Thursday, May 1, 2003

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

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Check out the discussion on Romenesko's Letters page for his readers' opinions of some of the best reporting from the conflict so far.
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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.

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Friday, April 25, 2003

Essam Al-Ghalib, Arab News War Correspondent
UMM QASR/BASRA, 30 March 2003 — Four days ago my friend, Mohammed Al-Deleami and I were invited by Abdul Rahman Almotawa, a journalist at our sister publication Asharq Al-Awsat, to accompany him on a trip organized by the Kuwaiti Ministry of Information to report on the humanitarian relief effort at Safwan, an Iraqi town at the Kuwaiti border.
...
When we finally made it to Safwan, Iraq, what we saw was utter chaos. Iraqi men, women and children were playing it up for the TV cameras, chanting: “With our blood, with our souls, we will die for you Saddam.”

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.

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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. 

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By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 1, 2003; Page A22

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.

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By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 31, 2003; 12:00 AM

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.

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CAMP VIPER, Iraq -- Learning on Sunday that they had been considered missing in action was only the latest nightmare for eight Marines whose M1A1 Abrams tanks broke down in the Iraqi desert and lost contact with U.S. forces.

On Monday, for the first time, the Marines told the story of their 11-day ordeal that began on March 20, when the United States invaded Iraq from Kuwait. The Marines' 2nd Tank Battalion was in the first wave of U.S. forces.

One of the first tanks to rumble onto Iraqi sand was the Gabriel, named for the angel who in Christianity told Mary that she would give birth to Jesus, and in Islam delivered the word of God to the Prophet Mohammed.

The Gabriel's crew of four expected no enemy opposition, but the laser range finder -- or "the video game," as the crew calls it -- showed another tank.
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By Tim Butcher with the British advance into Basra's southern suburbs
Triumphant 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.

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By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer
   NEAR KARBALA, Iraq, April 1 -- Farhan's truck bore down despite warning shots from the M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle's machine gun. The U.S. soldiers said later they felt they had no choice. They riddled the truck with bullets, they recalled, and shot a 25mm high-explosive round right through the center of the cab, just above the windshield.
   His left leg badly broken, Farhan hopped to the side of the road and lay on the desert floor. There, he spent a chilly night with only the clothes on his back: a uniform of the Iraqi military's elite Republican Guard. The U.S. soldiers, unaware of his fate and unwilling to advance into the darkness, waited out the night at their checkpoint, weapons at the ready.
...
   Farhan, 33, said his Grad tribe, which belongs to the Shiite branch of Islam, "will not fight against the Americans." He indicated that he was deserting because his unit was decimated and he did not want to die without seeing his family.
   As U.S. officers went through his belongings and debated whether to seize a wad of Iraqi currency he carried, he said in Arabic, "That money belongs to my family. Please don't take it." Then, in English, he added, "Thank you."
   Rashed Mohammad, an impoverished farmer with a hut on scrubland off Highway 9, was also badly in need of help when he walked up with his family, including a barefoot 10-year-old boy carrying a white flag, to U.S. soldiers gathered around an M88 recovery vehicle. His wife, Sikara, carried their 3-year-old daughter Rajwa, whose labored breathing came in rapid gasps.
   The father, clad in a dark brown robe and a black-and-white kaffiyeh headdress, said his daughter would die without medical attention, which he said he could not get at an Iraqi government hospital because he could not afford the fees. A Bradley took Mohammad, his wife and daughter to the aid station, where a team led by Capt. Eric Schobitz, 30, an Army doctor from Fairfax, attended to the girl, administering oxygen, an intravenous drip and antibiotics.
   "She has pneumonia," said Schobitz, a pediatrician. He said she was also suffering from an asthma attack and showed her mother how to administer a puffer. "If she's not getting any better in two days, you need to come back," Schobitz told the mother, who wore a black smock and head scarf, with only stockings covering her feet.
   The 3rd Battalion chaplain, Steve Hommel, said he was not worried that the aid station might be swamped with Iraqi civilians seeking medical attention once word got out that life-saving care was available. After what happened Monday at the checkpoint a few miles away, he said, "maybe we could use some good press in the local community."
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By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
   MARINE COMBAT HEADQUARTERS, Iraq, April 3 -- Mohammed, a gregarious 32-year-old Iraqi lawyer, went by the hospital in Nasiriyah one day last week to visit his wife, who worked there as a nurse, when he noticed the ominous presence of security agents.
   Curious, he asked around, and a doctor friend told him an American soldier was being held there. Something made him want to go see. The doctor took him to a first-floor emergency wing where he pointed out the soldier through a glass interior window -- a young woman lying in a bed, bandaged and covered in a white blanket.
   Inside the room with her was an imposing Iraqi man, clad all in black. Mohammed watched as the man slapped the American woman with his open palm, then again with the back of his hand. In that instant, Mohammed recalled today, he resolved to do something. After the man in black left, Mohammed sneaked in to see the young woman.
   "Don't worry, don't worry," he told her. He was going for help.
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Barbara Ferguson, Arab News War Correspondent
ON THE USS BOXER IN THE ARABIAN SEA, 5 April 2003 — Arab News has spoken exclusively to the Marine commander of the assault support helicopters which flew in the US commandos to rescue Jessica Lynch, the 19-year-old private first class Army supply clerk who was freed after 10 days of captivity from an Iraqi hospital early Wednesday morning.

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.

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By Frederik Balfour
I never knew David Bloom when he was alive. He was brought to our medical tent at the 703rd Battalion of the 3rd Infantry Division (3ID) shortly before 8 a.m. on Apr. 6. Medics were still performing CPR on him when he arrived, but it was already too late. At 8:08 a.m. he was pronounced dead. As I was about to head to the medic station I overheard a soldier phoning in a report, in what I suppose was meant to be military efficiency. But it struck me as chillingly terse. "Report: initial. Enemy involvement: none. Name: Bloom, David. Military unit: civilian. Status: deceased."

Five short lines to summarize the last day of a man who was, by all measures, in the prime of life. Already known by millions of Americans as a co-host of NBC's Weekend Today show, Bloom's live coverage of the Iraqi war gained him an even wider audience, in large part because of the "Bloom-mobile." He traveled most of the time in an armored military-recovery vehicle with a camera mounted on a gyroscope that allowed it to absorb most of the shocks and bumps en route. A microwave antenna transmitted his voice and image to the rest of the NBC crew following several miles behind which then retransmitted the feed via satellite for broadcast.

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By SCOTT CANON
The Kansas City Star
NEAR AL-LAFIYAH, Iraq - While people in Baghdad began embracing a foreign army Wednesday, about 20 miles away 147 men lined up with heads hung low to be frisked and ordered two-to-a-seat in creaky buses.

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.

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By SCOTT CANON
The Kansas City Star
NEAR AN NAJAF, Iraq - A member of the Iraqi Parliament, who dressed up like his wife to sneak from his home and surrender to Americans, arrived at a temporary prisoner of war camp here on Tuesday.

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.

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By PATRICK PETERSON
The (Biloxi, Miss.) Sun Herald
BAGHDAD - It's all looting and hooting. Not much shooting.

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.

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By Carl Prine
TRIBUNE-REVIEW

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.

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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.

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The French government insists that it has strictly enforced a tight embargo imposed on Saddam Hussein’s regime by the United Nations in 1990. But Saddam never lost his taste for French weapons or luxury goods. And evidence found by U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq suggests that—despite U.N. sanctions—the dictator continued to receive an abundant supply of both until very recently.

LT. GREG HOLMES, a tactical intelligence officer with the Third Infantry Division, told NEWSWEEK that U.S. forces discovered 51 Roland-2 missiles, made by a partnership of French and German arms manufacturers, in two military compounds at Baghdad International Airport. One of the missiles he examined was labeled 05-11 KND 2002, which he took to mean that the missile was manufactured last year. The charred remains of a more modern Roland-3 launcher was found just down the road from the arms cache. According to a mortar specialist with the same unit, radios used by many Iraqi military trucks brandished MADE IN FRANCE labels and looked brand new. RPG night sights stamped with the number 2002 and French labels also turned up. And a new Nissan pickup truck driven by a surrendering Iraqi officer was manufactured in France as well.

U.S. soldiers who moved into one of Saddam’s sumptuous palaces found a treasure house of less-deadly French goodies. Sets of Baath Party-logo silverware were marked MADE IN FRANCE on the back. And the palace was littered with the French cigarette brands Gauloise and Gitane. There were even packages of white French underwear.

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By Hilda M. Perez
BAGHDAD INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, Iraq -- Rows upon rows of palms sway in the wind under the heat of the sun, the yellow wildflowers amidst the vermilion fields are almost fluorescent.

A sharp contrast to the stench of a few decomposing bodies under the hot sun that lay in the nearby farm fields on the outskirts of the airport and along a major highway -- scenes of heavy fighting as the 3rd Infantry Division has maintained control of the facility.

Scorched tanks and disabled RPG (rocket propelled grenade launchers) line the route.

The closer you get to the airport, the stronger the stench of oil. It is like that burst of smell you get when you uncap an oil can, only magnified a thousand times. A few of the pipelines surrounding the airport have been broken in the fighting so pockets of oil accumulate along the grassy-sides like puddles after a heavy afternoon downpour.
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By Hilda M. Perez
BAGHDAD -- Sgt. 1st Class Todd Johnson can't stop reminiscing about his mom's chocolate pound cake, even as he packs his green Army-issue duffel bag for the saddest trip home of his life.

"She used to make it just for me and anytime I have been deployed she always made sure it would get to me," said Johnson, 39, of Gainesville, Ga.

Johnson had just been notified that his mother Carolyn Witherspoon, 59, had died suddenly Wednesday of natural causes.

This is not the way he wanted to return home.
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It is a hazy, still morning, an ideal day to go sightseeing.

"Rivera, start the Humvee. We are going for a ride," Command Sgt. Maj. Chuck Medley shouts to his driver.

For a month, the armored-vehicle known as Pistol 7 has been a home-away-from-home for Medley and Spc. Sandy Rivera.

They have eaten, slept, cursed, laughed, reflected and feared for their lives in the sand-caked Humvee since the Army's 3rd Military PoliceCompany crossed the berm from Kuwait into Iraq at the start of the war.

Now 500 miles and one flat tire later they are about to take a ride to Saddam Hussein's airport palace, one of 46 the dictator is reputed to have owned.
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Name: Joey Coleman
Hometown: Panama City, Fla.
Age: 20
Branch: Marines
Rank: 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.

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By JUDITH MILLER

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.

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(Central Command Headquarters, Qatar-AP) -- US forces are finding all sorts of improvised weapons in Iraq.

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.

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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.

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By Rod Nordland
NEWSWEEK 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.

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