heavy casualties

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U.S. says it’s willing to take heavy casualties
Officials vow not to quit until Saddam is gone

Gary Dimmock in Doha, Qatar and Norma Greenaway in Ottawa
CanWest News Service

Tuesday, April 01, 2003

The United States is prepared to pay a “very high price” in casualties to depose Saddam Hussein and occupy Iraq.

“We are not going to do anything other than ensure that this regime goes away,” a senior U.S. official told the Citizen yesterday. “If that means there will be a lot of casualties, then there will be a lot of casualties.”

Reminding reporters at war headquarters there were nights during the Second World War when “we’d lose 1,000 people,” he said: “There will come a time maybe when things are going to be much more shocking.”
Coalition casualties in the 12-day-old conflict total 67, including 43 Americans and 24 Britons, a light tally beside the hundreds of Iraqis the coalition has reported killing.

In a grisly development hours after the Doha briefing, U.S. troops killed seven Iraqi women and children at a checkpoint in southern Iraq when their van did not stop as ordered. The killings came as coalition troops wrestle with declarations from Iraqi officials that suicide bombings will become “routine” as the fighting goes on.

In Philadelphia, President George W. Bush vowed the U.S. will not be deterred by such Iraqi fighting tactics as pretending to surrender and shooting fellow citizens in the back when they attempt to escape Mr. Saddam’s death squads.

“I give this pledge to the citizens of Iraq,” Mr. Bush told a receptive coast guard crowd. “We’re coming with a mighty force to end the reign of your oppressors. We are coming to bring you food and medicine and a better life. And we will not stop. We will not relent until your country is free.”

The fresh statements of U.S. resolve appeared timed to counter taunts by Iraqi officials and some other U.S. critics that Americans don’t have the stomach for thousands of their troops coming home in body bags.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri kept up the drum beat yesterday in Baghdad, telling Britain and U.S. to pull out or risk a “holocaust” of their troops.

“Every day that passes the United States and Britain are sinking deeper in the mud of defeat,” Mr. Sabri told Iraqi television. “These two states have no choice but to withdraw early and fast, today before tomorrow.”

Iraqi TV also carried pictures of Mr. Saddam and his two sons, Uday and Qusay, video U.S. officials dismissed as meaningless because there was no indication when it was taped.

Though unwilling to declare that Mr. Saddam is dead, Pentagon officials contend there is scant evidence of the president’s presence in the running of the Iraqi campaign.

At the briefing yesterday, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said the government has reports families of some senior officers in the Iraqi regime are fleeing Iraq.

Ms. Clarke, who stressed the reports did not come from the media, didn’t discourage reporters from thinking some of Mr. Saddam’s family was trying to escape.

A new curve has been thrown into the battlefield picture by Iraqi assertions that as many as 4,000 Muslim Arab volunteers are ready to join suicide bombing missions against the U.S. and British invaders like the one carried out Saturday at a military checkpoint that killed four U.S. soldiers.

That attack had tragic consequences for a van full of Iraqis shot up at a roadblock by jittery marines from the same unit hit in Saturday’s suicide attack.

An American journalist who was at the scene said 10 Iraqis were killed, including five young children.

According to an account by the Central Command, the van approached the checkpoint yesterday afternoon. Soldiers motioned for the driver to stop but were ignored. They then fired warning shots but the vehicle moving toward the checkpoint. Troops then shot into its engine. As a last resort, the military said, soldiers fired into the passenger compartment.

A Washington Post report of the shooting quoted a 3rd Infantry Division captain as saying the checkpoint crew did not fire warning shots quickly enough.

In a sign anti-coalition sentiment is on the rise beyond Iraq’s borders, a van exploded in Tehran when a man drove into the gates of the British Embassy, killing himself but causing no other casualties. The incident occurred after the embassy was closed for the day.

The disturbing developments were part of a day in which U.S. and Iraqi forces fought pitched street battles in the town of Hindiya, 80 kilometres south of Baghdad.

The clashes were the closest face-to-face engagement yet to Baghdad, where round-the-clock air strikes have disrupted telephone service, but failed so far to silence Iraqi radio and television.

Indeed, U.S. warplanes, anxious to soften Republican Guard divisions around Baghdad, continued to bomb at will, reportedly hitting a palace inside the capital belonging to one of Mr. Saddam’s sons.

The air assaults also targeted command and control positions in Baghdad, including the information ministry headquarters and Iraq’s state-run news agency.

Pentagon officials said the onslaught, involving B-1, B-2 and B-52 long-range bombers, had helped reduce “very significantly” the fighting capability of the Republican Guard divisions encircling Baghdad.

In Doha, the U.S. military official conceded the air assaults have damaged underground fibre optic cables in Baghdad, forcing the coalition to intercept more conventional communications systems, like hand-held radios, to find out Iraq’s military planning.

The military official also said the expected uprising by Iraq’s oppressed Shiite population, notably in Basra, has been slower than thought because of heavy resistance by paramilitary “death squads.”

It’s difficult to blame the Shiite community for not rushing to revolt, he argued, because the U.S. did not support the 1991 uprising it encouraged the Shiites to launch, leaving them at the mercy of Mr. Saddam’s army.

At a separate briefing, U.S. Brig.-Gen. Vince Brooks said a growing problem looms in the capital because the Iraqi army has positioned its arsenal in residential neighbourhoods.

Mr. Saddam’s war plan, according to allied commanders here, is to suck coalition forces into bloody urban warfare against Iraqi fighters interspersed with civilians.

In ground battles, intense firefights outside Najaf left one U.S. soldier dead, and dozens of Iraqi paramilitaries killed or captured, according to U.S. Central Command. The soldier from the 101st Airborne Division was killed by paramilitaries dressed in civilian clothes.

U.S. soldiers had closed in on the holy city of 300,000, which houses some of the holiest Shia shrines, as part of the effort to secure the route north to Baghdad.

Brig.-Gen. Brooks said many of the new Iraqi war prisoners have identified themselves as Republican Guard soldiers and their uniforms, emblazoned with the elite unit’s insignia, support their claims.

He said the elite Iraqi soldiers, headquartered in Mr. Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit, may have been deployed south as reinforcements.

North of the Ramayla oilfields, the Royal 16 Air Assault Brigade pounded key Baath Party militia positions as paratroopers on the ground engaged in a fierce firefight that destroyed most of two Iraqi infantry companies, believed to number between 150 and 200 soldiers. The raid also destroyed 17 T-55 Iraqi tanks.

U.S. marines raided Shatra yesterday in the hope of killing or capturing Ali Hassan al-Majid, dubbed “Chemical Ali.” Mr. al-Majid, one of Saddam Hussein’s cousins, was appointed to oversee defensive operations in southern Iraq. He earned his nickname for gassing Kurdish villagers in 1988.

Air assaults also targeted command and control positions in Baghdad, including the information ministry headquarters and Iraq’s state-run news agency.

In Basra, the largest city in southern Iraq, British troops fought against dozens of paramilitaries. The firefight yesterday left several dead and about 30 Iraqis captured.

According to Brig.-Gen. Brooks, the Iraqi prisoners of war have been providing “helpful” intelligence on the city’s ruling Baath Party but acknowledged that much of the city remains “under the boot of the Iraqi regime.”

He said any decision to re-classify Iraqi prisoners of war would be made by Washington, which according to U.S. news reports, is considering shipping some of the prisoners to Camp X-Ray, long criticized by human-rights groups for its treatment of suspected al-Qaeda fighters.

Is this “war” really worth the lives that willl be lost?