DUE WEST OF NAJAF, SOUTHERN IRAQ – Soldiers of the US 3rd Infantry Division Sunday captured in Najaf, some 250 kilometers south of Baghdad, the first Iraqi installation that is suspected of having produced chemical weapons. About 70 Iraqi troops, including a general, surrendered to US forces at the plant. One soldier was lightly wounded when a booby-trap exploded as…
DUE WEST OF NAJAF, Southern Iraq – The First Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division conducted its first planned operation against an Iraqi target Sunday. Battalion forces were engaged twice by enemy forces along Highway 8, first in the village of al-Khadir just south of a-Samwah and later on the outskirts of a-Samwah itself. In the first battle, Iraqi forces…
ON THE IRAQ-KUWAIT BORDER – The few Iraqi guards on the Kuwait border fled on Thursday night in advance of US troops crossing into Iraq. At midnight, soldiers saw that the roof of the building housing the guards had been blown off and there was rubble all around, but there were no Iraqis; neither dead nor…
SOUTHERN IRAQ – I do not recall ever considering the country of Kuwait or the Kuwaiti people for that matter with any particular emotion. To the best of my knowledge, Kuwaiti forces never participated in the Arab world's wars against Israel, nor have the Kuwaitis overtly funded terrorism against us like the Saudis and the Iraqis.…
The US military is without a doubt the most powerful fighting force in the world. The forces arrayed in the Kuwaiti desert are stunning by any standard. Last Thursday night and Friday morning, the Fifth Corps, which commands all army ground forces in the country staged a rehearsal of the invasion of Iraq. The main…
KUWAITI DESERT – Monday afternoon I ate a hamentaschen on the hood of a humvee in the Kuwaiti desert, 40 km. south of Iraq with US Army 1st Sergeant Michael Mansfield. I lit a zippo lighter for a candle and we said the blessings. We clinked hamentaschen for l'haim. In lieu of the megilla reading, I told his…
The indictment and arrest of University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian by the FBI last week was a watershed event in the US war on terrorism. This was so not because Arian was the CEO of the Islamic Jihad, although that he was. Nor was it a watershed because by arresting Arian, the US has …
Today Labor Party Chairman Amram Mitzna is set to meet with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for a discussion that has been touted as "critical" for determining whether the Labor party will join Sharon's next government. The Labor party has made four demands of Sharon that its leaders — from Mitzna to Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and Haim Ramon — maintain must…
Americans were shocked this week to discover that while their attention was focused elsewhere, Europe — or large swathes of Europe — has become a hotbed of Iranian-like anti-American sentiment. The same irrational, insurmountable hatred of America that fuels Iranian rhetoric and dictates its policies against the Great Satan also characterizes much public opinion throughout Europe and informs the…
The tragic loss of the US space shuttle Columbia and the death of its crew just moments before their return home sealed in common blood the foundations of the US-Israel alliance. As we saw at Tuesday's memorial ceremony at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, this alliance's roots run far deeper than shared forms of government. The stories of…