And some not so good:
Attacks Intensify In Western Iraq
Foreigners Suspected in Eight Assaults
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 2, 2003; Page A12
RAMADI, Iraq, Aug. 1 -- With a mix of rocket-propelled grenades, mines and ambushes, guerrillas launched at least eight attacks against U.S. forces in western Iraq overnight and this morning, breaking a relative calm in towns along the Euphrates River and fueling suspicions that Islamic militants -- including foreigners -- were involved, U.S. officials and residents said.
At least four assailants were killed and three U.S. soldiers wounded in the attacks, which began Thursday night and lasted into the late morning today, said Sgt. Keith O'Donnell, a military spokesman. U.S. officials were surprised by their intensity, he said, and were trying to determine whether they were coordinated. Until today, attacks had averaged three or four a week, he said.
"That's been the most in a 24-hour period that I'm aware of," said O'Donnell, a public affairs officer for the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which patrols western Iraq. He said the Army was "trying to find out if there's a link between all these attacks. They could have been random, but it's suspicious, all of those happening at the same time."
In recent weeks, the U.S. military has focused its operations on Sunni Muslim towns along the Tigris River north of Baghdad, where soldiers have fought a low-intensity guerrilla war while searching for former president Saddam Hussein, who was toppled on April 9. Elements of the Army's 4th Infantry Division conducted more raids today in Tikrit, Hussein's home town.
On a darkened side street in the southern part of Tikrit, soldiers with the division's 1st Battalion searched the house of a suspected mid-level Baath Party member and uncovered photographs of the man's relatives taken in one of Hussein's presidential palaces. After being briefly questioned about the photos, the man was blindfolded, bound and taken away in the back of the truck.
Col. James Hickey, commander of the 4th Infantry Division's 1st Brigade, said the daily raids were aimed less at Hussein than at resistance fighters, former Baath Party members and other remnants of his government -- "those who affect our ability to complete the destruction of the former regime." But if Hussein is in Tikrit, he said, "we will get him."
"I have estimates that he could be here, based on reason," Hickey said. "This is his home town -- we know he has lots of loyalists here."
A tape recording attributed to Hussein was released today by the Arab television network al-Jazeera in which the speaker promised to again take power and return Iraq "to its normal state."
"Our faith is great that God will support us and that one day the occupation army will falter and that victory is possible at any moment in the future as a result of the painful strikes of the mujaheddin and our people's insistence to stop the invaders," said the voice, which resembled that of the former Iraqi president. "We must not let things slip away and our situation become desperate."
The tape was perhaps most remarkable for the tone struck by the speaker. In the style of presidential statements broadcast while Hussein was in power, the speaker issued a decree and referred to the instruments of his 24-year rule -- the Baath Party, the Revolutionary Command Council and ministers -- as if they were still in place. He offered amnesty to looters who ransacked Baghdad and others cities in the wake of his fall and urged them to become "a loaded rifle in the face of the invading foreigner."
The tape was the fourth purportedly released by Hussein in two weeks. The fear generated by the prospect of his return has become one of the U.S. military's main justifications for his death or capture.
Since U.S. forces captured Baghdad on April 9, many of Hussein's top aides have been captured, and U.S. troops killed his sons, Uday and Qusay, last week in the northern city of Mosul. Two of his daughters -- whose husbands defected, returned to Iraq and were killed on Hussein's orders in 1996 -- were granted sanctuary along with their nine children by Jordan on Thursday.
In an interview today, the eldest daughter, Raghad Saddam Hussein, told the Arab satellite channel Al-Arabiya that her father's overthrow was "a great shock" brought about by the betrayal of his closest aides.
"With regret, those my father trusted, whom he had put his absolute confidence in and whom he had considered on his side, as I understood from the newspapers, betrayed him," she said.
U.S. military officials have blamed the bulk of attacks and ambushes that have killed 19 U.S. soldiers in the past two weeks on remnants of Hussein's government and the Baath Party. The officials clearly hope that Hussein's demise will end or diminish the violence.
But some British and U.S. officials have suggested in recent days that Islamic activists and foreign fighters are taking part in attacks, as well. O'Donnell and some residents in Ramadi suggested that evidence of that could be seen in the rash of attacks today in western Iraq.
"I think it's safe to say there are individuals other than Iraqis here trying to disrupt the peace," O'Donnell said.
In one of the fiercest attacks, assailants this morning launched rocket-propelled grenades at a nine-vehicle convoy on the road between Ramadi and Fallujah. No U.S. soldiers were hurt, but at least four assailants were killed in a battle that residents said lasted 90 minutes along date groves and parsley farms irrigated by the Euphrates.
"We were all terrified," said Khalil Alwani, who sells soft drinks and cigarettes in a roadside shack just yards from where the fight erupted. "They were shooting all over the place. It was so intense."
With his two sons, he said, he ran through a parsley field to his house after the shooting started. He said he could not identity the attackers but, like other residents, believed they were Islamic militants operating in the area.
In other attacks, assailants fired grenades at two other convoys, damaging two vehicles, O'Donnell said. Assailants shot at a military helicopter north of Ramadi and at a U.S. officer in Fallujah, but no one was hurt. Explosives were detonated against two other convoys, injuring three soldiers and another vehicle, and troops reported seven men came at them with grenades in Fallujah.
O'Donnell said the attackers' tactics showed signs of growing sophistication. At the site of one attack on a convoy, explosives left five small craters along the road, spaced 20 to 30 yards apart. The explosives appeared to have been detonated from a distance, and partially buried black and yellow wire led from the craters into the scrub that dotted the arid landscape.
Staff writer Theola Labbé in Tikrit contributed to this report.
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