Steve Quayle News Alerts

April 9, 2003

U.S. military officials said Iraqi government control in Baghdad was collapsing Tuesday as citizens celebrated on the streets.

Iraqis surround a statue of Saddam Hussein as a tank patrols Baghdad.
April 9, 2003

Emboldened by the sight of U.S. forces seizing control of large chunks of Baghdad, hundreds of residents looted government buildings while others danced in the streets, many waving rifles, palm fronds and flags and flashing the V-for-victory sign as they celebrated the apparent demise of President Saddam Hussein’s control of the capital. U.S. officials welcomed the celebrations but cautioned that the war against Saddam was far from over.

THE OUTBREAK came after one of the quietest nights in Baghdad since the 3-week-old war began raised hopes that the worst of the fighting was over and that Baghdad had all but fallen to the U.S. forces.

“Today the regime is in disarray, and much of Iraq is free from years of oppression,” said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, a U.S. Central Command spokesman, at a briefing at Central Command forward headquarters in Doha Qatar.

Brooks said Baghdad could be added to the list of areas where Saddam’s regime has lost control. But he warned that Saddam loyalists were holding out in the north, including Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit and still posed a threat, including the possible use of weapons of mass destruction.

At police stations, universities, government ministries, the headquarters of the Iraq Olympic Committee and elsewhere, looters unhindered by any police presence made off with computers, furniture, even military jeeps. One young man used roller skates to wheel away a refrigerator.

In London, a spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair said that the command and control in Baghdad “appears to have disintegrated.”

The fast-moving developments occurred as U.S. military commanders systematically tightened their grip on Baghdad amid uncertainty over whether Saddam had survived a bombing strike aimed at a leadership meeting Monday afternoon.

BUSH ‘HEARTENED’
In northern Iraq, where Saddam’s forces still hold sway outside of Kurdish areas, U.S. and Kurdish forces ousted Iraqi security forces from a mountain used to defend the nation’s third-largest city, Mosul. Hoshyar Zebari, a leading member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party called it the most important gain in the region thus far.

A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said President Bush was heartened by the reports from Iraq.

“As well as things have gone, this is still a military mission and therefore lives are still at stake, but obviously the progress has been very good,” the official said.

In Baghdad, U.S. forces expanded their control to all quadrants of the city of 5 million people, seizing or destroying buildings that once housed some of Saddam’s most feared security forces. Marine tanks rolled into the commercial center, greeted by people cheering and waving white flags.

Maj. Gen. Buford Blount II, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, visited a command post set up at the New Presidential Palace, overlooking the Tigris River in central Baghdad. Col. David Perkins, whose 2nd Brigade was at the command post, told Blount his forces can go anywhere in the city and meet only sporadic sniping.

The two commanders discussed what buildings could be used to house U.S. military units and a new government to replace Saddam’s.

“That’s the next mental jump, is for the Iraqis to realize that even if he (Saddam Hussein) is still alive, he’s not in charge anymore,” Perkins said.

FLOWERS FOR AMERICANS
On the streets of Baghdad, many residents decided that Saddam no longer mattered, signaling the end of decades of Baath Party rule in the city.

“Thank you, thank you, Mr. Bush,” some of the looters shouted. An elderly man beat a portrait of Saddam with his shoe, while a younger man spat on the portrait.

A Reuters correspondent said crowds threw flowers at the U.S. Marines as they drove past the Martyrs’ Monument, just two miles east of the central Jumhuriya bridge over the Tigris River.

At Saddam City, a poor, predominantly Shiite area that has long been considered a hotbed of anti-Saddam unrest, hundreds of Iraqis cheered U.S. troops. Small bands of youths tore down portraits of Saddam and chanted, “Bush! Bush! Thank you!”

April 9 — Saddam Hussein’s regime collapsed overnight, leaving anarchy and looting throughout the Iraqi capital city. ITN’s James Bays reports from Baghdad.
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On Palestine Street, where Saddam’s regime as recently as a few weeks back held rallies and shows of force, gangs of youths and even middle-aged men looted the warehouses of the Trade Ministry, coming out with air conditioners, ceiling fans, refrigerators and TV sets.

There were no reports of any attempts by the Iraqi government to restore order.

“It’s like a K-Mart in there, they’re stealing everything,” said a Marine watching the pillage of stores and buildings.

State-run Baghdad radio was still on the air, broadcasting patriotic songs and excerpts from Saddam’s speeches.

Not everyone rejoiced. “This is the destruction of Islam,” said Qassim al-Shamari, 50, a laborer wearing an Arab robe. “After all, Iraq is our country. And what about all the women and children who died in the bombing?”

QUIET NIGHT
There were few indications overnight of the dramatic events that would ensue later Wednesday.

Explosions, tank shelling and gunfire rang out after daybreak, but the fighting was described as only sporadic resistance to U.S. forces trying to expand areas of the capital under their control.

The Americans worked on securing routes into the capital, repelling ambushes and trying to hunt down roving bands of fighters made up of three or four people.

The majority of regular Iraqi army soldiers and Republican Guard troops were believed to have deserted and gone home. Uniforms, boots and weapons litter the streets and fill fighting positions throughout the city.

The Arab-language satellite TV station Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. reported from Baghdad that there was no sign of any Iraqi government or military presence in the city.

Neither Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf nor any ministry “minders” showed up at the Palestine Hotel, where hundreds of journalists are staying.

The Iraqi government had assigned “minders” to escort journalists as they did their reporting, and Sahhaf gave daily briefings where he declared that Iraq forces were slaughtering the invaders and on the verge of victory.

KEY MOUNTAIN TAKEN IN NORTH
Farther north, U.S. special operations forces and Kurdish fighters said that the seizure of the mountain outside Mosul could open the way for coalition forces to march on the city as well as the he major oil center of Kirkuk, the main prize in the north.

But Hoshyar Zebari stressed that there would be no unilateral Kurdish move, saying the operation was being coordinated with the Pentagon.

The area called Maqloub, about 10 miles northeast of Mosul and heavily defended by Iraqi forces, was a hub for air defenses against coalition airstrikes as well as a munitions center.

“That area was heavily defended by Iraqis throughout the campaign. From our perspective, this is the most important gain of the northern front so far,” Zebari said. “We were surprised by the lack of resistance.”

The advances across Iraq were hailed by Barham Salih, the prime minister in the region of northern Iraq run by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

“It will mean a new opportunity, a new lease on life,” he said Wednesday. “We have had 80 years of misery locked up in this Iraqi state, ruled by tyrant after another, culmination in this vicious dictator which is unique to human history. We hope that with the demise of Saddam Hussein we can aspire to building a new nation of Iraq that is democratic, that is federal and that is at peace with the people of Iraq.”

In southern Iraq, British officials were contacting local figures and tribal leaders in Basra to deal with looting and preserve property.

Group Capt. Al Lockwood, a British spokesman at Sayliyah, said the British have an obligation under international law to stop the looting.

British troops were in close contact with local leaders but would not reinstall the same leadership that was in place under Saddam, Lockwood said.

“We have asked them (the people of Basra) to chose their own leadership that will take them to the future,” he said.

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS
Other developments on the 21st day of the U.S.-led war in Iraq:

The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Wednesday that it had temporarily suspended its humanitarian operations in Baghdad because the situation in the city was “chaotic and unpredictable.” The Geneva-based agency said a Canadian staff member had been missing in Baghdad since Tuesday afternoon and was feared seriously wounded but that it had not been able to search for him because getting around “involves incalculable risks.”

The United Nations said about $720 million in relief supplies were on trucks and ships bound for Iraq, but that it still needs $2.2 billion in emergency funds for more wartime relief.

NBC’s Carl Rochelle, Andrea Mitchell, Campbell Brown and Jim Miklaszewski in Washington, David Shuster in Qatar, Dana Lewis near Karbala and Chip Reid near Baghdad; MSNBC’s Bob Arnot near Baghdad; MSNBC.com’s Preston Mendenhall in northern Iraq; The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/870749.asp?0cv=CA01