4th Anniversary of the War On Iraq Time Capsule: March 16, 2003
|
|
| Also listed in: Ohio Bloggers |
On Sunday, March 16, 2003, America's newspapers were filled with cries for peace and drums for war. In Iraq, residents bought guns, dug wells and stocked up on food. The world's financial markets went up and down.
Anti-War Protesters Take to the Streets.
From Asia to Europe and the seat of American power, hundreds of thousands of anti-war protesters made a global appeal for peace, as President Bush prepared for a summit with allies today billed as a final diplomatic effort before an attack on Iraq.
Protesters made their cases in Berlin; Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles; San Francisco; Portland; Seattle; and scores of other cities.
The noon rally and march in Washington snaked peacefully from the Washington Monument to Lafayette Park, adjacent to the White House, and back. District police estimated that about 40,000 attended the demonstration, but rally organizers put the count instead at about 100,000.
The rhetoric was anti-Bush as well as anti-war.
"I can't go to bed tonight thinking that George Bush is going to bomb 6-year-olds only because they live in a country he has a personal vendetta against," said Washington, D.C., resident Melanie Stettz, 41, who brought her 6-year-old twin daughters to a march in the capital.
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., declared: "We need a regime change in the United States."
Striking Iraq Could Fuel Attacks on the U.S., Experts Warn
If President Bush is to be believed, a war against Iraq is integral to the global war against terrorism. The president argues that the real risk to American security would be to leave President Saddam Hussein in power, his missiles and weapons of mass destruction at the ready.
It is only a matter of time, Bush and his top lieutenants fear, before Hussein builds a nuclear weapon, fires a missile at an American target or delivers biological or chemical weapons to terrorists.
Yet specialists inside and outside the government told the Washington Post that they question whether a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq would deliver a significant blow against international terrorism. Experts warn that war and occupation could also have the opposite effect by emboldening radical Islamic groups and adding to their grievances.
"It's a gamble and a very significant one," said Daniel Benjamin, a Clinton administration terrorism specialist. "On the terrorism side of the ledger, there will be costs. I haven't heard a plausible explanation about how those costs will be avoided or how this will be a net plus on the terrorism side."
Troops prepare for duty, while cities worry about providing local defense.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote:
"The federal government has trained and equipped our troops for Iraq. But we haven't done the same thing for our first responders at home - our police and fire and emergency personnel. If the country goes to war, we are not prepared. I'm concerned about bioterrorism, about chemical warfare. Or lone terrorists. It's a scary set of circumstances."
The somber warning at the National League of Cities' yearly Congressional City Conference in Washington, came from Karen Anderson, the group's immediate past president and mayor of Minnetonka, Minn.
Cities, as a practical matter, provide local defense - against fire, crime, storms. "Naturally, we're the people who show up," said New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr., the current NLC president. But, he added, "If we have to buy bioterror suits, provide special training, deal with risks coming from without U.S. borders like materials entering my port from foreign-flag vessels, that's a different issue."
The bottom line, says DeStefano: "I will deal with the drug dealers. But it's difficult for me to deal with Osama bin Laden. That's not a fair expectation of local government."
In Baghdad, it's Guns and Gardening
As Iraqi men shop for guns in Baghdad, people throughout the city prepare for war by digging wells in their gardens, and stockpiling food, fuel and cigarettes.
In a coffee shop, a TV airs what has become almost a nightly appearance by Saddam Hussein. Being seen with military commanders is intended to reassure his edgy nation.
A portrait of Saddam Hussein hangs at nearly every street corner, above. On a bridge over the Tigris River, where Baghdad was born as a settlement nearly 4,000 years ago, children wave to boats. Many people fear that bridges will be targeted in a U.S. invasion.
Bush's Audacious Mission, With Awesome Risks
A Washington Post analysis puts things in perspective:
"With a force only one-third the size of the one that liberated Kuwait 12 years ago, U.S. commanders poised to attack Iraq have been given a far more ambitious mission: March hundreds of miles to Baghdad, neutralize the Iraqi military, overthrow President Saddam Hussein and then prevent a country the size of California from disintegrating into chaos.
The war plan they have devised to do all this is by most accounts innovative, even daring. "We literally could be in Baghdad in three or four days," said one general here in the field. "How audacious do you want to be?"
But those qualities also make this mission riskier than other recent U.S. military operations. Retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, a former chief of the Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters for the Middle East, noted that danger is "what comes with being bold and audacious."
The aspects of the operation that most worry planners here, and Pentagon insiders and experts in the United States, are the emphasis on lightning, simultaneous operations that could result in "friendly fire" incidents; the dependence on a 350-mile supply line; and the heavy reliance on Special Operations troops behind enemy lines.
A defining element of the plan is its requirement of speed, with multiple combat actions occurring nearly simultaneously in three arenas -- air attacks, ground combat and Special Operations activities behind enemy lines.
One risk of a bold plan is that it will be executed too cautiously. A potential flaw in the current plan, said defense analyst Harlan Ullman, is that "we may not be sufficiently audacious."
Warships On The Move
After weeks of frustrating delays, the Bush administration has all but given up on persuading Turkey to let U.S. forces use its territory to invade Iraq. Instead, it is now focusing on "discouraging and deterring" the Turkish government from sending troops across the border, a senior U.S. official said Friday.
The United States is also seeking permission to use Turkish airspace, which Turkey granted during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. But the official said Turkey would not receive the $ 6 billion in economic aid that Washington had offered if it only granted overflight rights.
In response, the Pentagon began moving warships from the eastern Mediterranean, where they had been loitering pending the Turkish decision. Several U.S. ships capable of firing Tomahawk cruise missiles sailed toward the Suez Canal, apparently heading toward a zone where the missiles could be fired without passing through Turkish airspace.
Two dozen cargo ships -- carrying the 4th Infantry Division's tanks, trucks and supplies for what the U.S. hoped would become a northern front against Iraq -- remained in the waters off Turkey for a possible move to Kuwait.
War Jitters Make Financial Markets Skittish
There are weeks when it is impossible to figure out why financial markets move up or down, but last week was not one of them. Whether stocks, bonds, currency or commodities, they all moved in near-perfect synchronization, responding to the latest developments in the diplomatic dance over the war in Iraq.
Early in the week, tough talk from the White House and rising prospects for an imminent attack sent stocks down sharply, taking the dollar with them. Investors fled to the safety of Treasury bonds, and speculators, fearing disruption of Middle East supplies, bid up futures on oil and gas. Major stock indexes fell to lows for the year, while bond yields, which move in the opposite direction to bond prices, hit 44-year lows.
Then on Thursday, as it became clear that the United States and Britain would not win the U.N. support they sought to begin operations, the markets retraced their steps and then some. The dollar posted its best weekly gain in seven months, while the price of oil for delivery next month fell from nearly $ 40 to just above $ 35 a barrel. For stocks, it was the first weekly gain after back-to-back declines, following a particularly strong two-day rally on European exchanges.
Retailers and home sellers have reported a drop-off in traffic beginning in February, and Ford announced it was cutting production targets by 17 percent in response to lagging sales of cars and trucks. Airlines and hotels reported that the pace of cancellations seemed to track almost precisely the increase in diplomatic and military activity. Industrial production, bank lending and advertising commitments suddenly show no growth -- or they even decline.
Visit War and Remembrance
Anti-War Protesters Take to the Streets.
From Asia to Europe and the seat of American power, hundreds of thousands of anti-war protesters made a global appeal for peace, as President Bush prepared for a summit with allies today billed as a final diplomatic effort before an attack on Iraq.
Protesters made their cases in Berlin; Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles; San Francisco; Portland; Seattle; and scores of other cities.
The noon rally and march in Washington snaked peacefully from the Washington Monument to Lafayette Park, adjacent to the White House, and back. District police estimated that about 40,000 attended the demonstration, but rally organizers put the count instead at about 100,000.
The rhetoric was anti-Bush as well as anti-war.
"I can't go to bed tonight thinking that George Bush is going to bomb 6-year-olds only because they live in a country he has a personal vendetta against," said Washington, D.C., resident Melanie Stettz, 41, who brought her 6-year-old twin daughters to a march in the capital.
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., declared: "We need a regime change in the United States."
Striking Iraq Could Fuel Attacks on the U.S., Experts Warn
If President Bush is to be believed, a war against Iraq is integral to the global war against terrorism. The president argues that the real risk to American security would be to leave President Saddam Hussein in power, his missiles and weapons of mass destruction at the ready.
It is only a matter of time, Bush and his top lieutenants fear, before Hussein builds a nuclear weapon, fires a missile at an American target or delivers biological or chemical weapons to terrorists.
Yet specialists inside and outside the government told the Washington Post that they question whether a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq would deliver a significant blow against international terrorism. Experts warn that war and occupation could also have the opposite effect by emboldening radical Islamic groups and adding to their grievances.
"It's a gamble and a very significant one," said Daniel Benjamin, a Clinton administration terrorism specialist. "On the terrorism side of the ledger, there will be costs. I haven't heard a plausible explanation about how those costs will be avoided or how this will be a net plus on the terrorism side."
Troops prepare for duty, while cities worry about providing local defense.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote:
"The federal government has trained and equipped our troops for Iraq. But we haven't done the same thing for our first responders at home - our police and fire and emergency personnel. If the country goes to war, we are not prepared. I'm concerned about bioterrorism, about chemical warfare. Or lone terrorists. It's a scary set of circumstances."
The somber warning at the National League of Cities' yearly Congressional City Conference in Washington, came from Karen Anderson, the group's immediate past president and mayor of Minnetonka, Minn.
Cities, as a practical matter, provide local defense - against fire, crime, storms. "Naturally, we're the people who show up," said New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr., the current NLC president. But, he added, "If we have to buy bioterror suits, provide special training, deal with risks coming from without U.S. borders like materials entering my port from foreign-flag vessels, that's a different issue."
The bottom line, says DeStefano: "I will deal with the drug dealers. But it's difficult for me to deal with Osama bin Laden. That's not a fair expectation of local government."
In Baghdad, it's Guns and Gardening
As Iraqi men shop for guns in Baghdad, people throughout the city prepare for war by digging wells in their gardens, and stockpiling food, fuel and cigarettes.
In a coffee shop, a TV airs what has become almost a nightly appearance by Saddam Hussein. Being seen with military commanders is intended to reassure his edgy nation.
A portrait of Saddam Hussein hangs at nearly every street corner, above. On a bridge over the Tigris River, where Baghdad was born as a settlement nearly 4,000 years ago, children wave to boats. Many people fear that bridges will be targeted in a U.S. invasion.
Bush's Audacious Mission, With Awesome Risks
A Washington Post analysis puts things in perspective:
"With a force only one-third the size of the one that liberated Kuwait 12 years ago, U.S. commanders poised to attack Iraq have been given a far more ambitious mission: March hundreds of miles to Baghdad, neutralize the Iraqi military, overthrow President Saddam Hussein and then prevent a country the size of California from disintegrating into chaos.
The war plan they have devised to do all this is by most accounts innovative, even daring. "We literally could be in Baghdad in three or four days," said one general here in the field. "How audacious do you want to be?"
But those qualities also make this mission riskier than other recent U.S. military operations. Retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, a former chief of the Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters for the Middle East, noted that danger is "what comes with being bold and audacious."
The aspects of the operation that most worry planners here, and Pentagon insiders and experts in the United States, are the emphasis on lightning, simultaneous operations that could result in "friendly fire" incidents; the dependence on a 350-mile supply line; and the heavy reliance on Special Operations troops behind enemy lines.
A defining element of the plan is its requirement of speed, with multiple combat actions occurring nearly simultaneously in three arenas -- air attacks, ground combat and Special Operations activities behind enemy lines.
One risk of a bold plan is that it will be executed too cautiously. A potential flaw in the current plan, said defense analyst Harlan Ullman, is that "we may not be sufficiently audacious."
Warships On The Move
After weeks of frustrating delays, the Bush administration has all but given up on persuading Turkey to let U.S. forces use its territory to invade Iraq. Instead, it is now focusing on "discouraging and deterring" the Turkish government from sending troops across the border, a senior U.S. official said Friday.
The United States is also seeking permission to use Turkish airspace, which Turkey granted during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. But the official said Turkey would not receive the $ 6 billion in economic aid that Washington had offered if it only granted overflight rights.
In response, the Pentagon began moving warships from the eastern Mediterranean, where they had been loitering pending the Turkish decision. Several U.S. ships capable of firing Tomahawk cruise missiles sailed toward the Suez Canal, apparently heading toward a zone where the missiles could be fired without passing through Turkish airspace.
Two dozen cargo ships -- carrying the 4th Infantry Division's tanks, trucks and supplies for what the U.S. hoped would become a northern front against Iraq -- remained in the waters off Turkey for a possible move to Kuwait.
War Jitters Make Financial Markets Skittish
There are weeks when it is impossible to figure out why financial markets move up or down, but last week was not one of them. Whether stocks, bonds, currency or commodities, they all moved in near-perfect synchronization, responding to the latest developments in the diplomatic dance over the war in Iraq.
Early in the week, tough talk from the White House and rising prospects for an imminent attack sent stocks down sharply, taking the dollar with them. Investors fled to the safety of Treasury bonds, and speculators, fearing disruption of Middle East supplies, bid up futures on oil and gas. Major stock indexes fell to lows for the year, while bond yields, which move in the opposite direction to bond prices, hit 44-year lows.
Then on Thursday, as it became clear that the United States and Britain would not win the U.N. support they sought to begin operations, the markets retraced their steps and then some. The dollar posted its best weekly gain in seven months, while the price of oil for delivery next month fell from nearly $ 40 to just above $ 35 a barrel. For stocks, it was the first weekly gain after back-to-back declines, following a particularly strong two-day rally on European exchanges.
Retailers and home sellers have reported a drop-off in traffic beginning in February, and Ford announced it was cutting production targets by 17 percent in response to lagging sales of cars and trucks. Airlines and hotels reported that the pace of cancellations seemed to track almost precisely the increase in diplomatic and military activity. Industrial production, bank lending and advertising commitments suddenly show no growth -- or they even decline.
Visit War and Remembrance
