Mar 21, 2003: First strike on Baghdad

The Australian ^ | March 19, 2008 | Roy Eccleston

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THE US opened its war on Iraq with a pre-dawn missile barrage at the Iraqi leadership yesterday but apparently failed to kill Saddam Hussein, whose image later appeared on television to accuse President George W. Bush of a "shameful crime".

It was not clear if the less-than-10-minute address broadcast by his son Uday's Youth television was live or pre-recorded.

The assassination attacks in Baghdad, targeting Hussein and his sons, Uday and Qusay, signalled the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, described by Mr Bush in a televised address from the Oval Office as a "broad and concerted campaign".

As Iraq claimed last night that the bombardment had killed one civilian and wounded several others, one of them a girl, it fired six missiles, two of them Scuds, into northern Kuwait. Two of the missiles were intercepted by Patriot missiles. Air raid sirens wailed repeatedly in the emirate amid fears of chemical attack, as Baghdad hit back against US forces.

The first missiles crashed near a US Marine base in the Mutlaa desert of northern Kuwait, where tens of thousands of US and British troops are massed to launch a ground invasion. Two hours later, three more missiles hit Kuwait, one of them intercepted over the western Kuwait Bay. There were no casualties in the attacks.

Australian forces were involved last night in dangerous covert reconnaissance deep inside Iraq, and providing vital support to bombing raids in a prelude to a massive invasion.

Special forces troops were dropped deep behind enemy lines in northern and southern Iraq to find weapons of mass destruction and locate targets for coalition bombers, such as missile launchers.

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QUAGMIRE.

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There was an Australian journalist who was embedded with Saddam’s forces and was with them at the time of Saddam’s capture. He writes for Time Magazine.

In another time and place he would be facing charges of treason like Axis Sally.