U.S. Forces Within 100 Miles of Baghdad

As U.S. forces surged to within 100 miles of Baghdad on Sunday, Arab satellite television showed what it said were American dead in an Iraqi morgue - and others it said were U.S. troops taken prisoner.

``There are some American soldiers missing,'' Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said. ``It's illegal to do things to POWs that are humiliating to those prisoners.''

There was plenty of bad news Sunday for an allied campaign that otherwise has had enormous success. British officials said a Patriot missile battery shot down a British Royal Air Force fighter aircraft near the Iraqi border with Kuwait; there was no word on the fate of the crew.

And an American soldier was held in a grenade attack on 101st Airborne Division camp in Kuwait that left one man dead.

The footage of aired by the Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera came from Iraqi television. It showed four bodies in uniform, lying on the floor of the room, and interviews with at least five prisoners, speaking in American-accented English.

``I come to shoot only if I am shot at,'' said one prisoner, who said he was from Kansas. Asked why he was fighting Iraqis, he replied: ``They don't bother me; I don't bother them.''

The Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman said he thought fewer than 10 soldiers were missing in southern Iraq and that military officials were trying to account for them. ``Beyond that, we don't know,'' Gen. Richard Myers said on ``Fox News Sunday.''

The station said the prisoners were captured around Nasiriyah, a major crossing point over the Euphrates northwest of Basra.

Meanwhile, scores of security officers in Baghdad were seen searching the banks of the Tigris River, apparently looking for one or more pilots who may have bailed out of a downed plane. Interviewed on CNN, Rumsfeld said he knew of no such aircraft that had failed to return safely from their missions.

In perhaps the most dramatic advance on the ground, the 3rd Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade covered roughly 230 miles in 40 hours to take positions about 100 miles from Baghdad - less than a day's march.

The brigade raced day and night across rugged desert in more than 70 tanks and 60 Bradley fighting vehicles. At one point the soldiers ran into an hours-long firefight, killing 100 Iraqi militiamen who confronted the Americans with machinegun-mounted vehicles. No American injuries were reported in the battle.

Several other allied units engaged in intensive gunbattles Sunday, but the only confirmed American deaths of the day were not from combat. One soldier from the 3rd Infantry Division was killed in a vehicle accident in southern Iraq, while another soldier was killed and 13 injured in a grenade attack in Kuwait that officials blamed on one of their comrades.

The attack occurred early Sunday at a 101st Airborne Division command center, where an assailant threw grenades into three tents. Three of the wounded were seriously injured; 10 had superficial wounds from grenade fragments, said George Heath, spokesman for Fort Campbell, Ky., the 101st Airborne's home base.

The suspect, found hiding in a bunker, is an engineer from an engineering platoon. The motive ``most likely was resentment,'' said Max Blumenfeld, an Army spokesman. He did not elaborate.

The name of the soldier who died was withheld pending notification of relatives.

``Death is a tragic incident regardless of how it comes,'' Heath said. ``But when it comes from a fellow comrade, it does even more to hurt morale.''

The accidental downing of the British plane was another blow. The Tornado GR4, based in Marham, Britain, was returning from an operational mission early Sunday and was engaged by the missile battery, said a statement from the British press information center at U.S. Central Command.

``This is a tragedy and we are taking rapid steps to ensure there is no repetition,'' said Group Capt. Al Lockwood, a spokesman for British forces.

Asked how a U.S. missile could have brought down the plane, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told ABC's ``This Week'' that ``procedures and electronic means to identify friendly aircraft and to identify adversary aircraft ... broke down somewhere.''

It was the third aerial accident involving British personnel since the war began. Six British troops and a U.S. Navy officer died when two British helicopters collided, while eight British and four U.S. Marines were killed when their helicopter crashed near the Kuwait-Iraqi border.

In Baghdad, a series of air raid sirens and explosions were heard on the outskirts of the city at midmorning Sunday. Though an all-clear siren sounded, anti-aircraft fire, tracers and explosions could be heard to the north and northeast of the city 15 minutes later.

A cloud of smoke hung over the capital; residents believed it was created in part by fires set to conceal targets from bombardment.

Iraqi officials said more than 500 Iraqis in four cities were injured in allied airstrikes Saturday; they said 77 civilians were killed in Basra, the main city in southern Iraq.

Iraqi television reported that Saddam Hussein's home town, Tikrit, had been bombed several times. Al-Arabiya, an Arab satellite TV news channel, reported that four people were killed in those attacks.

On the ground, U.S. and British forces captured territory, towns and military installations - often with little or no opposition. But in some locations, Iraqi forces fought back with artillery fire or guerrilla-style counterattacks.

Iraqi state television reported fighting between Iraqi ruling Baath party militias and U.S.-British forces near the Shiite holy city of Najaf, 95 miles south of Baghdad. It said the top Baath party official in Najaf was killed.

Near the Persian Gulf, Marines seized an Iraqi naval base Sunday morning at Az Zubayr. In the command center, Marines found half-eaten bowls of rice and other still-warm food.

Coalition troops were still trying to mop up resistance at the main Gulf port of Umm Qasr so it could be used for humanitarian shipments. They engaged in street-to-street battles against guerrillas, including paramilitary fighters of the Baath party.

Near Basra in the south, Marines saw hundreds of Iraqi men - apparently soldiers who had taken off their uniforms - walking along a highway with bundles on their backs past burned-out Iraqi tanks.

Allied forces have captured Basra's airport and a key bridge. But commanders say they are in no rush to storm the city, hoping instead that Iraqi defenders decide to give up.

The "bad news" the press keeps trumpeting, while of themselves and individually tragic, are of no conequence to the overall effort, which is proceeding rapidly and amazingly successfully.

The major media, in its efort to lamblast and demonize this clearly honorable and justifiable effort, is picking away at every knat on the elephant's backside as if though they were ravaging lions. They are not and the effort and plan will proceed to a timely and successful conclusion.

I pray for the rest of the souls of our personnel who have fallen, for strength and resiliance of those captured ... and the comfort of their loved ones. They are heroes doing the hard work of freedom their detractors cannot even comprehend, and whose shoe laces those detractors are not worthy or capable of even tieing.

Best Fregards and prayers and support for our troops.

Jeff

Not to be insensitive, but you are right. As a percentage of the total number of troops involved, any casualties so far has been minimal. Not to say that each death isn't tragic, and that I don't feel for the families, but we're at war.

If we knew that we could have gone into Afghanistan and stopped Al Qaeda before 9/11, a few hundred military casualties lost to save the 3000 civilians that died that day, we would have done it, I'm sure.

Casualties of this war are saving the lives of who knows how many Iraqi's and citizens of the world, not only the US. Too bad the peaceniks can't see this and don't understand the sacrifice our military and their families are making.

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