Posted on 03/21/2003 12:37:48 PM PST by GulliverSwift
At least 60 and as many at 250 Iraqis surrendered. Col. Steve Cox of the British Marines told the Reuters news agency that U.S. Marines under British command captured 250 Iraqis near Umm Qasr. Television images from other parts of Iraq also showed Iraqi prisoners, marching in single file with their hands behind their heads. Sahhaf, the Iraqi information minister, said the images were fabricated. "Those were not Iraqi soldiers at all," he said. "Where did they get them from?"
As Rumsfeld stated again today, the United States has undertaken a major effort to persuade Iraqi troops to lay down their arms, offering them amnesty and constructive place in postwar Iraq if they do so and vowing to destroy them if they resist.
"There are signs of continuing Iraqi desertions, and disagreement and division at all levels of the regime," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said at a news conference in Brussels. "But I should warn that our forces will face resistance, and that the campaign necessarily will not achieve all its objectives overnight." The Iraqi troops who confronted the American and British marines in the Southeast used only conventional infantry weapons, such as machine guns. Three Iraqi missiles were launched overnight; one fell into the Persian Gulf, one landed inside Iraq and the third was destroyed by a Patriot missile defense battery at Camp New Jersey, a U.S. outpost in Kuwait. As in the last war with Iraq, Operation Desert Storm in 1991, there has been no sign of any Iraqi use of poison gas or biological weapons-the alleged possession of which is the U.S. justification for the current conflict.
Asked why not, Myers said, "Don't know."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Why is this "information minister" still alive? And why is the television station still there? They need to be "shocked" and "awed" out of existence.
Of course, he's an excpert in fake footage.
Senator Daschle: Who? Who do you believe? All that network real-time footage? Or my lying mouth?
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