"The enemy we're fighting is different from the one we'd war-gamed against ... "
-- Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace of V Corps
A bloody day in Baghdad
It's been a bloody day in Baghdad, and many of those killed have been civilians, reports from the Iraqi capital say.
Dr. Osama Sakhari at Baghdad's Al Noor Hospital said he had counted 55 dead and 47 wounded in an attack on a market Friday, Reuters reported.
Al Jazeera aired pictures of the bodies, including those of two children.
Abu Dhabi TV speculated that U.S. cruise missiles might have hit the market. The U.S. command said it was looking into the report. It blamed an earlier market explosion, which killed 15, on an errant Iraqi missile.
Earlier Friday, Iraq said eight members of Saddam's Baath Party died in a raid on party headquarters.
A U.S. Stealth bomber also dropped two 4,700-pound "bunker buster" bombs on a Baghdad communications complex. They were the largest bombs yet used on Baghdad.
Marines in house-to-house fighting in An Nasiriyah
The battle for control of An Nasiriyah, a city of about 500,000 that sits at the junction of roads from Kuwait to Baghdad, has raged for five days now between U.S. Marines and Iraqi militia. Four Marines are reported missing.
“It’s a big surprise,” said Capt. Lauren Edwards, a U.S. Marine stationed at a desert camp four miles from the city. “I don’t think we expected so much resistance. They’re fighting hard and they’re fighting dirty.”
Iraqi militia fires on civilians at Basra
British troops trying to root Iraqi militia out of Basra said the Iraqis fired on fellow citizens who were trying to escape the city toward British lines.
About 1,000 civilians, mostly women and children, were fired on by mortars and machine guns as they tried to cross a bridge toward British positions. The civilians scattered in panic, with 200 to 300 running back into Basra. Most of the rest made it across the bridge.
Once the civilians were out of the line of fire, a British tank took out a truck on which a machine gun was mounted, killing three Iraqis.
First relief ship reaches Umm Qasr
A British ship carrying nearly 200 tons of relief supplies for Iraqi civilians arrived Friday at Umm Qasr, the only major town the coalition forces have secured so far.
CNN's Christiane Amanpour reported that coalition forces want to get the aid to the people of Umm Qasr, several towns along the Iraqi border and eventually up to Basra. She said the "strategic aim" is to win the confidence and trust of the civilian population. The plan is to get the people to separate from the political leadership and give them space to "rise up" against that leadership.
U.S. and Britain hate Al Jazeera TV, but the Arabs love it
The coalition has blasted Al Jazeera for biased, gory and sensationalist coverage. But those seem to be just the qualities that make it popular in the Arab world.
Day 9: Now what?
Instead of "shock and awe" we now hear about "hard days ahead."
The administration says everything is fine and there’s nothing wrong with its war plan. That may prove true, eventually. But it’s also clear that the war was launched without enough force available to get the job done quickly.
So it’s going to take somewhat longer to end this conflict than it might have otherwise.
This is a big problem. A longer mission will be less safe for coalition troops and Iraqi civilians and better for Saddam Hussein. Every day that U.S. and British troops are under fire risks higher casualties. Every day we bomb risks more civilian casualties. And every day we pound Iraq fuels the growing rage in the Arab world.
No one wants to be the scapegoat for this, so the newest war front is bureaucratic finger-pointing.
A particular sore point is the "unexpected" guerilla tactics employed by Saddam’s regime. They have essentially slowed the advance on Baghdad by badgering our long, lightly defended supply lines. The CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency are in full CYA mode on this. Wednesday, there was some whining from unnamed CIA sources. By Thursday afternoon the content of a classified CIA report, dated Feb. 3, was making the rounds.
It predicted just what we’re seeing – a serious guerilla threat to the fuel, water, food and ammunition that our troops need. The report seems to have been given little credence by top-level planners.
How did we arrive at this juncture? Well, it wasn’t only U.S. intelligence that the administration slighted. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his closest advisors don’t seem to have paid much attention to the country’s top military leadership either.
Here’s Joe Galloway, one of the best reporters of the Vietnam War, who’s now directing Iraq coverage for Knight Ridder papers:
"Not since (Vietnam) have a secretary of defense and his closest civilian advisers demonstrated so thorough a contempt for the counsel of America's military leaders, who incidentally are the last generation still wearing the uniform to have served in Vietnam. The last who know the true price of failed and flawed political leadership in war.
"If there is any small group that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his closed circle of advisers -- none of whom have worn a uniform since Boy Scouts -- ought to be listening to, it is the four-star generals and admirals of the Joint Chiefs of Staff."
The whole concept of this war, we’ve been told repeatedly, is revolutionary. Nothing like it before, ever. At Slate, Fred Kaplan details how notions underlying this idea were born, nurtured and came to dominate the administration's thinking.
History will settle who was right. Until then, we’ll be endure not only by the fog of war but the fog of bureaucratic politics.
Mac Owens of National Review Online points out, importantly, that "the Iraqis seem to be incapable of anything beyond a static defense and guerilla operations by the Iraqi equivalent of the Gestapo and SS. Patience is a virtue at all times, but especially in time of war."
Still, at the end we may face a battle bloodier than anything since Vietnam. Saddam is intent on dragging us into house-by-house urban street fighting. His defense minister promised it to us at a news conference Thursday. The U.S. will continue to do all it can to avoid this. But the possibility raises questions we all should be thinking about now. As noted, casualties only go up with time. Are we prepared?
And, especially, are we steeled for urban combat?
Blame Saddam
Civilian casualties are a commonplace in any war. One of the reasons the U.S. was sure it could win this war without excessively offending Muslim sensibilities was the unprecedented precision of its current stock of weapons.
Still, accidents happen. But if any do, don’t blame us:
"Any casualty that occurs, any death that occurs, is a direct result of Saddam Hussein's policies ," Rumsfeld’s flack said yesterday.
This is a position that is unlikely to withstand much scrutiny.
Interested in enemy TV?
You can watch Iraqi TV via the Internet if you have a DSL connection. It does require a little technical savvy. Slate outlines the procedure.
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