Best of the Web Today - March 25, 2003
By JAMES TARANTO
Scenes From the Liberation
"British troops are said to be firing on Basra in support of a 'popular uprising' against Saddam Hussein's troops by the people of Iraq's second city," ITV News reports:
Thousands of people took to the streets of the key strategic city in the early evening and began rampaging through areas heavily populated by known sympathisers of the country's regime.
By nightfall dozens of buildings were on fire as the predominantly Shia Muslims of the south took their revenge after years of domination by Saddam Hussein's Sunni Muslim ruling Ba'ath party.
Saddam's forces fired mortars at civilians, ITV reports, which "gave the troops of the 7th Armoured Brigade--the famous Desert Rats--the perfect opportunity to move into the city and take control of a battleground whose capture is vital to the allies."
The Times of London, meanwhile, reports from northern Iraq, where Kurds watching allied bombing "jeered and clapped, delighted that the war had come at last to the front line in northern Iraq":
"I am so happy," Ismail Qadir, 32, a refugee from Kirkuk, said. "If this brings the end of Saddam Hussein's regime even one minute closer, it is great news for us all."
In the town's Communist party headquarters, fighters ran from their barrack rooms, grabbing assault rifles and magazines as their building's windows rattled and shattered.
"It's what we want, but we need more of," Taha Muhammad Qarim, the secretariat leader, said. "The Americans should give it to the Iraqis like this three times a day and then we might see things change."
Even the commies are on our side. This does recall the battle against Hitler, doesn't it?
The Los Angeles Times has evidence from here in America that Saddam's grip on power is loosening:
As Iraqi Americans reach out to their relatives in Baghdad and Basra, in Kirkuk and Irbil, some are hearing words they never thought possible: Iraqis are speaking ill of Saddam Hussein.
They're criticizing him out loud, on the telephone, seemingly undeterred by fear of the Iraqi intelligence service and its tactics of torture for those disloyal to the Baath Party regime.
"I was shocked," said Zainab Al-Suwaij, executive director of the American Islamic Congress, a nonprofit group in Cambridge, Mass., that promotes interfaith and interethnic understanding. "It's very dangerous. All the phones are tapped. But they are so excited."
The funk of pessimism and defeatism that descended on America seems to be lifting too, but in case you still need bucking up, check out this David Warren column:
You wouldn't know it from reading most of the papers, but the war in Iraq is going fabulously well. After just five days the U.S. Third Infantry Division and supporting units are approaching Baghdad. The immense steel column continues to drive reinforcements across the Iraqi desert, while its leading edge rumbles through the fields, villages, and waterways of Mesopotamia. To its rear, the "sleeper cells" of Ba'athist and terrorist hitmen waiting in ambush are being eliminated one by one. Special forces have seized bridges, dams, airstrips, oil and gas fields, and weapons sites all over the country.
The U.S. Air Force has devastated leadership targets, military infrastructure, and the physical symbols of the Saddam regime, across Baghdad and elsewhere. Allied troops have Basra, Nasiriyah, now Karbala, and other Iraqi cities surrounded, and are tightening each noose. Snipers in the towns are being patiently deleted. The "Scud box" of western Iraq is in allied hands, daily more secure, and allied forces are building with endless air deployments to the northern front. In all, the allies have taken only a few dozen killed, and a couple hundred lesser casualties--many of these from small accidents within the most amazing and vast logistical exercise since our troops landed in Normandy (when we lost men at the rate of up to 500 a minute, liberating France).
In just five days all this has been achieved! And while the most grisly parts of the campaign still lie ahead, all the worst fears have gone unrealized, so far.
