4th Anniversary of the War On Iraq Time Capsule: March 17, 2003
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On March 17, 2003, America prepares to wage war in the name of a world community that opposes it. Bush blasts the U.N. as the United States, Britain and Spain withdraw their Security Council resolution on Iraq and blame a threatened French veto for their decision. Germany and the Czech Republican close their embassies in Baghdad. Some networks and other news outlets pull reporters from Baghdad and move them to Jordon.
A look at the top news stories of the day:
Bush lashes out at U.N.
Former U.N. secretary-general Dag Hammarskjold once remarked that the United Nations was not created to take mankind to paradise, but merely to save humanity from hell.
And war on Iraq, many U.S. citizens believe, is - if not hell - a descent into an awful unknown.
But President, George W. Bush, who failed to get the nine votes he needed for Security Council authorization for an attack on Baghdad, vented his anger at the United Nations because the world body refused to give him the legitimacy he desperately needed.
"The United Nations didn't do its job," Bush said.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, looking distraught and dejected, told reporters Monday that almost every government and peoples around the world had hoped that the crisis could be resolved peacefully.
If, as expected, the United States decides to go to war, he said, "it is a sad day for everybody."
Saddam Says He Has No WMDs
Saddam Hussein said Iraq once had weapons of mass destruction for defense against Iran and Israel but no longer holds them, the Iraqi News Agency said.
"We are not weapons collectors," Saddam said. "But we had these weapons for purposes of self-defense when we were at war with Iran for eight years and when the Zionist entity (Israel) was, and it still is, a threat… When Saddam Hussein says he has no weapons of mass destruction, he means what he says," Saddam said.
He also said his country had fully cooperated with U.N. inspectors seeking to verify that all weapons of mass destruction have been destroyed and he called on the United States to set an example by destroying its own weapons of mass destruction first.
If Iraq is attacked, he vowed to take the war anywhere in the world "wherever there is sky, land or water."
American Media Needled for Not Asking the Tough Questions
A new poll shows a strong majority of Americans thinks the media have done a good or excellent job of covering the run-up to a war with Iraq, but several journalism experts said the depth of the reporting was shallow.
"Too many reporters have been slow to ask the tough questions, slower than their counterparts in Europe," said Geneva Overholser, a prominent journalism educator and former newspaper editor.
That's not to say Americans are dissatisfied with the job of the media.
A recent poll done by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press showed 66 percent of the public thinks the media are doing a good or excellent job, with 73 percent of supporters of military action giving the media a favorable rating.
Overholser and others said that much of the media attention has focused on the military buildup and United Nations debates about resolutions on going to war. The result: Some important investigative stories have been crowded into late-hour television and into the inside pages in many newspapers.
Among them:
Vice President Cheney's former energy company received a contract to control Iraq's oil fields after the U.S. wages its war.
Documents that President Bush and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell cited in major speeches as evidence that Iraq had a nuclear program were forgeries. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., has asked for an FBI investigation as to the origin of them.
The United States sold biological weapons to Iraq in the 1980s that the Bush administration now wants destroyed.
Nearly all of Bush's key defense and foreign affairs advisers, as well as the vice president, were affiliated with a think tank that in 1998 called for a war in Iraq and a regime change.
Saddam Steps Up Baghdad Defenses
Fearing that a US-led invasion may be only days away, Iraqi authorities stepped up defensive preparations in and around Baghdad today, emptying government ministries of documents and equipment, assigning Baath Party cadres to police neighborhoods and deploying more elite troops across the city.
The measures appear to be efforts to allow the Iraqi government to weather an intense bombing campaign and confront US ground forces at the city's edge. If that fails and American units push into the city, or if US commanders opt to air- drop soldiers directly into Baghdad, the government here hopes to mount an aggressive, block-by-block resistance.
School Kids Not Welcome In Washington Amid Pre-War Jitters
Students still making the spring pilgrimage to their nation's capital are finding a vast Forbidden City with a nasty case of pre-war panic.
For generations, the nation's offspring have poured from buses to tour the White House, take a gander at the Declaration of Independence and watch with wide eyes as a real G-man sprayed bullets into a paper target representing an old-time bugaboo, the homeland criminal.
But today, even school groups from the president's home state of Texas aren't welcome inside the Executive Mansion.
The National Archives is off-limits, and the popular FBI tour - which featured John Dillinger's pistol and a gallery of the Ten Most Wanted - is closed until 2005.
Washington, a city richly speckled with symbols of freedom, cringes behind obstructions in these uncertain days between Sept. 11 and a looming invasion of Iraq. Cement traffic barriers ring the Washington Monument and construction fences block the majestic steps of the Capitol.
A recorded voice on the Metro subway encourages patrons to report "suspicious behavior."
Visit War and Remembrance
A look at the top news stories of the day:
Bush lashes out at U.N.
Former U.N. secretary-general Dag Hammarskjold once remarked that the United Nations was not created to take mankind to paradise, but merely to save humanity from hell.
And war on Iraq, many U.S. citizens believe, is - if not hell - a descent into an awful unknown.
But President, George W. Bush, who failed to get the nine votes he needed for Security Council authorization for an attack on Baghdad, vented his anger at the United Nations because the world body refused to give him the legitimacy he desperately needed.
"The United Nations didn't do its job," Bush said.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, looking distraught and dejected, told reporters Monday that almost every government and peoples around the world had hoped that the crisis could be resolved peacefully.
If, as expected, the United States decides to go to war, he said, "it is a sad day for everybody."
Saddam Says He Has No WMDs
Saddam Hussein said Iraq once had weapons of mass destruction for defense against Iran and Israel but no longer holds them, the Iraqi News Agency said.
"We are not weapons collectors," Saddam said. "But we had these weapons for purposes of self-defense when we were at war with Iran for eight years and when the Zionist entity (Israel) was, and it still is, a threat… When Saddam Hussein says he has no weapons of mass destruction, he means what he says," Saddam said.
He also said his country had fully cooperated with U.N. inspectors seeking to verify that all weapons of mass destruction have been destroyed and he called on the United States to set an example by destroying its own weapons of mass destruction first.
If Iraq is attacked, he vowed to take the war anywhere in the world "wherever there is sky, land or water."
American Media Needled for Not Asking the Tough Questions
A new poll shows a strong majority of Americans thinks the media have done a good or excellent job of covering the run-up to a war with Iraq, but several journalism experts said the depth of the reporting was shallow.
"Too many reporters have been slow to ask the tough questions, slower than their counterparts in Europe," said Geneva Overholser, a prominent journalism educator and former newspaper editor.
That's not to say Americans are dissatisfied with the job of the media.
A recent poll done by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press showed 66 percent of the public thinks the media are doing a good or excellent job, with 73 percent of supporters of military action giving the media a favorable rating.
Overholser and others said that much of the media attention has focused on the military buildup and United Nations debates about resolutions on going to war. The result: Some important investigative stories have been crowded into late-hour television and into the inside pages in many newspapers.
Among them:
Vice President Cheney's former energy company received a contract to control Iraq's oil fields after the U.S. wages its war.
Documents that President Bush and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell cited in major speeches as evidence that Iraq had a nuclear program were forgeries. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., has asked for an FBI investigation as to the origin of them.
The United States sold biological weapons to Iraq in the 1980s that the Bush administration now wants destroyed.
Nearly all of Bush's key defense and foreign affairs advisers, as well as the vice president, were affiliated with a think tank that in 1998 called for a war in Iraq and a regime change.
Saddam Steps Up Baghdad Defenses
Fearing that a US-led invasion may be only days away, Iraqi authorities stepped up defensive preparations in and around Baghdad today, emptying government ministries of documents and equipment, assigning Baath Party cadres to police neighborhoods and deploying more elite troops across the city.
The measures appear to be efforts to allow the Iraqi government to weather an intense bombing campaign and confront US ground forces at the city's edge. If that fails and American units push into the city, or if US commanders opt to air- drop soldiers directly into Baghdad, the government here hopes to mount an aggressive, block-by-block resistance.
School Kids Not Welcome In Washington Amid Pre-War Jitters
Students still making the spring pilgrimage to their nation's capital are finding a vast Forbidden City with a nasty case of pre-war panic.
For generations, the nation's offspring have poured from buses to tour the White House, take a gander at the Declaration of Independence and watch with wide eyes as a real G-man sprayed bullets into a paper target representing an old-time bugaboo, the homeland criminal.
But today, even school groups from the president's home state of Texas aren't welcome inside the Executive Mansion.
The National Archives is off-limits, and the popular FBI tour - which featured John Dillinger's pistol and a gallery of the Ten Most Wanted - is closed until 2005.
Washington, a city richly speckled with symbols of freedom, cringes behind obstructions in these uncertain days between Sept. 11 and a looming invasion of Iraq. Cement traffic barriers ring the Washington Monument and construction fences block the majestic steps of the Capitol.
A recorded voice on the Metro subway encourages patrons to report "suspicious behavior."
Visit War and Remembrance
