Front Page: Iraq, March 24, 2003

The following is a compilation of today's newspaper reports about the Iraq crisis from around the country and around the world. It is just a sampling of different perspectives, designed to offer additional context into the conflict. Compiled by CBSNews.com's Andrew Cohen.

From around the country:

Brad Knickerbocker of the Christian Science Monitor offers this analysis: "The war in Iraq today is a laboratory and a testing ground for the biggest shift in U.S. war fighting since World War II. The campaign includes cruise missiles exploding in downtown Baghdad and soldiers suited up and armed like mini-weapons of mass destruction as they race across the desert. But in fact it's a kind of four-dimensional blitzkrieg whose most important weapons may be secret e-mails and cell-phone calls, leaflets raining down on enemy commanders, and pointed personal messages from Donald Rumsfeld to Saddam Hussein. The point is to get the enemy to capitulate with as little death and destruction as possible, a situation in which '"shock and awe" is in the mind of the opponent,' as defense analyst Thomas Donnelly of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington puts it, an approach that's as old as the writings of Chinese military theoretician Sun Tzu and as new as a hand-held computer. The effort has not been without setbacks, highlighted Sunday by images of U.S. prisoners — including apparently dead ones — showing up on the al Jazeera TV network. There have been ground skirmishes, some of them fierce, and no doubt there will be more. Unsettling as these issues are to a nation hoping for quick victory, America's overall approach, militarily, seems to be working. Several thousand Iraqi soldiers have surrendered. U.S. and British forces quickly secured oil terminals, limited the torching of Iraqi oil wells to just nine of about 500 wells in the southern part of the country, and prevented the release of 139 mines into the Persian Gulf by capturing or destroying Iraqi boats."

David Peregrino of the El Paso Times reported this on the capture of U.S. soldiers stationed in that part of Texas: "Hearing of the capture and possible deaths of 10 to 12 U.S. troops based at Fort Bliss was gut-wrenching for El Paso's military families, many of whom have loved ones deployed in the war against Iraq. Rosie Witt, whose husband, Army Capt. Chad Witt, is deployed with Fort Bliss's 108th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, read the news online and later followed television coverage with a neighbor. Web sites and networks released images from Iraqi television showing dead soldiers on a morgue floor and at least five terrified soldiers being interviewed by their captors. 'We saw that and we got this horrid, sick feeling in our stomachs,' said Northeast resident Witt, 26, who is a 'stay-at-home mom' for her 8-month-old son and 2-year-old daughter. 'I could probably start crying right now.' Witt said she doesn't believe her husband's unit was involved in the capture or in a battle that took the lives of about 10 coalition soldiers. Eastsider Barbara Sherwood, whose husband, Staff Sgt. James Sherwood, is deployed overseas with the Army's 285th Engineering Co., said the reports from the war are what every military spouse fears. It's just heart-wrenching and heartbreaking,' said Sherwood, who has two daughters, 12 and 5. 'I know there is a cost for the peace we have every day. We don't realize how fortunate we are, and we take for granted what we have, but it comes at a cost.'"

The Nashville Tennessean had this report on the suspect involved in the grenade attack on the 101st Airborne Division: "When Asan Akbar left Fort Campbell in February for Kuwait, he left behind signals that he wasn't a lock-step, confident soldier sure of his mission, and he had expressed concerns about carrying his Muslim religion to a war zone, according to his family and a neighbor. A sergeant with the 101st Airborne Division's 326th Engineering Battalion, Akbar had told his mother that his Muslim faith could land him in military prison when he got to the Middle East. And a neighbor who spoke with him shortly before he deployed said Akbar had said America should not be going to war with Iraq. Still, those who love him and others who know him only slightly said they were shocked and surprised that Akbar, 31, is the man military authorities are questioning in a grenade incident in Kuwait that left one American officer dead and 15 other soldiers injured. His mother, Quran Bilal, was reached by telephone in Louisiana yesterday morning and said she has not been contacted by the military about her son being detained after the incident. Her reaction was disbelief, and she said she is concerned her son is being questioned and held because of his religion."

Steven Carter and Bill Graves of the Portland Oregonian reported the grenade attack from a different angle: "An Air Force officer who grew up in Portland and graduated from Benson High School and Oregon State University was seriously injured in a weekend grenade attack in a U.S. Army command center in Kuwait. Maj. Gregg L. Stone was among the 15 wounded and one killed when an apparently disgruntled sergeant threw grenades into three command tents at Camp Pennsylvania, the rear base for the 101st Airborne Division near the Iraqi border. Stone, 40, had undergone surgery in Kuwait twice since the attack, said Lt. Col. Tim Marsano, spokesman for the Idaho Air National Guard. Marsano said it was hoped Stone could be transferred today to the Army's Landstuhl medical complex in Germany. Marsano said he did not have details on Stone's injuries but he apparently was among the three most seriously hurt. Stone, a father of two who now lives in Boise, always has been fascinated with flight, taking aviation science at Benson. In the Middle East, his job was to coordinate air support for ground troops, relaying requests from the brigade commander to the Air Force. He looked forward to serving in the war. 'He said the thing that stuck out in his mind was that he had been in the military in some capacity or another for 20 years and had all this training but had never seen action,' said his half-brother, Frank Lenzi of Portland. 'He looked at being called up for the Gulf as his final exam.'"

Jack Kelley of U.S.A Today offers this view on discussions between U.S. and Iraqi forces: "Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abdul Qassab receives a telephone call each day in Baghdad. His daughter says an anonymous voice tells him, 'Give yourself up. You cannot win. You will be saved if you defect.' He has gotten the same message — defect now — from a relative in Jordan, from an Iraqi opposition member in London and in a letter that was hand-delivered to his house by someone claiming to be a family friend, according to Milad Qassab, 23, who was interviewed by telephone Sunday. Dozens of other Iraqi generals and other officials have received similar messages and, to avoid retribution, reported them to their superiors, she added. Her father 'is not listening,' Milad Qassab said from her family home in Baghdad. 'My father is ready to fight. He is not going to give in to the CIA.' U.S. intelligence officials have been contacting Iraq's generals and leaders of Saddam Hussein's ruling Baath Party with promises of safety, asylum and a role in Iraq's new government if they defect, mount a coup or agree not to use biological or chemical weapons."

From around the world:

Canada's National Post had this editorial view: "Despite a handful of deadly setbacks over the weekend, a U.S.-led army is now less than 160 kilometres [100 miles] from Baghdad. The war may continue for another week, or another month. But soon, Saddam Hussein's regime will fall. But what will replace it? Speaking on Friday, U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld set forward the coalition's war aims in Iraq, a list that included: (1) regime change, (2) the elimination of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, (3) the safeguarding of the country's oil assets for the benefit of the Iraqi people, (4) humanitarian relief and (5) the liquidation of terrorist cells operating under Saddam's writ. Lastly, he said, the war effort is designed to 'help the Iraqi people create the conditions for a rapid transition to a representative self-government that is not a threat to its neighbours and is committed to ensuring the territorial integrity of the country.' We certainly hope Mr. Rumsfeld and his boss, U.S. President George W. Bush, are serious about that last one. The short- and medium-term goals listed by the Defence Secretary are all vitally important — and their achievement would, in themselves, fully justify the present campaign. But they should also be looking beyond Iraq, at ways to change the political and social structure of the Arab Middle East to ensure it is no longer receptive to rogue autocrats spewing militant anti-Western ideologies. That's why creating a viable democracy in Iraq should be treated as a core war aim."

The Jordan Times offered this angle on Arab diplomacy: Arab foreign ministers will seek ways to end a U.S.-led war on Iraq at a meeting in Cairo on Monday, which diplomats said would try to bridge Arab divisions and forge a unified antiwar position. The meeting at the Arab League headquarters will also try to convince restive Arab populations their governments are doing their best to stop the four-day-old war, which has provoked sometimes violent demonstrations across the Arab world, diplomats said. "The Arab foreign ministers want to see what steps can be taken to stop the war," Arab League spokesman Hesham Youssef said, adding the ministers would discuss a diplomatic initiative to try to stop the conflict through the United Nations. The meeting has been scheduled since before the war began, but the start of the conflict has given it greater urgency. Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, due to attend the meeting, said on Saturday his country wanted Arab states to take a "true Arab stand" against the war which he said would mirror sentiment on the Arab street. In Damascus on Sunday he said reports that Iraqi leaders had been killed during the war were 'fables.'"

Russia's Tass News Agency offered this: Russian President Vladimir Putin has instructed Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov to address Iraq on behalf of the Russian leadership with a strong request to strictly follow the rules for treatment of prisoners of war. "We know about the conditions the soldiers of the anti-Iraqi coalition taken prisoner are kept in," Putin said at Monday's conference with government members in the Kremlin. "I express the hope that Iraq will follow all international law requirements concerning the treatment of prisoners of war."

The Sydney Morning-Herald offered this editorial perspective: "There is surprising uncertainty about the postwar shape of the new Iraq. In its decision to invade Iraq, the United States has been certain of victory, but has lacked a fully formed plan for what will follow its postwar military administration. So far, only a broad general approach is discernible. Most likely, international police and justice personnel, drawn from Muslim countries, will be called on to govern under U.N. auspices. This would restore and maintain order at the local level. The administration at the top — its personnel and powers — is less certain, as is the timetable for a move to full democracy. Iraq has a strong tradition of independence and — unlike many other Muslim nations — a lengthy secular history. For all the hopeful talk of that kind, though, its story even before Saddam Hussein took power in 1979 has been of a brutal one-party dictatorship. Rule by fear, which has been maintained by kinship-based corruption, has destroyed the lives of millions of Iraqis. That is in large part the justification for the war. In this, the resemblance between Iraq and the brutal and corrupt one-party states of communist Europe is striking. The fear is that Iraq, when it is free, will have the same propensity to fall under the sway of organised crime, just as the former communist states of Europe did after their own liberation. Added to the uncertainty of who in Iraq will eventually take over the government are geopolitical uncertainties."

The Syria Times reported this: "A U.S. warplane targeted yesterday morning a Syrian civilian passenger bus with an air-to-surface missile in al-Rutba Iraqi area, some 160 km [100 miles] from the Syrian-Iraqi borders. The bombardment resulted in five passengers killed and ten wounded. Some 37 passengers on board the bus were on their way back home, fleeing the U.S. aggression on Iraq and its innocent civilians. The Syrian medical centre at Tanf rendered medical treatment to the wounded and sent the bodies of the martyrs to Douma hospital in the outskirts of Damascus to be delivered to their families."

Compiled by Andrew Cohen