Politics > Politics-USA > "My fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended." 11.14.2003
| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Tom Jefferson" |
| Date: |
14 Nov 2003 06:45:12 PM |
| Object: |
"My fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended." 11.14.2003 |
President Bush proclaimed aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on
May 1, 2003:
Admiral Kelly, Captain Card (ph), officers and sailors of the USS Abraham
Lincoln, my fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In
the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.
http://www.milparts.net/bush-on-uss-lincoln.html
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U.S. Aircraft Strike Iraq Targets; 3 Soldiers Die
Fri November 14, 2003 05:07 PM ET
By Dean Yates
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. warplanes and ground forces pounded targets in Iraq
on Friday in the third day of operations to root out guerrillas and destroy
their hideouts, amid rising casualties among occupation forces.
The U.S. Central Command said one soldier was killed when a convoy he was
traveling in struck an improvised explosive device on Friday. Two other
soldiers were killed in a bomb attack on Thursday.
Despite the mounting death toll, President Bush vowed troops would stay
until they had defeated insurgents fighting on seven months after Saddam
Hussein's fall.
But Iraqis could expect a faster transfer of power, U.S. officials said.
A spokesman for the 1st Armored Division said U.S. forces hit five targets
around Baghdad with mortar fire on Friday evening in the third successive
night of "Operation Iron Hammer," an American drive to attack guerrilla
positions.
"These are locations the enemy has used to fire on us. Today we are firing
first," he said.
Reuters witnesses reported several explosions around the airport, in the
southwest of the city, as U.S. planes and helicopters flew overhead. Later
in the evening, a succession of blasts echoed from northwest Baghdad.
The tougher U.S. tactics follow guerrilla mortar and rocket attacks on the
headquarters of the U.S.-led administration in Baghdad and a bloody few
weeks in Iraq in which 16 Italian soldiers and dozens of American troops
have been killed.
NO TURNING BACK
U.S. officials have denied Washington was in trouble, but opinion polls show
declining support among U.S. voters for the occupation as Bush seeks
re-election a year from now.
Key ally Japan has also shown cold feet about sending troops in the wake of
Wednesday's suicide bomb attack on an Italian military base that killed at
least 27 people.
"Look, we will stay until the job is done, and the job is for Iraq to be
free and peaceful," Bush said in response to concerns the U.S. shift in
strategy to speed up the transfer of authority to the Iraqi people could
lead to a premature withdrawal of U.S. forces and leave the country in
chaos.
U.S. officials said the initial plan had been for a transfer of sovereignty
after a new Iraqi constitution was ratified and elections held but the
administration was considering ways to transfer some responsibility sooner.
They have not spelled out how this will be done, saying Iraq administrator
Paul Bremer, now back in Baghdad after urgent consultations this week in
Washington, will discuss details with the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing
Council.
The council is scheduled to meet on Saturday.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called the decision to speed up a handover
of power to Iraqis a positive step.
But Annan, speaking in Bolivia, did not say when or if the United Nations,
which withdrew its foreign staff from Baghdad following suicide bomb
attacks, would participate in the political process in Iraq.
In the latest deadly attack on occupation troops, a U.S. soldier was killed
and two were wounded in an attack on their convoy near central Baghdad on
Friday, the U.S. military said.
Two soldiers were killed on Thursday when a bomb detonated as a U.S. convoy
passed. Three American soldiers were also wounded in the attack, the U.S.
army said.
Guerrillas have killed at least 159 U.S. soldiers since Bush declared major
combat in Iraq over on May 1.
ATTACK HELICOPTER, FIGHTER JETS
Near Saddam's hometown Tikrit, a U.S. Apache helicopter spotted and killed
seven Iraqi insurgents late on Thursday as they prepared to fire rockets at
a U.S. military camp, a U.S. army spokeswoman said.
And near the Syrian border, the 82nd Airborne said F-16 fighter jets on
Thursday night destroyed an isolated three-story building used by
"terrorists" as a staging area for attacks and storage of ammunition.
In the southern town of Nassiriya, divers scoured the Euphrates river for
evidence after the blast that devastated the Italian base nearby. In Rome,
wounded survivors returned home.
Fearing a similar attack, the U.S.-led administration has shut its
headquarters in the southern city of Basra for 36 hours for a security
review, spokesman Dominic D'Angelo said.
Underscoring Iraq's fragile security, gunmen shot and wounded a Portuguese
reporter and kidnapped a second in southern Iraq on Friday after attacking a
convoy of vehicles, the British military and Portuguese media said.
The kidnapped reporter, Carlos Raleiras of private radio station TSF, made a
plea for help on his mobile phone.
With voices speaking in Arabic behind him, Raleiras said: "Would anyone who
speaks Arabic please contact me? I have to stop talking now, OK?"
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=3826344&pageNu
mber=2
--
http://www.costofwar.com/
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/
http://lunaville.org/warcasualties/Summary.aspx
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