There was a time when Baghdad was a normal city. Well, normal by the standards of an Arab dictatorship that seemed to have enough oil to make its dreams come true.

To come here, you bought a ticket and stepped aboard an airliner. At Saddam International Airport taxis waited to take you to your hotel.

Traffic was regulated by a system of red, amber and green lights and policemen who blew whistles and waved their arms.

The dictatorship was always close by. But it was easy, as a foreigner, to ignore it. The streets in the centre of town were clean. Cars were new. The roads were smooth. People were friendly.

People still are friendly in Baghdad. That is about the only thing that has not changed since I first came here 13 years ago.

United States forces in Iraq admit they mistakenly released a former Iraqi official suspected of killing thousands of Shi'ite Muslims after the 1991 Gulf war.

The BBC reports last month a mass grave though to contain as many as 15,000 bodies was uncovered in the town of Mahawil, south of Baghdad.

Mohammed Jawad al-Neifus is suspected of having been involved in the killings.

The US military has not explained why he was picked up in the first place but after three weeks in an internment camp in the southern town of Umm Qasr, he was freed.

» ABC News - US 'erroneously' releases suspected Iraqi war criminal

What happens next in Iraq? Does America settle in for the long term to help shape a democratic nation? Or do U.S. forces withdraw as soon as Iraqis can establish a government able to ensure order, provide services and oversee the economy?

Polls suggest the American people would prefer to put up whatever money is needed to help rebuild Iraq, bring the troops home and let the Iraqis get on with it. But some influential policymakers in Washington are more ambitious. They want to make Iraq a model state that promotes democratic reform throughout the region. That commitment to nation-building would require a more intimate U.S. involvement for a much longer time.

FORT CARSON, Colo. (AP) - Saribelle Rodriguez gets nervous whenever the telephone rings.

In the past few days, three members of her husband's unit - the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment - have been killed in Iraq, and she is terrified he may be next.

"It's hard, the separation," Rodriguez, 30, said Tuesday. "Every time you think someone is calling you to tell you your husband has died."

On Tuesday, two of Sgt. Daniel Rodriguez' regiment comrades were gunned down at a traffic checkpoint in Fallujah, where support for Saddam Hussein runs deep.

Nine other American troops were injured and two Iraqis were killed in the gunfight.

The Bush administration decided back in mid-December that a US-led war on Iraq was inevitable, even as it publicly held out hope for a diplomatic solution, the Financial Times newspaper reported on Tuesday.

In the first instalment of a three-part investigation, it said the "internal moment" to go to war came within days of Iraq's 12,000-page declaration to the United Nations on December 8 on weapons of mass destruction.
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Despite France's image as leader of the anti-war camp, the Financial Times also said that a "senior French liaison officer" travelled to US Central Command headquarters in Florida in December to discuss a possible French contribution of at least 15,000 troops to the US-led invasion.

French diplomats concluded in January, however, that the United States had effectively abandoned the diplomatic track, the newspaper said.

» US decided on Iraq war in December: Report : HindustanTimes.com

After two decades in hiding, an Iraqi man has finally emerged back into the real world - squinting at the unaccustomed light.
Twenty-one years ago, Saddam Hussein placed an execution order on Jawad Amir for supporting an outspoken Shia cleric.

Mr Amir escaped - not into a far-off town or neighbouring country, but into a space sandwiched between two walls in his parents' home.

He said for the whole of his hiding he never left that small, dark space and had only a tiny peephole to view the outside world.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- For U.S. soldiers in Iraq, Memorial Day won't mean backyards, picnic tables and grilled hot dogs. It will be another 24 hours spent on foot patrol, guard duty or reconstruction projects.

But the memorial part will be there.

American troops -- many of them young, many new to such seriousness -- say memories of fallen comrades will linger, and a holiday that once meant the beginning of summer has taken on new significance.

"In the past, I never thought about why Memorial Day was celebrated. And now, when I know someone who died and what it means, in the future I'll be thinking of my buddies," said Sgt. Jeremy Smith, a 22-year-old from Reno, Nev., who is a driver in the 3rd Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade.

The war in Iraq has produced tens of thousands of new combat veterans, and many will remember their 136 fallen comrades while at the same time feeling thankful for their own survival.

WASHINGTON (AP) At a roadblock in Iraq, American troops confiscated what they believe may be gold bars worth up to $500 million, defense officials said Friday.

A truck carrying some 2,000 bars was stopped by soldiers of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment at a military checkpoint near Qaim, a northwestern city near Iraq's border with Syria, said U.S. Central Command.

The bars still must be tested to make sure they are gold, Central command said in a statement.

Two people were taken into custody, but it was unclear who they were, their nationality, and where they got the bars.
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Soldiers conducted a search of their Mercedes truck and discovered approximately 2,000 40-pound, 10-inch-long bars.

The bars may have a total worth of $500 million, depending on karat weight and purity, the statement said.

» Boston.com / Latest News / Washington / Officials say found Iraq gold may be worth half a billion dollars

I spent last week driving and flying around central Iraq. There are so many cross-currents swirling, the only way I can summarize them is with this postcard home:

Biggest Surprise -- How dirt-poor Saddam Hussein had made his own country -- thanks to his wars with Iran and Kuwait, 10 years of sanctions and 30 years of tyranny. Outside the main cities, most of the houses people were living in appeared to be mud-brick huts, often with open sewers and no sidewalks. Many villages and towns here look like ancient Babylon with electricity poles. Many Iraqis appeared bedraggled.

In short, Saddam had broken his people long before we ever arrived. It is no wonder that so many Iraqi soldiers just ripped off their uniforms and fled, and that much of the damage done to U.S. forces was done largely by Baath guerrillas.

PARIS (AFP) - The United States is curtailing military ties with France despite some improvement in relations badly damaged by the rift over the Iraq war, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said.
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Although Powell lauded France's vote in favor of the resolution -- which the UN Security Council adopted 14-0 as he was speaking -- he said the past could not be forgotten and said the US military was taking steps against Paris in light of "the current environment."

Among those measures are leaving France out of an annual military exercise in Nevada known as "Red Flag," scaling down the US presence at next month's Paris Air Show and cutting back on military-to-military exchange programs, he said.

United States intelligence agencies have concluded that two mysterious trailers found in Iraq were mobile units to produce germs for weapons, but they have found neither biological agents nor evidence that the equipment was used to make such arms, according to senior administration officials.

The officials said intelligence analysts in Washington and Baghdad reached their conclusion about the trailers after analyzing, and rejecting, alternative theories of how they could have been used. Their consensus was in a paper presented to the White House late Monday.
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Officials in Iraq and Washington emphasized in interviews that because the unit studied in greatest detail had been thoroughly decontaminated with a still-unidentified caustic agent, it was impossible to say whether it had ever produced agents for bioweapons.

A leading member of Saddam Hussein's family has been discovered living in Damascus under the protection of the Syrian government after fleeing Iraq last week, The Telegraph can reveal.

Fatiq al-Majid, one of Saddam's nephews, entered Syria last Monday after leaving Iraq at the al-Rabie'a checkpoint, which is under the control of American troops. Majid was given a Syrian visa and made his way to Damascus, where he is now living in exile.
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Apart from being related to Saddam, Majid is also the nephew of Ali Hassan al-Majid, otherwise known as "Chemical Ali" because of his role in gassing the Kurds at Halabja in 1988.

The revelation that senior members of Saddam's regime such as Majid have fled into exile in Damascus is deeply embarrassing to the Syrian government of President Bashir al-Assad, which has consistently denied allegations made in Washington that Damascus is providing sanctuary to former Iraqi officials.

Osama bin Laden singled out Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan as targets for "martyrdom operations" in a chilling audio tape issued only three months before the latest string of bombings.

All three countries were struck by terrorist attacks last week, adding to fears that the al-Qaida leader may have ordered a new wave of bombings across the world

As the death toll in Friday's Casablanca suicide attacks rose to 41, it emerged that Morocco was one of six countries identified by bin Laden as "ready for liberation" in a section of the tape calling for "martyrdom operations" by Islamic extremists.

"True Muslims should act, incite and mobilize the nation in such great events . . . in order to break free from the slavery of these tyrannic and apostate regimes enslaved by America," he said. "Among regions ready for liberation are Jordan, Morocco, Nigeria, the country of the two shrines (Saudi Arabia), Yemen and Pakistan."

Your parents aren't the only ones who hate your music--some Iraqis hate it, too. U.S. military units have been breaking Saddam supporters with long sessions in which they're forced to listen to heavy-metal and children's songs. "Trust me, it works," says one U.S. operative.

THE IDEA, says Sgt. Mark Hadsell, is to break a subject's resistance by annoying that person with what some Iraqis would consider culturally offensive music. The songs that are being played include "Bodies" from the Vin Diesel "XXX" movie soundtrack and Metallica's "Enter Sandman." "These people haven't heard heavy metal before," he explains. "They can't take it." Few people could put up with the sledgehammer riffs of Metallica, and kiddie songs aren't that much easier, especially when selections include the "Sesame Street" theme and some of purple dinosaur Barney's crooning.

» Psyop: The Love's Not Mutual

WASHINGTON (Billboard) - With military operations all but over in Iraq, the next invasion is about to begin: a horde of movie stars, comedians, and music acts will hit the sands to entertain the troops.
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According to a source, General Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. armed forces in Iraq, personally requested the current tour.

It will include "prominent" recording artists, as well as movie stars, sports figures, and comedy talent. But for what he says are security reasons, he refuses to provide details.

Sources say, however, that the USO is considering flying celebs to one of several locations near Iraq, perhaps Qatar or Dubai, both friendly nations that border Iraq. The tentative time frame for the tour is June 16-21.
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Film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and Robert De Niro may also be making the trip.

» Yahoo! News - Rap, Hip-Hop Acts AWOL in Iraq

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Film uncovered after the fall of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) shows what seems to be new evidence of brutality under his rule -- three men being executed in gruesome fashion by being blown up with explosives packed around their bodies.

Convicted in 1985 of a bomb attack that killed children in Baghdad, Saddam's security police wired them up to explosives in the desert and simply blew them up, one by one -- the whole proceedings captured on a film obtained by Reuters on Thursday.

The footage shows men in the uniforms of Iraqi security officers strapping what appears to be explosive to one of the blindfolded men and attaching wires to a large vehicle battery.

"You're going to kill me, you're going to kill me even if I confess," wails the man, apparently accused of being an Iranian agent at the height of the Iran-Iraq war.

Licking his dry lips with his tongue, he waits for death. A few seconds later, he disappears in a cloud of smoke and dust.

In the next shot, bloodied remains lie in the sand. The next man is brought up to the same spot and made to kneel. He too appears to be blown up, followed by the third.

Mahawil, Iraq - "George Bush the elder abandoned us," Ali Abed al-Hussein said yesterday as he stood with other grieving families at the site of a mass grave where the bodies of 3,000 Shia Iraqis are being disinterred.

On Feb. 15, 1991, with the regime of Saddam Hussein dramatically weakened by its loss in the Gulf War, then-President George Bush twice made a speech that encouraged Iraqis like al-Hussein to rise up against Hussein.

Bush asked "the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands, to force Saddam Hussein the dictator to step aside."

Like thousands of Iraqi Kurds and Shia Muslims, al-Hussein believed that Bush was offering a partnership in toppling Hussein.

Al-Hussein was wrong. The American military gave the rebels no air cover or other military support as the regrouping Iraqi military crushed the uprising and began a slaughter of the participants.
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In spite of the power of the personal grief and shock of the discovery of this, the largest mass grave yet found in Iraq, bereaved relatives such as al-Hussein have not forgotten the history that led their family members and friends to be dug up by a yellow mechanical digger from execution pits 12 years after their murders. Many said they were grateful for what Bush's son, the current president, had done to finally end Hussein's regime. But for the man they feel misled them and abandoned them to Hussein's butchery in 1991, they have nothing but contempt.

WASHINGTON - As they prepare to come home from Iraq, thousands of U.S. soldiers are being screened for emotional problems. One goal is to prevent tragedies such as those last summer when three men who returned to Fort Bragg, N.C., from Afghanistan killed their wives.

"We have people who have gone through some tough stuff," Brig. Gen. Steven P. Schook of the Army's human resources office told a Pentagon news conference Wednesday.
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Part of the reason is to make sure units that suffered a significant number of casualties in Iraq do not go home without proper help. But the program is not just for them, but for all Army active and reserve troops, as well as family members who want it.

"Part of the message ... is that you've been through something extraordinary, every person who has been through it and every family that has been through it ought to have some kind of reaction to it. And that's OK," Army psychologist Lt. Col. Charles S. Milliken said at the news conference.

Distraught Iraqis are continuing to search for the remains of loved ones in a mass grave as human rights groups denounced coalition forces for failing to protect the site.

The grave just outside the small village of al-Mahawil, located near the city of Hilla about 56 miles (90 km) south of Baghdad, is thought to be one of the largest discovered since the toppling of Saddam Hussein's government.

Local volunteers say the remains of up to 3,000 people had been found so far, but estimates suggest there could be as many as 15,000 buried at the site.

Looters outran the WMD hunters almost every time. "Once a site has been hit with a 2,000-pound bomb, then looted, there's not a lot left," says Maj. Paul Haldeman, the 101st Airborne Division's top NBC officer. In the rush to Baghdad, Coalition forces raced past most suspected WMD sites, and looters took over. After Saddam's fall, there were too few U.S. troops to secure the facilities. Roughly 900 possible WMD sites appeared on the initial target lists. So far, V Corps officers say, fewer than 150 have been searched. "There aren't enough troops in the whole Army," says Col. Tim Madere, the overseer of V Corps's sensitive-site teams. "There just aren't enough experts to do everything."
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Last week American troops finally went back to secure the site. Al Tuwaitha's scientists still can't fully assess the damage; some areas are too badly contaminated to inspect. "I saw empty uranium-oxide barrels lying around, and children playing with them," says Fadil Mohsen Abed, head of the medical-isotopes department. Stainless-steel uranium canisters had been stolen. Some were later found in local markets and in villagers' homes. "We saw people using them for milking cows and carrying drinking water," says Ibrahim. The looted materials could not make a nuclear bomb, but IAEA officials worry that terrorists could build plenty of dirty bombs with some of the isotopes that may have gone missing.

For reasons having to do with international law, President Bush cannot yet officially state that the war in Iraq is over.
In his recent speech, he said America had been successful, but didn't go so far as to call it "victory."

Of course, everyone this side of Baghdad Bob (Saddam's old disinformation minister) knows that that is exactly what it was: an unambiguous, out-of-the-ballpark, first-class triumph.

Few military victories have been as swift, decisive - and one-sided.

America and its allies invaded a country some 8,000 miles away and toppled a resisting regime - suffering remarkably few casualties and causing minimal collateral damage in the process.
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The New York Times quotes a "senior Pentagon official": "What you want to do now is very different than in '91 . . . These are not victory parades or events. These are recognition for the troops - and to say thanks to the American people for supporting them."

Apparently, there is a fear that calling a parade a "victory" march would seem like gloating to the rest of the world.

Well, nuts to them.

This was a military campaign to disarm a mad dictator - and liberate a people.

The goals were met.

End of discussion.

» New York Post Online Edition: postopinion

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. Customs agents, working with military and museum experts at the National Museum in Baghdad, have recovered nearly 40,000 manuscripts and about 700 artifacts, government officials announced in Washington Wednesday, leaving perhaps only a few dozen key pieces missing.
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Agents of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs (ICE) said that so far they have photos and documentation to confirm only 38 items from the museum are still missing. Although they suspect additional pieces may have been stolen, they declined to speculate on the scope of the additional uncatalogued items that may have been looted.

Officials from ICE, newly created as part of the Department of Homeland Security, said many of the missing items had been stored for safekeeping in hidden storage vaults within the museum before the war. Other items had been returned after public promises of amnesty and rewards.
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The Justice Department officials said their best information continues to be that whatever the scope, the thefts were organized, not the result of random crime.

"From the evidence that has emerged, there is a strong case to be made that the looting and theft of the artifacts was perpetrated by organized criminal groups," Ashcroft said Tuesday at the Lyons conference. (Full story)

Expanding on those comments, ICE agents Wednesday said there was no apparent sign of forced entry to the storage sites, and the doors were locked when investigators arrived.

» CNN.com - Thousands of Iraqi artifacts found - May. 8, 2003

U.S. intelligence agencies are intensifying the search in Europe for officials of Saddam Hussein's government who fled Iraq with the help of French passports, U.S. officials said yesterday.

The search efforts were strengthened after intelligence sources reported that France's government secretly provided fleeing Iraqi officials with European Union travel documents in Syria that allowed them to escape to other countries, said U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
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Several U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, said yesterday that they could not confirm the report, but the matter would be further investigated. Mr. Powell told reporters, "It's one press report, and I have just started my day, and I have not looked into it. I don't know the source. I don't know if it's accurate or not." He said he had not talked to French officials and would look into the allegations.

Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer said, "I think the French will have to explain what they did or did not do."

Other U.S. officials said the French passports had made it difficult to track down fleeing Iraqis because they had allowed Saddam's officials to travel freely in 12 EU countries.

» Search for Iraqis focuses on Europe -- The Washington Times

American forces in Iraq are doing tests on trailer that matches the description of a mobile biological weapons lab given by various sources including defectors, the Pentagon said Wednesday.
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Cambone said more testing will be required, noting that the surface of it had been washed with a caustic material and it likely would have to be dismantled before testing can be done on hard-to-reach surfaces.

It is painted a military color scheme, was found on a transporter normally used for tanks and - as an Iraqi defector has described Iraq's mobile labs - contains a fermentor and a system to capture exhaust gases, Cambone said.
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Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace, commander of the Army's V Corps, told a press conference the reason Saddam didn't use unconventional weapons against invading forces may be that these weapons were buried too well to retrieve before the fast coalition dash to Baghdad.
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On several occasions, troops have found substances they said tested positive as nerve agents or other chemical weapons materials, only to learn from more sophisticated testing that they were crop pesticides, explosives and so on.

The defense official said that he and others "feel good" about the prospect this time that they have found good evidence of an unconventional weapons program.

But they are being careful to cover all bases. He noted that many questions will be asked if it is announced as the evidence - including "chain of custody" information on who has handled the truck and whether it might have been tampered with.

» U.S. Says It Has Suspected Iraq Arms Lab (washingtonpost.com)

Recalling his time as a prisoner of war in Iraq as "sheer terror," Army Sgt. James Riley said Tuesday that the experience has left him feeling overwhelmed and confused at times.
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When asked what it was like to be held captive, Riley said that "on a scale of 1 to 10, I rate it about 2,000 and 20 billion. It was sheer terror the whole time." He said he lost about 30 pounds during the three weeks he was detained.

Lynch was rescued from an Iraqi hospital on April 1, while Riley and the six other POWs, including two Apache helicopter pilots who were not part of the 507th, were released April 13.

"They came in and said, 'If you're an American, stand up.' I will always remember them saying that. It was overwhelming," Riley said.

Gaining his freedom was bittersweet, though, because that was when Riley learned that his sister, Mary, 29, had died while he was a captive. She died March 28 after two months in a coma with a rare neurological disorder.

"That was an emotional overload (for me). It was sad, but life goes on," he said.

» Ex-POW Recalls Time in Iraq Captivity (washingtonpost.com)

The United States is studying ways to restore perhaps a quarter of the marshes of southern Iraq, drained by Saddam Hussein to crush the local Shi'ite population, according to a senior official.
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The Iraqi marshes between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers were home to a unique culture and complex ecosystem that lasted thousands of years. The wetlands were largely drained by Saddam to punish the population for supporting a Shi'ite uprising against his rule that erupted after the 1991 Gulf War.

Nearly 300,000 Marsh Arabs, also known as Ma'adan, were bombed, rounded up by troops, killed or forced to march out of the wetlands. Many others disappeared while the marshes that sustained them turned into a salt-encrusted wasteland. Now, fewer than 20,000 remain.
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A report released by the United Nations Environment Program in 2001 found only 7 percent of the once-extensive marshlands remained. UNEP described the deliberate destruction as one of the worst environmental disasters in history, ranking it with the desiccation of the Aral Sea and the deforestation of the Amazon rain forests.

On the blank walls and concrete pedestals of Baghdad, artist Esam Pasha al-Azzawy sees ripe opportunity.
These spaces, where Saddam Hussein's outsized and ubiquitous likenesses long loomed, should become the places for a new kind of expression - art for art's sake, Mr. Azzawy says.
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Alone in his cramped studio, Azzawy drowned out the shuddering and explosions with Mozart's "Requiem" in the mornings, and Beethoven's "Emperor" concerto in the afternoons, played over and over.

"It was me, my colors, and my music," says the thickly bearded painter, who jokes about his resemblance to the former Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Omar.

In two intense, eight-hour sessions, just hours before American forces entered the Iraqi capital, he finished what he considers his masterpiece from those days of war - "Baghdad," an image of a woman in deep reds and dark hues.

It is an expression of the spirit, the potential, and the uncertainty in the city Azzawy so loves.

About 50 Iraqis on Friday became the first looters to be taken to jail since Baghdad fell to US forces last month.

Had Saddam Hussein still been in power, the men would each have had their right hand cut off for theft.

Few in Iraq are sorry he and his reign of terror are gone. But Iraqis now want a new Iraqi-led government to be set up urgently to fill the power vacuum.

Doctors and nurses have not been paid since Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled. Ambulance workers are volunteering their services.
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Security is one major problem in the new Iraq, a lack of basic services is another.

Most civil servants have not worked for weeks. Much of Baghdad is still without electricity.

The streets are littered with uncollected rubbish, and some areas are awash with sewage.

» Power vacuum angers Iraqis

Ala Bashir was a plastic surgeon who had had an unusually friendly relationship with Saddam for twenty years and was also a member of the medical team responsible for his care.
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He was at the clinic on Friday, April 4th, the day the Americans took control of the airport. He went home early to look after his elderly mother, who was unwell, and the next day, Saturday, one of Saddam's guards came to his house and told him to pack his bags and return "immediately, immediately" to the clinic. The guard left, and Bashir soon followed. He didn't show up for work at the hospital the next day, and no one seemed to know where he was.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a key architect of President Bush's Iraq policy, said yesterday that the ouster of Saddam Hussein has had a "shaming effect" on the Arab and Muslim world where other tyrannical rulers exist.
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The Pentagon's No. 2 official, a highly influential thinker in conservative quarters, called the allied ouster of Ba'ath Party rule in Iraq an "enormously important event."

Mr. Wolfowitz, along with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, was a strong advocate for removing Saddam Hussein by force.

He also said in yesterday's interview that fewer troops will be needed to keep the peace in Iraq than the 135,000 there.

"We're are not going to need as many people to do peacekeeping as we needed to fight the war," Mr. Wolfowitz said.

In a wide-ranging interview, Mr. Wolfowitz also said he is confident prohibited weapons will be found in Iraq, said that Syria allowed "killers" to cross its borders, and predicted the Iraqis themselves will impose penalties on countries that blocked U.S. action against Saddam, such as France.

Now that the invasion and occupation of Iraq have left a California-sized canvas on which to create a new Arab state, some analysts see the United States embedding an intricate network of technological and human spy assets that would function long after U.S. troops have left.
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Though Rumsfeld indicated that the officials were providing what he described as useful information, captured leaders of a defeated regime are historically unreliable, said Timothy Naftali, an intelligence historian and a consultant on the declassification of U.S. intelligence documents under the Nazi War Crimes Act of 1999.

Imprisoned functionaries often make up things in order to magnify their importance and perhaps avoid prosecution for war crimes -- or even get a CIA job.

"None of the Nazi Party intelligence officers whom we employed were worth the moral cost of that contract," Naftali said. "Most of what they provided was invented. They saw this as a way to survive in an otherwise anarchic world. We could not corroborate what they told us."