Mr Bush delivered a life television address shortly after explosions rocked the Iraqi capital, signalling the start of the US-led campaign to topple Saddam Hussein.
US military sources have told the BBC that five key members of the Iraqi regime, including Saddam Hussein, were targeted in the first attacks.
The first strikes, which began at 0534 local time (0234 GMT) were of a limited nature, in preparations for further, more extensive operations, US defense officials said.
The president promised a “broad and concerted campaign” and said the US would prevail.
Speaking from the Oval office, President Bush said American and coalition forces were in the “early stages of military operations” and had struck “targets of military importance”.
But, he warned, the campaign could be “longer and more difficult than some predict”.
As dawn broke in Baghdad, antiaircraft artillery peppered the sky as deep, heavy thuds were heard in the outskirts of the city.
The same target, in the east, is reported to have hit three or four times.
Republic of Iraq Radio in Baghdad said that “the evil ones, the enemies of God, the homeland and humanity, have committed the stupidity of aggression against our homeland and people”.
‘Limited thing’
Reports quoting American military officials said planes had stuck “targets of opportunity” which were thought to be occupied by elements of the Iraqi leadership.
US officials said Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter-bombers.
French news agency AFP quoted a Pentagon official as saying the first strikes were “a limited thing − it ain’t A-Day,” referring to the planned massive air campaign.
A BBC correspondent in Baghdad said anti-aircraft guns were in action for about 15 minutes, after which the city became quiet again.
After the first strike, a large pull of black smoke was seen in the south of Baghdad.
At about the same time as the strikes began, the US military appeared to take over a frequency of Iraqi radio with an Arabic speaking presenter announcing: “This is the day we have been waiting for.”
Our correspondent in Baghdad says the timing of the attack is unusual – coming as it did in daylight.
He says traffic remains normal and people are beginning to appear on the streets.
The attack began after President Bush’s 0100GMT deadline for Saddam Hussein to go into exile or face war expired.
Text 2.3 Toil and Trouble
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Maureen Dowd
The New York Times, April 9, 2008
Maybe it was because I was sitting in the back of the Senate chamber with three war protesters – grim-faced, chanting women dressed in black hooded cloaks, white makeup and blood-red hands – that I felt as though I were watching a production of “Macbeth” rather than a hearing on Iraq.
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair,” the witches in the play said.
“Hover through the fog and filthy air.”
Many words hovered Tuesday in the Senate – including some pointed ones by the woman and two men vying to be commander in chief. But the words seemed trapped in a labyrinth leading nowhere.
The Surge Twins were back, but the daylong testimony of David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker before two committees seemed more depressing this time. As the Bard writes in “Macbeth”: “From that spring whence comfort seemed to come, discomfort swells.”
They arrived on the heels of the Maliki debacle in Basra, which made it stunningly clear – after a cease-fire was brokered in Iran – that we’re spending $3 trillion as our economy goes off a cliff so that Iran can have a dysfunctional little friend.
Not good news, given Ahmadinejad’s announcement that his scientists are putting 6,000 new uranium-enriching centrifuges in place.
I like General Petraeus’s air of restrained competence and Ambassador Crocker’s air of wry world-weariness. But now they seem swallowed up by the fresh violence and ancient tribal antagonisms that they were supposed to be overcoming.
The guardians of Iraq offer more of the same – a post-Surge Pause or “consolidation and evaluation,” as the general generically puts it – and no answers about how we can stop our ward from aligning with our enemy.
The way forward, General Petraeus said, should be “conditioned-based.”
Even in a place as prosaic as the Senate, this news spurred existential angst.
Senator Evan Bayh summoned up the Dada nature of our plan in Iraq: ”We’ll know when we get there, and we don’t know when we’re going to get there.”
A confused Chuck Hagel asked the pair: “So, where’s the surge? What are we doing? I don’t see Secretary Rice doing any Kissinger-esque flying around. Where is the diplomatic surge? …So, where is the surge? What are you talking about?”
Condi is too busy floating trial balloons about being John McCain’s running mate to bother about the fact that she was instrumental in two historic blunders: 9/11 and Iraq.
It’s hard to follow the narrative of our misadventure in Iraq. We went in to help the Shiites that we betrayed in the first Gulf War shake off their Sunni tormentors. But then, predictably for everyone except the chuckleheaded W. and Cheney, the Shiites began tormenting the Sunnis. So we put 90,000 Sunni Sons of Iraq – some of the same ones who were exploding American soldiers – on our payroll so they’d stop shooting at Americans and helping Al Qaeda. Our troops have gone from policing a Sunni-Shiite civil war to policing a Shiite-Shiite power struggle, while Osama bin Laden plots in peace as Al Qaeda in Iraq distracts us and drains our military resources.
Even some senators got confused.
John McCain seemed to repeat his recent confusion over tribes, mistakenly referring to Al Qaeda again as a “sect of Shiites” before correcting himself and saying: “or Sunnis or anybody else.”
Senator John Warner asked the essential question – the one that makes it clear that W. and Cheney hurt the national interest: Is the war making us safer at home?
General Petraeus avoided answering. But he acknowledged that the “fragile” gains there are “reversible”. “The Champagne bottle,” he told Senator Bayh, “has been pushed to the back of the refrigerator.”
You know you’re in trouble when Barbara Boxer is the voice of reason.
“Why is it,” she asked, “after all we have given – 4,024 American lives, gone; more than half-a-billion dollars spent; all this for the Iraqi people, but it’s the Iranian president who is greeted with kisses and flowers?”
She warmed to: “he got a red-carpet treatment, and we are losing our sons and daughters every single day for the Iraqis to be free. It is irritating is my point.’
Ambassador Crocker dryly assured the senator from California that he believed that Dick Cheney had also got kissed on his visit to Iraq.
Text 2.4 ‘Stalin’s World’ theme park a hit
Thursday, May 4, 2006
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