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At the core of the civilian casualty crisis is the decision by Iraqi forces to decline both of the two options coalition war planners are offering them: surrender or obliteration. Instead, those Iraqis still fighting have, according to an American officer, "turned matador," changing into civilian clothes, sidestepping the full might of advancing forces only to reappear later to inflict cut after cut in the Americans' flanks with guerrilla strikes on convoys or suicide bomb attacks. In this atmosphere every civilian is suspect, and the longer the conflict lasts and the more innocents that are sacrificed, the less welcome the Americans may be. The recent suicide bombing, in which four 3rd Infantrymen were killed, swiftly followed by the 3rd Infantry Division's killing of seven women and children at a checkpoint, was the perfect one-two for Saddam Hussein's desperate endgame.
Before the conflict started, combat trainers stressed the priority of avoiding civilian casualties. But that changed with the first guerrilla-style attacks. On Day 2, the order came to assume all Iraqis were hostile unless proved otherwise--an assumption that many of these young soldiers had made anyway. Since receiving their new instructions, the soldiers have dropped their message of liberation for one of mistrust and irresistible force. Checkpoint squads have arrested hundreds of Iraqis who are unable to communicate their reasons for traveling, while detaining others carrying AK-47s as "terrorists," even though Iraqis carry AKs the way Texans do handguns.
To a man, it seems, the U.S. soldiers are unhappy about their rising civilian kills. And many are smart enough to realize that every death backs up Saddam's claim and the Arab world's suspicion that they are occupiers and conquerors, not liberators. "They didn't do anything wrong," said Mitchell of his men. "But it bothers me to hell that the guy is innocent."
Mitchell argues that according to U.S. rules of engagement, the soldiers carried out their primary mission: "to eliminate the threat." Iraqis, however, are following a different set of compulsions. A few hours after the killing, Major Dean Shultis reported that his battalion had collected 69 prisoners of war over the previous 24 hours. He said he had tried to warn the Iraqis that approaching American checkpoints now was dangerous. They're not listening. "We're hungry," replied a prisoner. "And we're not going to stop coming."
Enveloped in Smoke and Fear BASRA TERRY MCCARTHY
The fear that hangs over Basra is as thick and evil-smelling as the canopy of black smoke reaching across the sky from the burning oil trenches around the city. "In Basra everything is horrible for us," says Osamah Ijam, 23, a medical student who left town on Friday morning. "We see our future burning."
Others tell of a city where bands of young Fedayeen Saddam militia patrol in white trucks, shooting anyone who defies them. Residents talk of their fears of anarchy and looting and of the terror at the sounds of mortars, rockets and gunfire that crack day and night across this city of 1.3 million. Underneath it all is the unfathomable, almost irrational fear that Saddam Hussein could still survive this war and return to wreak terrible vengeance on anyone who turns against his regime, as he did after U.S. forces left in 1991.