Regards, Ivan
Posted on 03/22/2003 6:40:48 PM PST by MadIvan
SADDAM Hussein’s grip on power was rapidly slipping last night as Allied ground forces surrounded Basra and moved to within 100 miles of Baghdad.
Following a day of ferocious fighting on the outskirts of Basra and repeated air strikes on the capital, coalition commanders believed the Iraqi dictator was within days of defeat.
Vast plumes of acrid smoke rose above Baghdad as the city’s defenders set light to oil-filled trenches in anticipation of the Allies’ final assault.
British and US armour reported they had defeated Iraqi troops defending the western outskirts of Basra and were laying siege to Iraq’s second city while attempting to negotiate a surrender.
Although fierce resistance has been encountered and at least two US troops have been killed in combat, thousands of Iraqi troops have already surrendered. The al-Jazeera news agency reported last night that up to 50 civilians died during the attacks.
Last night, Baghdad was once again ablaze and large parts of the capital were plunged into darkness as power lines were destroyed amid a renewed ‘shock and awe’ torrent of cruise missiles and guided bombs.
US ground forces moving north said they had captured a vital bridge over the Euphrates river, some 235 miles south-east of Baghdad. Fighting was also reported near the holy city of Najaf, just 100 miles from the capital. It was reported that the local leader of Saddam’s Baath party was killed in the clashes.
Coalition forces also moved through the southern port of Umm Qasr, a "relatively well-defended city" which was deemed as a necessary stop en route to Baghdad, rather than a strategic centre to be secured and occupied.
Amid increased optimism about the course of the campaign so far, senior politicians held out the prospect of the conflict finishing within days.
"It’s unpredictable, in that the whole regime could collapse tomorrow," one minister told Scotland on Sunday last night.
"It could take longer than expected, but on the basis of what has happened so far, it looks promising that we could have a resolution to this within days."
But it remained unclear whether Saddam himself had been killed in the first strikes on Wednesday night. It emerged that Britain’s war cabinet was told he was so badly injured in the lightning strike on his bunker that he needed a blood transfusion.
Intelligence chiefs gave a graphic run-down of the impact of the strike which started the war against Iraq in a 40-minute briefing to Tony Blair’s core team at their morning meeting in Whitehall.
Reports from Baghdad also suggested that the Iraqi leader’s son Uday was also badly injured and may have been killed, along with another family member, the so-called "Chemical Ali".
While the number of Iraqi soldiers surrendering to the coalition forces soared beyond 9,000 in the first two days of combat, military leaders reported that resistance on the ground had been stiffer than expected.
British soldiers complained that some Iraqi servicemen had put on civilian clothes and employed guerrilla tactics during street-to-street battles in Umm Qasr.
In Kuwait, at least 10 US soldiers were wounded when grenades were thrown into an army command tent near the border with Iraq last night. The incident was initially viewed as a terrorist reprisal, but it later emerged a soldier was missing from his guard post, raising the prospect that an American soldier had attacked his own side.
Also in Kuwait, a Patriot missile battery was reported to have downed an Iraqi missile which was heading towards a US military camp.
Meanwhile, it emerged that American special forces were already on the ground in Baghdad, paving the way for an early invasion by advancing coalition forces. An American brigadier general, Vincent Brooks, said that the US military had entered the Iraqi capital, but reports claimed "intelligence paramilitary forces" were in the city, to "help locate military emergency targets and monitor defence preparations".
The presence of operatives inside Baghdad could help undermine the heart of Saddam’s regime from within, and ease the coalition advance into the city.
American and British military chiefs fear a drawn out "Stalingrad-style" siege of Baghdad that could bog them down in an exhausting campaign for months.
There were also reports that a major Special Air Service operation had secured two airbases near the Jordanian border. The special forces troops were said to have been dropped near the sites a week before war officially started, before they and reinforcements began a full assault on Wednesday, overcoming Iraqi forces. They were said to have been accompanied by reconnaissance and demolition experts from 45 Commando, based in Arbroath.
The human cost of the conflict was made abundantly clear yesterday, with the coalition forces suffering further losses in the field, including six British servicemen killed when two helicopters collided five miles from HMS Ark Royal in the Gulf. At least four journalists - including Terry Lloyd and two of his ITN colleagues - are also feared dead.
Iraqi forces managed to set light to nine of the estimated 500 oil wells in the Rumila oil fields in the south of the country before fleeing, and coalition soldiers found that many of the remaining oil platforms had been mined and booby-trapped. Meanwhile, Red Cross workers also began to count the cost of the massive aerial onslaught against Baghdad, where Iraqi officials said that three civilians had been killed and more than 200 wounded.
News of the first casualties added to the fury of anti-war demonstrators at a series of marches around the UK and the rest of the world.
But Tony Blair, who met his war cabinet in Whitehall to discuss the early phases of the campaign yesterday morning, insisted that the ‘shock and awe’ strategy was squarely focused not on Iraqi civilians, but on the network that has kept Saddam in power for almost 25 years.
In a newspaper article, Blair said coalition airstrikes were designed to target Saddam’s "levers of oppression and power" and not the Iraqi people. "We must realise that no matter how hard we try to avoid them, there will be civilian casualties," he said.
"But while the dramatic TV pictures have shown the force of the attacks on Baghdad, they have also highlighted just how much effort has gone into safeguarding civilians and ensuring the targets are Saddam’s regime and machinery of control and terror."
There was good news for Blair today as two opinion polls showed a big increase in support for the Prime Minister since the start of the war.
A YouGov survey for the Sunday Times found that 56% thought Britain and the US were right to take military action, with 36% opposed, almost the exact reverse of the findings in the days before Blair took the risky decision to join a military campaign that did not enjoy UN support.
Another survey, in the News of the World, showed that Blair’s strategy now met with 56% approval, compared with 53% disapproval in a similar poll taken on March 6-7.
Coalition leaders also hope that securing a port will enable them to begin the relief effort, landing vital supplies of food, clothes and medicines.
But even as his forces rolled towards Baghdad, President Bush was keen to stress that the war could be "longer and more difficult" than some had thought. He has had to abandon plans to use Turkey as the base for a massive invasion of Northern Iraq involving of thousands US troops.
Amid reports of stiff resistance on the frontlines, Bush convened his war council at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland and maintained that he would use "decisive force" to bring down the regime of Saddam Hussein.
"This will not be a campaign of half measures," Bush warned the Iraqi leadership in his weekly radio address after US and British aircraft unleashed their devastating firepower of missiles and bombs on Baghdad and other Iraqi sites. "A campaign on harsh terrain in a vast country could be longer and more difficult than some have predicted."
The note of caution was reinforced by the leader of his men in the field, US General Tommy Franks. But Franks also maintained the pressure on an Iraqi regime that the British and Americans believe has been plunged into disarray by the sheer ferocity of the assault in the first 72 hours of conflict. "This will be a campaign unlike any other in history," he said.
Regards, Ivan
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