Word: basra
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...Foreign Wars convention in Nashville in August 2002. "Regime change in Iraq would bring about a number of benefits to the region," he said, including "the chance to promote the values that can bring lasting peace." He quoted Ajami's conviction that after liberation, the streets of Baghdad and Basra would "erupt in joy in the same way as the throngs in Kabul greeted the Americans." By last summer, to the surprise of many old critics, Cheney's intellectual journey was complete. William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, the Koran of neoconservative thought, was critical when Bush chose Cheney...
...Republican lawmaker, "was like a parrot bringing [Iraq] up all the time. It was getting on the President's nerves." At one point in the Camp David meeting after Sept. 11, Wolfowitz tried to persuade Bush to back a scheme to lop off the southern part of Iraq, including Basra, its third largest city, and some important oil fields. That went nowhere. And no matter how hard the intelligence agencies looked, they couldn't come up with a link between Saddam and Sept. 11 that might persuade Bush of the virtues of an early strike...
...from its field commanders, Pentagon officials asserted, and leaving much of its undermanned, underfed army on its own in the face of the allied onslaught. That may explain why U.S. and British troops encountered meager resistance as they pushed toward the oil-rich southern Iraqi city of Basra. One day into the ground war, allied forces secured the town of Safwan and the port city of Umm Qasr; Marines seized two vital oil fields that Saddam's forces may have been preparing to set ablaze. Iraqi forces managed to set fire to only nine of 1,000 oil wells...
...well as Tomahawks fired from 30 warships. By then, the Iraqi will to fight was weakening across southern Iraq. Close to 10,000 Iraqi troops surrendered in the first three days of conflict; on Saturday, Iraq's 51st Infantry Division, a 200-tank-strong corps charged with defending Basra, told U.S. commanders it was giving up. On Friday, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said surrender discussions between U.S. officials and some Iraqi military leaders had intensified. "They're beginning to realize the regime is history," Rumsfeld said. "And as that realization sets in, their behavior is likely to begin...
...camp housing the 101st Airborne Division; a U.S. soldier was held in connection with the attack. At least two soldiers died at the hands of overmatched enemy forces that nevertheless tried to fight off the invaders. Allied troops found themselves in fire fights near the cities of Samawah, Basra and Nasiriyah. Some Iraqi soldiers left their positions, put on plain clothes and vanished into the populace, raising concerns that they would stage guerrilla attacks on Western troops as they drew closer. Despite signs of weakening Iraqi morale, the mass surrenders witnessed at the end of the first Gulf...