convinced of what U're doin' ??? (!(!!))
piX found via www.freitag.de
AP

Fifteen days since the coalition's entry into Iraq, our coalition forces have preserved key resources for the future of Iraq, have provided water, food and medical support to liberated areas of Iraq, and have removed the influence of the regime throughout most of Iraq.
We remain on our plan and we recognize that the achievements to date have come with a cost in lives. We continue to remember those who have sacrificed all in doing their duty, and we remember their families.
The coalition operations over the last 24 hours remain focused and effective. The coalition attacked regime command and control targets, surface-to-surface missiles, air defenses, and any identified military aircraft.
I have two products to show you from a recent precision attack against regime targets. This image is a regime command and control facility in the vicinity of Tikrit. The target was struck on the 2nd of April. And I'll show you on the -- this image here, you can see there's only a minor amount of damage that's apparent. The part of the structure that was being attacked is actually under the ground. So, let's go back to the split now. Again, it's this one. And post-strike, here. Some of our weaponeering decisions will let us penetrate through concrete and cause a detonation beneath them. There are many of these facilities that are actually underground.
The second image is a command and control facility in Baghdad. And this target was struck on the 1st of April. The post-strike, please. And the split.
Our coalition special operations forces in northern Iraq continued concentrated air attacks against regime military forces in northern Iraq. They're maintaining effective control of roads leading into or out of Iraq, and roads between Baghdad and Tikrit. Special operations forces in key locations throughout the country are positioned to locate regime facilities or strategic systems, and to direct precision fires to destroy them.
This next video shows a special operations air asset engaging regime command and control facilities in western Iraq. This is a military complex for command and control. A series of buildings were engaged in this case from an aerial platform.
The integration of operational fires by air assets, sea-based precision guided munitions, and land-based long range fires, in conjunction with a forceful land attack is proving to be devastating to Iraqi military forces. That integration is a key component of General Franks' plan. It's working, and we remain on plan to accomplish our objectives.
The land component attacked further into the defenses of Baghdad, seizing key objectives in the process. Concurrently, operations continued to eliminate paramilitaries and regime elements remaining in urban areas within the zone of attack.
in the South, U.K. forces continued to expand the area influenced by the coalition. Their efforts to rid Basra of regime death squads are effective and they're ongoing. Aggressive patrols beyond Basra resulted in the seizure of a cache of 56 surface-to-surface short-range ballistic missiles, and four missile launchers. And this was in the vicinity of al-Zubair, just north of -- north and west of Basra. While there may be more yet undiscovered, this particular seizure was a significant removal of a threat to our forces in the southern region.
Operations were conducted to ensure reply lines remain open, especially in as-Samawa and an-Najaf. As coalition forces clear these areas of regime presence, caches of weapons and ammunition are often found in residential areas, as this next image shows. These weapons and ammunition were found inside of an agricultural building in a neighborhood of an-Najaf.
The 1st Marine Expeditionary Force continued its attack towards Baghdad, destroying remnants of the Baghdad Republican Guard division near al-Kut, and elements of the Al Nida Republican Guard division between al-Kut and Baghdad. The attack continues.
Fifth Corps attacked Iraqi forces on the approach to Baghdad, and seized several key intersections on the south side of the city. The attack continued through the night, and by dawn this morning the coalition had seized the international airport west of Baghdad, formerly known as Saddam International Airport. The airport now has a new name, Baghdad International Airport, and it is the gateway to the future of Iraq.
We anticipate that in the coming days we will continue to see on the ground the types of tactics that we've seen before, including the hiding of combat equipment close to homes, the use of schools, hospitals and mosques as military facilities, and even the use of civilian assets or even civilians to hide their actions.
This short video shows an example of what I just described. In it you'll see an ambulance near the town of al-Kut, after a firefight that occurred. You can see personnel right here in this area being extracted after a coalition attack. Let's go ahead and roll the tape. And you can see the back of the ambulance is open. These are paramilitaries. The destroyed vehicle there was a military truck that had an anti-aircraft artillery system on its back, and you can see the barrels of the anti-aircraft system right here. That had already been destroyed by coalition forces, and the element you saw was trying to extricate itself from the area.
Yesterday I told you that our maritime component discovered a small boat beached along the Khor Abdullah. We've got an image of where that is located it. It was on the north bank, and their work continues to make sure the area is cleared. This find was done by our deployed members of the U.S. Coast Guard that are part of the maritime force.
We have some images of what was recovered from that particular search. Rocket propelled grenades in this particular image. Anti-tank guided missiles systems. And the third image is the rubber assault boat itself. As I mentioned, there were tunnels that were associated with this set of seen caches that were found there, and these types of things were found within the cache.
Our leaflet operations have now reached over 37 million leaflets dropped, as we communicate our efforts to communicate directly with the Iraqi population and with Iraqi military units.
Even as the coalition works to preserve Iraq's resources on behalf of the Iraqi people, we continue to find evidence of the regime placing these resources in danger.
The next image shows parts of an ancient citadel of Arapa (sp) in modern day Kirkuk within northern Iraq. This site is an archaeological remnant of the Assyrian Empire, and it is very important to the Assyrian people of northern Iraq since the ancient city of Arapa (sp) existed thousands of years ago. The regime has chosen in this case to use the ancient wall of the city to protect military equipment, and that's what you see where the arrows are located. This is the actual remnant of the wall itself. There is an ancient tomb inside of it and some more modern buildings that have been built on top.
Day by day, the coalition is facilitating the distribution of humanitarian assistance and providing quality of life improvements for the Iraqis. We've learned that the most important need in areas liberated is water. I'd like to show you a video of some of the recent efforts in water distribution.
In forward areas, water is provided by military water trailers, as you see here, providing immediate needs of water to the population. Bulk water, larger amounts of water move by water trucks from the southern region. These trucks are filled at one of the 11 water points at the end of the Kuwaiti water pipeline near Umm Qasr.
And with that, ladies and gentlemen, I'll take your questions. Yes.
Q Thanks. Neal Karlinsky with ABC. We've heard a late report coming in here about another checkpoint suicide attack near the Hadithah Dam, a pregnant, possibly three coalition troops being killed in that. Can you tell us about that? And also a late report before coming in here of a suspicious site of thousands of boxes of white powder, chemical warfare documents, and nerve agent antidotes found south of Baghdad. And if you will, in answering that, an update perhaps on yesterday's remark about suspicious -- or bottles with suspicious markings being found? Thank you.
BRIG. GEN. BROOKS: Okay, Neal. The first part, we do have a report of a car bomb explosion at a military checkpoint southeast of the Hadithah Dam area. And we talked about the Hadithah Dam and its importance yesterday. It's still early in the process for us to have a very full story of exactly what happened at the site. Initial reports do indicate that a vehicle approached the checkpoint. A woman who appeared clearly to be pregnant exited the vehicle, screaming for assistance, in some degree of distress. As coalition forces began to approach, she and the vehicle were detonated. So, she was killed by the explosion from the vehicle. We do have some combat losses as a result of this, and we'll provide more information as time goes on.
The report of the powder and boxes we've just recently heard about, and we just don't have any details that are factually based to provide to you at this point in time. Certainly it's an item of interest, and we'll get more information and report that as it goes.
What we discovered in the west near Mudaysis, where a special operations raid was ongoing, was a building that we think now was probably an NBC training school. These bottles were samples -- I think we have an image of that. Can we bring up the bottles? These were there -- this what we saw. One of the had been marked "Tabin" (sp), a chemical agent that was developed back in the '40s. Some of these were taken away and testing is ongoing. But we think that there may have been an explanation for this as an NBC training school, not an operational facility. These sorts of things happen, we get information, we proceed -- proceed to find more detailed information about what it is that is in a particular location, and we make conclusions beyond that. And that's how we see it at this point. We don't have any further investigation we're going to do on that site.
Please, Tom.
Q Tom Mintier with CNN. There are reports out near the airport, farther away from the city, that 2,500 members of the Republican Guard laid their weapons down and surrendered. What can you tell us of the status of the Republican Guard in and around Baghdad, and do you expect more resistance in the city?
BRIG. GEN. BROOKS: We have been in contact with a number of Republican Guard forces over the last several days, as you're all aware. Most of the array was outside of Baghdad, and defenses that really prevented access, easy access to Baghdad. We've attacked a number of those divisions, particularly the Baghdad Division on the east near al-Kut, the Medina Division near Karbala. We think there are mixtures, some portions of the Nebuchadnezzar Division that had reinforced the Medina Division, and today we believe we had contact with the Al Nida Division between those two locations. There may be other elements of Republican Guard forces command that have moved to reinforce or that have become intermingled. At this point, it's very difficult to separate one from another. We have had a tremendous effect on those organizations that we have encountered in the process. We still anticipate that special Republican Guard forces are operating from within Baghdad or on the outskirts of Baghdad. Some of those we may have encountered near the airport today with some very uncoordinated small-unit attacks. I won't even call them counter-attacks. They certainly came after we had possession of terrain, and they were soundly defeated in each case. Not well integrated, not coordinated, but nevertheless there is a presence of force that's out there still.
So, in answer to the question, will there be more fighting? Yes, there will be more fighting. The fighting is not complete by any stretch of the imagination. We remain cautiously optimistic. We have in fact seized a very important piece of terrain that has importance not only now but into the future of Iraq. But we don't have any doubts that there will be more fighting ahead. The nature of that fighting, we'll have to see how it unfolds. We're prepared to deal with a number of contingencies, but we're not finished with this operation at this point.
Q The surrenders?
BRIG. GEN. BROOKS: The surrender number, I don't know. I've heard that report, and we have not gotten any confirmation of 2,500 or any other number like that surrendering. We have encountered forces that have surrendered along the way. They're usually parts of units, not whole units at this point.
But we believe that as the situation continues to unfold, that may change. There may be larger sizes of units that we encounter, particularly in other parts of the country where there hasn't been as much combat, but we've had some attacks against those forces. And that will remain to be seen. And if we have more confirmation, we'll provide it to you.
www.centcom.mil

when i am totally taken in by the developments i cant help returning to german expressions
cnn.com has changed its layout, i.e. when you are looking for the casualties now, they are a very small link - nearly impossible to find. you open this link and you instantly see that the number of casualties has risen from 79 to 102 in a very short period of time.
april 5th - an extremely long speech by gen.renuart. these speeches are only online on centcom mil for a couple of days. they will be online for a longer period here on cellophan ant.
I don't want that to sound like it's meant to be minimized. There has been a very concentrated effort to keep this plan going exactly the way General Franks and the staff have built it, and the plan goes on, on time line, and in the direction we'd like for it to go.

As always, we take a minute just to remember those folks who have been wounded or lost in combat. It's important for us not to forget the cost that each of these operations exacts on the young men and women of all of the nations of the coalition.

The focus of today's briefing is going to be a sort of an operational summary. There will be some history here, things that you've seen before, but my goal today is to try to put some of that in a context for you that will hopefully allow you to understand how the operations have flowed over time.

As you know, we began building up forces some number of weeks ago, potentially months ago as we floated some forces in the early days of -- or late days of last year with the 3rd Infantry Division. Those forces continued to build over time until we began combat operations on the 21st of March.

On the 21st, we began with an insertion of special operating forces and a strike in Baghdad by a number of Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles. Those targets were key leadership targets. We think the results were very favorable, and we're not exactly sure of the result of the leaders that were involved in that, but we continue to see disruption in the command and control of the regime.

Shortly after that, the 1st Marine Division crossed the line of departure, moved north out of Kuwait into the oil fields in the south, taking control of those oilfields and begin to secure them for the future of the Iraqi people. The key elements of those oil fields were the gas-oil separators, the individual wellheads themselves, and the objective was to be able to secure those before the Iraqi regime had the opportunity to destroy them. As many of you know, there were some wellheads that were destroyed. We have since been able to bring those well fires under control. We're down to two wellheads remaining to be secured and the fires put out. A joint Kuwaiti and coalition oil firefighting team is working on those. We hope to get the last two of those oil well fires put out within the next few days.

In addition to the oil heads that were damaged, we had a number of breaks in pipelines. Some of those were ignited. We have had a number of pools of oil that were let out on to the ground. Some of those were ignited as well. And we have since brought the majority of those under control, both securing the infrastructure in the oil fields and repairing those to be able to bring that back into operation.

I had some maps earlier that were going to go along with this, but as you know, sometimes computers trick you, and so I'm going to have to go without the maps that will kind of walk you through what the ground looked like as we moved through southern Iraq.

But during those first few days, we moved with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force from south to north from Kuwait, and then with the 3rd Infantry Division moving from Kuwait's western, northwestern border to the northwest towards An Nasiriyah, As-Samawa, An Najaf, and then continuing on. The 3rd Infantry Division attacked to seize initially the Tallil airfield, the town of An Nasiriyah, and then to follow -- with a follow-on objective of the town of As-Samawa. We also seized key Highway 1 bridges in the vicinity of An Nasiriyah to allow for the 1st Marine Division to then move forward to the north as they made the turn coming up out of the oil fields and continuing on towards As-Shatra (sp) and al-Kut to engage a Republican Guard division in the vicinity of al-Kut.

I think the progress could be characterized as nothing short of superb. A lot was made about we were out there for three or four days -- as you know, bad weather had challenged us a bit. A lot was made of bringing the supply lines along. I think what we've shown is that the plan was very smoothly executed, that logistics support, humanitarian assistance has flowed in behind the combat troops in a way that allowed the momentum of the fight to be carried to the Iraqis in a steady fashion with great results.

Over the five days from about the 27th of March until right at the end of the month, 5th Corps forces pressed north to the vicinity of Karbala, and the 1 MEF forces pressed from An Nasiriyah towards al-Kut, As-Diwaniyah, and the town of As-Shatra (sp), in each case, taking the time to reduce pockets of irregular forces in each of these locations, forces that were holding the local leaders of the towns an the populations of those towns hostage, if you will, and in some cases terrorizing them to the point of inactivity by any of the leaders in the town to resist.

The 1st U.K. Armor entered the battlefield also on the 27th of March, beginning to secure the area from south to north from Umm Qasr to As-Zubair into the town of Basra. In addition, they expanded to the northwest to provide additional security for the southern oil fields.

And then in the north, on the 27th, the 173rd Airborne Brigade jumped into an area near Bashur (sp) in northern Iraq to provide additional combat power to the special operating forces that had already inserted themselves into Kurdish-held territory.

At the same time, combat operations were ongoing. Humanitarian aid -- I mention this repeatedly because that is really one of the two great pillars of this combat operation -- at the same time you're exerting combat power against a very focused enemy, you want to be able to infuse into that fight humanitarian assistance that will begin to normalize the lives of the people in the towns that you're liberating. And things like bringing in wheat to Umm Qasr, bringing in humanitarian aid over land from Kuwait -- great support from the Kuwaitis to infuse that aid into the fight was noted as early as the second or third day after combat operations began.

The water pipeline was constructed and is completed now from Kuwait into Umm Qasr, up to Zubair, and we now have a situation just a few days ago, a couple days ago, where water into Basra is almost completely restored. We have a few small areas that we're completing that infusion.

Those operations continued until the 4th of April, just yesterday, where we saw great operations conducted on a two-core front approach in towards Baghdad. The 3rd Infantry Division moved north from Karbala to the highway intersections of routes 1 and 8, just south of the city, about seven miles from the city center. In fact, you saw some of the forces that were at that intersection today driving through the inner city of Baghdad.

In addition, forces moved to the west, initially created a force to attack and then secure the Baghdad International Airport. Those forces have completed that operation and now hold the airport secure. And we are continuing to flow forces in there to reinforce and establish a main operating base.

At the same time, the 1st Marine forces, the 1st Marine Expeditionary Forces were attacking from the vicinity of As-Diwaniyah and south of al-Kut to destroy the remnants of the Baghdad Division and then turn northwest along Highway 6 to the southeast corner of Baghdad, attacking remnants of a regular army division and a Republican Guard infantry division, destroying those forces as they moved forth to establish an operating base on the southeast edge of Baghdad.

Finally, continuing the great work in Basra and then moving further to the north, the 1st U.K. Armored Division has moved north through the oil fields to begin to secure more and more of those vital resources for the future, and we now have a substantial percentage of what we call the southern oil fields, the Ramallah fields, the Khorna (sp) fields, and some other smaller fields, Zubair, under our -- under our safe control, and we continue to expand that U.K. lodgment position further north along Highway 6 to complete the destruction of -- the remnants, really, of four regular army divisions that began the fight in the vicinity between al-Amarah and Khorna (sp) in the eastern portion of the country.

Finally, we've alluded to special operating forces throughout the operation, and I just want to spend a minute or two describing the intent of these very highly capable forces, the use of those highly capable forces around the country.

As we were beginning combat operations, special operating forces were infiltrated into western Iraq, into northern Iraq, and some areas in the south. The intent of these forces was to establish a relationship with leaders in the local area, to be able to call fires on theater ballistic missile launch sites in the west in order to protect neighbors in the region, other neighbors that were threatened by the Iraqi theater ballistic missile capability, to begin to set conditions to bring follow-on forces in to take advantage of the airfields in the west and in the north. In addition, to begin working in an unconventional warfare manner, engaging with Iraqi forces in the north who might be interested in laying down their arms and not continuing to fight. Those operations have been highly successful.

In addition to the unconventional warfare operations in the north, as many of you know, we attacked a terrorist base camp in -- near the little town of Khourma (sp). The intent here was to eliminate an al Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam based terrorist training camp and military facility, and potential chemical WMD processing or manufacturing plant. Those operations were very successful. It was a combination of U.S. special forces and Kurdish fighters, and those operations actually continue to eliminate small pockets of terrorist activity in extreme northeastern Iraq.

Finally, on a -- on a note of success that was very visible to you all, the special operating forces, in coordination with conventional forces from the Marine Corps and the Air Force and the Army were able to successfully rescue Private First Class Jennifer (sic) Lynch out of a hospital and irregular military headquarters facility that was being used by these death squads in Nasiriyah and successfully return her to U.S. hands and on to medical care and a reunion with her family. I'll talk a little bit about that operation in just a little bit, so if you'll hold for that one just a second, I'll come back to it.

Finally, to continue to beat the drum of humanitarian assistance, we have worked to secure key bridges and infrastructure to maintain those for future use, and we begin -- have begun to really accelerate the infusion of humanitarian assistance into the country.

Throughout all of these operations, we've encountered an enemy who has been determined. We have encountered an enemy who has chosen to use fear and terror and brutality as a means to push the people either to not support a change in their own communities, or even to the extremes to be used as shields to protect these fighters as they try to engage our forces. We've seen forces fighting in civilian clothes from vehicles we call technical vehicles, pick-up trucks with machine guns loaded on to them, SUVs. We've seen them stringing wire across roads that would be designed to decapitate people driving in trucks. We've seen them wearing uniforms that were U.S. or U.K. or Australia based equipment so that they might fit in. We've seen them using flags of truth -- truce, I'm sorry -- to gain a position of advantage on the battlefield, and on and on, from suicide bombings to other acts of terror on the field.

This has been an unconventional enemy, but not one we have not trained for. Through it all, we've seen prudent use of the military. We've seen professional performance by our soldiers, and they have been able to, in each case, defeat this enemy threat as we've moved on to each of our objectives.

Now, all of that happens because the people behind the scenes, the logisticians, ensure that we have the tools that we need to carry the battle forward on the field. Some of you have had a chance to listen to some of the logistics facts that we've used out there. And I won't go into lots and lots of them, but I do have a few tidbits of trivia that might be interesting for you.

The line of communication that we are maintaining open from Kuwait up to Baghdad is about 350 miles. On any given day out there on the battlefield, we've probably got 2,500 or more logistics support-related vehicles traveling on that road.

So if you can sort of imagine driving from LA to San Francisco, along the way there you'll see a whole -- it's sort of like having a big old convoy of semi tractor-trailers running up and down that road, moving food and fuel and water and humanitarian assistance to our forces.

We've moved something on the order of 65 million gallons of fuel into the region in order to fill supply points around the area to allow our forces to continue operations unencumbered. If you throw that into a -- well, I've got a little car, so I get about 20 miles to the gallon. If you throw that into my car, I could do an around-the-world trip about 52,000 times.

To fly the air tasking order that we have each day, the aircraft that are out there to support our operations, takes something on the order of about two and a half million gallons of fuel. And in that same car of mine, I could only make the trip around the world about 1,736 times.

So, to give you some perspective, the cost -- the support required to keep these operations going continuously is substantial. And the work that is being carried out by our logistics experts in the field is nothing short of herculean. There are some real superstars out there.

In order to keep our forces properly hydrated, we use about a million and a half liters of water a day. About 2 million tons of spare parts and support equipment is moved around the battlefield each day.

And then, finally, soldiers, as they say -- you know, you feed the army; you have to maintain its ability to eat. And, you know, about a third of a million MREs are consumed each day. So for that one Marine out there that didn't get more than one that day, we've got some more out there coming to him and I think we've solved that problem.

We continue to have great days of supply out in the field at each of our supply points, and I think we have continued to excel day by day to improve that process.

I talked about a lot of humanitarian aid a minute ago, and I want to give you just a few tidbits on what we call CMO, civil military operations. These are some good-news stories, and they're not stories that the military has brought to the fight. They're stories that other non-governmental organizations and international organizations bring in.

The World Food Program, for example, delivered a thousand metric tons of wheat yesterday. We have had support from non-governmental organizations to distribute kerosene to families to allow them to heat their homes. There were not many cool nights left, but there were a few. And we've been able to get kerosene in to some of the families in order to run heaters.

The World Food Program's warehouse in Basra has built up substantial stockpiles of cooking oil, coffee, flour and miscellaneous items, and those continue to be packaged for distribution.

We talked about DART teams before, and these are designed to respond to a disaster, really. But this is also an element that gives us command and control for distribution of humanitarian aid. We've formed the largest DART team ever in history.

It's a three-phrase front from Kuwait to Jordan to Turkey to enable us to move humanitarian assistance very rapidly in. And I'm pleased to say that today we moved a number of trucks of humanitarian assistance in from Turkey as well as we are continuing to grow the size of assistance that we're able to move in from Jordan over time.

So the successes are there. We continue to have need for more. We're far from perfect in that regard, but we are making a stronger attempt every day to increase and improve our ability to move those kinds of supplies and support to the Iraqi people at the same time we prosecute combat operations against the Iraqi regime.

Now, I told you I'd spend a minute or two talking about the rescue of Private Lynch. And I'd like to -- you'll forgive me for referring to notes a little bit more, but the facts of this are important and I'd like to go through those with you to try to give you a sense of what is really one of the characteristics of this operation.

There is nothing done on this battlefield that is not a joint and integrated operation. It's a combined operation. It takes the capabilities of each of our components -- and I know I've talked about this a couple of times from the podium here, but I can't overstress this -- each nation contributing.

Each force on the battlefield brings a capability that has to be integrated in order to be successful out there. And this is but one example, this one very localized to a very unique problem, but across the battlefield we have the same kinds of circumstances. And I'll cover those in questions, if you like.

In the situation that we're talking about here with Private Lynch, as you know, on about the 23rd of March, her 507th Maintenance Company was ambushed in the vicinity of An Nasiriyah. A number of the members of that maintenance company were killed, a number of captured, and a number were unaccounted for, she being one of them.

As the situation developed over time, we began to get some indications from local contacts in the community. And as we have used Special Forces to develop intelligence on the battlefield, as we do everywhere on the battlefield, we got an indication that there may be an injured U.S. military member held in this hospital, the Saddam Hospital in An Nasiriyah.

Any time we have a situation like that, we put together a planning team that investigates the intelligence and decides, is this credible, and if so, do we have the capability to respond to recover our service member?

In this case, after some detailed planning and study, it was felt that we not only had good intelligence information and had good access and had the potential for good access, but we, in fact, also felt that we had a feasible plan.

On the night of the first of April, a coalition Special Forces operation was put together that included the U.S. Army Rangers, Special Forces, and aviators from the Army, U.S. Navy SEALs, Air Force pilots, combat controllers and United States Marines.

The team was designed in a way to very rapidly get into the area of the hospital, to determine the location of Private Lynch, and then to bring her out, and at the same time exploit some areas of the hospital where we had reports of enemy headquarters, command-and-control facilities and the like.

As the night unfolded, the Marine task force was given two missions. Task Force Charlie was asked to create a diversionary tack, to focus what small elements of Iraqi irregulars there might be in the surrounding part of the town away from the hospital, in order to draw them into a fight in another part of the town.

At the same time, elements of the Marines, using helicopters, moved the recovery force rapidly into the hospital area with both ground transport and helicopter infiltration, with the principal priority being to recover Private Lynch and very rapidly move her out of the hospital area.

Upon entering the hospital, the assault force actually persuaded a local physician to lead them to Private Lynch's location, and this local physician claimed at the same time that there were potentially remnants -- I'm sorry, were remains of other U.S. military, either in the morgue or possibly buried close by.

As the team entered the hospital room, they found Private Lynch in a hospital bed. The first man approached the door and came in and called her name. She had been scared, had the sheet up over her head because she didn't know what was happening. She lowered the sheet from her head. She didn't really respond yet because I think she was probably pretty scared.

The soldier again said, "Jessica Lynch, we're the United States soldiers and we're here to protect you and take you home." She seemed to understand that. And as he walked over and took his helmet off, she looked up to him and said, "I'm an American soldier, too."

As they prepared to evacuate her, a team member made a preliminary assessment of her medical condition. The physician who had accompanied them -- this is our physician who accompanied the assault -- took the opportunity to further evaluate her condition, stabilized her for evacuation. She had injuries both to her legs, her arm, a head injury, and seemed to be in a fair amount of pain.

After she was prepared for movement and secured to the stretcher, the team members carried her down the stairwell out to the front door to the waiting helicopter. While the helicopter transported her to a nearby aircraft, who was then going to move her on to a field hospital, Jessica held up her hand and grabbed the Ranger doctor's hand, held on to it for the entire time and said, "Please don't let anybody leave me." It was clear she knew where she was and she didn't want to be left anywhere in the hands of the enemy.

After a short period of time, the hospital (sic) departed and she was moved back to the field hospital and her condition -- I'm sorry, her evaluation, her treatment was expanded.

After Private Lynch was removed from the hospital, the team continued with the rest of its mission. Searching through the hospital they found a weapons cache. They found a terrain model.

And, in fact, what this was was a planning -- it was like a sandbox model done on the floor of the basement of the hospital, and it was a model of the town of An Nasiriyah, and it had blue and red markers on there just like we would use for a war game, and depicted with relative accuracy the general positions of U.S. forces and also enemy forces in the town. So it allowed our Special Forces to gain a bit of intelligence as well from that activity.

At the same time, the team was led to a burial site, where, in fact, they did find a number of bodies that they believed could be Americans missing in action. They, in fact, did not have shovels in order to dig those graves up, so they dug them up with their hands. And they wanted to do that very rapidly so that they could race the sun and be off the site before the sun came up; a great testament to the will and desire of coalition forces to bring their own home.

After completing the excavation and ensuring there were none left behind, the force recovered all bodies and transported them back to the staging location and moved those back with the rest of the assault force. And as you know, we've since returned those bodies to the States, and we have identified nine of those sets of remains.

Eight of them, in fact, were from the 507th Maintenance Company and one from the -- a soldier from the Third Forward Support Group of the Third Infantry Division.

that after having seen iraqi children burnt all over their body on tv tonite i am literally disgusted for pasting any further military speeches here.

da hier
http://infam.antville.org/stories/346929
oder da
http://woelfin.antville.org/stories/345903
aber wirklich weh hat mir das hier getan
so weh dass ich mich garnicht äußern konnte, nur angewidert mich darüber hinwegverklickern
http://war.twoday.net/stories/19108
es ist die bitternis die über ein log herfällt das nimmer up2date ist und dessen präsenz in den printmedien keine anerkennung mehr findet