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US officials fight criticism Iraq vows more suicide attacks against invading forces JT, 3/31/03 BAGHDAD (AFP) — The Iraqi army on Sunday promised more suicide attacks against US and British forces, as US officials scrambled to deflect mounting criticism of their campaign strategy amid growing fears of a protracted and bloody war. The air bombardment of Baghdad continued unabated but, with no sign of the start of the ground campaign to conquer the Iraqi capital, US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld warned that things would get even tougher for the forces seeking to oust President Saddam Hussein's regime and control Iraq's oil wealth. The growing chorus of dissent in the US and Britain was bolstered by more mass antiwar protests worldwide, the largest of them in India, Indonesia and Pakistan where hundreds of thousands took to the streets. Iraqi army spokesman General Hazem Al Rawi told a press conference that "martyr operations will continue and they will be carried out not only by Iraqis but also by thousands of Arab volunteers who have come to Baghdad." As if to echo his words, the Palestinian resistance movement Islamic Jihad announced that it had sent a first batch of its suicide bombers to Baghdad to fight the invading US and British forces. On Saturday, a suicide attacker — reportedly an Iraqi army officer — detonated his taxi after driving up to a US checkpoint near the Shiite Muslim holy city of Najaf, some 150 kilometres south of Baghdad. President Saddam promoted the attacker posthumously to colonel, Iraqi television said. Four US soldiers were killed in the attack. Rumsfeld led the ranks of senior US administration and military officials seeking to dampen criticism that the war planners had underestimated the strength of Iraqi resistance and blundered into what could become a protracted and bloody conflict. He told reporters in Washington that the current US military strategy to overthrow the Iraqi regime was "excellent." "All the second guessers seem to be people who haven't seen the plan." However Rumsfeld, who has been accused in some circles of earlier blocking military planners' requests for a larger invasion force, cautioned that the going would get even tougher for the allied troops. The campaign has so far claimed the lives of 38 US and 23 British soldiers. "The resistance that has been encountered has been quite stiff. The most dangerous and difficult days are still ahead of us," he said. Top US military commander General Richard Myers talked up the campaign, saying US forces would "tighten the noose" on Baghdad but would not hurry to confront Saddam's army defending the Iraqi capital. "Nobody ever promised a short war," the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff said on NBC television. General Tommy Franks, chief of the US Central Command responsible for forces in the Middle East, joined the military PR blitz, saying that coalition troops were within 95 kilometres of Baghdad and were steadily "dismantling" President Saddam's regime. Speaking at coalition command centre in Qatar, he said the deployment of another 120,000 US troops in addition to the 90,000 already in Iraq was decided well in advance of the opening of hostilities and did not signal a change of plan. He told repoters he had no idea whether President Saddam was dead or alive, but it was clear that the Iraqi military was not being controlled from the top. However, the message is not getting through to the US public according to a new poll released Sunday. Some 55 per cent of respondents to the Time Magazine/CNN poll thought Washington had falsely raised expectations about the conflict, with 29 per cent saying that officials did so not of their own convictions but to increase public support. Former British foreign secretary, Robin Cook, who resigned from the government in opposition to war with Iraq, marched further into the naysayers camp on Sunday by demanding that Britain's troops return from the battlefield. "I have already had my fill of this bloody and unjust war," Cook wrote in the mass-circulation newspaper the Sunday Mirror. "I want our troops home and I want them home before more of them are killed," Cook added. The threat of future suicide attacks complicates the US-led drive towards Baghdad, which has already been slowed by stiff Iraqi resistance in the central and southern desert and the need to shore up supply lines. But US armoured units massed south of the capital were on Sunday finalising plans for a decisive thrust towards the city within a week, Major John Altman, intelligence officer for the Third Infantry Division's First Brigade, told AFP. Meanwhile, the air war continued unabated as the Iraqi capital came under fresh bombardment Sunday, with at least four different waves of attacks overnight and into the day. Missiles struck a residential neighbourhood in central Baghdad, an Iraqi information ministry official said. In the south, coalition war planes unleashed fresh air raids on the country's second city and main port of Basra, the Qatar-based Al Jazeera news channel reported. A British military spokesman claimed an Iraqi general and another senior officer had been captured in fighting near the city. Coalition jets also launched new raids on "government frontlines" in the north, where Kurdish rebels, accompanied by small units of US special forces, have been advancing as Baghdad's troops have fallen back on the main cities. US Central Command denied Iraqi claims that a Harrier fighter and an Apache attack helicopter had been shot down over Iraq. Antiwar protests continued around the world, with some 200,000 people turning out in Jakarta for the biggest rally yet in Indonesia, while China allowed its first open demonstrations against the US-led offensive. Over 250,000 people gathered in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar in the biggest rally in the country to date. In southeastern Turkey a group of people showered trailer trucks carrying US military equipment with stones, breaking the windows of two vehicles, the Anatolia news agency reported. There were also large demonstrations in Spain, whose leaders have offered strong support for the US-led war, as well as in India, Egypt and Morocco among others.
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