"one had a cow and the tree. the other road was free." --sanjay sundram

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http://www.abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20030404_885.html

U.S. Marines near the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah found what initially appeared to be suspicious chemicals in water samples from the Euphrates River, two defense officials said Friday. Details were sketchy, but both officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they knew of no indications that subsequent tests of the water had confirmed the presence of illegal chemicals.

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http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_767484.html?menu=news.latestheadlines

American officials have admitted that the thousands of boxes of white powder they seized north of Baghdad are explosives. The US military and various media outlets had suggested that they may have made the first discovery of chemical weapons in Iraq.

The claim that the Latifiyah complex was "a suspicious site" was made by a US colonel. He also claimed to have discovered nerve agent antidote and Arabic documents relating to chemicals. Colonel John Peabody, an engineer brigade commander with the 3rd Infantry Division, had stated troops found thousands of boxes, each of which contained three vials of white powder, together with documents written in Arabic about chemical warfare.

...UN inspectors visited the plant at least nine times, including as recently as February 18.

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20030404/wl_mideast_afp/iraq_war_us_commander_030404151122

SOUTH EAST OF BAGHDAD (AFP) - A US commander who was leading a push by Marines through southern Iraq towards Baghdad was relieved of his post for an undisclosed reason, a US military spokesman told AFP.

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http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/waroniraq/articles/4190933?source=Evening%20Standard

In a night of ferocious fighting, more than 1,000 soldiers were killed in a battle with the US infantry, while more than 400 died as the Americans took control of Baghdad airport. In a separate battle at Baghdad airport, more than 400 Iraqis died as the Americans took control. Dawn broke to reveal a scene of carnage all across the suburbs of the city.

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http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2510637

Michael Kelly, a former editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Monthly who was covering the war in Iraq, was killed along with an American soldier in an accident involving their Humvee military jeep, magazine staff and U.S. officials said on Friday... Kelly was the fourth journalist killed in action in the two-week-old war...Two additional journalists are still missing in Iraq.

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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/03/1048962881242.html

United States special forces have taken up strategic positions in three secondary schools located in a densely populated residential area of a city in northern Iraq. The schools, which have been closed since the war began, are located near a prominent Christian church and within 200 metres of a United Nations complex.

...The Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, recently criticised Iraq for placing key military units and weaponry in and around mosques, hospitals and schools in both Baghdad and Basra.

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http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2503975

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Dozens of Iraqis, including civilians and soldiers, were killed in the village of Furat near Baghdad airport on Thursday evening in what witnesses said was a U.S. rocket strike, a Reuters reporter said. He said more than 120 people were wounded in the attack on the village, which lies between the airport and the Iraqi capital. Iraqi officials put the total death toll at 83, but it could not be independently confirmed.

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http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,6119,2-10-1460_1342460,00.html

Baghdad - The International Committee of the Red Cross described as "horrific" on Thursday the scene at a hospital south of Baghdad, where hundreds of Iraqi men, women and children "practically dismembered by explosions" were being treated... Workers reported seeing the local 280-bed hospital completely full of casualties of bomb attacks.

...An ICRC team - including a doctor and a water engineer - visited Hilla to assess the medical and water situations and saw the carnage. When the team reached Hilla Hospital, they saw vehicles with corpses of men, women and children arriving. Inside the hospital they saw at least 280 injured people. The hospital and other medical facilities were having great difficulty facing the emergency, the ICRC said.

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http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,928386,00.html

British cabinet ministers are warning that it would be illegal for Tony Blair to bow to US demands for Iraqi prisoners of war captured by the British to be handed over to the US for trial or imprisonment in America... More than half of the 8,000 Iraqi PoWs are being held by the British. Cabinet ministers are warning that prisoners of war captured by the British cannot be handed to the US for extradition since the US still uses the death penalty.

One government source warned that it would be entirely unacceptable for British captured prisoners of war to be taken to Guantanamo Bay. He argued that even if Osama bin Laden was captured in Britain, it would be unlawful to hand him over to the US for trial because of the death penalty there. The doubtful legality of the US treatment of prisoners taken in Afghanistan has still not been settled in the higher American courts, British ministerial sources pointed out.

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blame canada!

http://www.nationalpost.com/world/story.html?id=7A17A7DA-049D-465F-81FC-66793E9CFC9C

OTTAWA - Richard Perle, a leading U.S. defence policy advisor, said yesterday that Canadians will come to regret Jean Chrétien's refusal to join an American-led coalition in the war against Iraq... "There is simply no other way to describe the positions of some countries -- not many, but some countries -- which is to lend far more support to Saddam Hussein's regime than they may have intended by the positions they have taken.... There will be many people around the world, including many Canadians, who on reflection, if they have an open mind at all, will question whether their government equated itself with the right expression of Canadian values."

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the aljazeera english site is back up

http://english.aljazeera.net/topics/index.asp?cu_no=1&lng=0&template_id=1&temp_type=44

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http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-wosyri033204221apr03,0,4315121.story

The CIA has no credible evidence that the government of Syria has had a role in the shipment of night-vision goggles and other military equipment to Iraq, according to an administration official familiar with U.S. intelligence in the region.

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http://www.boston.com/news/daily/03/us_war_pow.htm

PALESTINE, W.Va. -- The father of rescued POW Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch said Thursday she was in great spirits following her first surgery and said she had not been shot or stabbed during her ordeal. "We have heard and seen reports that she had multiple gunshot wounds and a knife stabbing. The doctor has not seen any of this," Gregory Lynch Sr. said. "There's no entry (wounds) whatsoever."

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2530703,00.html

ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) - Bombs exploded within hours of each other Thursday at the British consulate and outside a UPS office in Istanbul, causing damage but no injuries. In the first blast, an assailant hurled a bomb at the consulate, shattering windows and damaging a gate and walls of the building in the downtown Beyoglu district, police said. Police gave no details of the explosion at the United Parcel Service office in Istanbul... Nobody has claimed responsibility for the consulate attack, which came hours after Turkey's 2-0 defeat by England in a Euro 2004 soccer qualifier in England.

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http://www.drudgereport.com/flash2.htm

Athens (dpa) - Veteran newsman Peter Arnett, famous for his coverage of the 1991 Gulf War, has been hired by Greek state television NET to cover the war in Iraq after he was fired by a U.S. network. Arnett, a Pulitzer Prize winner, was sacked earlier this week by NBC for giving an interview for Iraqi television in Baghdad.

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http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=BXP0Z2IZC21TCCRBAE0CFFA?type=worldNews&storyID=2501603

VIENNA (Reuters) - Austrian far-right leader Joerg Haider, a vocal backer of Iraq against the United States, offered asylum in his Alpine province to Iraq's foreign minister in an interview published on Thursday. Haider, a long-time friend of Foreign Minister Naji Sabri and a harsh critic of U.S. policy in the Middle East, was asked if Sabri could count on refuge in Carinthia, where Haider is governor, if the Iraqi leadership is forced to flee.

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