A Message for the NPA’s 34th anniversary on March 29 Celebrate the victories of the people’s army!
Thwart the counterrevolutionary all-out war
of the Macapagal-Arroyo regime and US military intervention!
Gregorio "Ka Roger" Rosal
Spokesperson
Communist Party of the Philippines
March 28, 2003
Gazwan Al Muktar: Well ah—what I’m planning to do? I will pull up my rifle and I will shoot. And I will shoot at anybody who comes in. I’m a sixty year old man, but I am not going to let anybody, any foreigner tell me what to do or running my own country. This is a country I have spent all my life, trying to build something, to do something about improving the lot of the Iraqi people. Iraq is a wealthy country, Iraq has been, because of the sanctions, relegated to a third class country. You remember in 1961, that’s 42 years ago, the Iraqi government then, and it wasn’t the Ba’ath Party government, sent me to the States to study. I was a high school student. They sent me. Iraq has invested a lot of money in our education, a lot of time. The consecutive governments, all the governments of Iraq, and we are trying to build a country and you have ruined it. The US government is destroying everything. They destroyed it in ‘91 and we rebuilt it and they are destroying whatever we have rebuilt-- "
Iraq New Allied Administration Receives Cautious Welcome In Umm Qasr "One man, who identified himself only as Muhammad and said he is a port engineer, said he wants to ask the British "to stop shooting looters." Since Iraqi troops and government police abandoned the town earlier this week, there have been widespread break-ins at shops, office buildings, and factories by people stealing furniture and machinery.
The British headquarters itself is in a port office building and former Iraqi intelligence-service hotel that was looted of all its beds and toilets before the soldiers finally ended the looting two days ago through numerous arrests.
Muhammad told me he can't understand why the soldiers are shooting the looters -- a charge the British officers strongly deny. "If [someone] wants to steal an air conditioner, that is a mistake but don't kill him -- O.K.? Catch him. In the last days, those killed include one girl 16 years old, one 32-year-old, and one 45-year-old. Why do [the British] want to do that? If you want to catch someone, just talk to anyone -- we'll catch him. But [don't do things this way], because everyone is afraid," Muhammad said.
Muhammad's insistence that looters have been shot by the soldiers, despite the officers' assurances to the contrary, underlines the tough challenge both sides will face in bridging the trust and information gap in the days ahead."
A 'Turkey Shoot,' but With Marines as the Targets (washingtonpost.com) "They call it the turkey shoot, and they are the targets. Every day, Marines trying to keep critical supply lines open to forward units heading toward Baghdad run a gantlet through the strategic crossroads city of Nasiriyah -- over one bridge, up a few miles and then over another bridge. If they make it without getting shot at, they are lucky."
Mars-like desert makes bushes look like tanks "Crew members who asked not to be identified said they had grown wary of seemingly friendly crowds, its members waving and holding white flags as helicopters flew overhead.
"They'll do everything -- wave at you, show their white shirts," said a major who gave only his first name, Stephen. "As soon as you fly over them, they start shooting at us." "
BAGHDAD - Iraqi forces fired around 50 missiles at US troops parachuting into the Kurdish-held north of the country, a military spokesman said here Thursday.
"We fired 44 Tariq missiles and seven Raad missiles at the American forces as they parachuted into Sulaymaniya," Hazim al-Rawi told journalists here, without saying if the missiles had caused casualties."
Soldiers don't find a welcome mat in Basra ""Just because you are treated well here doesn't mean (U.S. forces) would be," said an Iraqi engineer. "American soldiers would never be accepted in the streets of Baghdad."
Nor, apparently, in the impoverished streets of Basra.
The unexpected combat in this Shiite region far south of Baghdad's ruling Sunnis has killed several coalition soldiers. Just north of Basra, near the city of An Nasiriyah on Sunday, 12 coalition soldiers were captured and at least two may have been executed with single shots to the forehead.
I flew from Baghdad to Basra in February on an Iraqi Airways Boeing 727 jet. I was served snacks by flight attendants in lime green uniforms that resembled those of U.S. Airways. The flight was filled with Iraqis who occasionally peered at me curiously but were always pleasant."
