Over 700 US And British Troops Killed In Iraq - Envoy
Press Trust of India
3-28-3

MOSCOW -- Iraq on Thursday claimed that in the US led attack over the country nearly 700 American and British troops have been killed in the past seven days of fighting. Iraq's Ambassador to Moscow, Abbas Khalaf, quoting fresh reports from Baghdad, claimed that in the last 24 hours alone over 500 American and British troops were killed in fierce fighting in An-Najaf and Kerbala. Three American spy drones were downed over An-Najaf, he told reporters. Though it has not been possible to verify the claims of the Iraqi envoy, Khalaf pointed out to the "great difficulties faced by the invading army as US is planning to send up to 30,000 more troops to Iraq as reinforcement."

Explosion, Said to Be From Missile, Rocks Empty Mall in Kuwait By CRAIG S. SMITH

UWAIT, Saturday, March 29 - An explosion rocked an empty shopping mall on the waterfront early today in Kuwait City, the capital, sending a huge plume of white smoke towering into the sky. Kuwaiti officials said a missile that had landed in the water nearby was responsible. Witnesses who gathered shortly after the explosion at 1:45 a.m. local time could see a twisted piece of metal on the esplanade near the shoreline about the size of a wastebasket and bearing the number "5420" in red. The words "place" and "protractor" could also be made out on a shard. Emergency workers put fragments into bags that they took away for analysis. Despite indications that a missile had struck near the rear entrance to the Sharq mall, by the Sharqiah cinema, witnesses said they did not hear air-raid sirens that would indicate an incoming missile. Some Kuwaiti officials who examined the fragments said they believed an errant American cruise missile had been fired from the Persian Gulf toward Iraq.

"It was an American cruise missile, we know from the markings and writing on it," said a Kuwaiti police colonel who did not give his name. "It doesn't go up, it comes in low from the sea, and that's why there was no alert." Another uniformed Kuwaiti official said that he, too, believed the missile to have been American and said that it "came from the sea." He then added that "it was a mistake" that it had struck Kuwait. In Washington, the chief Pentagon spokeswoman, Victoria Clarke, asked about reports that Kuwaiti officials were blaming an American missile for the damage, said it was too early to tell what had happened or whose missile it was.

The Associated Press reported that unidentified American officials in Washington said the missile appeared to have been a Chinese-built Silkworm launched from southern Iraq. The mall, about a mile and quarter from Al Saif, the palace of Kuwait's governing emir, had been closed for the Muslim holy day. The official Kuwaiti news service reported two people wounded. The blast shattered windows, scattered ceiling tiles and ruptured water pipes in the mall, in the Souq Sharq district. Talal al-Zamanan, who was sitting in a cafe on the opposite side of the mall when the explosion occurred, said that if the missile had struck on a Wednesday night, before the Islamic weekend, the area would have been crowded with people.

A few of the emergency workers who rushed to the scene wore gas masks, which they kept on for a short time, and members of the Czech Republic's Chemical Protection Battalion took away chemical samples, saying their analysis would probably be able to determine the missile's origin. A faint chemical scent of what some people described as rocket propellant hung in the night air. Rather than sending people scrambling for shelter, the explosion drew a crowd of onlookers. Officials say more than 10 missiles have come into Kuwait airspace since the beginning of the war in Iraq, with most having been shot down by Patriot missiles. None of the Iraqi missiles have caused significant damage or injuries.

Former CIA analyst: US 'conned into war'
Robert Baer charges that the American-led invasion is a 'dire mistake'

BEIRUT: Middle East expert and former Central Intelligence Agency officer Robert Baer has charged that the American-led war in Iraq is a dire mistake based on false assumptions and faulty information, but that President George W. Bush cannot stop now and leave Saddam Hussein in power after the long emotional and political buildup to the war. "The American people, Congress, government and president were conned into this war, in the full sense of the word, by neo-conservatives and hawks in Washington who sold a false bill of goods. The president was lied to and given erroneous information that was filtered through Iraqi exiles who had not lived in Iraq for 20 or 30 years and had no clear idea of realities inside Iraq. The exiles had no intention of fighting themselves, but wanted the US to fight for them," he told The Daily Star Thursday in an interview. The 21-year CIA veteran quit the agency in good standing about five years ago, and was given the Career Intelligence Medal for his service. He called this "almost an accidental war," against the backdrop of an American population that did not bother with foreign affairs but suddenly suffered the wrenching emotional experience of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. "There was already in place among some circles in Washington an old plan to attack Iraq. After Sept. 11, 2001 it was sold to the president, who was told that this would be a quick, decisive, easy, almost bloodless operation, at little expense and with no resistance by Iraqis, with Saddam Hussein gone at a flash of the muzzle. But it has not worked out that way. Determined Iraqis who stalled mechanized divisions in southern Iraq are not just pockets of resistance. In its first week the war did not go as planned." Baer, who has published a book on his years in the CIA and is now publishing a second book about Saudi Arabia, said the worst scenario for the US is to surround and lay siege to Baghdad and its 5 million people. He fears that this will increase the bitterness felt against the US by Arabs and Muslims, who increasingly see Americans as hostile to them. He is also concerned "that young Americans now are fighting and dying in Iraq based on faulty analyses from questionable sources," but he cannot see Bush stopping the war now.

"President Bush spent nine months working the American population into a frenzy of fear and anger about Saddam Hussein, and he cannot now tell them that it was not so serious after all, that he has to stop the war and leave Saddam in power."

The best way to minimize long-term damage to the US' standing in this region is for Washington "to make a brisk, clean transition to Iraqi or Iraqi-UN rule after the war ends, offer substantial assistance for reconstruction, leave the Iraqis alone , and turn America's attention quickly to achieving a fair resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict." R.K.

Dari
Anak Tanjung

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Terbitan : 31 Mac 2003

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