Even though there's still considerable DISPATCHES-related coverage out there, posting to the weblog has dropped off to the point that we think it best to discontinue e-mail delivery. We'll continue to add items occasionally to http://www.poynter.org/dispatches. If you're a journalist with a particular interest in this topic and would like to get things cranked up again, just shoot me a note.To read about coverage issues related to the war in Iraq and its aftermath, please see http://www.poynter.org/diary (which is still available by e-mail, too).Bill Mitchell/Poynter
DIWANIYAH, IRAQ
By Scott Bernard Nelson, Globe Staff, 3/29/2003
s the sky darkens, the tensions rise. The Marines have dug in for another night along the main highway through this strategic town, awaiting Iraqi sniper bullets and mortar fire. Forced to remain camped in one spot for the past few days while supplies catch up with the front lines, the Marines spent much of yesterday toughening their defensive positions and dispatching patrols to hunt for the Iraqi militia fighters who have shot up the American column's flanks each night. Illumination flares regularly light up the sky, and artillery and mortar fire interrupt the soldiers' attempt to catch some sleep, on cots under the open sky or on the floors of their armored vehicles, before what many expect to be the assault on Baghdad, about 110 miles to the north. The Marines here yesterday were able to refuel their armored vehicles and Humvees for the first time in days when several huge tanker trucks arrived from the south. Many fuel tanks had run perilously low after the relentless drive north from the Kuwait border over the past week.
Forced to remain camped in one spot for the past few days while supplies catch up with the front lines, the Marines spent much of yesterday toughening their defensive positions and dispatching patrols to hunt for the Iraqi militia fighters who have shot up the American column's flanks each night.
Illumination flares regularly light up the sky, and artillery and mortar fire interrupt the soldiers' attempt to catch some sleep, on cots under the open sky or on the floors of their armored vehicles, before what many expect to be the assault on Baghdad, about 110 miles to the north.
The Marines here yesterday were able to refuel their armored vehicles and Humvees for the first time in days when several huge tanker trucks arrived from the south. Many fuel tanks had run perilously low after the relentless drive north from the Kuwait border over the past week.
I took a young Iraqi man, 19, away from the cameras and asked him why they were all chanting that particular slogan, especially when humanitarian aid trucks marked with the insignia of the Kuwaiti Red Crescent Society, were distributing some much-needed food.
His answer shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did.
He said: “There are people from Baath here reporting everything that goes on. There are cameras here recording our faces. If the Americans were to withdraw and everything were to return to the way it was before, we want to make sure that we survive the massacre that would follow as Baath go house to house killing anyone who voiced opposition to Saddam. In public, we always pledge our allegiance to Saddam, but in our hearts we feel something else.”
Different versions of that very quote, but with a common theme, I would come to hear several times over the next three days I spent in Iraq.
CENTRAL IRAQ — U.S. Marines approaching a small village about 100 miles south of Baghdad fought an Iraqi battalion of about 600 men for control of the village today.
Once all of the Iraqis were either dead or had fled, it did not take the Marines long to find out why the small settlement was so fiercely defended.
Inside the compound of just a few buildings, the Marines found two large missiles covered by tarps on the back of a trailer. The missiles, about 25 feet long and 3 feet in diameter, bore the markings of United Nations weapons inspectors.
If the markings are legitimate, the weapons, believed to be Soviet-made "FROG-7" (Free Rocket Over Ground) unguided missiles with a range of up to 70 kilometers, could be permitted weapons under current U.N. guidelines.
U.S. Marines believe the discovery of the missiles indicates that they were removed from Baghdad and hidden away from Americans, for use at a later time during the conflict. They deduced this because they could find nothing nearby worthy of being defended by missiles.
FROG-7 missiles are capable of carrying conventional, nuclear and chemical warheads. It was not immediately known what sort of warhead these missiles carried.
U.S. ARMY TACTICAL ASSEMBLY AREA VICKSBURG, Iraq, March 31 -- Shortly before his Army unit deployed to the Middle East in January, Lt. Col. Jerry Pearson sat down with his wife. He would probably be home by late May, he assured her, after a relatively quick war in Iraq. Today, he smiles wryly at that prediction. "I think I was off by a couple of months," Pearson, 39, of Merrillville, Ind., executive officer of the 11th Aviation Regiment, said as he spooned fettuccine Alfredo rations out of a packet in a tent here. "Over the last week, we've all developed a different mind-set." Tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq are preparing for a longer war than many officials had foreseen, because of stiffer-than-expected resistance from the Iraqi army and irregular forces. But that does not appear to upset soldiers here at a dusty U.S. aviation camp in central Iraq. Some have become increasingly accustomed to long missions, as the Army has shrunk in recent years and its international peacekeeping duties have grown. Others say they knew from the outset they could be here for months, even if the war was over quickly.
U.S. ARMY TACTICAL ASSEMBLY AREA VICKSBURG, Iraq, March 31 -- Shortly before his Army unit deployed to the Middle East in January, Lt. Col. Jerry Pearson sat down with his wife. He would probably be home by late May, he assured her, after a relatively quick war in Iraq.
Today, he smiles wryly at that prediction. "I think I was off by a couple of months," Pearson, 39, of Merrillville, Ind., executive officer of the 11th Aviation Regiment, said as he spooned fettuccine Alfredo rations out of a packet in a tent here. "Over the last week, we've all developed a different mind-set."
Tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq are preparing for a longer war than many officials had foreseen, because of stiffer-than-expected resistance from the Iraqi army and irregular forces. But that does not appear to upset soldiers here at a dusty U.S. aviation camp in central Iraq.
Some have become increasingly accustomed to long missions, as the Army has shrunk in recent years and its international peacekeeping duties have grown. Others say they knew from the outset they could be here for months, even if the war was over quickly.
SOUTH OF BASRA, Iraq, March 31 -- Two U.S. Humvees pulled up to a British position outside Basra shortly before dusk today. It was time to play some mind games with the Iraqis. Scattered across a wide arc about 2,000 yards away, Iraqi soldiers with mortar and machine guns had been moving around between this post on a desolate spot of sand and marsh and the rising lights of Basra more than two miles away. Occasionally they would fire on the British, who would have trouble identifying their positions for return fire. One of the Humvees, with loudspeakers on its roof and a U.S. psychological operations team inside, parked beside a British Warrior armored personnel carrier. A Special Forces team drove the second Humvee 100 yards further down a dirt track before pulling to the side. That group's equipment included a small surveillance drone and laser devices for identifying targets to strike pilots. Soon the soft hum of the drone's tiny engine was heard. The model-sized craft passed over the Humvee with the psychological operations team in it, then headed off into the darkness. Then came a thunderous noise from the speaker: the recorded sound of British Challenger tanks, laid down on eight tracks to create the auditory illusion of multiple armored vehicles on the move.
SOUTH OF BASRA, Iraq, March 31 -- Two U.S. Humvees pulled up to a British position outside Basra shortly before dusk today. It was time to play some mind games with the Iraqis.
Scattered across a wide arc about 2,000 yards away, Iraqi soldiers with mortar and machine guns had been moving around between this post on a desolate spot of sand and marsh and the rising lights of Basra more than two miles away. Occasionally they would fire on the British, who would have trouble identifying their positions for return fire.
One of the Humvees, with loudspeakers on its roof and a U.S. psychological operations team inside, parked beside a British Warrior armored personnel carrier. A Special Forces team drove the second Humvee 100 yards further down a dirt track before pulling to the side. That group's equipment included a small surveillance drone and laser devices for identifying targets to strike pilots.
Soon the soft hum of the drone's tiny engine was heard. The model-sized craft passed over the Humvee with the psychological operations team in it, then headed off into the darkness. Then came a thunderous noise from the speaker: the recorded sound of British Challenger tanks, laid down on eight tracks to create the auditory illusion of multiple armored vehicles on the move.
By Tim Butcher with the British advance into Basra's southern suburbsTriumphant Royal Marine commandos yesterday mopped up the final traces of resistance in the south of Basra after the success of the first urban infantry assault of the war by British troops....By midday some sort of normality had returned to the riverside suburb of Abu Al Khasib and Royal Marine foot patrols were already deployed Northern Ireland-style, looking for Saddam loyalists.
They received a warm welcome from the members of the 30,000-strong population, with children and adults giving the thumbs-up, smiling and shouting "Mister, mister, England good".
One surprised Royal Marine said: "We were meant to be giving them food but they keep coming up to us and giving us stuff."...The Challenger 2 tanks from C Squadron the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards were crucial to the battle. "Plenty of rocket-propelled grenades were fired at our call signs but they simply bounced off the armour," said Capt Fraser McLeman, 26, from Stratford-upon-Avon, the leader of one of the tank troops.
After the battle, there was a buzz of excitement among the Royal Marines as groups exchanged stories. A physical training instructor sergeant was generally acclaimed after he was hit on his bullet-proof vest by enemy fire. The shot shattered the heavy ceramic plate in his vest but the sergeant continued to fight and even killed his attacker.
One British armoured vehicle was attacked by 70 rocket-propelled grenades but it was not destroyed and its occupants were unhurt.
A Royal Marine told of a grenade glancing off his helmet and another told of how an Iraqi colonel driving a car with a briefcase full of cash refused to stop and was shot dead. "I didn't know what to do with the money so I gave it to the kids, bundles of the stuff," the Royal Marine said.
The commander, whose identity cannot be revealed, told Arab News that he is unsure how they “got the word about the POW,” adding the media suggested it was an informant, “but I don’t have any personal knowledge of that.”
Regarding the operation itself, the colonel said he was given about 12 hours notice before executing the mission. To prepare, he sent one of his pilots into Iraq to meet with the mission planning team.
“My job is to transport the soldiers,” said the colonel. “I was the commander of the group, but not the commander of the mission. My pilot called back to say how many people we would be transporting. We then put together the lift package (the number of helicopters), which comprised CH-46s (Sea Knights) and CH-53s (Super Stallions).
“We launched that day at about 8:30 p.m. from a ship to go ashore. We rendezvoused with our planners and all the forces and launched our mission. Shortly afterward, they landed “in the zone” near the Saddam Hospital at Nassiriyah.
They were carted off to another camp with parts to a puzzle that could eventually make it clearer how Saddam Hussein maneuvered, what plans he had, and, perhaps, with clues about to overcome more quickly those still firing at coalition troops.
Five hours later, on a bouncing drive that had the wounded constantly wincing, they would tell Americans their stories.
Officers at the camp said the man, whose name they refused to release, was looking for favorable treatment in return for cooperating with western forces fast taking control of the country.
The Iraqi politician, believed to be a member of the ruling Baath Party, was segregated from other prisoners in the camp. For a short time Tuesday night he watched part of the latest Austin Powers movie projected on a screen next to the concertina-wire pens where prisoners are being held.
Iraqis turned out by the thousands to welcome Marines entering the city from the east and to loot government building, especially the Al-Sinaa Sports Complex that held thousands of new athletic shoes.
"It's like Los Angeles after the Rodney King verdict. I was there too," said Capt. Mike Martin of Palm Springs, Calif., K Company commander of the 3rd Battalion of the 1st Marine Division.
Martin said the Marines and the Army have nearly secured Baghdad.
"It's in the end game now," he said.
SOUTH OF BAGHDAD — 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.
Ask residents of Baghdad's Mansur district if they think Saddam Hussein's remains are at the bottom of a 20-metre pit blasted out of their neighbourhood last week by US bombs, and the answer will probably be no.
It's not that they believe the president was hiding elsewhere. The US just hit the wrong house, they say.
Right next to the rubble-strewn hole is a two-story white stucco home that has become the focus of intense speculation. Some neighbours believe Saddam was hiding there. No one knows for sure, of course.
But there is evidence, enough to persuade Saad Waali, 51, a retired general who lives nearby, to think it's "90 per cent" certain Saddam was next door. Exhibit 1: The five telephone lines hooked into the house. This isn't gossip. Anyone can see the five black wires running off a pole on the street and into the first floor. Five lines may be extravagant even by Western standards for a residence, but here, no one has five lines.
Name: Joey Coleman Hometown: Panama City, Fla. Age: 20 Branch: MarinesRank: Lance Corporal Job: Heavy equipment operator
CAMP CHESTY, central Iraq - Lance Cpl. Joey Coleman waits outside a Navy surgical hospital. His right hand hangs limp, swollen to twice its normal size.
"My right hand is my life," says Coleman, who is right handed. "It's my biggest fear, if anything happens to my right hand. I just don't want any scar tissue."
Coleman, 20, a Marine reserve, is studying to become a cartoonist. He smashed his hand into a rock six days earlier when he jumped into a hole after a mortar shell landed about 10 meters from him.
WITH THE 101ST AIRBORNE DIVISION, south of Baghdad, Iraq, April 20 — A scientist who claims to have worked in Iraq's chemical weapons program for more than a decade has told an American military team that Iraq destroyed chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment only days before the war began, members of the team said.
They said the scientist led Americans to a supply of material that proved to be the building blocks of illegal weapons, which he claimed to have buried as evidence of Iraq's illicit weapons programs.
The scientist also told American weapons experts that Iraq had secretly sent unconventional weapons and technology to Syria, starting in the mid-1990's, and that more recently Iraq was cooperating with Al Qaeda, the military officials said.
At a war briefing, Central Command spokesman Vincent Brooks said Iraqis have been guiding American troops to the weapons, which include so-called "suicide vests."
Brooks says troops have found hundreds of such vests, in which explosives can be planted for suicide bombing attacks. He also says troops are finding marble coffee tables into which explosives have been inserted.
Brooks says it shows allied troops are still in danger from terrorists converting routine objects into weapons -- and it shows that Saddam Hussein's regime supported such terrorist tactics.
He says it'll take "deliberate work" to root out the terrorists.
Baghdad -- Ali fell to his knees and said this is how it was done: He put his hands behind his back to simulate being bound, then leaned his head back and closed his eyes as if blindfolded. A friend stepped behind him to hold his head, taking on the role of one of the enforcers. Then another would force open the victim's mouth, Ali said, and a third would yank the tongue out with pliers and slice it off with a surgical knife or an army blade.
Tales of such abuse have flowed out of Iraq in the two weeks since Saddam Hussein was toppled. But Ali was not one of those whose tongue was cut. He was, he said, one of those who did the cutting.
By Rod NordlandNEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
Saddam Hussein’s ear-amputation campaign went on for three days, May 17-19, 1994, in every city in Iraq. Some of the estimated 3,500 men who lost their ears are now telling their stories
April 23 — They’re among the saddest of the sad, in a land full of sadness. They push forward from the crowd of beggars and supplicants that gathers wherever they find foreigners, whether soldiers or journalists or aid workers. MOST, LIKE AHMED Hussein, have no words in English, but they don’t need them. Outside the HQ of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit in An Nasiriya yesterday, Hussein only had to turn his head to show his profile, and utter a single word, “Saddam,” as he pointed to the stump where his right ear used to be. He wasn’t begging for money, though he had none, or asking for a bottle of water or a telephone call abroad, like so many others in a place where the water doesn’t run and the phones don’t work. He just wanted to tell his story.
CENTRAL IRAQ (AFP) - Iraqi civilians fleeing heavy fighting have stunned and delighted hungry US marines in central Iraq (news - web sites) by giving them food, as guerrilla attacks continue to disrupt coalition supply lines to the rear.
Sergeant Kenneth Wilson said Arabic-speaking US troops made contact with two busloads of Iraqis fleeing south along Route Seven towards Rafit, one of the first friendly meetings with local people for the marines around here. ..."They gave us eggs and potatoes to feed our marines and corpsmen. I feel the local population are grateful and they want to see an end to Saddam Hussein," he said.
"It was a lovely, beautiful gesture."
Khairi Ilrekibi, 35, a passenger on one of the buses, which broke down near the marine position, said he could speak for the 20 others on board.
In broken English he told a correspondent travelling with the marines: "We like Americans," adding that no one liked Saddam Hussein because "he was not kind."
While heavy rains batter the air base, we are bracing for the brunt of a severe sandstorm, expected to hit around midnight.
Sandstorms come about once a week, and this storm appears to be larger than average. Winds are expected to reach a maximum of 40 to 50 knots by Tuesday night, according to forecasters on base. Winds that powerful kick up sand and can knock out visibility entirely.
By Daniel PepperI wanted to join the human shields in Baghdad because it was direct action which had a chance of bringing the anti-war movement to the forefront of world attention. It was inspiring: the human shield volunteers were making a sacrifice for their political views - much more of a personal investment than going to a demonstration in Washington or London. It was simple - you get on the bus and you represent yourself.
Kurdish forces were last night believed to have swept seven miles into territory previously controlled by Saddam Hussein, the first significant advance by opposition forces in northern Iraq for 12 years. "I'm very excited. We have been waiting for this day for a long time," Azar Jaffer, 33, a peshmerga fighter, said. "I would like to go to Kirkuk soon." "We've been preparing the airstrip for a year, just for this moment," said Mohammed Souwier, a schoolteacher who also runs a tea house on Harir's main street. "They [the Americans] are our guests and they are here to help us defeat the tyrant. If it were not for our religion, we would put statutes of George Bush in every square in Kurdistan."
AN-NASIRIYAH, Iraq -- U.S. Marines, moving through this still-contested city, opened fire at anything that moved Tuesday, leaving dozens of dead in their wake, at least some of them civilians.
Helicopter gunships circled overhead, unleashing Hellfire missiles into the squat mud-brick homes and firing their machine guns, raining spent cartridge cases into neighborhoods. Occasionally, a tank blasted a hole in a house. Several bodies fell in alleys.
It was impossible to know which casualties were civilians and which had been members of Iraqi loyalist militias. The militias have ambushed convoys for days as Marines tried to cross the Euphrates River on a rapid march north to Al-Kut, where they are expected to engage elements of Iraq's Republican Guard.
Signs of battle were everywhere. Burned-out shells of Russian-made tanks lay along the road. Other tanks facing a bridge had been destroyed by U.S. aircraft.
Official versions of the battles were unavailable. U.S. casualties appeared light, but it was likely that many civilians had been killed. U.S. soldiers searching houses found one woman with her husband, who was wounded, and her two sons, who were dead. All had been hit by stray bullets.
But then, war is a strange business.
Pvt. Wesley A. Davis, 22, wrote about his scary encounter in a letter postmarked March 12. The senior Davis believes his son is with troops making the push toward Baghdad.
The unit that found him initially treated him as a prisoner of war, the younger Davis wrote, until they could confirm that he was with the the Army’s 35th Engineering Battalion, Company D.
Davis told his dad in the letter that he got turned around in the sandstorm while on his way to wake up the next guard shift after his shift was done.
After walking aimlessly and unable to see a foot in front of him, Davis curled up in a ball to wait out the storm.
But I think it's important that some reporters stay in Baghdad so that we can tell both sides of the story.
It's the kind of decision that might not be popular with all Americans. I have put myself in a position where it's my job to talk about the bombing of this city, Saddam Hussein's capital, and the casualties suffered by its people.
