Veterans for Common Sense

Brize Norton Royal Air Force Base, United Kingdom – They heard the noise first. Then a dark shape broke through the clouds that hung over RAF Brize Norton.

The C-17 cargo aircraft slowly came into view over the Oxfordshire airbase. After landing and taxiing past flags flying at half-mast, Flight 22073 came to a halt at 12.10 yesterday afternoon.

Three chaplains from the navy, air force and army walked towards the plane – a small poignant welcome party, dwarfed by the shadow of the hulking black craft. A hundred yards away, relatives waited.

The tailgate of the plane inched down. As the giant engines slowed and the noise of cars on the nearby M40 drifted over the Oxfordshire base, fellow servicemen entered the cavernous hold. A military band played Handel’s death march.

The coffins, each draped in the Union Flag, appeared tiny next to the C-17, normally used to carry tanks and armoured personnel carriers to theatres of war. The bodies wouldn’t have taken up much space in the hold, a place where young men being ferried home might share a joke, be boisterous and talk about the good times ahead.

But this was a different type of homecoming. The bodies of the first 10 British servicemen to die in the Iraq war were coming home.

Groups of six servicemen from HMS Collingwood in Portsmouth emerged from the gloom of the aircraft hold with a coffin on their shoulders and began a slow march to a waiting hearse. As each coffin was brought out, the three chaplains said quiet prayers. A band from the Royal Marines 3 Commando Brigade, based at Stonehouse Plymouth, began to play Handel as the first body – that of Royal Navy mechanic Ian Seymour – was brought out. All of the British dead brought home yesterday had died as a result of accidents.

The first eight coffins to be carried from the aircraft were those containing the bodies of the British servicemen who died when a US helicopter they were aboard crashed south of the Kuwait border.

The final two contained the bodies of Flight Lieutenant Dave Williams and Flight Lieutenant Kevin Main of the Royal Air Force. They died when their GR4 Tornado aircraft was engaged near the Kuwaiti border by an American Patriot missile battery.

The families of the dead, each of whom was allowed to bring five members to see their sons come home, rose slowly to their feet, leaning on each other for support, as the coffins were placed in black hearses. The aircraft taxied along the two-mile long runway and disappeared over the horizon before reappearing behind a nearby hanger and gliding to a halt just 50 yards in front of the mourners.

There was a moment of stillness broken only by bird song, then the rear door of the terminal building opened and the Royal Marine band marched out in silence. It was followed by 70 coffin bearers, the three chaplains and, finally, 10 hearses.

Inside the coffins were: Captain Philip Guy; Warrant Officer Mark Stratford; Major Jason Ward; Marine Sholto Hedenskog; Sergeant John Cecil; Lance Bombardier Llywelyn Evans; Sergeant Les Hehir; Operator Mechanic Ian Seymour; Flt-Lt Kevin Main; and Flt-Lt Dave William.

Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, and Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, also attended the ceremony along with several senior military and defence officials.

Among the senior military officials attending were the Commandant General of the Royal Marines, Major General Tony Milton; the Commander-in-Chief, Land Command General Sir Timothy Granville-Chapman; the Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet Admiral Jonathon Band; and Air Marshal Sir John Day. They stood among the families of the servicemen in full dress uniform as each coffin was slowly brought from the rear of the aircraft to a waiting hearse before being driven to a temporary mortuary at the airbase.

After the final coffin was brought from the aircraft and placed in a hearse, the Royal Marines band stopped playing and marched slowly and solemnly away.

The military and defence officials and families of the dead servicemen then began to file back into the main passenger terminal as the three chaplains who had led the prayers walked back to join them. The RAF flag above the passenger terminal had been flying at half-mast for the duration of the ceremony, which was bathed in hazy sunshine.

After the bodies of their sons had gone, the families filed back inside the terminal building and the C-17 sat on the deserted runway. No one knows where it will be sent next, but the likelihood is that it will return to the Gulf.

Soon, the plane will take off again and disappear into the sky. Outside RAF Brize Norton, the traffic will roar by.

Colonel Chris Vernon also said the last five days of fighting had made it impossible to get aid into the area.

“Basra (is) clearly nowhere near yet in our hands and we have no way at the moment of getting humanitarian aid into Basra,” he admitted on Sky News.

“But clearly, as we begin to pressurise Basra and to begin to dominate it militarily we should move towards the day we can get humanitarian aid into Basra.”

The colonel said fighting had taken place on the outskirts of the city.

But allied troops had not gone into the city centre “for worry of collateral damage”.

He said: “The key to Basra is to eradicate the Baath Party control and the irregular forces operating under their control there.”

By doing so, the “hearts and minds” relief operation could then be put in place for the civilian people on the ground.

“Not easy, no time lines on it, but that’s what we are working towards,” he said.

The colonel said he was confident they had enough British troops based in southern Iraq.

The Anglo-American war now being fought in the Middle East is without question the most flagrant act of aggression carried out by a British government in modern times. The assault on Iraq which began a week ago, in the teeth of global and national opinion, was launched without even the flimsiest Iraqi provocation or threat to Britain or the US, in breach of the UN charter and international law, and in defiance of the majority of states represented on the UN security council.

It is necessary to descend deep into the mire of the colonial era to find some sort of precedent or parallel for this piratical onslaught. However wrong or unnecessary, every previous British war for the past 80 years or more has been fought in response to some invasion, rebellion, civil war or emergency. Even in the most crudely rapacious case of Suez, there was at least a challenge in the form of the nationalisation of the canal. Not so with Iraq, where the regime was actually destroying missiles with which it might have hoped to defend itself only a couple of days before the start of the US-led attack.

But there is little reflection of this reality, or of Anglo-American isolation in the world over the war, in either the bulk of the British media coverage or the response from most politicians and public figures. Little is now heard of the original pretext for war, Iraq’s much-vaunted weapons of mass destruction, and regime change – that lodestar of the US hawks which Tony Blair struggled to dissociate himself from for so long – is now the uncontested mission of the campaign. Having lost the public debate on the war, Blair has demanded that a divided nation rally round British troops carrying out his policy of aggression in the Gulf. And under a barrage of war propaganda, the soft centre of public opinion has dutifully shifted ground – in the wake of those MPs who put their careers before constituents and conscience once Blair had failed to secure UN authorisation. Many balk at criticising the war when British soldiers are in action, but it’s hardly a position that can be defended as moral or principled when the action they are taking part in arguably constitutes a war crime. And whether public support holds up under the pressure of events in Iraq – such as yesterday’s civilian carnage in a Baghdad market – remains to be seen.

Events have, of course, signally failed to follow their expected course. The pre-invasion spin couldn’t have been clearer. The Iraqis would not fight, we were told, but would welcome US and British invaders with open arms. The bulk of the regular army would capitulate as soon as soon as they saw the glint on the columns of American armour. The war might even only last six days, Donald Rumsfeld suggested, in a contemptuous evocation of the Arabs’ humiliation in the Six Day war of 1967. His hard right Republican allies insisted it would be a “cakewalk”. British ministers, as ever, took their cue from across the Atlantic, while the intelligence agencies and US-financed Iraqi opposition groups reinforced their arrogant assumptions.

But Rumsfeld’s six days have been and gone and resistance to the most powerful military machine in history continues to be fierce across Iraq – in and around the very Shi’ite-dominated towns and cities, such as Najaf and Nasiriyah, that the US and Britain expected to be least willing to fight. Nor has the Iraqi army yet collapsed or surrendered in large numbers, while regular units are harrying US and British forces along with loyalist militias. One senior US commander told the New York Times yesterday, “we did not put enough credence in their abilities,” while another conceded that “we did not expect them to attack”. The International Herald Tribune recorded dolefully that “the people greeting American troops have been much cooler than many had hoped”.

There was little public preparation for the resistance that is now taking place. Third World peoples have after all been allocated a largely passive role in the security arrangements of the new world order – the best they can hope for is to be “liberated” and be grateful for it. There has been little understanding that, however much many Iraqis want to see the back of Saddam Hussein, they also – like any other people – don’t want their country occupied by foreign powers. No doubt Ba’athist militias are playing a coercive role in stiffening resistance. There are also those who cannot expect to survive the fall of the dictatorship and therefore have nothing to lose. But the scale and commitment of the resistance – along with reports of hundreds of Iraqis struggling to return from Syria and Jordan to fight – suggests that it is driven far more by national and religious pride. Most of these people are not fighting for Saddam Hussein, but for the independence of their homeland.

To fail to recognise this now obvious reality is not only condescending, but stupid. But then we have been subjected to such a blizzard of disinformation in recent days – from the reported deaths of Tariq Aziz and Saddam Hussein to the non-existent chemical weapons plant and Tuesday’s uprising in Basra – that it should come as no surprise to hear everyone from British and US defence ministers to BBC television presenters refer to Iraqis defending their own country as “terrorists”.

Of course, the US has the military might to break Iraqi conventional resistance and impose a puppet administration in Baghdad in order to change the regional balance of power, oversee the privatisation of Iraq’s oil and parcel out reconstruction contracts to itself and its friends. But the course of this war will also have a huge political impact, in Iraq and throughout the world. This is after all a demonstration war, designed to cow and discipline both the enemies and allies of the US. The tougher the Iraqi resistance, the more difficult it will be for the US to impose its will in the country, and move on to the next target in the never-ending war on terror. The longer Iraqis are able and choose to resist, the more the pressure will also build against the war in the rest of the world.

Almost 86 years ago to the day, the British commander Lieutenant General Stanley Maude issued a proclamation to the people of Baghdad, whose city his forces had just occupied. “Our armies,” he declared, “do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors, but as liberators.” Within three years, 10,000 had died in a national Iraqi uprising against the British rulers, who gassed and bombed the insurgents. On the eve of last week’s invasion Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins echoed Maude in a speech to British troops. “We go to liberate, not to conquer”, he told them. All the signs from the past few days are that a new colonial occupation of Iraq – however it is dressed up – will face determined guerrilla resistance long after Saddam Hussein has gone; and that the occupiers will once again be driven out.

s.milne@guardian.co.uk

Some US Tomahawk cruise missiles aimed at Iraq have fallen on Saudi Arabia, forcing planners to suspend certain routes for launches, US military commanders say.

“In the case of Saudi Arabia, we did have a number of T-LAM missiles that were reported down in their territory,” Major General Victor Renuart said at war headquarters in Qatar.

“We continue to use Tomahawk cruise missiles throughout the theatre. We have coordinated with the Saudis to hold on a couple of routes that might put them in a position where they could be close to any civilian population,” he told a news conference.

A US defence official, speaking in Washington on condition of anonymity, says “about five” Tomahawk missiles landed in the Saudi desert without exploding.

Saudi Arabia’s official SPA news agency quoted an unnamed high-ranking Saudi defence official as saying the kingdom had submitted an official complaint to the US regarding the incident.

The official also reiterated Saudi Arabia’s position that it will not participate in the war with Iraq in any way, SPA said.

Maj Gen Renuart says the problem occurs shortly after the launch phase of the missiles, before they begin their cruise flight toward Iraq.

“Basically we have a situation where the Saudis have said, ‘Can you see if we can figure out what has caused this?'” Maj Gen Renuart said.

“And so we have agreed with them to conduct a review of those launch procedures.”

In Washington, the defence official expressed confidence US forces would at some point regain the ability to fire missiles across Saudi territory along the routes that have been suspended.

However, he did not say when that would happen.

The official says the suspension has had “no effect” on US war operations but did not rule out the possibility missile-firing warships would have to move to provide different routes for the cruise missiles to travel to Iraqi targets.

Tomahawk cruise missiles are fired by ships and submarines at land targets.

A spokesman, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Owens, said every reasonable possibility was being investigated.

The Washington Post on Friday quoted a military source as saying an A-10 Thunderbolt II warplane may have mistaken the Marines for Iraqi fighters and attacked them.

Army Lt. Gen. John Abizaid said last week that the Marines were ambushed March 23 after Iraqi solders faked a surrender then fired a rocket-propelled grenade.

At least six U.S. or British troops have been killed by so-called friendly fire since the start of the campaign against Iraq.

Owens also said he could not confirm a report that a Marine was missing or captured near the town of Shatra, about 30 miles north of Nasiriya.

Friday night, Marines were escorting a 200-vehicle convoy north through Shatra when the last vehicles came under attack with rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine-gun fire, a reporter with the Richmond Times-Dispatch embedded with the 1st Marine Division said.

A 7-ton truck overturned, and Marines raced to fend off the attack. As they pulled out, they discovered a Marine was missing, Maj. Dave Holahan told the reporter. Intelligence reports Saturday indicated the missing Marine had been captured and been displayed in the middle of town.

Washington, DC (Reuters) – Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly rejected advice from Pentagon planners that substantially more troops and armor would be needed to fight a war in Iraq, New Yorker Magazine reported.

In an article for its April 7 edition, which goes on sale on Monday, the weekly said Rumsfeld insisted at least six times in the run-up to the conflict that the proposed number of ground troops be sharply reduced and got his way.

“He thought he knew better. He was the decision-maker at every turn,” the article quoted an unidentified senior Pentagon planner as saying. “This is the mess Rummy put himself in because he didn’t want a heavy footprint on the ground.”

It also said Rumsfeld had overruled advice from war commander Gen. Tommy Franks to delay the invasion until troops denied access through Turkey could be brought in by another route and miscalculated the level of Iraqi resistance.

“They’ve got no resources. He was so focused on proving his point — that the Iraqis were going to fall apart,” the article, by veteran journalist Seymour Hersh, cited an unnamed former high-level intelligence official as saying.

A spokesman at the Pentagon declined to comment on the article.

Rumsfeld is known to have a difficult relationship with the Army’s upper echelons while he commands strong loyalty from U.S. special operations forces, a key component in the war.

He has insisted the invasion has made good progress since it was launched 10 days ago, with some ground troops 50 miles from the capital, despite unexpected guerrilla-style attacks on long supply lines from Kuwait.

Hersh, however, quoted the former intelligence official as saying the war was now a stalemate.

Much of the supply of Tomahawk cruise missiles has been expended, aircraft carriers were going to run out of precision guided bombs and there were serious maintenance problems with tanks, armored vehicles and other equipment, the article said.

“The only hope is that they can hold out until reinforcements arrive,” the former official said.

The article quoted the senior planner as saying Rumsfeld had wanted to “do the war on the cheap” and believed that precision bombing would bring victory.

Some 125,000 U.S. and British troops are now in Iraq. U.S. officials on Thursday said they planned to bring in another 100,000 U.S. soldiers by the end of April.

Washington, DC — Though the scion of a family steeped in politics and public service, George W. Bush remains a young president who came to the White House with relatively limited knowledge of the world and its ills. Yet for two years he has ridden high in public esteem, thanks to confident leadership after Sept. 11 and a surer political touch than his detractors give him credit for.

Is his luck about to turn in the winds and sands of Iraq?

It is quite true, as administration officials say with metronomic regularity, that coalition forces have scored singular successes in the early days of the war, and it is too early to rule out a speedy conclusion. But there have been military surprises and diplomatic shortfalls.

With every passing day, it is more evident that the failure to obtain permission from Turkey for American troops to cross its territory and open a northern front constituted a diplomatic debacle. With every passing day, it is more evident that the allies made two gross military misjudgments in concluding that coalition forces could safely bypass Basra and Nasiriya and that Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq would rise up against Saddam Hussein.

Already, the commander of American ground forces in the war zone has conceded that the war that they are fighting is not the one they and their officers had foreseen. “Shock and awe” neither shocked nor awed.

Other potential perils lie ahead. Among senior Washington political figures of both parties, four are mentioned most, as follows:

The war could last so long that the American public loses patience, having been conditioned by predictions from American officials (to quote one of them, Vice President Dick Cheney) that Mr. Hussein’s government would prove to be “a house of cards.” This has not happened yet; the polls indicate that nearly three of four Americans remain unshaken in their support of Mr. Bush’s war policies, despite surprises on the battlefield. The White House believes that public patience, often fickle in recent years, was fortified by 9/11.

Street-by-street fighting in the rubble of Baghdad and other cities — an eventuality that American strategists have long sought to avoid — now looks more likely. Mr. Hussein’s aides have promised savage resistance. If it materializes, it could produce large coalition casualties, challenging American resolve, and equally large Iraqi civilian casualties, with dire consequences for the coalition’s attempt to picture itself as the liberator of Iraq. A heart-rending picture of a wounded 2-year-old was widely published today after a Baghdad market was ripped apart by an explosion Iraqi officials attributed to a coalition bomb.

Saddam Hussein could escape, denying the war effort a definitive totem of victory. It sounds improbable, given the terrifying array of force available to the coalition, but other notorious figures remain at large despite intensive manhunts, including the wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and the Qaeda mastermind, Osama bin Laden.

The hunt for weapons of mass destruction could prove futile — a development that would make the war look like a wild-goose chase.

Of course, all that is a worst case prognosis. As the war in Afghanistan showed, hard military slogging can give way suddenly to victory. But will victory in Iraq take the shape the United States so badly needs?

Mr. Hussein seems to have decided that he can turn this war into Vietnam Redux. He appears willing to take casualties and to give away territory to gain time. Over time, his strategy implies, he thinks he can isolate the United States and build a coalition of third world nations. Already he is seen as less of an ogre and more of a defender of Islamic honor across the Arab world.

Most Republicans radiate confidence in not only military but also political and diplomatic success.

The longtime Republican pollster Robert Teeter said recently, “If we’ve gotten rid of Saddam and stabilized Iraq, then things will look pretty good.” Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, steadfast in his argument that that is precisely what will happen, told the naysayers on Friday that “it’s a bit early for history to be written.”

Democrats are more dubious.

“Saddam won’t win,” said Richard C. Holbrooke, the former United States representative at the United Nations. “Unlike L.B.J. in Vietnam, Bush won’t quit. He’s a different kind of Texan. He’ll escalate and keep escalating. In the end his military strategy will probably succeed in destroying Saddam.

“But it may result in a Muslim jihad against us and our friends. Achieving our narrow objective of regime change may take so long and trigger so many consequences that it’s no victory at all. Our ultimate goal, which is promoting stability in the Middle East, may well prove elusive.”

Mr. Bush came to office determined, by his own account, not to swagger and not to overreach. “If we’re an arrogant nation, they’ll resent us,” he said in the second presidential debate against Al Gore in 2000. “If we’re a humble nation but strong, they’ll welcome us.” That was a promise to check hubris at the door, an effort to guard against the temptation to believe that because he had such awesome power at his fingertips, he could and should use it to achieve grandiose objectives.

Like remaking a chaotic region in our own democratic image.

The very term “shock and awe” has a swagger to it, no doubt because it was intended to discourage Mr. Hussein and his circle. But it rings hollow now, and there are other signs of overconfidence. A reserve officer was told some time ago, for example, that he would be needed as part of a provisional government in Baghdad, on March 28.

For the moment, Mr. Bush seems secure. People like him. None of his possible Democratic opponents loom as a major threat, not so far.

Still, for presidents, especially for wartime leaders, political capital can drain quickly from the White House account. After the guns fall silent, voters’ eyes turn elsewhere, often to social and economic needs. It happened to Winston Churchill late in World War II, and as this president remembers better than most, it happened to his father, too.

… Rumsfeld tactics fail as chief admits: “This is not what we war-gamed for” …

Washington – It has all begun to go horribly wrong for Donald Rumsfeld. The White House’s No1 hawk dreamed of a swift, hi-tech precision war. Smart bombs and Special Forces would triumphantly sweep all before them.

Basra would revolt, Baghdad would follow. Saddam would be his. But, nine days in, it hasn’t quite turned out like that.

And yesterday, as US Defence chief Donald Rumsfeld’s grand design for a quick victory lay in tatters, the coalition’s top brass were frantically redrawing battle plans. The rethink came as the US army’s most senior ground commander admitted they had underestimated Iraqi tactics and the fierce levels of resistance.

Lt General William Wallace said: “The enemy we’re fighting is a bit different than the one we war-gamed against, because of the paramilitary forces.

“We knew they were here, but we did not know how they would fight.”

General Wallace, head of US 5th Corps, said he was aware of pressure for a quick victory, but admitted it will take longer than planned.

He said: “We’ve got to take this pause. We’re still fighting the enemy every night. We’re doing things to keep him operating at a higher tempo than the one we’re at.”

The general confessed he was stunned by Iraqi tactics.

TACTICS: Rumsfeld

He said: “The attacks we’re seeing are bizarre. Technical vehicles with .50-calibre weapons – any kind of weapon – leading the charge. They were even charging tanks.”

Pentagon chiefs now do not expect to launch a major offensive on Baghdad for at least a month in an attempt to quell huge pockets of fighting raging across Iraq.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, Mr Rumsfeld is still convinced the people of Baghdad will rise up and overthrow Saddam.

He says that the US will now lay siege to the capital, but he also admits: “It could take some time.”

His tone is starkly different from when he confidently crowed at a US air base at Aviano on February 7: “It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.”

One senior military official said last night: “We’re not going back to the drawing board completely – but it’s pretty close.”

The US now plans to step up the air strikes – aping the 35-day bombing campaign that started the first Gulf War – as spy chiefs confirmed Saddam was alive and in full control of his forces.

Colonel Ben Hodges, commander of the 1st Brigade of the 101st in northern Iraq, said: “Everybody’s frame of reference is changing. The enemy always gets a vote. You fight the enemy and not the plan.

“I personally underestimated the willingness of the Fedayeen to fight, or maybe overestimated the willingness of the Shi’ites to rise up.”

A snapshot of the coalition problems is Nassiriya where intense fire-fights have resulted in heavy casualties on both sides.

Injured Gunnery Sergeant Tracy Hale said: “Nassiriya was supposed to be a six-hour battle. It’s already been five days of non-stop fighting.”

It was anticipated that Saddam would go for an urban defence, centred on Baghdad.

But what the war-planners didn’t expect was house-to-house battles in every major town while militia fighters attacked troops from the rear and sabotaged supply lines.

Troops less than 60 miles from Baghdad are unable to go any further as they run low on food, fuel and water.

A 300-truck US convoy carrying 160,000 gallons of fuel and 180 tons of ammunition has been trying to get north from Kuwait for more than three days, but has been blocked by guerrilla-style attacks.

Iraq has said troops will have to fight their way into Baghdad street by street. “The enemy must come inside Baghdad and that will be its grave,” said Defence Minister Sultan Hashem Ahmed.

Rumsfeld was warned by the CIA in February that fedayeen fighters would pose the greatest threat.

And in Qatar, Brigadier General Vincent Brooks hinted that Central Command may be out of touch with the real situation on the ground.

He said: “There is a different view on planet Earth.”

AWFUL TRUTH IS DAWNING ON ALL OF US

The prospect of our troops fighting their way into Basra and Baghdad will mean it’s going to be a very basic and bloody war, not the hi-tech video game politicians led us to believe.

A tough time lies ahead for our troops and the Iraqi civilians they are there to liberate.

These are things British and American military planners have always known but, it seems, the politicians never listened to.

The awful truth is now dawning on all of us as stories of deaths and Iraqi resistance continue to reach our TV screens hourly.

We shouldn’t be surprised Iraqis are fighting in civilian clothes.That is how you tackle a superior force. The troops have likened our equipment to Ferraris and compared the enemies’ to Austin Allegros.

But as they know only too well, once you are fighting house-to-house instead of on open terrain it doesn’t really matter what the weapons are like. Even if it’s 60 years old and firing at you from a window it will kill you.

This sort of urban guerrilla war boils down to our troops fighting house-to-house, street-to-street with bayonets fixed and as much ammunition as they can carry.

Mobility and manoeuvre hit a dead end in the condensed and confusing concrete of Baghdad. Hi-tech equipment and armour is of limited use as our troops push into the city trying to keep the infrastructure intact, and civilians alive at the same time.

Iraqi soldiers have the advantage. They know its streets and alleyways. They have prepared booby traps and set up “killing areas” to try and lure our troops into.

None of this will come as a surprise to our troops. After all, they train to fight against an enemy such as this and are excellent at it. As the Army saying goes. Train hard – fight easy. Train easy – fight hard and die. But that doesn’t mean they are immune to the danger. There will be fear as they approach the capital.

I get angry when politicians tell us that the Iraqi Republican guard are no match for our troops and equipment. They tend to be people who have never seen combat.

The fact is the Republican Guard have artillery pieces, plenty of tanks, and are certainly much better armed than soldiers our troops have so far faced in the desert.

We just have to look at what an inferior force such as the Palestinians can inflict when taking on the Israelis in their home towns.

Over the last few days we’ve seen the war escalate and casualties grow.

What the politicians led us to believe isn’t quite shaping up. They began by telling us that this war would be quick and easy. They are now beginning to shift uncomfortably.

America is suddenly doubling its forces in Iraq – something the military had wanted all along. Politicians were not listening.

But Rumsfeld – and the others like him- have never been in combat and never properly listened to military advice.

Military planners who wanted more men from the outset were told this war was too important to be left to the generals. But these generals must be listened to.

They can then operate in a way that wins the war quickly – and saves our troops’ lives.

Washington – A top Pentagon health official conceded Tuesday that conducting physical examinations of troops after military deployments might help prevent a recurrence of gulf war illness.

William Winkenwerder, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, also told a congressional hearing that the Pentagon’s brief health questionnaire, which it plans to give to troops as a substitute for physical exams, might not be adequate.

“I’ve already initiated an effort to reassess this survey to see if it collects all the information,” he said.

The hearing was before a House Government Reform subcommittee looking into the health care of deployed forces, and the lessons learned from the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

With about 300,000 troops now in the gulf or on their way, the military has been criticized recently for failing to follow a 1997 law that requires medical screenings of troops before and after deployment.

The Kansas City Star reported this month that the military was conducting neither physical or mental examinations, nor blood sampling, as Congress required.

“What’s so difficult about all of this?” asked Rep. William Janklow, a South Dakota Republican. “We’re talking about elementary data? What is so mysterious about giving everyone a physical exam?”

Throughout most of the hearing, Winkenwerder insisted the Pentagon was doing the appropriate amount of medical testing.

Winkenwerder said the questionnaire would provide a baseline for medical information about the troops. Certain answers could trigger more detailed questions, he said, adding that “hands-on” physical examinations provided limited value.

He said that the blood samples from the troops were part of the military’s standard test for HIV, and that samples older than a year would not be used.

“We feel we are following the law and doing it in a way that makes sense,” Winkenwerder said.

Rep. Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican who leads the subcommittee and has been investigating gulf war illness for a decade, said Congress intended otherwise.

“From my standpoint, you’re not meeting the letter of the law, clearly you’re not meeting the spirit of the law,” Shays said.

Gulf war illness became the collective name for a variety of unexplained illnesses that have plagued thousands of veterans. Over the years they have reported such ailments as skin rashes, headaches, loss of motor skills, memory loss, and equilibrium problems.

Government agencies and medical experts, looking for causes, have investigated the malady. They have covered the gamut: the release of chemical agents when Iraq’s stockpiles were burned after the war; materials used in military equipment to protect against such agents; even vaccines to guard against those deadly agents. Other potential culprits are pollution from burning oil wells, and desert parasites and diseases.

Since no cause was ever established, veterans battled for years to get medical treatment and compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Stephen Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center, a nonprofit veterans service group, predicted that since the military was still not collecting the medical data, veterans of the current war would have just as much trouble.

“The public law is being ignored,” Robinson said, “thereby setting up mystery illnesses to present themselves after the war.”

To reach David Goldstein, Washington correspondent, call (202) 383-6105 or send email to dgoldstein@krwashington.com

Horrific images of Iraqi civilians reportedly killed by the coalition bombing of Basra were being shown on the Arabic news station al-Jazeera yesterday. Several Arab media outlets described the civilian deaths there as a “massacre”.

Al-Jazeera’s footage included an Iraqi child with the back of its head apparently blown off and wounded people covered in blood being treated on the floor of a hospital.

It apologised for showing disturbing pictures but said: “The world should know the truth and what is going on.”

The Iraqi information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, claimed that 77 civilians had been killed and 366 wounded in Basra, mainly by cluster bombs.

Al-Jazeera, an influential channel seen throughout the Arab world, put the number of civilian dead at 50.

The Lebanese newspaper as-Safir claimed that US missiles had been used to “assassinate the children of Basra”. Other Lebanese papers made similar claims of casualties from bombing by F-16 fighter planes.

The Pentagon would not comment on the reports. At a news conference in Kuwait, Major-General Daniel Leaf of the US Air Force said the coalition forces were doing all they could to avoid such deaths, but added that he could not confirm or deny the specific Iraqi claims.

There was no official confirmation that the coalition had bombed Basra, but repeated explosions in the city’s outskirts could be heard in the area.

British forces approaching Basra found a huge arsenal of Iraqi weapons including two Russian-made missiles, each 6 metres long, nine warheads, and giant anti-shipping mines, according to a reporter with 7 Armoured Brigade.

The weapons were in dozens of bunkers at a place marked on maps as the Zubayar heliport.

The British troops met heavy Iraqi resistance as they reached the suburbs of Basra. Reporters with 7 Armoured Brigade, the Desert Rats, said they had encountered barrages of rocket-propelled grenades and artillery, mortars and machine-gun fire.

More than 60 Iraqi soldiers were reported killed, and three Iraqi T-55 tanks were destroyed in the fighting, which began to get fierce on Saturday night.

About 70 Iraqi prisoners of war were taken.

Witnesses said a missile was launched from the city, and two mobile Scud launchers and four missiles were spotted at a school.

There was no indication last night that the missile launched was a Scud. But an Iraqi who had surrendered told British troops that the Iraqis planned a “big bombing” today.

The final stages of the ground advance on Basra, Iraq’s second city and an oil production centre, were being spearheaded by British forces, while the US troops pushed northwards, arriving within 100 miles of Baghdad by yesterday afternoon.

The fierce fighting on the approach to Basra seemed to have subsided by yesterday evening.

Tanks moving into position on the edge of the city encountered abandoned Iraqi tanks, deserted barracks and white flags flying from houses in a nearby village.

Iraqi prisoners of war are reported to have told British intelligence officers that they had tried to surrender on Friday, but Iraqi secret security agents had forced them at gunpoint to return to the battle front.

Compiled from pool reports from Gethin Chamberlain, Martin Bentham and Greg Swift with the 7 Armoured Brigade.