Former POW, U.S. Army Spc. Shoshana Johnson listens to speakers during a Capitol Hill tribute for her sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus during ceremonies on Capitol Hill Thursday, June 12, 2003. Specialist Johnson, seated, was captured in Iraq at the same time as former POW Jessica Lynch.
Army Sgt. Michael E. Dooley, 23, of Pulaski, Va., is shown in Desert Camouflage Uniform at Fort Carson, Colo., in March 2003. Dooley was shot and killed in an ambush on an American checkpoint in western Iraq near the Syrian border Sunday, June 8, 2003. Dooley was the eighth fatality among soldiers from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, based at Fort Carson, and the ninth Fort Carson soldier killed overall.
Corporal Michael Sturgeon, 29, of the British Army's 23 Amphibious Engineer Squadron, looks at the 'Al Mansur', the luxury yacht of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, which finally keeled over and sank in the Shaat al Arab waterway at Basra, Iraq, Thursday June 12, 2003. The vessel, which is nearly 400 foot long and was reputed to be able to accomodate some 200 guests, was heavily bombed by coalition forces in the war, since when it has regularly been set on fire and looted by local people.
US Central Command confirmed that a F-16 fighter crashed southwest of Baghdad.
Lieutenant General David McKiernan, commander of all ground forces in Iraq, confirmed that the US-led coalition was conducting a "very lethal" assault on Saddam Hussein loyalists in western Iraq.