Free Republic

BASRA, IRAQ--The bookkeepers of the police state were meticulous. Payoffs to tribal leaders, quotas for cheering crowds on Saddam Hussein's birthday, long lists of "bonuses" paid out to party members on every state occasion, reports on suspicious families and pro-Iranian Shiite "traitors" in their midst -- at the Mother of All Battles Branch of Iraq's ruling Baath Party, they wrote it all down. Here at the chief party headquarters for Iraq's second city, near the party villas and the date palm groves and the decayed elegance of the Shatt-al-Arab waterway, officials kept a hand in nearly every aspect of daily...

BRITISH forces staged a dawn raid on a Baath Party headquarters yesterday after receiving intelligence that it was still being used to exert Saddam Hussein’s will. Five people were arrested and taken away for interrogation in a swift assault designed to send a powerful message to the intimidated local population that the Baath Party’s reign of fear is over. The two-storey complex stood on the southwest edge of the Basra National Oil Refinery, three miles from the port city and surrounded by a shanty town. A sniper team from Zulu Company, the 1st Battalion Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, kept the...

SHATRA, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. Marines have launched a dawn raid on the town of Shatra, north of Nassiriya, aiming to kill senior Iraqi officials they believe are directing guerrilla attacks, Reuters correspondent Sean Maguire has reported. Among those targeted was Ali Hassan al-Majeed, or "Chemical Ali", the cousin whom President Saddam Hussein has put in charge of the southern front. Majeed earned his nickname for overseeing the use of poison gas against Kurdish villagers in 1988. The Marines were storming the town, about 35 km (20 miles) north of the city of Nassiriya, with warplanes dropping precision-guided bombs, helicopter...

03/29/03 - WASHINGTON -- A pair of Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles attacked a Ba'ath Party headquarters building in southern Iraq on March 28, where some 200 leaders of the Iraqi "irregular forces" were meeting. According to Maj. Gen. Victor Renuart, U.S. Central Command director of operations, the attack was meant to destroy some of the terror cells that are holding hostage many of the cities in southern Iraq. "Each time we make one of these attacks, we degrade the regime," Renuart said during the daily CENTCOM press briefing at the command's forward headquarters in Qatar on March 29. Renuart...

<p>March 27, 2003 -- British and American warplanes yesterday smashed a convoy of Iraqi armored vehicles heading out of the southern city of Basra - but it was unclear if the column was retreating from a popular uprising or striking out against coalition troops.</p>