Posted on 03/28/2003 9:37:56 AM PST by jwalburg
Additional U.S. and British troops were expected to deploy to the Persian Gulf to reinforce coalition forces fighting the Iraqi military, and British intelligence officials said they now have evidence of a direct link between the Iraqis and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.
News report said late Thursday some 30,000 soldiers of the 4th Infantry Division and other units based at Fort Hood, Texas, were to be deployed to the region in the next few days. Another 100,000 ground troops were expected to be deployed in the next month.
A defense official told United Press International there was nothing new in the move.
"It's all part of the plan," the official said.
In London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair was expected to seek approval from the Cabinet Friday to send another 5,000 British troops as reinforcements to Iraq after a request from U.S. President George W. Bush, British officers at the coalition command headquarters in Qatar were told.
The report of additional troops came as the war entered its second week Thursday and the U.S.-led coalition pushed forward on a number of fronts after being stalled by sandstorms and what military officials called a series of minor setbacks.
In Camp David, Md., Thursday, Bush and Blair said they were prepared for a long campaign against Saddam's troops.
"It isn't a matter of timetable, it's a matter of victory," Bush said. "The Iraqi people have got to know that. They've got to know that they will be liberated."
He said the war will last "however long it takes to win."
In Baghdad, overnight air raids were one of the heaviest so far. CNN reported that a U.S. Air Force B-2 stealth bomber dropped two satellite-guided "bunker-buster" bombs, shaking a large area. Parts of the city were shrouded in haze. At least one of the bombs was a 4,500-pound GBU-37, CNN said.
In a news release, U.S. Central Command said a B-2 Spirit bomber "targeted and struck a major link in Iraq's national communication network." It said link occupied a large tower on the east bank of the Tigris River in downtown Baghdad.
"The strike with two precision-guided munitions was to degrade the ability of the Hussein regime to command and control the actions of Iraq's military forces," the statement said.
The capital has been targeted almost every day since the fighting began. Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf said Friday that Thursday's bombing killed seven people and wounded 92.
In the southern Iraqi city of Basra, which is the country's second largest, British officials said Friday Iraqi paramilitary groups are firing upon some 2,000 fleeing civilians.
"We had recent reports of approximately 2,000 Iraqi civilians trying to leave Basra in the north and the west of the city," a British military spokesman in Qatar told UPI. "They were apparently being fired upon by Iraqi paramilitaries using machine guns and mortars. Coalition forces from the 1st U.K. armored division are trying to neutralize the paramilitary fire and rescue these innocent civilians.
"They are also attempting to treat casualties."
He said the British troops were still engaging the Iraqis.
British intelligence officers said they had evidence of a direct link between the Iraqi forces and al-Qaida. They have learned that up to a dozen al-Qaida volunteers were fighting alongside the pro-Baghdad guerilla forces in the town of As Zubaya outside Basra.
After a British raid on the Baath party headquarters in As Zubaya Wednesday to capture the local paramilitary leaders, Arabic-speaking intelligence officers interrogated the captured defenders. They were told that volunteers from al-Qaida were taking part in the town's defense and helping to organize the pro-Baghdad resistance. Transcripts of the interrogations have been shared with U.S. military intelligence.
On the diplomatic front, U.N. Security Council members negotiated a draft resolution Thursday for a new humanitarian program for the people of Iraq, by revamping the so-called oil-for-food program. The program's problem was not that any nations were against getting humanitarian goods to Iraq's people, but that some council members, namely Russia and Syria, feared the wording of a reworked resolution could legitimize the U.S.-led invasion.
"It seems that we have found an agreement concerning humanitarian assistance to Iraq," said Ambassador Gunter Pleuger of Germany, who led the negotiations. He said a text was agreed on "so that we will be able to vote on it tomorrow (Friday) and of course it is our hope ... that this finds the agreement of everybody and that we can adopt the resolution by consensus tomorrow."
Earlier at the United Nations, U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte walked out of a meeting after the Iraqi representative accused the United States of being "war criminals."
In military operations, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported Friday that additional U.S. troops were moving in to join the battle at An Nasiriyah.
In central Iraq, UPI's Richard Tomkins reported Thursday that an Iraqi armored unit and infantry troops were pummeled with airstrikes and artillery fire after falling for a trap that lured them into vacated U.S. positions. The armored unit, including Soviet-made tanks, was approaching the vacated positions across the open desert when two Navy F-14 aircraft swooped down from a bright, clear sky -- the first after three days of vicious dust storms -- and released laser-guided missiles and bombs.
Cobra helicopter gunships then buzzed in lower, firing Gatling guns and rocket launchers. Plumes of smoke could be seen in the distance from the burning hulks.
Troops of 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, meanwhile, were attacking a regional airport about two hours away by slow-moving armored troop carrier. Two Marines were killed by small arms fire. Word on Iraqi casualties was not immediately available.
Protests against the war continued. In New York, hundreds crowded Fifth Avenue near Rockefeller Center, blocking traffic for less than an hour Thursday morning and resulting in more than 100 arrests. Several hundred thousand Algerians from around the country converged on the capital Algiers on Thursday to protest the U.S.-British war in Iraq and demand an immediate halt to hostilities.
Overall support for the war in the United States continued strong, with more than 70 percent of Americans approving it. But the number who expect a relatively quick campaign has dropped in the past few days to below 40 percent, with some critics saying that the administration had downplayed the potential costs in dollars, time and lives.
In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a Senate panel the war in Iraq, while expensive, will be worth the money because it will deter terror. The Bush administration has asked for more than $74 billion to fund the initial military action in Iraq and provide additional money for the fight against terrorism in the United States.
"(It is a) great deal of money," he said. "Whatever it ends up costing, it will be small compared to the cost in lives and treasure of another attack like we experienced on Sept. 11," he said, referring to the 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington that killed about 3,000 people.
Also Thursday, over some U.S. objections, leaders of an Iraqi opposition exile council in northern Iraq announced they would form a provisional government for the Iraqi people upon Saddam's fall.
"Upon the liberation of Iraq, the Leadership Council will declare the formation of an independent provisional government that will be a coalition to run the affairs of the country, to uphold the dignity of the people, the unity and national sovereignty and independence of the country," a statement from the opposition front said.
The council represents Iraq's Kurds and Shiites, but currently a chair on the five-person panel reserved for Sunni Arabs, the ethnic group that comprises the majority of the ruling Baath party's leadership, is vacant.
(With reporting by Pamela Hess from the Pentagon, Richard Tomkins with the 5th Marine Regimental Combat Team, Gassan al-Khadi in Baghdad, Kathy Gambrell at the White House, Seva Ulman in Ankara, Turkey, Martin Walker in Kuwait City, Hussein Hindawi in London, Eli J. Lake at the State Department and William M. Reilly at the United Nations.)
Sounds reasonable to me to call this a direct link.
Not everyone is convinced, though, so every new piece of evidence helps.
Not that it would do any good. Ed Asner was on Fox the other night and he actually said that Afghanistan was better off under the Taliban rule. There's just no getting through to these Hollywood idiots.
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