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Politics : War -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tadsamillionaire who wrote (19807)	4/5/2003 2:52:22 PM
From: Tadsamillionaire	Respond to of 23908

Worn out by days of bombing, thousands of Iraqi civilians fled Baghdad on Saturday, trudging to relative safety behind U.S. military lines or else heading north away from the relentless American advance. Men, women and children walked for hours through the fierce heat of an early summer's day, carrying at most the odd plastic bag, blankets or tin kettle between them. "We are very tired, " said one bearded man, with a young girl in his arms. "I need rest," he sighed, explaining that he was escaping round-the-clock bombing of the Iraqi capital. In less than an hour, hundreds of people walked past one U.S. convoy stacked up some 20 km (12 miles) southeast of Baghdad on the main highway into the city. Thousands more people were reported to be streaming north out of the capital. One woman dressed in black held up a blue plastic cup, the only thing she was carrying. "Water, water," she pleaded from passers-by as the temperature hit 35 Celsius (95F), then frowned when she saw there was none on offer. U.S. Marines peered down from the gun turrets of their armored vehicles as the grim-faced families traipsed past. One serviceman offered a bottle of water to an Iraqi, but was immediately rebuked for his generosity. "We're here for a war, not a humanitarian mission, OK?" a gunnery sergeant yelled at him. Several women carried yellow plastic packages of U.S. humanitarian rations, but Marines said the bulk of the food aid was 10 km (six miles) further south, where the military had set up a distribution station far from the front lines. "We don't have any means to help them. All the humanitarian supplies are behind us," said first sergeant Matthew Brookshire, standing by his Humvee all-terrain vehicle. "If we started giving it out then we'd be swarmed by civilians. We don't know who's friendly and who's not," he said. SUICIDE ATTACKS U.S. troops are nervous about the possibility of suicide attacks following two car bomb strikes in the past week that have killed seven soldiers. Iraq says thousands of Muslims have volunteered to join suicide death squads and attack U.S. and British forces across the country. A burst of explosions on Saturday sent Marines dashing for cover behind their vehicles before they realized it was the noise of their own outgoing artillery fire from the south. U.S. Marine Captain Matt Watt, commander of Lima Company, a unit of mechanized infantry, said he had seen about 2,000 people heading south from Baghdad on Friday. But he said local people had told military interpreters that most refugees were heading north, away from the approaching U.S. armor. "We may find that as we roll north and get closer to the city we'll probably find more and more people pushing out. I really think that's going to clog up the roads and slow us down," he said. "It's going to prevent us from engaging the enemy if we have all those civilians around us." Earlier on Saturday, U.S. troops staged a brief foray into Baghdad for the first time, taking the 17-day-old war to topple Saddam Hussein right into his battered capital. U.S. military sources said at least 20 tanks and 10 Bradley fighting vehicles had rumbled up a southern highway through Baghdad's Dawra suburb before swinging west and linking up with troops at the airport southwest of the city center. washingtonpost.com

To: Tadsamillionaire who wrote (19807)	4/6/2003 5:09:32 AM
From: Yaacov	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 23908

Tim, thank you for your post. This is indeed a very sad list, and my heart goes to the family of the dead. I saw the turky-shoot in Baghad yesterday. I simply do not believe what I saw. There things that I simply can't comprehend: Where is Saddam's heavy armor? Was the iorn triangle defended by 500,000 man army was simply a fiction? Where is his DMD and heavy artilary? Where is special Republican Gaurds are? All I saw where soft trucks and Datsun pick-ups. I beleive this man should be an absolute fool and a great bluff. Why did he push the crisis so far if he new he can't face the mightiest army in the world. He could have agreed with some sort of armed inspecion and open the doors to inspections as early as 1991 and avoid getting where he is today. Or maybe there is a more sinister aspect that we should considier; Saddam he was royally screwed by his Russian and French ""friends"". French and Russians assured him that they will block any resulation for the invasion, and Saddam believed them and did not give-in as has always done in the last minute. This gave a pretext for the invasion. Were France and Russia in a way knowingly where working with the United States!! Or, Saddam knew that no matter what he does, the invasion was forthcoming,there was nothing he could have done.