Al-Balagh [Archives:2003/635/Press Review]

6 May 2003
Main headlines:
– Attempted assassination against the American secretary of defense in Baghdad
– In a message to the public opinion, Jarallah Omar killer gives three conditions to confess the truth
– After the killing of sheikh Saleh, Jahm tribe accuses military men and threatens to punish the killers
– Western diplomat: The U.S. would not handover any suspects detained outside its borders
– The pentagon announces new rules for military trials in charges of terror
– Supporters of Yemeni Islah party in Aden, arrested.
Columnist Ahmed Mutahar al-Haj says in an article that any military or politician or even an ordinary citizen cannot believe that what happened in Iraq embodied by the fall and collapse of the regime as a normal matter, as some tended to describe. The certain thing is the presence of a secret deal concluded in Baghdad. It has quickly been confirmed for the follower that the Iraqi regime was fully in control of the situation and all front till the hour that precede the occupation of Baghdad. This was the cause of astonishment and shock that affected the many as a result of the dramatic fall of the regime. It is known that the United States and its allies had earlier planned to topple the regime, using all ways and means and depending on the nature of the internal and external situation together. All those measures aimed at getting an internal support for the change to reduce effort, time and sacrifices, i.e. an invasion from within. America, with an encouraging participation by Britain, believed that 12 years of blockade, inspection and destruction of the regime's elements of power had managed to isolate it from its regional and international periphery. Added to that is the blockade and impoverishment that changed Iraq into a big prison the only woe of its people is the search for what could satisfy their need governed by American and Britain with the patronage of the United Nations. The two states had always held the regime, especially Saddam Hussein, responsible for the whole situation. It was supposed the Iraqi people would rise against the regime to have the sanctions lifted.
Despite all that the moment the first American invading military forces arrived the first city in Iraq, they felt the disappointment and that all its previous calculations had evaporated all of a sudden to find instead a fierce resistance as the inhabitants of all the Iraqi cities and villages changed into fortresses confronting the occupying forces. Then the Americans changed all scenarios of he war and military plans by redoubling the troops, ammunition and the direct attack and hitting ferociously on land, sea and in the air to reach inside Iraq at any price.
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