War: Latest News

[DcupSheepNipples]

OPERATION: IRAQI FREEDOM

Saddam trains kids to kill 8,000-strong army of children ready to take on U.S. forces

Posted: April 4, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern

Reminiscent of the Hitler Youth of World War II, Saddam Hussein has trained an 8,000-strong army of children to face coalition forces in Baghdad.

In a report by the New York Daily News, Peter Singer of the Brookings Institution explains the children are considered a junior Fedayeen Saddam – the paramilitary forces Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has dubbed "death squads" for the atrocities they commit.

The child army is called Ashbal Saddam, or Saddam's Lion Cubs, according to the report.

"Whatever the Fedayeen has been willing to do, you can extrapolate that these children will do the same," Singer told the paper.

After the first Gulf War, says Singer, Saddam began forcing boys as young as 6 into military boot camps. By age 10 the children are trained in the use of small arms and basic infantry tactics. Their uniform includes shirts with the inscription "Ashbal Saddam," according to the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights.

So, what can U.S. forces expect to see from the Lion Cubs?

"Ambushes, sniping, hit-and-run tactics are the most likely things we'll see," Singer said.

In northern Iraq, said the Daily News report, U.S. troops may find themselves fighting in the trenches alongside children. There are an estimated 3,000 children serving with Kurdish opposition forces opposed to Saddam, according to the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers.

Facing child warriors is nothing new for U.S. forces, having battled them in Vietnam, Somalia and Afghanistan.

U.S. military personnel are taught tactics to use when fighting children.

Keni Thomas, an Army Ranger who fought in Somalia, said that in the heat of battle, a soldier is a soldier.

"At the time, it is not a difficult decision to make," he told the paper. "In the end, only you know what you see down your sight. Whether it's a man, woman, child or machine firing at you, it's a threat."

In a December 2002 report titled "Iraq: A Population Silenced," the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor disclosed that Saddam Hussein forces "children between the ages of 10 and 15 to attend 3-week training courses in weapons’ use, hand-to-hand fighting, rappelling from helicopters, and infantry tactics. These children endure 14 hours of physical training and psychological pressure each day." If families object to having their children turned into soldiers for Saddam, said the State Department report, they're "threatened with the loss of their food ration cards."

Saddam's recruitment and cultivation of child warriors is not surprising considering his close ties with the Palestinian Authority. As WorldNetDaily has reported, under the direction of PA leader Yasser Arafat, Palestinian children are commonly taught to hate Jews, to glorify jihad, violence, death and child martyrdom almost the earliest ages. Use of children as warriors, human shields and as suicide bombers is an essential part of the Palestinians' war strategy against Israel.

Saddam has routinely paid $25,000 to families of youthful Palestinian "martyrs" who died killing Israelis.
WorldNetDaily.com

 

[Lao Tzu]

Officer: Troops Find Vials of Powder

NEAR BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. troops found thousands of boxes of white powder, nerve agent antidote and Arabic documents on how to engage in chemical warfare at an industrial site south of Baghdad, a U.S. officer said Friday.

AP Photo

Col. John Peabody, engineer brigade commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, said the materials were found Friday at the Latifiyah industrial complex 25 miles south of Baghdad.

"It is clearly a suspicious site," Peabody said.

Peabody said troops found thousands of boxes, each of which contained three vials of white powder, together with documents written in Arabic that dealt with how to engage in chemical warfare.

He also said they discovered atropine, used to counter the effects of nerve agents.

The facility had been identified by the International Atomic Energy Agency as a suspected chemical, biological and nuclear weapons site. U.N. inspectors visited the plant at least a dozen times, including as recently as Feb. 18.

The facility is part of a larger complex known as the Latifiyah Explosives and Ammunition Plant al Qa Qaa.

During the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites), U.S. jets bombed the plant.

On April 1, Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, in a statement on Iraqi television, repeated Baghdad's position that it had no weapons on mass destruction. Referring to reports that gas masks and other chemical gear had been found elsewhere in the country, he said the coalition might plant weapons of mass destruction to implicate Iraq (news - web sites).

"Let me say one more time that Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction," he said.

"The aggressors may themselves intend to bring those materials to plant them here and say those are weapons of mass destruction," he said.

 

[jwill3:16]

Looks like they went after one of Saddams kids by bombing a building just a few mins ago..

 

[DcupSheepNipples]

Russian ships headed for Gulf region
Moscow claims exercises with India planned before war started

April 4, 2003

Two groups of Russian warships and nuclear-powered submarines are heading for the Arabian Sea, sparking speculation about Moscow's possible military involvement in the Persian Gulf area.

According to Z News, however, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov says the movement of naval vessels is not linked to the U.S.-led war on Iraq.

Ivanov explained to the Itar-Tass news agency that Russia had planned to stage war games with India's navy "long before" hostilities broke out in the gulf region.

This is the first time Russian ships and subs have been sent to the area since the breakup of the USSR, reports Z News.

Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes visited Moscow in January, said the report, at which time the war games were planned for May. The vessels are scheduled to arrive in the Arabian Sea by the end of April.

According to a report in the Latvian news service LETA, the ships from the Black Sea fleet will include the cruiser Moskva, military transport ship Cezar Kunikov and two guard vessels. They are scheduled to leave Sevastopol within a few days. The news service says more ships from the Pacific fleet will join the armada to double its size. Three nuclear submarines also will be part of the exercise.

The Russian defense minister declined to comment on media reports about the presence of tactical nuclear missiles on board one of the battleships, reports Z News.

"No military ever comments on this," Ivanov told the news service.

According to the Russia-U.S. agreement, ships are not allowed to carry tactical (short-range) nuclear missiles in peacetime.
WorldNetDaily.com

 

[DcupSheepNipples]

Ground troops roll into Baghdad

NBC, MSNBC AND NEWS SERVICES

April 5 — U.S. Marines and Army troops rolled into the center of Baghdad in “substantial” numbers Saturday morning, a U.S. military official told MSNBC TV. Meanwhile, south of the city, Army forces captured the headquarters of the Republican Guard’s vaunted Medina Division and launched an air assault on Karbala.

MARINES AND ARMY troops encountered only sporadic resistance from Republican Guard divisions as they advanced into Baghdad from the south, Navy Capt. Frank Thorp, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command forward headquarters in Doha, Qatar, told MSNBC TV.
“We do have reports of engagement with a small number of Special Republican Guard,” Thorp said. “At this point, we have engaged the Al Nida Division of the Republican Guard.”
Officials at Central Command told NBC’s David Shuster that the ground troops, members of the Army’s V Corps and the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, were supported by a “full component” of close air support, meaning helicopters and low-flying warplanes were able to fly over the city without threat.
Central Command officials stressed that the advance did not constitute the leading edge of an invasion. But the troops’ mission clearly was not merely a preliminary probing operation.
“That’s not the intent to come back out,” Thorp said. “They’re in Baghdad.”
U.S. special operations forces are known to have been in the city on covert missions for some time, but until Saturday morning, U.S. ground forces had not ventured inside the city limits. The special operations forces laid the groundwork for the ground advance, which had been in the works for some time, Central Command officials told NBC News.
“All of this has been deliberately planned, and you are now seeing the fruits of that work,” an official said.
There was no immediate comment from Iraqi authorities.

In Suwayrah, 35 miles southeast of Baghdad, two tank companies and an infantry company of the 3rd Infantry Division rolled through the headquarters of the Republican Guard’s Medina Division unopposed, military officials at the Pentagon told NBC’s Carl Rochelle.
Hundreds of bunkers and foxholes and dozens of artillery pieces, antiaircraft guns, tanks and armored personnel carriers littered the grounds of the base, the Associated Press reported. All of them had been abandoned by Iraqi troops. No troops could be seen.
The U.S. tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles used their main guns to destroy the military vehicles along the route.
Fifteen miles farther southwest of Baghdad, the 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, launched an airborne assault on Karbala, reported NBC’s Dana Lewis, who is traveling with the 2nd Brigade.
Several hundred infantrymen were pushing into the city under the cover of AH-64 Apache and OH58D Kiowa attack helicopters. They met little resistance.
Karbala was one of the cities the 3rd Infantry bypassed as it raced up to Baghdad. The 101st Airborne was cleaning up behind it in cities to the south of the capital, Lewis reported.

 

[CanadianCripple]

Marines Digging Up Suspected Chemical Arms Site
Sat April 5, 2003 07:07 AM ET
AZIZIYAH, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. Marines were digging up a suspected chemical weapons hiding place in the courtyard of an Iraqi school southeast of Baghdad on Saturday.
The Marines said that a man who described himself as a former member of the Iraqi special forces told them that groups of Iraqi men had knocked down a wall of the girls' school two months ago, hidden something in the courtyard and then concreted it over again during the course of three nights.

"We don't have a clue now but we're going to dig it up and see," General James Mattis, the commander of the Marine Division which is the main Marine ground force in Iraq, said at the scene.

Marine forces were digging up the heavy concrete laid in the courtyard of the school in the dusty town 80 km (50 miles) southeast of Baghdad.

Washington and London launched the invasion of Iraq on March 20, saying they wanted to rid the nation of alleged chemical and biological weapons and oust President Saddam Hussein. Saddam denies having such weapons.

 

[DcupSheepNipples]

US begins the process of 'regime change'

Ed Vulliamy in New York and Kamal Ahmed
Sunday April 6, 2003
The Observer

The US is ready to install the first leg of an interim government for the new Iraq as early as Tuesday, even while fighting still rages in Baghdad, officials said yesterday.
America's readiness to establish the first stages of a civil administration to run post-war Iraq comes at lightning speed and constitutes a rebuff to European ambitions to stall on the process until some kind of role for the United Nations is agreed.

It was reported yesterday that the National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has also ruled out any key role for the UN.

The decision to proceed with an embryonic government comes in response to memoranda written by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last week, urging that the US begin to entrench its authority in areas under its control before the war is over.

Pentagon officials told The Observer that the administration is determined to impose the Rumsfeld plan and sees no use for a UN role, describing the international body as 'irrelevant'.

The proposal is due to be discussed by George Bush and his closest security officials when he returns from this week's Northern Ireland war council with Tony Blair.

But according to US offi cials in Doha, elements of an embryonic new government will be established in the southern port of Umm Qasr, taken by coalition forces during the first days of the war.

It will be installed by the Pentagon's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, under the former US army Lieutenant General Jay Garner, and answerable to the Pentagon.

'What we are going to start trying to do, even before the fighting is over in Iraq, is to move to the areas in Iraq that are relatively peaceful, places like Umm Qasr, and to start moving [the office of reconstruction] into Iraq,' the official said. 'It is a fair assessment to say that this is the first step to set up a civil administration in Iraq.'

The decision is a rebuff to European diplomats who pleaded with US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Thursday to allow for a UN role.

By brushing the UN aside at such an early stage, the move also places Tony Blair - whose own preference is for a UN role - in a difficult situation ahead of his meeting with Bush this week.

Rumsfeld presented two memoranda to the White House last week, urging the President to begin setting up government institutions in areas under US control. He said the new organs could install Iraqis returning from exile under the tutelage of American civilians answerable to General Garner.

But his plan has been opposed even within the administration. Colin Powell is known to favour a military government established after victory is assured, prepared to nurture an Iraqi government centred around citizens resident in Iraq, rather than exiles sponsored by neo-conservatives in the Pentagon.

General Garner is already set to make his media debut in Kuwait tomorrow as the man whom the US has named to be Iraq's temporary post-war civilian administrator.

The US viceroy of the Southern region will be retired General Buck Walters; one of three governors slated to minister the new Iraqi provinces.

The others are General Bruce Moore in the largely Kurdish north and former U.S. Ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodine based in Baghdad, governing the central region.

 

[BowlingForSoup]

Looks like they're making their second raid into Baghdad right this minute. There's a column of tanks on the way as well as air support.

 

[DcupSheepNipples]

Looks like they're making their second raid into Baghdad right this minute. There's a column of tanks on the way as well as air support.

Yep! Taking control of Pres. palaces and the information ministry live right now! They got some great intl. from an Iraqi general that was caught earlier in the war! He has been giving up all kinds of info! Weapons caches, hideouts, etc.! They cut a deal with him and Special Ops his family out of Iraq! He is going to get Secret Asylum identity change for his help!

 

[BowlingForSoup]

See! If they play nice, we give them neato names and toys! Seriously, Dcup, you checkin' this out? This is a bit awe inspiring.