Posted on 03/29/2003 5:50:14 PM PST by miltonim
Baghdad warned Saturday that a suicide bombing which claimed the lives of four U.S. soldiers is just the start of a new strategy that will strike at British and U.S. interests inside and outside of Iraq.
Iraq's vice president identified the bomber as an Iraqi army non-commissioned officer and father. He added that suicide attacks will become "routine" military policy. A report from Iraqi television said that Saddam Hussein had awarded the man two posthumous medals for honour.
"We will use any means to kill our enemy in our land and we will follow the enemy into its land," Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan said. "This is just the beginning. You'll hear more pleasant news later."
Saying that the attack "looks and feels like terrorism," United States military officials called it a sign of desperation on the part of the Iraqi government.
U.S. Major-General Stanley McChrystal told a Washington briefing Saturday that almost 100,000 coalition forces are now in Iraq, with more headed to the Persian Gulf. Appearing with him, Pentagaon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke insisted that the ongoing deployment is part of the original plan, and not a response to tougher-than-expected Iraqi resistance.
Also Saturday, officers with U.S. Central Command — orchestrating the war from a base in Doha, Qatar — denied reports that the invading forces had decided on a four-to-six day pause in their advance.
"I think that with respect to a pause, there is no pause on the battlefield. Just because you see a particular formation pause on the battlefield it does not mean there is a pause," Major-General Victor Renuart, director of operations, told a news conference.
"I don't believe there is any intent to pause on the battlefield. We will continue to focus our operations. Sometimes they will be focused in the west, sometimes in the north, sometimes in the south, sometimes all together."
U.S. forces are preparing for an expected battle against Iraq's best-trained and best-equipped troops: the Republican Guard forces arrayed outside Baghdad. Air strikes, including the first heavy combat from a helicopter unit of the 101st Airborne, hammered at Iraqi forces to soften them up for the eventual ground campaign.
The Army's 101st Airborne Division sent out upwards of 40 attack helicopters to pound Republican Guard positions south of Baghdad. Officers at the scene said the helicopters destroyed tanks, armoured personnel carriers, other vehicles, a fuel depot and a communications tower.
Farther south, near Nasiriyah, U.S. Army forensics experts have been summoned to examine four bodies found buried in shallow graves. The town has been the scene of days of fighting and a number of U.S. soldiers remain missing.
Correspondents at the scene in Najaf said that the soldiers were killed as they approached a taxi at a checkpoint.
"Two soldiers went to the front of the car, two to the rear," a Sky News reporter said. "The driver beckoned to them and there was an explosion. All the soldiers were killed."
The suicide bombing is the first against U.S. and British forces since the invasion began. There have been warnings that such attacks are likely and several Middle East clerics have urged their followers to attack invading forces.
With a quick war in Iraq now in question and international criticism growing, the Bush administration lashed out at its critics and enemies Friday. In Washington, U.S. President George W. Bush's administration had to fight a rear-guard political action as concern continued to mount that its war effort was showing early signs of trouble.
Speaking to U.S. veterans, Mr. Bush defended the war as a campaign "to free the people of Iraq from the clutches of Saddam Hussein and his murderous allies."
His Defence Secretary struck a more belligerent note, threatening Syria and Iran with dire consequences if they interfere with the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld accused Damascus of smuggling night-vision goggles that would help Iraqi fighters enormously, a move he called "a hostile act."
"We have information that shipments of military supplies have been crossing the border from Syria into Iraq, including night-vision goggles," he told reporters at the Pentagon. "These deliveries pose a direct threat to the lives of coalition forces. We consider such trafficking as hostile acts and will hold the Syrian government accountable for such shipments."
Night-vision goggles are one of the few technological advantages U.S. troops may have over Iraqi forces in the close urban fighting that is expected to come soon in Baghdad and other centres.
With little battlefield progress to report, the Bush administration has stepped up its denunciation of the Iraqi regime, accusing it of war crimes and threats against civilians. Such threats have been identified by administration officials as the main reason ordinary Iraqis have not publicly welcomed American and British forces.
Despite the slow progress on the ground, Mr. Rumsfeld's dire warning to Syria and Iran raised the spectre of a wider Middle East war, something long sought by the Baghdad regime in its attempts to portray the conflict as an American and Jewish effort to subjugate the Arab world.
Syria responded testily to the accusation, calling it an attempt by Mr. Rumsfeld to "justify his troops' failure" in Iraq.
MKM
So Iraq is finally showing us the right side of it's face.
More proof that the war on Iraq is part of the war on terrorism. (as if we needed more proof)
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