No possibilty of negotiating with Iraq, says Rumsfeld
The United States has ruled out the possibility of negotiating a ceasefire with Baghdad or accepting any third party peace plan.
“There will be no outcome to this war that leaves (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein and his regime in power. Let there be no doubt,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news briefing.
Rumsfeld accused Baghdad of spreading rumors that “the coalition has entered into a cease-fire negotiation with the regime and that there’s a third-party peace plan under consideration.” “Their goal is to try to convince the people of Iraq that the coalition does not intend to finish the job,” he said.
The US defense secretary stressed that there are no negotiations taking place with anyone in President Saddam’s government. “The only thing the coalition will discuss with this regime is their unconditional surrender,” Rumsfeld said.
Addressing the same news briefing, Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that US forces will make “bigger pushes” in Iraq once they are ready. But the top US general did not provide any specific timetable for such assault.
Meanwhile, two Iraqi surface-to-surface missiles were fired early yesterday at US troops near the central Iraqi city of Najaf, but caused no injuries, the CNN reported.
This was the first time that Iraq fired surface-to-surface missiles at the US troops since the beginning of the war on March 20, the report said.
The attack triggered an alert among the 101st US airborne division troops stationed near the city as soldiers donned gas masks amid fears that such missiles might have chemical warheads. But the alert was over soon after it was confirmed that the missiles did not carry chemical warheads, the report said.
The firing of Iraqi missiles was another sign that the battle for the control of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad has begun.
Earlier Wednesday, US troops engaged in the first major ground battle with the Iraqi elite Republican Guard near the holy Shiite Muslim city of Karbala, 80 kilometers south of Baghdad, US defense officials said in Washington.
http://www.kentimes.com/nwsstory/mainiraq.html

or shocking or just interesting, to collect the speeches - the so-called DURCHHALTEREDEN from the two parties. how do they touch emotions - how do they motivate. is it possible to read defeat between the lines? it IS - obviously!
the more mentioning of god - the more disillusion it contains
so this is saddam's speech of yesterday evening
via bbc.news
God is great, God is great, God is great. There is no God but Allah.
O great warrior nation, O sons of our glorious nation, O men of arms who uphold the honour of resistance, God's peace be upon you as you face the aggressors, the enemies of God and humanity, the passing infidels, with chests filled with faith and love for God.
Yes, these are the most honourable days for more than 700 years, God has granted us this great opportunity and calamity, through which God meant to test our faith, to which He, the omnipotent Almighty, was a witness. God has granted us this opportunity to match our words with deeds, so that He can bless us with His mercy.
Yes, O brothers, for ages and ages, religious scholars could not reach such a consensus as they have reached today - that this aggression against the fortress of faith is an aggression on religion, wealth, honour and life and is an aggression against the homes of Islam.
Therefore, jihad (holy war) is a duty in facing them and whoever dies on its fields is rewarded by heaven.
Seize it (jihad), O brothers, for within it are one of two good deeds for the sake of God and great principles.
Hit them! Fight them! They are evil aggressors damned by God. You are victorious and they are defeated.
By God, God will grant victory over enemies to any one of us who recalls his faith and pledge, puts them in front of his eyes at the moment of confrontation, and resorts to the patience that Almighty God ordered us to demonstrate.
The aggressors will flee from what is right and be damned, along with their devils. Faith and honour will brighten the faces of mujahideen (holy fighters), men and women.
Seize it, O apples of my eye and the eyes of Iraq and the nation. It is the chance to achieve immortality and unmatched honour.
Hit them! Fight them! They are evil aggressors damned by God. You are victorious and they are defeated.
Fight them as your brothers and sons fought them in Umm Qasr, glorious Basra, Ninawa, Nasiriya, and al-Shatra, the outskirts of al-Hay, and al-Anbar.
Fight them everywhere, as you are fighting them today, and do not give them a chance to catch their breath until they announce and carry out their withdrawal from the homes of Muslims - they are failures who are damned in this life and the hereafter.
And long live our great nation and long live Palestine, free and Arab from the river to the sea. Long live Iraq, long live Iraq.
Answer the call of jihad and long live the mujahideen of our nation. God is great and may the criminals fail.

Shortly after the Clinton administration's 1993 military fiasco in Somalia, these criteria were corrupted to fit a different agenda. In a supposed reform of United Nations-sponsored operations, the administration issued Presidential Policy Directive 25, which tried to adapt Weinberger's guidelines to "peace operations." Rather than securing our "vital interests" through "clearly defined political and military objectives," Clinton's directive formulated the idea of an "endpoint for U.S. participation." Thus, the term "exit strategy." Clinton, who protested the Vietnam War in his youth, thereby returned us to the Vietnam syndrome that Reagan sought to overcome.
Asking about our exit strategy became commonplace during the Clinton administration because of its profligate use of U.S. military power for conducting peace operations. It was also a good question to ask as virtually none of the peace operations since the end of World War II have ever ceased. But ending participation in an U.N.-led operation is not a strategy, exit or otherwise. claremont - PDD#25
qvw http://woelfin.antville.org/stories/336629

"While we hoped that popular revolt would topple Saddam, we did not wish to see the breakup of the Iraqi state. Extending the war into Iraq would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land." From "Why We Didn't Remove Saddam" by George Bush [Sr.] and Brent Scowcroft, Time Magazine, 1998

we have come here and liberation is in our minds as we destroy the regime and proceed to remove the weapons of mass destruction from Iraq. Liberation is the action that will occur by way of what we're doing in this campaign. The potential threats of others coming in from external countries tells you that the problem is not in Iraq, the problem is the regime and trying to protect itself.

We remain convinced from what we're seeing throughout the country, as we are having more and more success, that the Iraqi people are welcoming the departure of the regime and its destruction. Where we attack regime complexes and Ba'ath Party headquarters buildings, the towns people are helping us, and in fact they're very pleased about that. There is, truthfully, still a degree of "let's wait and see." We have to understand that for decades these people have been severely brutalized by this regime, and they have taken risks before that have not proven to be safe for them to do so. And so there's a degree of caution still that's out there and is entirely understandable, but we mean what we say and we're going to continue with that mission. source: centcom.mil