***Operation Iraqi Freedom - Situation Room - Day 22

Oh, here's Pretty Chicken again. Messing with his hair again.

I wish one of those git reporters would ask about the nuke plant the Marines found the other day.

Question: will operation be complete even if SH is not apprehended? Read reports that he's going in the direction of Iran?

Renuart: Doubt he'd be going to Iran...won't have a welcome party

I wish one of those git reporters would ask about the nuke plant the Marines found the other day.

Naah, that strays too far from the script.

CENTCOM - Thurs. Apr. 10:

Maj. Gen. Gene Renuart and Brig. Gen. Vincebt Brooks:

Maj. Gen. Renuart:

Our message has been consistant. We are on plan. We conitnue to reduce pockets of resistance.

We've seen a lot of activity in Bagdhad, those ops. continue.

Despite what you see..local euphoria..this operation is a long way from complete...a no. of areas that are not yet stabilized (throughout country)..

The men and women of our coalition are bearing a heavy cost..we remember our fallen...and civilians (and reporters)..

1st Mar. Exp Force and 3rd ...completed outer cordone around Baghdad.

So - 1st UK armored div. conducting no. ops. in Basrah...secured all so. oil wells....800 wells have been inspected, secured.

Population seems supportive and continues to welcome our coaliton forces.

Senior clerics are asking for help...to help stop looting and enforce a curfew, and for local citizens to turn in weapons...

101st Airborn returned stability to El Hillil (sp)..found 4 warehouses of food...are distributing...

Baghdad - ops. are ongoing...localized pockets of resistance...assessing electrical, water, medical needs...

West - Ar Ruppa (sp) Spec. Ops talking w/ leaders, that town is open to coalition forces...new mayor asking help w/ water, we are helping w/ this and elect., etc...

We're working to get media broadcasting running...we hope free Iraqis will broadcast own radio and TV...they conitnue to tune inot OUR radio and TV, tell them not to come out onto streets of Baghdad, that it is not safe..

We have been planning for the peace that follows....to bring infrastructure back up...railroads, bridges, power, water...

Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks:

Spec. Ops- have succeeded in maintaining lethal pressure in the north...in west- Al Qa im...working to secure, Spec. ops joined w/ citizens of El Ruppa working together...Hadiffah dam, NW of Baghdad, we've been able to keep secure...video: of new tanks arriving by C-17 aircraft to the dam area, tanks rolling across dam..a greater set of option now exist to defet

Spec. ops now control 5 different airfields...

Karbala, El Hillah an Baghdad:

Karbala..increasing security

Al Hillah..coalition forces of 5th corp attacked during niight...RPG ambushes, found artillery...successful in (defeating some bad guys)...found warehouse, large distri. center..we think is assoc. w/ oil for food

Baghdad: 1st Exp force increased presence...pockets of resistance in center and nr. mosque where fighting happened this morn...5th corp nr. Tigris River...stopped boats attempt. to cross...

Baghdad Airp/ and Rasheed airport...ops continue, we have larger presence...

Reports of ambushes w/ surface mines (by bad guys)...

We cont. efforts to reach Iraqi population..distr. more than a million leaflets yesterday, broadcast messages changes (to fit circumstances)....

Humanit. assist...we find that our initial needs...areas of food, water and medical...not a crisis in foor avail..our forces are able to distribute supplemental... pics of rations, we're distributing by hand....new type is salmon colored - Spanish ship Galicia brought human. supplies and a field hospital..video of offloading the field hospital...this is a very important coalition effort...this is for Iraqi population....not military med. support...immed. medical needs are assessed every day....we provide treatment where needed...

Coalition taking several steps to meet water needs...trucked in, water purification equipm., video of water taken from the river, purified 2000 liters per hour able to purifiy..north of Samalah...testing water conditions....throughout Iraq, there are efforts like these continuing...

Maj. Gen. Gene. Renuart:

What do leaflets do? Where wired oil fields had valves turned off, the people had read the leaflets, (local people helped) knew how important the oil was for their future... and helped secure the oil wells by insuring true damage would not occur.

Questions:

"As we have seen in many of these cities, there is a governance that has been based on tradition for many many years...based on clerics, etc., as we have taken away regime...clearly the Iraqi people will (decide how communities will be governed...meetings have occured...Iraqi people beginning to voice their preference..)

Re. Kirkut: "Our Spec. forces are in a number of positions to carefully monitor flow of traffic on (major road)...SRG, irreg. army, etc., we have continued to conduct unconv. warfare against those forces..we believe those forces have been significantly reduced...we believe we're making good progress....we've had spec. forces in area for some time...est. relationship w/ local Kurds...Kurds will be under command element of spec. ops, no reports of fighting in city...irreg. army falling back from green line in many cases...we are monitoring their movements...

"If you look back during Gulf War the greater Al Qa'im area was site of largest # of S-S missiles.. (we are protecting the neighbors by securing this area)..it's preventive medicine...by our presence, air power...etc, if there is that capability there that (we'd prvent the bad guys from using it)...

"Not all of our leads are current or accurate but we have to try to run them to ground...we got message that there was senior leadership meeting (in vicinity of the Mosque)...our troops were fired on...heavy firefight for number of hours...we jhave resolved...(killed the top bad guy, I think)...

Re. Tikrit and looting in Basrah and Baghdad...Iraqi gov. let out thousands of criminals months ago: "Very good point... for a city, maybe even a coutnry that has been held prisoner...there is a great deal of bad feeling against the regime...not surprising..people expressing anger...in Basrah, some (local seniors have asked UK forces to provide presence...that's occuring...E. Baghdad...where we had not yet put military forces in. (looting)..was reaction of that neighborhood to (bad guys)...today.. we've moved some poeple in...it starts to settle...(we want locals to hande this.)..we'll work with them through our Civil Affairs teams...that's the best way...will calm down...(they will build their own) police force...curfew? ..locals will decide...our intent is not to be heavy-handed, but to bring stability..

Re. Tikrit..."We do not have any substantial US forces (there) it is an area we are interested in..

"Each day we have uncovered either numbers of destroyed pieces of equip. that go to local scrap yards...or functional equip...there will be some military forces (eventually) built back for Iraq (we're not destroying all military equip...saving for Iraqi future.)..

'I think you've seen in some case in incidences of jubilation..we've taken out the US flag...this is the country of Iraq...when the Iraqi people reclaim area, the Iraqi flag will be flown...we'll continue to be enthusiatic where we've succeeded and understanding (of the local Iraqis)

"Baghdad's still an ugly place...unsecured areas...remaining small pockets of RG, SRG...our objective is to go to those areas (secure them)...

Re. Saddam, Tariq??? MOAB? "The so-called MOAB, the blue 82, the 15,000 lb. weapon is surely available to us...we wouldn't want to (take away any options)...re. the Huseein bunch..."don't know where they are...but we'll continue our pursuit of any intel.. "I don't know if they're alive...don't know if they're dead...

Re. Mosque: "We did suffer some wounded....in terms of enemy forces...a numb. killed and captured were dressed in similar black garb we've seen other paramilitary forces dressed in...

Re. bad guy foreign fighters, Mosul: "Mosul...we have had, continue to have 173rd Brigade ont eh ground, addutional military forces flow in to that area...as the US forces see and seize the opportunity to further expoand to push (bad guys out we will seize those opportunities)...foreign fighters? We ahe a number of reports about a week ago...since had fewer reports...have not seen addit. influx...our elements in west are doing (good job of keeping bad guys out.)..

Re. POWs "We had evidence of US that may have been held there because we saw US uniforms.. (will not further speculate)..

"Some of those circumstance on the battlefield...are civil-military ops...part of training of our Marines is to train...both in urban..and civil...will be natural..to provide (civil presence into these neighborhoods) It is important for us to create an environment that is secure...(allows for everyday life...school, etc...doesn't mean just policing..but to work with and get to know locals)..

Re. Tikrit: "The way we used our Spec. forces in Afghan. was (spec. to that area...) no, it's not the Afghan model (we're doing unique things..)...We have put a great deal of emphasis on Tikrit...some conventional, some unconventional..we continue to increase presence...continue along the timeline of the plan we've laid out...

"As far as we know there are ~125 hospitals (in greater Bagdhad area...we're trying to assess). We are attempting to identify the areas we can restore power and water...into hardest hit area...that will expand just as our military ops have expanded in city...

"The coalition forces are in direct contact with ALL of the parties in regions (Turks, Kurds, etc)..it is clear to all of them what our position is..we'll continue to commun. to make sure they understand our itnentions...

"Intially designed to provide encirclement and then to move through center (of Bagdhad...) worked pretty much on plan.."

"I would not argue with what Russian satellites are able to see..our estimates may differ a little bit...we have destroyed (or ) own a substantial number of armor that made up the Iraqi military", Re. Saddam going to Iran? "I don't think he'd be welcome there"...

Re. WMDs: "We believe that many of the sources of info would be in and around Baghdad...we hope to gain access to more and more facilities...many of the places that WMDs might be hidden will not be (visible...will require intel, much investigation)...

Cool! Sky just showed a clip of the President with Arabic subtitles saying that this is almost over.

you just plain rock
I just woke up, great recap, thanks

As a update I heard more on ABC Radio news and they called the Coalition Iraqi TV station "Toward(s) Freedom" As for what Bush and Blair said it was what we have heard from them about our intentions since this started.

nuke plant? please tell more...

Thanks again, RC! I missed half of Gen. Renuart's answers.

Pretty Chicken on Good Morning America with interview of Cpl. Chin who put the flag on statue. Uh-oh, having trouble about tag or throwback.

Nuke plant report from yesterday:

Marines hold nuclear site

Live Thread ping for today!

and an oil-rich Kurdistan would be wealthier than Turkey.

True.

Also, there is a fairly LARGE Kurd-dominated area in western Turkey (on the border with Iraq). The Turks are afraid that if the Kurds get the oil, they will have enough money to organize and form their own country and take away a portion of Turkey. The "new Kurdistan" country would include the Kurdish-controlled portion of Iraq, and the Kurdish-occupied portion of Turkey, and some Kurdish territory in Iran, and maybe one other country. So Turkey doesn't want to lose any of it's own territory.

I doubt they would care if the Kurds didn't occupy a large portion of Turkey. So, as usual, it's a case of "The boy with the most toys (aka LAND) wins." This is why various Rulers go in and CONQUER other lands. I'm pretty sure it's to compensate for a small penis.

Good morning. Turkey's got its panties in a wad over Kurds in Kirkuk.

Here ya go

In a valley sculpted by man, between the palms and roses, lies a vast marble and steel city known as Al-Tuwaitha.

In the suburbs about 18 miles south of the capital's suburbs, this city comprises nearly 100 buildings — workshops, laboratories, cooling towers, nuclear reactors, libraries and barracks — that belong to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission.

Investigators Tuesday discovered that Al-Tuwaitha hides another city. This underground nexus of labs, warehouses, and bomb-proof offices was hidden from the public and, perhaps, International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors who combed the site just two months ago, until the U.S. Marine Corps Combat Engineers discovered it three days ago.

Today, the Marines hold it against enemy counter-attacks.

So far, Marine nuclear and intelligence experts have discovered 14 buildings that betray high levels of radiation. Some of the readings show nuclear residue too deadly for human occupation.

A few hundred meters outside the complex, where peasants say the "missile water" is stored in mammoth caverns, the Marine radiation detectors go "off the charts."

"It's amazing," said Chief Warrant Officer Darrin Flick, the battalion's nuclear, biological and chemical warfare specialist. "I went to the off-site storage buildings, and the rad detector went off the charts. Then I opened the steel door, and there were all these drums, many, many drums, of highly radioactive material."

To nuclear experts in the United States, the discovery of a subterranean complex is highly interesting, perhaps the atomic "smoking gun" intelligence agencies have been searching for as Operation Iraqi Freedom unfolds.

Last fall, they say, the Central Intelligence Agency prodded international inspectors to probe Al-Tuwaitha for weapons of mass destruction. The inspectors came away with nothing.

"They went through that site multiple times, but did they go underground? I never heard anything about that," said physicist David Albright, a former IAEA Action Team inspector in Iraq from 1992 to 1997. Officials at the IAEA could not be reached for comment.

"The Marines should be particularly careful because of those high readings. Three hours at levels like that and people begin to vomit. That leads me to wonder, if the readings are accurate, whether radioactive material was deliberately left there to expose people to dangerous levels.

"You couldn't do scientific work in levels like that. You would die."

Albright hopes the Marines safeguard any documents they find and preserve the site for analysis. That, say the Combat Engineers, is their mission.

Nestled in a bend in the Tigris River, Al-Tuwaitha was built in the early 1960s. Nuclear experts believe the government began Iraq's nuclear weapons program there between 1972 and 1976. Satellite imagery shows dramatic expansion at the site in the '70s, '80s and '90s, according to the Institute for Science and International Security.

Mindful of nuclear weapons inspectors, ISIS said the Iraqis developed methods to thwart them when they visited Al-Tuwaitha.

"Iraq developed procedures to limit access to these buildings by IAEA inspectors who had a right to inspect the fuel fabrication facility. On days when the inspectors were scheduled to visit, only the fuel fabrication rooms were open to them. Usually, employees were told to take their rooms so that the inspectors did not see an unusually large number of people," according to a 1999 report Albright wrote with Corey Gay and Khidhir Hamza for ISIS.

Hamza, an Iraqi nuclear engineer who defected from Iraq in 1994, testified before Congress last August that Iraq could have had nuclear weapons by 2005.

Yesterday, Hamza expressed great surprise that the underground site could even exist. The ground there is muddy and composed of clay, he said. The water table is barely a foot and a half below the surface of the ground. During construction of one of the former nuclear reactors there, French engineers spent a fortune pumping water from the foundation area, only to see buildings crumble when the water was removed.

Hamza said the French built a reactor at Al-Tuwaitha that Israel destroyed in 1981. The Russians built a reactor that was destroyed during the Gulf War. Both had the muddy ground to contend with.

So the Marine's discovery makes the former atomic inspector wonder if the Iraqis went to the colossal expense of pumping enough water to build the underground city because no reasonable inspector would think anything might be built underground there.

Nobody would expect it,” Hamza said. “Nobody would think twice about going back there.”

Despite being destroyed twice by bombings, Al-Tuwaitha nevertheless grew to become headquarters of the Iraqi nuclear program, with several research reactors, plutonium processors and uranium enrichment facilities bustling, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

"The plutonium processing was dispersed on-site by the bombing in 1991," said Michael Levi, the Federation's director. "But the Iraqis started to rebuild it. And they continued building there after 1998, when the Iraqis ended the inspections.

"I do not believe the latest round of inspections included anything underground, so anything you find underground would be very suspicious. It sounds absolutely amazing."

Outside the gates yesterday, children on donkeys dragged air conditioners from the area, part of the ongoing looting of government offices, Iraqi army forts and Baathist Party headquarters.

The nuclear scientists, engineers and technicians, housed in a plush neighborhood near the campus, have run away, along with Baathist party loyalists.

Farmers in rags drive the scientists' Mercedes and Land Rovers across Highway Six, filled with looted color televisions, silk rugs and Burberry suits.

That's where the Marines see the grand irony.

Amidst grinding poverty, where peasants eke an existence out of dust and river water, the Saddam Hussein regime built a lavish atomic weapons program. In a nation with some of the world's largest petroleum reserves, Saddam saw the need for nuclear energy.

"It's going to take some very smart people a very long time to sift through everything here," said Flick. "All this machinery. All this technology. They could do a lot of very bad things with all of this."

The mayor of this high-tech city is, for now, Capt. John Seegar, a combat engineer commander from Houston, Tx. He trudges up the 10-story hillocks hiding the campus from the surrounding villages and, crossing near a demolished mud bunker, it all opens up, gleaming and swaddled in roses.

"I've never seen anything like it, ever," said Seegar, who leads a company of combat engineers turned into combat grunts. "How did the world miss all of this? Why couldn't they see what was happening here?"

Seegar's biggest headache: Peasant looters, who keep cutting through the miles of barbed wire, no longer electrified because the war killed the power. He cradles in his arms blueprints in Arabic, showing recent construction, and maps in English, detailing which buildings test radioactive. Next to each, Seegar's placed an asterisk.

"Three weeks ago, the scientists seemed to have abandoned the complex," said Seegar. "That's what the villagers say. The place was protected by the Special Republic Guard, but they deserted it, too. Four days ago, everyone was gone. Then we came."

For him, Al-Tuwaitha is like a crime scene, and the next detectives on the atomic beat will be Army specialists.

Seegar promises to hold the nuclear site until international authorities can take over. His men hunker down in sandbag bunkers, sleepless, gripping machine guns.

Last night, they followed running gun and artillery battles on both sides of the complex, fought by U.S. Marines and soldiers against Iraqi Republican Guards and Fedayeen terrorists.

In the deserted edifices of Iraqi science, there is the omnipresent Saddam. Paintings show Saddam with scientists; Saddam with farmers; Saddam with soldiers. On the walls, Saddam's face. In the scrub surrounding the guard bunkers, murals of Saddam. There are books of Saddam sayings. Scientists' offices glitter with medals, from Saddam.

The offices underground, under unlit signs warning of "Gas/Gaz," are stuffed with videos and pictures, all showing how this complex was built, largely over the last four years after formal international inspections ended. The Marines haven't even mapped all the subterranean tunnels veining the site.

In an above-ground library built like a fortress with a beautiful alabaster marble now washed in dust and mud, the clocks stopped at ten minutes until one. The stacks, cool because of the marble, hold the scientific manuals, textbooks and published papers for the Iraqi intelligentsia.

In the commanding general's study, goldfish still swim in a long tank, glittering like the medals on his desk from Saddam.

"Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy for Scientific and Economic Development," a bulky green tome published in 1975, leans against the general's wall, under a picture of Saddam, whose Baathist Party came to power four years later in a bloody coup.

On a mantle, folded under documents, a Christmas card never sent. On the front is a dove, its wings the ellipses of the atom, tinged in orange, yellow and green. Under it, a tiger, facing backward, its body a swirl of Arabic letters. Inside the card: "Rights of Third World Peoples To Alternate Energy Sources For the Future Development of Their Environment and Culture."

The next page: "Let Us Hope This New Year Will Be a Year of Peace and Justice and With All Good Wishes for Christmas and the New Year." Signed, Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission. Baghdad.

Carl Prine can be reached at cprine@tribweb.com.

If Baghdad Bob and The Minders (the band) are nowhere to be found, then why are our BagCams all still stuck on the roof/balcony of the Palestine Hotel?? Don't tell me it's because Pretty Chicken et. al. are too afraid to go out to where the action is. I mean, if there's action in Kirkuk and Tikrit, why don't we have a KirCam and a TikCam ???

why don't we have a KirCam and a TikCam ???

Yeah, good question.

I want my KirCam.

I heard that last night right before I crashed and burned.

Too bad.

Sky showing Kirkuk's celebrations--lots of flag waving, honking, people smiling.

I wanted QNN - The Quagmire News Network.