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U.S. urges Iraqis to give up

Friday, March 21, 2003

By Dennis B. Roddy, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Warplanes and cruise missiles pounded Baghdad for a second day as a U.S.-led coalition rumbled across southern Iraq amid calls by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for Iraqi military commanders to surrender “without the full force and fury of a war.”

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“They can act with honor and turn over their weapons and walk away from them and not be hurt,” Rumsfeld said last night after a classified briefing about the ongoing Operation Iraqi Freedom, the military invasion to topple Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

U.S. leaders have warned of an unprecedented onslaught, combining massive, high-tech armaments and a legion of 300,000 allied troops, but yesterday’s forward movement by American and British forces showed no sign of quickly becoming the much-anticipated “shock and awe” military campaign.

One day after personally ordering a precision-guided munitions strike in an effort to kill Saddam, President Bush largely handed over military operations to military commanders.

“There is a war plan that has been developed over a considerable period of time and the president was involved with the stages of the development of it, the approval of it throughout those stages, and now that plan is being implemented,” said White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer.

Administration officials suggested yesterday that remarkably light resistance met by coalition troops raised suspicions that the Wednesday night attacks on Baghdad might have decapitated the Iraqi military command.

Later in the day, military officials in Washington reported the crash of a U.S. Marine CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter in Kuwait that killed 4 American and 12 British soldiers aboard.

The helicopter crashed at 7:37 p.m. EST yesterday about 9 miles from the Iraq border. The crash cause was under investigation, but military officials said hostile fire had not been reported in the area.

Artillery fire erupted along the Iraq-Kuwait border as American units edged into southern Iraq. The objective is to oust Saddam -- one that will likely take them to Baghdad.

The movement stopped short of the massive invasion that could begin at any moment, sending tens of thousands of troops across the border in a huge onslaught aimed at toppling Saddam.

“There are military preparatory actions that need to be accomplished before any major attack,” said Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “There’s been much talk about how easy this conflict could be. Let me assure you that we do not regard combat as an easy task. Warfare is dangerous. We will have casualties.”

So far, American forces reported no combat casualties on the coalition side, and casualties on the Iraqi side were less clear. Iraqi officials said four Iraqi soldiers and a Jordanian civilian had died in the initial missile and bomb attacks.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld publicly urged Iraqi commanders to surrender rather than face an overwhelming show of force.

Yesterday morning began with a second wave of Tomahawk cruise missile attacks launched from six U.S. ships in the morning.

One tore apart the office of Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz. Other targets included various Iraqi government installations.

In Camp Doha, Kuwait, U.S. Central Command reported that Patriot missile batteries intercepted two Iraqi missiles in the afternoon. A third missile struck outside Camp Commando, Kuwait, earlier in the day.

A team of monitors reported no signs that it contained chemical munitions.

U.S. officials said the missiles appeared to be Scuds -- the same missiles the Iraqis had assured U.N. arms inspectors that they did not possess.

Scuds were among the munitions Iraq agreed to remove from its arsenal as part of a surrender treaty after the 1991 Gulf War.

Oil well fires were reported in three locations around Iraq, apparently set in an effort to slow advancing coalition troops.

Earlier in the week, U.S. intelligence reported that Iraqi troops appeared to have laid explosives around oil wells in the country’s northeast fields.

In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has risked his career by taking Britain into the coalition in the face of popular opposition, officially announced that British troops were now in combat.

“I know this course of action has produced deep divisions of opinion in our country. But I know also the British people will now be united in sending our armed forces our thoughts and prayers,” he said.

Blair also sent a message to the Iraqi people: “We are with you. Our enemy is not you, but your barbarous rulers.”

President Bush spent most of yesterday in meetings, gathered with his Cabinet, and dined later with the visiting president of Cameroon, a nation that is not part of the coalition.

In brief remarks following a Cabinet meeting, Bush praised “the ever-growing coalition of the willing, nations who support our deep desire for peace and freedom.” Bush said more than 40 nations -- some of them not publicly identified -- now support the allied invasion.

The president took no questions and did not respond to one shouted by a reporter: “Is Saddam alive or dead?”

As aerial attacks continued over the Iraqi capital and at suspected leadership and military bases around that Persian Gulf nation, U.S. defense officials studied a broadcast speech by Saddam to determine whether it had been taped prior to the attempt to kill him, and if the speaker was, in fact, the Iraqi leader.

Speaking at a Pentagon briefing with Rumsfeld, Myers defended the decision to directly target Saddam in the opening moments of the war. “Regime leadership command and control is a legitimate target in any conflict, and that was the target that was struck [Wednesday] night,” he said.

State-run Iraqi television said Saddam survived and met with his top aides yesterday, planning a counterattack.

“We are resolved to teach the criminal invaders hard lessons and make them taste painful punishment,” said a statement attributed to the Iraqi military.

Dennis Roddy can be reached at droddy@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1965.