and United Nations specialized agencies and non-governmental
organizations are better able to operate. We welcome the adoption by the United
Nations Security Council of Resolution 1472, which will allow shipments of
humanitarian items to Iraq to resume under the Oil for Food program.

As we said at our March 16 meeting in the Azores, we will uphold our
responsibility to help the people of Iraq build a nation that is whole, free and
at peace with itself and its neighbors. We support the aspirations of all of
Iraq's people for a united, representative government that upholds human rights
and the rule of law as cornerstones of democracy. We reaffirm our commitment to
protect Iraq's natural resources, as the patrimony of the people of Iraq, which
should be used only for their benefit.

As the Coalition proceeds with the reconstruction of Iraq, it will work with its
allies, other bilateral donors, and with the United Nations and other
international institutions. The United Nations has a vital role to play in the
reconstruction of Iraq. We welcome the efforts of U.N. agencies and
non-governmental organizations in providing immediate assistance to the people
of Iraq. As we stated in the Azores, we plan to seek the adoption of new United
Nations Security Council resolutions that would affirm Iraq's territorial
integrity, ensure rapid delivery of humanitarian relief, and endorse an
appropriate post-conflict administration for Iraq. We welcome the appointment by
the United Nations Secretary General of a Special Adviser for Iraq to work with
the people of Iraq and coalition representatives.

The day when Iraqis govern themselves must come quickly. As early as possible,
we support the formation of an Iraqi Interim Authority, a transitional
administration, run by Iraqis, until a permanent government is established by
the people of Iraq. The Interim Authority will be broad-based and fully
representative, with members from all of Iraq's ethnic groups, regions and
diaspora. The Interim Authority will be established first and foremost by the
Iraqi people, with the help of the members of the Coalition, and working with
the Secretary General of the United Nations. As coalition forces advance,
civilian Iraqi leaders will emerge who can be part of such an Interim Authority.
The Interim Authority will progressively assume more of the functions of
government. It will provide a means for Iraqis to participate in the economic
and political reconstruction of their country from the outset.

Coalition forces will remain in Iraq as long as necessary to help the Iraqi
people to build their own political institutions and reconstruct their country,
but no longer. We look forward to welcoming a liberated Iraq to the
international community of nations. We call upon our partners in the
international community to join with us in ensuring a democratic and secure
future for the Iraqi people.

Strategy Page has a plethora of interesting news today, including this:

Hundreds of Iraqi exiles have answered the call by the Iraqi National Congress to volunteer for duty in Iraq as translators and negotiators for coalition troops. More are arriving daily and being put to work. The exiles often find themselves revisiting areas they grew up in and reuniting with friends and kin they have not seen for years. Their advice on who's naughty and who's nice is preventing a lot of embarrassing incidents. Captured Saddam loyalists have already caused problems by accusing anti-Saddam locals as being pro-Saddam.

via Glenn Reynolds

Anne Garrels on Morning Edition this morning (audio will be available at this link after noon EDT) reported that the NPR news team was at the Palestine hotel during the tank fire, and mentions that U.S. troops reported sniper fire and people on the roof of the hotel using binoculars to track u.s. troops.

Garrels said she heard no sniper fire coming from the rooftop, but that reporters had been using high-powered binoculars on the rooftop to observe the fighting.

Garrels also mentioned that Al-Jazeera and the other arab news outlet that had offices hit yesterday chose to stay in locations that were very near legitimate military targets, despite being warned to relocate.

Iraq latest: At-a-glance

1132: US marines capture the Rashid military airfield on the eastern outskirts of Baghdad, meeting no resistance, an officer tells Reuters at the airfield. The airfield is five kilometres (three miles) from the city centre.

BBC

NEWS - DAY 20 OF THE WAR
* U.S. forces launch major tank and air assault to seize heart of Baghdad, say they are increasing presence in the city
* Bush, Blair endorse a "vital" post-war role for the U.N.
* Saddam, sons targeted as four 2,000-pound bombs dropped on Baghdad building, U.S. says
* Reuters cameraman killed after U.S. tank fires on Baghdad hotel housing foreign media; al-Jazeera cameraman dies after being wounded in U.S. air raid on Bagdad, TV channel says
* More tests required to determine if substances found at Iraqi sites were banned chemical agents, U.S. military says

QUOTES
Bush: "We are committed to working with international institutions including the United Nations."
Blair: "There will be a vital role for the United Nations in the reconstruction of Iraq."

EVENTS (TIMES IN GMT)
Tuesday
* Kofi Annan meets EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana (1930)
* U.N. Security Council meets on Iraqi oil-for-food programme
* French Foreign Minister Villepin meets Kuwaiti Foreign Minister in Paris

Wednesday
* Kofi Annan leaves for visit to Britain, France, Germany and Russia on U.N.'s role in postwar Iraq
* Villepin meets western Mediterranean, north African counterparts
* Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Muhammad Sabah al-Salim al-Sabah visits Moscow

Friday
* Germany's Schroeder meets Russia's Putin

CASUALTIES
* U.S. - 91 dead, 14 missing
* Britain - 30 dead
* Iraqi military - More than 2,320, according to U.S. military. Iraq has given no figures for its military losses
* Iraqi civilians (Iraqi estimates) - 1,252 killed, 5,103 injured

MILITARY ACTION
BAGHDAD: U.S. says hit "leadership target" in Baghdad with four 2,000-pound bombs. Officials say Saddam and his sons Uday and Qusay were targeted.
U.S., Iraqi troops exchange fire across two bridges in central Baghdad. One U.S. tank crosses to eastern end of one of the bridges for the first time.
U.S. early-morning bombardment pounds Baghdad ministry district. U.S. tanks fire at targets north in palace compound as Iraqi troops battle to reoccupy the complex. Al-Jazeera television says one of its cameramen was killed after a U.S. air raid hit its Baghdad office. A Reuters journalist was killed and three were wounded in Baghdad when a U.S. tank fired a shell at the media hotel where they were working. Apache helicopters, planes attack Republican Guard base southeast of Baghdad

SOUTHERN IRAQ: U.S. forces engage Iraqi soldiers near Hilla,
100 km (62 miles) south of Baghdad.

NORTHERN IRAQ: Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, working with U.S. forces, advance south towards Iraq's third largest city Mosul, capturing the small town of Faida.

How to re-construct a dysfunctional country, as described by the BBC. The last time the Brits did this type of thing was in Western Germany in 1945.

It is a sound which has echoed down the centuries but which has not been heard here for 15 years - the wailing call to prayer.
On Friday however, at 0430 (0130 GMT), in the minutes before the desert dawn, the voice of the Imam rang out.
What Saddam's Baath party had forbidden, the British Army had restored.
The townspeople, whose mosque was destroyed years ago, prayed in the privacy of their own homes.
Friday prayer is an important occasion for Muslims
But instead of their worship being a secret and dangerous thing, it was freely performed with new joy.
The 1st Battalion Royal Irish secured a public address system for the Imam and men from their attached Royal, Electrical and Mechanical Engineers installed it on Thursday night in time for Friday prayers.

Hundreds of people came to the gates of a special prison here Monday, armed with hopes: Somewhere beneath the floors of the compound, they believed, a secret network of tunnels existed. There they would find the brother, the father, the son, unseen for years after being seized by government agents but surely alive.

They told the stories in spurts of broken English and lengthy pantomimes. Arms gesturing as if digging. Wrists crossed as if bound. Hands shaping a roof overhead, walls on the sides, a floor underneath.

So many crowded the gates that military lawyers on the scene called for reinforcements. A few people managed to talk their way through the gates, but no one could lead soldiers and lawyers from the military judge advocate's office to any tunnels.

Reuters>>

Al-Jazeera cameraman Tarek Ayoub has been killed during a U.S. air raid on Baghdad, the Arab satellite television channel says.

The Qatar-based network on Tuesday said Ayoub, a Jordanian national, died in hospital after he was wounded in a bomb strike on Jazeera's office near the Information Ministry.

Another member of Jazeera's Baghdad crew, Zohair al-Iraqi, was slightly wounded. Reuters correspondent Samia Nakhoul had earlier said U.S. planes were bombing targets near the ministry.

Update to previous post:

The United States is working to retrieve a downed A-10 "Warthog" warplane. The plane went down near Baghdad Tuesday morning.

The pilot was able to eject safely and was recovered by nearby ground forces. He's said to be in good condition.

Lt. Mark Kitchens, of U.S. Central Command, said they're investigating whether the plane was shot down. He said recovery operations are under way and they're doing their best to determine the status of the aircraft and its condition.

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi, referring to Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi's recent visit to Turkey, here on Monday said that Iranian and Turkish officials reviewed the issue of preserving Iraq's territorial integrity.

He stressed that no arrangement for post-war Iraq would work and endure unless neighboring countries are part and parcel, highlighting the identical stances of Tehran and Ankara on the issue.

Responding to a question on the recent threats raised by US officials against Iran, he said: "If you mean political, economic and cultural threats, I have to say that the country has faced such threats since the victory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. We are not concerned about any US military threat".

Asefi, on the other hand, pointed to the close relations between Iran and the European Union (EU), saying any plan by the US to attack Iran would not even get the support of its European allies.

IRNA

Update: BBC Reporters' Log, 12.35: Iranian students pelt UK Embassy in Tehran with petrol bombs chanting "death to America, death to Britain".

Just a quick update on the chemical weapons story:

From Canada.com: Mustard gas, cyanide found in Euphrates River

Mustard gas and cyanide have been found in river water in the Iraqi city of Nasiriya, coalition forces said yesterday. The poisonous substances are believed to have been dumped in the Euphrates either by Iraqi soldiers fleeing from U.S. troops or by local factories that produced weapons of mass destruction.

This report seems to be a repeat of a story filed by the UK Telegraph.

Also from the Telegraph: Rockets found 'with chemical warheads'

At this point, there seems to be three finds: One that probably is a collection of pesticides, one that may be a cache of warheads or rockets with chemical weapons, and the above mentioned story of chemicals dumped into the Euphrates. It should be noted that these are almost entirely the result of reports from embedded and on-scene media reporters, and not official releases from Coalition forces, the Department of Defense or the White House.

German linguists yesterday called on the nation to use French words in place of their popular English equivalents in protest at the US-led war against Iraq. A campaign launched by the group Language in Politics proposed swapping English words such as "ticket" with "billet" or "briefing" with "communiqué".

English words and phrases are increasingly used by Germans who value the language's efficiency - compared to German - and its perceived street credibility. Among the words that it is proposed should be pushed aside in favour of French are "driver" for "chauffeur", "playboy" for "bon vivant" and "okay" for "formidable".

Telegraph

One of the main subjects on the agenda of the Belfast summit yesterday was Syria, the Pentagon's next likely target for "regime change" amid suspicions it allowed Saddam Hussein to transfer weapons of mass destruction within its borders.

Some US officials are also convinced that Mr Assad has actively collaborated with Saddam and agreed to take weapons, including Scud missiles, from him so they would not be discovered in Iraq by United Nations inspectors.

Satellite photographs revealed heavily guarded convoys moving from Iraq to Syria last year. The official said: "Put it this way, they wouldn't have needed that kind of security to move cattle."

Telegraph

U.S. military forces in Iraq were reported Monday to have uncovered at least two caches of what may be banned chemical weapons — barrels of chemicals buried outside an agricultural compound near Karbala and medium-range rockets found in a warehouse south of Baghdad. But more sophisticated U.S. tests later indicated that the chemicals in the barrels were not chemical weapons agents.

Suspicions remained open, however, about warheads found south of Baghdad in a warehouse near Baghdad International Airport, which was seized last week by coalition forces. National Public Radio reporter John Burnett said an officer with the U.S. 1st Marine Division told him that the warheads contained sarin and mustard agent.

A senior intelligence official who discussed the reports with NBC News also noted that previous suspicious finds had not been confirmed.

“Often, the first test is wrong, the second as well,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

MSNBC

Coalition troops searching Baath Party buildings for weapons caches have also been told to check all school buildings.

General Franks said: "I was overpowered by this notion of 110 schools where they found arms caches in every one of them. What I don't want to do is go bomb schools so we won't do that."

Ananova

Rooftop snipers have been shooting down on US soldiers, wounding two - one seriously. There are reports US tanks have been spotted on the Jumhuriya bridge over the River Tigris and US armoured cars have fired cannon and machine guns across another central bridge, the Sinak.

Staff Sergeant John Kelley said: "Everyone's trying to snipe us. They just came out of the woodwork with AKs." Overnight, the Marines of the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines took over a prison in an industrial section of south-east Baghdad.

Ananova

John Pike on Fox just referred to the need to arrest members of the Iraqi leadership including "Baghdad Bob."

Is John Pike one of our readers?

Greg Kelly reports from 3ID across the river from the Palestinian Hotel. US forces operating in the area thought they received RPG fire from the top of the hotel, or indirect fires that were being directed from there.

They did fire one round at the hotel, which confirms that the incident did involve a US tank.

This action is within the ROE for tanks, although the hotel is on the prohibited target list for air. The tank ROE allows returning fire under all circumstances.

Very annoyingly, his report was interrupted by a news conference for the family of ex-POW PFC Jessica Lynch.

FoxNews saying above headline, which seems obvious from here, but apparently is not so obvious to the reporters at the hotel. The reporter for FoxNews sister network SkyNews said "What are we supposed to do? We're at the mercy of the Iraqi government, but I witnessed the US tank aiming at us."

Summary of updates:

1) Iraqis force all non-embedded reporters to stay at the Palestine Hotel.

2) Al-Jazeera & Abu Dhabi TV offices on east bank of Tigris River, in the middle of several Iraqi government facilites, hit by US forces returning fire at snipers across river bridge. Al-Jazeera reporter injured during fire dies at hospital.

3) Al-Jazeera & Abu Dhabi quickly react to reporter's death with broadcast statements that the US is specifically targeting Arabic journalists in an attempt to shut them up.

4) Iraqi snipers fire on US forces from Al-Rashid hotel (across river, devoid of reporters) a short time before Palestine Hotel incident.

5) Iraqi Disinformation Minister holds incredibly timely news conference at Palestine Hotel.

6) Iraqi sniper on roof of Palestine Hotel spotted by US tanks, appears to have RPG (possibly misidentified camera).

7) US tank fires at hotel under rules of engagement.

Hit Reuters suite, injuring 4 reporters. Many conflicting reports on source of attack, much suspicion on western media that Iraqis did it to inflame Arab media, Arab media blaming US even though US forces are nowhere near hotel.

UPDATE: Fox reports that 1 Spanish reporter killed, 6 reporters injured.
UPDATE: SkyNews reporter David Chater says he witnessed tank aiming directly at hotel.
UPDATE: Centcom says it is NOT targeting journalists.

urging suicide attacks against all Arab governments supporting the US attack on Iraq.

Bagdad Bob (The Iraqi Information Minister)...speaking on the lawn of the Palestine Hotel.

We are going to use our artillery.

Today Saddam is in charge of the situation.

They cannot get out of their tanks. The tanks are isolated. We will burn them.

"They bomb Al Jazeera, they bomb Abu Dhabi TV, and now they bomb the hotel."

US tanks have crossed the Euphrates to the east side - per MSNBC.

The Iraqi Information Minister (known as Baghdad Bob on the comments section of The Command Post) is to speak shortly.

This should be amusing, especially since US tanks just crossed the river and may stage a drive-by during the press conference.

MSNBC Arabic translator reported that since the Al-Jazeera reporter died, they are claiming on air that it was an intentional US act to try to silence them, but they cannot be stopped from fearlessly reporting the truth to the Arab world. Now that reports indicate some sort of attack on the Palestine Hotel, MSNBC is speculating that the Iraqis intentionally targeted the hotel to inflame this reaction.

Baghdad Bob is going to speak in front of the hotel...

Sky News reports the Palestine Hotel was just hit by a tank. This is the hotel where all the reporters are staying and where the webcams are placed. Injuries are reported, and the reporters are now all out on the lawn on the East side.

I heard the explosion, and it was very loud - the muezzin at the nearby mosque stopped in mid muezzining.

MSNBC's analyst Jonathan Alter speculates that the Iraqi's hit the hotel as a propaganda trick.

[UPDATE: Al Jazeera just showed an injured individual being carried from the hotel into a vehicle.]

[UPDATE: Two reporters were injured on an upper floor. MSNBC's military analysts do not believe any US tanks are in range of the hotel. I disagree - hotel is about 3km from the bridge south of it and 2km from the one north of it. One of those is being used for US tanks to cross the river. The M1A1 has an accurate range of at least 4km]

[UPDATE: Sky News reports 4 injuries. NBC reports "tank mortar" hit the top of the hotel - whatever a tank mortar is!]

Kelly with 3rd ID: Civilians helping to find Fedayeen... video of compound... found much rubble in Saddam's mansion due to JDAM... other side not damaged as badly... orante... found groundskeepers.. spent night in palace... nice to sleep in a bed.. surreal.

Greg Jarret: Running water?
Kelly: Originally, no longer... good to have a roof.. but palace no more... rooms that are intact covered with dust.. compared to previous accomodations..

Rita Cosby:How far away from Saddam?
Kelly: 5 miles away.. leaned about it from you..

Jarret:What did JDAM feel like?

Kelly:It was like thunder since it was miles away. Distinctive signature.. JDAMs sound different... good thing they are allied forces

Jarret:Video of statue.. tell use

Kelly: Took a tank shell to a statue of Saddam...they hope it has affect on Iraqis.. video .. tank roilling through Saddam's viewing stand

Bob Arnot just reported that one of the groups they are fighting, and which apparently have residence in the area, is Hizbullah!

This is quite striking. These are one of the worst groups in the world. Furthermore, and quite surprising, they are sponsored by Iran, considered an enemy of Iraq.

It is also ironic, and hopefully satisfying for the Marines. It was Hizbullah who blew up the Marine barracks in Beirut 20 years ago, killing over 200 Marines.

[Small editorial comment. If you are going to be offended, please stop reading here.]

Go for it Marines. It's payback time!

Ha'aretz: The large arms deal Syria recently made on behalf of the regime in Baghdad (thus provoking rage in Washington) involved the acquisition from Russia of 500 laser-guided anti-tank missiles and their transfer to the Iraqis.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said in Washington some five days ago that Syria was continuing to transfer military items to the Iraqis, referring to arms and military equipment deals Syrians made before the outbreak of hostilities in Iraq. These deals, going back to 2001, initially focused on East European states that manufacture Russian weapons systems such as tanks, artillery cannons, and engines for tanks and MiG fighter jets.

The first deals concentrated on equipment to refurbish old tanks and aircraft in Iraq; but the latest large Syrian deal on behalf of Iraq involved the purchase, from Russia, of the Russian military industry's newest anti-tank missile, known as the Kornet, which NATO calls the AT-14. It is laser-guided and has a range of some 5.5 kilometers. The deal was made with the KBP weapons plant in Tula.

Rumsfeld accused Damascus of also being involved in the purchase of night-vision equipment that was passed on to the Iraqis. The secretary of defense did not note the origins of this equipment or who were the Syrians' partners in the deal.

The modus operandi, in general, involved the acquisition of arms or equipment by a Syrian "businessman," with the Mediterranean port of Latakia as the point of destination. The equipment was then offloaded, trucked to the Syrian-Iraqi border and sent directly to the Iraqis.

The Syrians' profit margins were big. Apparently the war in Iraq found the Syrian "traders" in the middle of negotiations over additional arms and equipment slated for the Iraqis.

The Syrians conducted one of the first deals involving equipment for the Iraqis in Germany, where the Syrian "traders" purchased some 60 tank transporters. These were shipped to Latakia, from where they set out on the long journey to Baghdad.

Clearly these deals could not have been made without the approval of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Nevertheless, in light of the secrecy that shrouded the transactions, it is possible that not all the Syrian leadership was in the know.

At first, the Americans sufficed to deal with the problem quietly and diplomatically, but their anger has increased in view of the Syrians' ongoing activities. Washington was also angered by the opening of the Syrian border to volunteers from the Arab states (primarily Syria) who wanted to joint the fight against the coalition forces.

American pressure, it seems, is beginning to work: The Syrian-Iraqi border crossings have indeed been closed to passage.

From the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

No officials from the ministry were available to explain why the broadcasts had ceased.

Lewis: Chemical barrels with French writing above ground were tested, tested negative -- pesticides... the ones that tested positive were under leaves, with no French writing on them...

In the comments, Rpongett, who saw more of the report than I did, says:

They tested the barrels twice, and they came up positive for Sarrin, Tabin and Mustard Gas.

The samples have been shipped off to the US for further analsyis.

MSNBC reported that an A-10 pilot ejected and was rescued near Karbala. Source was embed Dana Lewis who is with the 101st.

No word on whether combat or mechanical loss. The aircraft was in support of the firefight in which Lewis's unit was engaged.

Dr. Bob Arnot is with the Marines in a running firefight.

They are in or near Saddam City in East Baghdad. Arnot reports that the opposition is fighting from mosques. The snipers are using rooftops. Opposition includes Fedayeen, terrorists from other Arab countries, and a group that Arnot is forbidden to name (speculation suggested :-). Opposition is reported to be using very accurate riflemen.

Marines are inhibited by the city from using their artillery as much as they would like, but are using tank main gun and machine gun fire.

Australian SAS blocking the exit road reportedly offered medical aid to evacuating Russian diplomats yesterday, according to the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). The aid was declined.

Fox Embed Rick Leventhal: Marine vehicles that you see are on their way to Baghdad... we will join them soon..` the artillary can hit Baghdad.. spoke to Commander at HQ... surprised with support they've gotten from locals.. thinks George Bush is popular here.

Dhue: Where are you?
Levinthal: Sort of on the easter side, 10 miles outside of town.. lots of Marine assets around here.. river crossing continues... effort to end war ASAP.. 3rd LAR tasked with providing security... destroying tanks.. watching for Baath officials... list of names...

Dhue: Are all roads secureed?
Leventhal: Roadblocks on amjor roads, some secondary roads... looking at people carefully [can hear tank in background].. checking to make sure no suicide attacks

Dhue: Resistance?
Leventhal: Mostly in Baghdad, which is why we want to get out there...

BBC World has been showing pix of 2 Abrams tanks on one of the Bridges for about 1 hour now. They're periodically firing the main gun when they see a good target, just daring any opposition to have a shot at them.
The BBC World Reporter on top of the Palestine Hotel is now describing "fighting all around me", and is ducking during the larger blasts. According to him, he's in not much danger, the fighting's at least 500 metres away (!!).
US troops reported in the Al Rasheed(?) hotel, having taken it overnight. Fighting there may be an Iraqi Counter-attack.
BBC military analysts speculate on an attempted link-up 3rd Inf from SW with USMC from SE to cut the city in half.
Things happening even quicker than this time yesterday.

Fox anchor : "I'm calling an audible" Shows picture that camera was directly behind what looked like a machine gun position. Video does seem to show that, to the layman's eye. Then an American plane came in an dropped bomb.. explosion. This would mean that the reason that the camera position was hit because the US forces were returning fire. (If this is conjecture is accurate)

The video is either the Abu Dhabi or Al Jazeera feeds...

Update: Argument in comments if Fox anchor is correct or not. "Joe Maller" says that the clip from the feed is at rtsp://live1.stream.aol.com/farm/*/encoder/cnn_webcast1_high, where you can decide for yourself. ( I report, you decide. Hey, that would make a great slogan...)

Fox Embed Greg Kelly: There's alot of fighting going on.. there's lots of Fedayeen and RG who are angry that we are here at the palace... that was the idea... 100 Fedayeen coming this way .. warthogs strafing them... Officers here very interested in Fox report about Saddam... heard nothing through channels... implications for political situation in Baghdad.. legwork in place for collapse

Lauire Dhue: What kind of counterattack?

Kelly: RPG armed guys 50-100 fighters in pickup trucks ...not really effective, but keeps the guys busy

Dhue: What's next?

Kelly: Priority 1 is this counter attack.. tanks... air support.. once that's wrapped up.. expand presence in city.. just wanted to point out that we've lost 4 reporters.. from 15 of us on the bus coming out

Dhue: David Bloom?

Kelly: I didn't know him well... well liked.. also Michael Kelly.... reporters from Spain and Germany in locations we had occupied were killed... we're ready for this to be over.. soldiers are too...

The Sun is reporting a Senior British Officer, Col Chris Vernon, was very upbeat yesterday and declared. "Militarily we have won the war."

The Washington Post reports:

MARINE COMBAT HEADQUARTERS, Iraq, April 7 -- Since the first night of the war in Iraq, U.S. commanders have been trying to find and kill Ali Hassan Majeed known as "Chemical Ali" for ordering the use of poison gas against ethnic Kurds 15 years ago. Time and again over the last 18 days, U.S. forces have bombed and raided houses where they thought he was staying, only to turn up empty-handed.

Over the weekend, an informer told U.S.-British forces that Majeed could be found at an office compound in Basra, the country's second-largest city then under siege by British forces. Majeed, a cousin of President Saddam Hussein and his military commander in the south, might have chemicals with him, the informer said. In swooped the F-16 jets, and the buildings exploded into fireballs.

This morning, British officers said they found Majeed's body.

By this evening, however, British forces said they believed Majeed might have survived the attack. But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials in Washington said they believed he was dead. Given Majeed's success in eluding his hunters, U.S. officers in Iraq remained more cautious.

My earlier post described a supposed Palestine Liberation Front complex: "Bomb-making facilities, chemicals, mortars, gas masks and AK-47s were found inside the 20-building complex to the east of Baghdad..."

The L.A. Times has no new information, but it does provide a source:

Marines said they had found what they said were links between Iraq and terror groups as they probed the city's outskirts... Capt. Aaron Robertson, the intelligence officer of the 2nd Battalion, 23rd Regiment, said his unit had come across what he said appeared to be a training camp used by the Palestinian Liberation Front and documents indicating that Iraq had sold weapons to the Palestinians as late as January... There was no independent confirmation of his assertion.

The Daily Mirror is reporting that Blair faces humiliation over his wish to see the UN play a large role in post-war Iraq. The paper says the President will not budge on this point, hurting Blair within the EU and his own party.

US is claiming jurisdiction over Iraqis liable for war crimes. They are refusing to hand them over to international tribunals.

Sky is reporting that a missle has hit Al Jazeera in Baghdad. US say strike was accidental.

From 'Missile hits Al-Jazeera office':

A US missile has hit the Baghdad offices of Al-Jazeera television, wounding a cameraman and leaving a correspondent missing, the Qatar-based Arabic news network said... The station aired footage of the cameraman being taking away for treatment in a car belonging to rival network Abu Dhabi television... Al-Jazeera's offices are near the Mansur Hotel, not far from the information ministry.

Also, the Arab News has a report about the al-Jazeera car supposedly being fired upon by U.S. forces, originally posted from IRNA earlier.

Here's a report in French with much the same on the latest bombing as well as the shooting of the car.

CNN showing Abu Dhabi feed: Baghdad firefight, with Arabic anchor play-by-play... Gen. Wes Clark doing the color commentary...

Translation of Abu Dhabi: small arms fire... saw small explosion... armored vehicles attempting to hold bridge... heavy fire around bridge that coalition troops trying to control.. building (shown on feed) is part of presidential complex... can see bullets exhanged

Aaron brown talks over her.. thinks his inanities are more important.. he shut up..now he's talking again... can't hear translator...she says.. can you see black smoke.. surrounding palace... some snipers in area

According to commenter cassun, video feeds can be found at:

DialUp:
rtsp://live1.stream.aol.com/farm/*/encoder/cnn_webcast1_low

Broadband:
rtsp://live1.stream.aol.com/farm/*/encoder/cnn_webcast1_high

Translator continues: Southeast of Baghdad...this area that we've been talking about since early morning, the presidential complex..we think that the surrounding are is nearly completley destroyed.. yesterday Rashid Hotel.. tried to enter... it seems that this area is having priority for targeting by coalition troops but the Iraqis [] troops were not able to have control of the area... no one knows who are in these buildings.. will try to find out

Brown is talking again...

[Can hear rumbling explosion type sounds, smoke gets thicker]

Brown is talking over translator... thinks we need to hear what she said all over again insteadof what she is sayin NOW.

Translator: I cannot confirm.. too far from camera.. what you see is fire in building of presidential complex. ... still hear exchange of fire... war planes flying very low altitude... AAA were not ready ... was not used... the planes hit their targets [ Brown thinks he is talking about the A-10's from an hour ago] Building was Dept. of Planning [fire burning very intensely out of two windows, top floor is smokey]

Jane (last name) on phone thinks it is near Tariq Aziz's office, near the Uday offices

Switched to CNN Int'l on commentor "watcher's" advice. Same feed different commentators....

Now on wide shot, shows coalition tanks on Baghdad Bridge... speculate that they are doing that to sow population that coalition is here... don't want to cause innocent casualties...

Nic Robertson: turret is swinging in the direction of Abu Dhabi (camera).. this is how tank commanders see.. they aren't going to stick their heads up... this is how they look... the turret is their eyes... US forces about to... maybe.. on Baghdad route.. a signinficant development... what would be the strategic targets?... Difficult to see... on the right intel showed that military uniformed people took them over.. some kind of military use.. more a value to send a clear message... just going out on the bridge send a message.. if they went over they'd be in a shopping district (head pops up out of tank)... a mile straight they'd hit a major highway...

Camera switch.. Palestine hotel? Still shows same two tanks from reverse angle... now they put Abu Dhabi translator back on

Translator: Sound of explosions... warplanes... talk of tanks...dropping bombs...
(arabic crawl says strike "over" abu dhabi camera) ... don't know why we were targetted... just telling truth... early morning planes... low flights around bridge.. would you have any way to contact our body (buddy?)... [tank fires off another round]

Nic Robertson: NW direction.. difficult to tell what tank fired out at... area is normally residential... but 100% can say a number of bunkers were dug there I saw before the war... to the right of building we are looking at... used as a football pitch y kids... bunker there... smoke coming from that direction.. before war many residential areas had more military look to them... edge of Gov't area.. perhaps Ministry of information..

Camera switch... looking towards horizon S-SE toward Al Dura refinery, oil trench...

Martin Savidge inside Baghdad, with US Marines.. where is he, Nic?

Nic: Bridge we saw would be right behind current camera location. Martin would be to the left of picture...

[Doesn't seem like much more is happening-- will stop updating now. If more happens will open new entry]

MEMRI reports on Sheikh Tantawi, who is the highest-ranking cleric in Sunni Islam and his positions on Jihad, Saddam and The War in Iraq. The report is necessary since his views change frequently.

CNN Savidge: Checking in ... seems to be in a live firefight... with video...

[sorry life intruded saw video, could not listen to sound]

Spoke to John Laurence of Esquire ... One person was injured.. they think associated with Al Jezeera...

In comments for this post
Cblink "Those A10 strafes against that 15 story building are amazing. The sounds of the gun reverberates throught the buildings. That would scare the tar out of me."
Kathleen: "I'm watching the cam that's watching the firefight, and I'm not certain that some of it isn't pre-recorded. I keep seeing the same plane over and over, and possibly the same scene of firing from/to the multistory building that looks like a hotel, with the 2 big antennas on top.
"

FoxNews' Rita Cosby reporting that Pentagon has confirmed that the attack on the residential complex was based on information provided by the CIA and visual confirmation from two special ops personnel on the ground. Once they got a second visual confirmation, the order was given and the bombs struck "within minutes" of such order. Says that they know that the target personnel were in a "restaurant" (or "below the restaurant") just prior to the attack. Officials in various agencies are very confident that Saddam and his two sons were present ("sense of optimism") and that they will be able to confirm whether or not he was there (based, presumably, on signals intelligence) "very soon" ("senses" that this is very different than the first "decapitation" strike).

NOTE: Thanks to all who provided info on Rita Cosby!

From Baghdad

Two loud explosions shook an area near the Iraqi Information Ministry on Tuesday as U.S. planes were seen flying overhead, a Reuters witness said.

"They have hit a target near the Information Ministry and black smoke is now rising into the sky," reporter Samia Nakhoul said. "Planes are flying very low overhead. The sound of fighting is very loud and seems to be intensifying."