Free Republic

In April 2004, followers of Iraqi Shi‘ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr launched a well-coordinated uprising across southern Iraq. While Western media focused on events in Sadr City, Najaf, and Karbala, violence occurred elsewhere as well. A Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) source forwarded the following after-action report regarding violence in the town of Al-Kut, the capital of the Wassit governorate and home to the Ukrainian contingent.The unclassified report, written by a coalition security contractor, highlights dysfunction between regional coalition offices and the Coalition Provisional Authority headquarters in Baghdad, as well as tension between diplomats and security officers. The summary faulted a British...

<p>BAGHDAD -- An Iraqi colonel has revealed how he passed top-secret information to British intelligence warning that Saddam Hussein had deployed weapons of mass destruction that could be used on the battlefield against coalition troops in less than 45 minutes.</p>

The security chief responsible for the Government's controversial dossier on Iraq has described how intelligence indicated that Saddam could deploy weapons of mass destruction in just 20 minutes. John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, was giving evidence to the Hutton Inquiry into the death of Government scientist Dr David Kelly. He described to Lord Hutton how the dossier published last September and used by the Government to make the case for war on Iraq was drawn up. Before it was published, new intelligence came to light suggesting Iraq could deploy the weapons within a maximum of 45 minutes...

Minute after minute the missiles came, with devastating shrieks Robert Fisk in Baghdad 22 March 2003 Saddam's main presidential palace, a great rampart of a building 20 storeys high, simply exploded in front of me ­ a cauldron of fire, a 100ft sheet of flame and a sound that had my ears singing for an hour after. The entire, massively buttressed edifice shuddered under the impact. Then four more cruise missiles came in. It is the heaviest bombing Baghdad has suffered in more than 20 years of war. All across the city last night, massive explosions shook the ground. To...