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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Three U.S. Soldiers Killed in Iraq

By MARIAM FAM, Associated Press Writer

MOSUL, Iraq - Attackers slit the throats of two American soldiers who were
waiting in traffic in this northern Iraqi city on Sunday, witnesses said.
Another soldier was killed in a roadside bombing north of Baghdad.

Elsewhere, three American civilian contractors were wounded in an explosion
in the northern oil center Kirkuk. First reports said the blast was from a
mortar, but Lt. Col. Matt Croke said officials later concluded it was a
bomb.

The killings occurred after U.S. helicopter gunships struck targets in
central Iraq on Sunday, according to other witnesses.

The bodies of the two male soldiers could be seen lying in the street next
to their vehicle in Mosul's Ras al-Jadda district with their throats cut.
The U.S. command in Baghdad said it had no information on the incident.

A 4th Infantry Division soldier was killed Sunday and two others were
wounded when a roadside bomb exploded in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of
Baghdad, the military said.

In political developments, an Iraqi-American woman and veteran lobbyist,
Rend Rahim Francke, was chosen as Iraq's ambassador to the United States.

U.S. officials have warned of more attacks against coalition forces as the
Islamic holy month of Ramadan nears its end Tuesday.

The blast in Kirkuk, 150 miles north of Baghdad, occurred overnight on the
compound of the National Oil Company. Three American employees of the U.S.
firm Kellogg Brown & Root suffered facial cuts from flying glass, Croke
said. On Friday, insurgents rocketed the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, where
many KBR employees as well as international journalists and others stay. One
civilian was wounded.

"We all know that Americans are being threatened," Croke said.

In Samara, about 75 miles north of Baghdad, Iraqi police said six U.S.
Apache helicopter gunships blasted marshland after four rocket-propelled
grenades were fired at the American military garrison at the northern
entrance to the city. One Iraqi passer-by was killed in the air attack.

Also Sunday, a spokeswoman with Iraq's Governing Council said the body has
chosen an Iraqi-American woman and veteran lobbyist as its ambassador to the
United States.

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari announced Francke's appointment at a news
conference Sunday. Francke led the Iraq Foundation, a Washington-based
pro-democracy group, and has helped in post-Saddam Hussein government
planning.

She was born in Baghdad but has not lived here full-time in more than 30
years. She became a U.S. citizen in 1987.

"I will sincerely express the ambitions of the Iraqi people and ... take
care of the Iraqi community in the United States, which amounts to some
400,000 people," Francke told reporters. "The Iraqi Embassy used to be a
source of fear for this community, rather than being a place to render
services."

The appointment will renew diplomatic ties between Washington and Baghdad 13
years after they were severed in 1990 when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.

Discussions about appointing an envoy came after an agreement between the
Bush administration and the Governing Council to hand over power to a new,
transitional Iraqi government by the end of June.

The council also will soon appoint a replacement for a member assassinated
two months ago, council member Mahmoud Othman said. Aquila al-Hashimi, a
Shiite Muslim member of the 25-seat group, was mortally wounded Sept. 20,
the highest Iraqi official killed by suspected Saddam loyalists.

Her replacement is expected to be a Shiite Muslim since the Council,
installed on July 13, has been divided proportionally between Iraq's
different sects and ethnic groups: 13 Shiite Arabs, five Kurds, five Sunni
Arabs, one Christian and one ethnic Turk.

On Saturday, insurgents hit a civilian cargo plane with a surface-to-air
missile, but the aircraft landed safely. The plane was the first civilian
airliner to be hit by insurgents, who have shot down several military
helicopters with shoulder-fired rockets. DHL and Royal Jordanian, the only
commercial carrier flying into Baghdad, immediately suspended flights.

Suicide bombers struck two police stations northeast of Baghdad within 30
minutes on Saturday. In the market town of Khan Bani Saad, a Chevrolet
Caprice sped through a guard's gunfire Saturday morning and exploded at the
station gate, police said.

The U.S. military said 10 people were killed in one and four in the other.

Elsewhere, an Iraqi police colonel in charge of protecting oil installations
was assassinated in northern Iraq, part of what appeared to be an insurgent
campaign against U.S.-backed security forces.

Col. Abdul-Salam Qanbar, who was in charge of a police force in the northern
city of Mosul, was fatally shot Saturday evening while heading to a mosque,
a spokesman said.

"It is clear that the terrorists have targeted Iraqis, the very Iraqis who
are trying to improve the security in Iraq and the lives of ordinary
Iraqis," coalition spokesman Charles Heatly said.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&e=1&u=/ap/20031123/ap_on
_re_mi_ea/iraq


--
"From the brief time that we did spend occupying Iraqi territory
after the war, I am certain that had we taken all of Iraq, we would
have been like the dinosaur in the tar pit - we would still be there,
and we, not the United Nations, would be bearing the costs of
the occupation. This is a burden I am sure the beleaguered
American taxpayer would not have been happy to take on."

- Norman Schwarzkopf, from his 1993 autobiography, "It Doesn't
Take a Hero."