United States troops on Thursday remembered the September 11 terrorist onslaught that triggered their invasion of Iraq, but faced a new spate of attacks and warnings by Islamic militants the fight here is far from over.
Soldiers around the country designated by President George Bush as the “central front” in the war on terrorism prayed, sang and organised candelight vigils to commemorate the attacks two years on New York and Washington.
“This is all about September 11 and there are a lot of terrorists in this country and we’re making it difficult for them, and in the long run this will make a difference,” Specialist Jerry Dillon said at Baghdad airport.
But other soldiers at a dawn memorial service organised by the 8 000-strong 1st Armoured Division were not persuaded they were doing much good after the ouster of Saddam Hussein in April.
“I haven’t seen my family for two years. Right now I’d like to be home,” said Sergeant Brian Sparks, standing guard outside the airport gates. “These people are not terrorists, so where’s the significance about being here?”
The 116 000-strong US force has come under daily attack, and the occupation effort has been rattled by a series of car bombings that have left 120 people dead since last month, including the top United Nations envoy and a revered cleric.
A new chilling reminder of the dangers they face came in a videotape released on Wednesday featuring suspected September 11 mastermind Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, who swore the battle in Iraq had only just begun.
“Rely on God and devour the Americans, like lions devour their prey. Bury them in the Iraqi graveyard,” Zawahiri exhorted Iraqis.
But Bush vowed in a series of appearances this week to stay the course in Iraq and “finish what we’ve begun”, asking Congress for $87-billion for military and civil operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Bush on Wednesday defended the decision to go into Iraq while a new White House report again insisted that Baghdad had been developing biological, chemical or nuclear weapons.
“No terrorist networks will ever gain weapons of mass destruction from Saddam Hussein’s regime. That regime is no more,” Bush said in a speech at the Quantico, Virginia, headquarters of the FBI.
But US-led forces have failed to nab the ex-dictator despite a manhunt that one senior official said involved “every single soldier, every service member of the coalition … looking for Saddam every minute of every day.”
They have also been having a tough time taming violence, lawlessness and simmering communal tensions in Iraq since Bush pronounced major combat operations over on May 1.
US and Iraqi forces sorted through the detritus of a suicide car bomb that killed as many as three and wounded more than 40, including six US defence staff, late on Tuesday in the northern city of Arbil.
US defence officials said the six included four military intelligence officials engaged in “sensitive” work in Arbil, a city controlled by the Kurdistan Democratic Party.
US commanders also reported a fresh spate of violence, with 22 attacks on US soldiers in a 24-hour period on Tuesday and Wednesday, sharply up on the daily average of 13 to 15.
In the latest US death, a soldier was killed on Wednesday in Baghdad when an “improvised explosive device” he was trying to defuse went off.
US troops shot dead one Iraqi policeman and seriously wounded another after a bomb struck their convoy on the outskirts of the hotspot town of Fallujah west of Baghdad, a senior Iraqi police commander said on Wednesday. — Sapa-AFP
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