The Dolphins must've done their job - Food & Water Arrive

[Timber Loftis]

captions: A British soldier arrives in Umm Qasr aboard a shipload of water, food and other supplies today.

TL's OpEd: This article has tons of information though it rambles incredibly. Note it mentions (briefly, at the end) that today France is calling for a reconciliation with the US.

Today's NY Times:
Relief Ship Docks at Iraqi Port With Emergency Supplies

Jon Mills/Agence France-Presse
A British soldier arrives in Umm Qasr aboard a shipload of water, food and other supplies today.

By PATRICK E. TYLER

KUWAIT, March 28 — After a week of mine-clearing operations, the British supply ship Sir Galahad docked at the port of Umm Qasr today, loaded with the first emergency relief supplies since the invasion of Iraq began.

The ship carried 232 tons of water, food, blankets and other supplies.

But the British Army said no relief could reach nearby Basra, Iraq's second largest city, because of fighting that has limited water and electricity supplies and forced many civilians to flee.

The Sir Galahad was led into port from the Persian Gulf by a minesweeper, while a helicopter flew overhead. Crew members were wearing chemical protection suits.

Its arrival followed a thunderous bombardment of Baghdad last night and early today as allied armies strung out over a 350-mile swath of desert fought skirmishes against tenacious Iraqi resistance.

Supply lines stretching back to Kuwait from central Iraqi towns like Nasiriya strained to keep the forces watered, fueled and fed. A top Army commander, Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace, said the removal of Saddam Hussein could take longer than expected and the army had paused to allow quartermasters to push provisions forward and to secure the rear area.

Testifying before Congress in Washington on Thursday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said of the eight-day-old-war: "We're still closer to the beginning than we are to the end."

His statement appeared to reflect several factors: Iraq's will to fight has proved stronger than foreseen, the 125,000 British and American troops now inside Iraq are stretched and the popular uprising widely expected in the south has not happened.

The bombardment of Baghdad aimed at government buildings, appeared designed to sap the Iraqi will to fight. But the Iraqi defense minister, Sultan Hashim Ahmed, said that allied forces would face punishing street fighting in the city that could last months.

Allied forces might encircle Baghdad within 5 to 10 days, but would eventually have to enter the city, he added. "God willing, Baghdad will be impregnable. We will fight to the end."

In coming weeks, troops already detailed to take part in the allied operation will bring the force in Iraq to more than 200,000 soldiers.

In the north, the Iraqi Army abandoned the town of Chamchamal, close to the border with the northern enclave under Kurdish control. Fighters from the Kurdish minority that predominates in the region, known as pesh merga, rushed into the city, bringing their front lines closer to the strategic oil center at Kirkuk, about 150 miles north of Baghdad. It was the first time that the informal border had been breached by the American-backed Kurds.

President Bush met with British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Thursday. Both deflected questions about allied forces encountering unanticipated delays and resistance.

"This isn't a matter of timetable, it's a matter of victory," Mr. Bush said. "And the Iraqi people have got to know that they will be liberated and Saddam Hussein will be removed, no matter how long it takes."

On the southern approach to Baghdad, the front-line Iraqi force, known as the Medina division, received reinforcements on Thursday and perhaps chemical weapons, intelligence officers said, to thwart the advance on the capital by the American Third Infantry Division.

Hundreds of refugees streamed out of the southern city of Basra on Thursday, as British tanks pointed their muzzles down long boulevards into the city where loyalists to Mr. Hussein fired mortar rounds at residents who protested on Tuesday.

South of the city, British tank units backed by air support destroyed 14 outdated Iraqi tanks that were part of a large armored column that came out of the city early Thursday and attacked British commando positions on Fao.

Air Marshal Bryan Burridge, commander of British forces in the Persian Gulf, said it appeared that the Iraqi formation fought as if it didn't "know its business."

He said most of the soldiers had been pressed into a suicidal attack by hard-line loyalists who are threatening troops and their families with execution in order to force soldiers into battle. There was no independent means to verify his acount.

Most of the soldiers who died were from the Iraqi 51st Division, reported to have surrendered or fled during the first days of the war. Members of the division were back on the battlefield under threat, military officials said, to make a last stand or die.

A force of 30 British Challenger tanks and 200 soldiers from the Seventh Armored Brigade — known as the Desert Rats — attacked a Baath Party headquarters in Zubayr outside Basra, where on Tuesday they seized a top party official in a commando raid.

In the northern Kurdish enclave, American 173rd Airborne troops, who made a dramatic entry by parachute on Wednesday, secured an airfield at Harir, providing the coalition with its first base in the region from which to conduct operations against Iraqi forces on Baghdad's northern flank.

In Nasiriya, about 230 miles south of Baghdad, marines faced another day of gun battles with irregular forces mounted in armored personnel carriers with rocket launchers and antiaircraft systems.

The American force that is holding the strategic crossroads, with its bridges across the Euphrates River, suffered an unspecified number of casualties during a 90-minute battle, said Gen. Vince Brooks of the Central Command.

In Washington on Thursday night, the Pentagon confirmed two more deaths in action — those of Cpl. Evan T. James and Hospital Corpsman Third Class Michael Vann Johnson Jr., 25, of Little Rock, Ark.

American commanders expressed surprise at the level of resistance in a country where they expected to be greeted, if not with rose petals, at least with gratitude.

One lieutenant colonel standing next to a loudspeaker truck in central Iraq broadcasting "Surrender, surrender, surrender," observed: "They ain't surrendering. I don't know why not."

But with shortages and logistical bottlenecks reported up and down the armored columns splayed across the ancient landscape of Babylon, the Army commander in the field, General Wallace, said his forces were in the midst of a pause to recover from three days of intense sandstorms and to allow provisioning convoys to catch up on the long road back to Kuwait.

"We knew we would have to pause at some point," he told reporters in central Iraq. But the delays are being extended, he indicated, because, "We're still fighting the enemy every night."

Many commanders in the field already knew that the allied offensive had been delayed.

Instead of forming up to attack the Medina division of Republican Guard, much of the Third Infantry Division was still diverted Thursday in a cordon around the holy city of Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad, battling snipers and irregular troops who infiltrated the American lines near Kifl, where they threw up harassing fire and charged American tanks in light trucks.

The predicament prompted one lieutenant colonel to curse in exasperation, "I'll be here a month and a half."

B-52 bombers flew missions against reinforcing columns that rolled out of Baghdad on Wednesday to reinforce Iraqi troops fighting around Najaf. One Iraqi soldier shot in the stomach at Kifl said that he was part of a 450-man contingent that had been ordered south. He cursed Mr. Hussein as he was rushed to an American field hospital.

To the east, the First Marine Division struggled to catch up on the Army's right flank, but Marine officials said privately that they were at least three days behind schedule in preparations for a ground assault on Baghdad.

A Marine officer complained that the serpentine formation of 7,000 vehicles has been harassed by Iraqi fire "every mile on the way up" the river valleys of central Iraq.

American military officials also disclosed on Thursday partial results of their investigation into the errant bomb or missile that struck a civilian Baghdad market the day before, killing 15 people and wounding 30 or more.

"We did have an air mission that attacked some targets" in Baghdad at about the time the market erupted in a powerful explosion, General Brooks said. But he said the American bombs were not targeted "in that area."

While not ruling out that an American weapon went astray, he suggested that an errant Iraqi surface-to-air missile, which was fired at American jets, may have been fired and fell back onto the market.

France today called for reconciliation with the United States after the divisive debate at the United Nations in which President Jacques Chirac threatened to veto any resolution that would authorize the United States and Britain to go to war.

[ 03-28-2003, 11:40 AM: Message edited by: Timber Loftis ]

[Charean]

You are right, hard to read during that rambling. Like he had to say EVERYTHING that happened all at once, poor guy.

The last line was intresting. I hear they want to be a big part of the after conflict reconstruction.

Now it is a matter of getting the supplies to the people who need it. Not an easy job, by a long shot.