Democracy Now! April 10, 2003

8:00-8:01 Billboard 8:10-8:11 Headlines 8:11-8:12 One Minute Music Break 8:15-8:30: Looting is surging and buildings have been set on fire in Baghdad today as fighting continues in some parts of the city. US troops have come under fire throughout the day. Fighters attacked a convoy of US marines and special forces at dawn on the banks of the Tigris River near a mosque. One US soldier was killed and over a dozen wounded. The BBC is reporting Saddam Hussein may have been hiding in the mosque. US troops are now searching the mosque. US warplanes bombed non-Iraqi Arab fighters on the west bank of river. Reuters reports the fighters appear to be in control of several districts in the West of the city. They are controlling checkpoints and US troops were nowhere to be seen. British war correspondent Robert Fisk visited a group of the fighters yesterday and reports they are from Algeria, Morocco, Syria, Jordan, and Palestine. One of them told Fisk: "We left our wives and children and came here to die for these people and then they told us to go. Yesterday, top US officer Brigadier-General John Kelly told the Sidney Morning Herald that hundreds of non-Iraqi Muslim fighters are putting up a stronger fight for Baghdad than Iraq's Republican Guard. He said: They run into our machine guns and we shoot them down like the morons they are." Meanwhile, the capital has plunged into lawlessless. Tens of thousands of people are roaming the city looking for plunder. Iraqis are targeting government buildings, embassies, and banks. They are taking air conditioners, radios, furniture, and money. US troops are making little or no effort to stop them and in some cases are joining them. On Monday, troops from the US Army's 3rd Infantry Division stormed one of Iraq's presidential palaces. They took ashtrays, gold-painted glassware and other souvenirs. U.S. troops are occupying the Oil Ministry. The Pentagon reports over 100 US soldiers have been killed in the invasion and around 400 injured. * May Ying Welsh, independent reporter in Baghdad 8:20-8:21 One Minute Music Break 8:30-8:40: Spanish Journalists protested the death of a Spanish TV cameraman killed by a U.S. tank shell in Baghdad yesterday by putting their cameras, microphones and notebooks on the floor as Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar arrived at the Senate. Aznar found the floor outside the chamber covered with equipment and 30 to 40 journalists standing in stony silence. In a further display of anger, about 20 Spanish journalists walked out of a news conference with British Foreign Minister Jack Straw and his Spanish counterpart, Ana Palacio, after just one question. * Maria Carrion, filmmaker and former Democracy Now! producer 8:40-8:41 One Minute Music Break 8:41-8:58: The lives of Michael Kelly and David Bloom have become widely known across the country over the past week. They are the two U.S. journalists who died while covering the invasion of Iraq. Kelly, an editor of Atlantic Monthly, was killed on Friday and Bloom, an NBC TV host, died on Saturday. But receiving less attention have been the many international reporters who have died since the attack began. They include Al Jazeera reporter Tariq Ayoub; Reuters TV cameraman Taras Protsyuk; Jose Couso, a Spanish cameraman for Madrid-based TeleCinco; reporter Julio Anguita Parrado of the Spanish daily El Mundo; German reporter Christian Liebig of the weekly Focus magazine; BBC translator Kamaran Abdurazaq Muhamed; ITV news correspondent Terry Lloyd; Paul Moran, a free-lance cameraman for Australia s ABC News. And finally there was Pulitzer Prize winning cameraman Kaveh Golestan who died after stepping on a landmine. Yesterday we talked to Wall Street Journal reporter Farnaz Fassihi, to talk about Golestan, an Iranian cameraman. We talked to Fassihi shortly after the statue of Saddam Hussein had fallen in Baghdad. * Farnaz Fassihi, Middle East correspondent of the Wall Street Journal 8:58-8:59 Outro and Credits 9:00-9:01 Billboard: U.S. occupies an Arab capital for the first time in history as Hussein s regime falls: British reporter Andrew Buncombe joins us from Baghdad A discussion with an Iraqi American whose father was murdered and mother was jailed by Saddam Hussein s regime Turkey sends military observers into Kirkuk while U.S. prepares to install a new government: A look at what happens after the invasion ends with writer Dilip Hero and Iraqi American Salam Al-Rawi. 9:10-9:11 Headlines 9:11-9:12 One Minute Music Break 9:12-9:25: US troops, tanks, and armored vehicles rolled in and occupied the capitol with only scattered resistance. Thousands of residents poured into the streets. They celebrated, greeted US troops with cheers and even flowers, looted, and tore down symbols of Saddam s rule. It is the first time in history that the United States has occupied an Arab capital. In the most dramatic moment, a moment that was broadcast around the world, a group of Iraqis gathered around the gigantic statue of Saddam Hussein in Al-Fardus Square. They tried to cut down the statue with a sledgehammer but had little luck. Then US marines roped the statue to an armored personnel carrier. One US marine climbed to the top and covered Hussein s head with an American flag. The American flag was quickly removed and an old Iraqi flag hung around Saddam s neck. Then, the Marines toppled the statue. One resident told journalist Robert Fisk: "You'll see the celebrations and we will be happy Saddam has gone. But we will then want to rid ourselves of the Americans and we will want to keep our oil and there will be resistance and then they will call us "terrorists." * Andrew Buncombe, reporter with the Independent of London. He is reporting now in Iraq. 9:20-9:21 One Minute Music Break 9:25-9:40: As Saddam Hussein s regime falls, Democracy Now! talks to an Iraqi America man who opposed the war although his family had been brutalized by Hussein. Salam Al-Rawi s father was tortured and murdered. His mother was jailed. As for Iraqis around the world yesterday was a day of mixed emotions for Al-Rawi. Regime change in Iraq had occurred but questions about where Iraq heads next remain unanswered. * Salam Al-Rawi, Iraqi American businessman who owns restaurants in New York. 9:40-9:58: Turkey is sending military observers to Kirkuk with U.S. approval, according to the Associated Press. This follows an Iraqi Kurdish move into the oil-rich city in northern Iraq. Turkey has repeatedly said that it will not accept Iraqi Kurdish control of Kirkuk. Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said he spoke with Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell today and that Powell offered to let Turkey send the observers. Earlier BBC reported US-backed Kurdish forces have moved into the center of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. Local people are celebrating. The AP reports oil facilities are completely intact around town and are even continuing to pump oil. Near Kalaka, thousands of Kurds swarmed and looted abandoned Iraqi bunkers and barracks in a free-for-all that the Kurdish militia made no attempt to halt. Meanwhile the BBC reports the controversy over Iraq s future continued as the Bush administration yesterday gave differing accounts of a key meeting of exiles within the country. Early on Wednesday, Vice President Dick Cheney announced the US will organize a conference of Iraqi exiles, and people from inside Iraq, to discuss the formation of an Iraqi interim authority which would gradually take over the running of the country. He said the meeting would take place on Saturday in Nasiriya in southern Iraq. But, within a few hours, others in the US government attempted to downgrade the status of the Iraqi opposition meeting. In an unusual move, White House press spokesman Ari Fleischer issued a correction to Cheney's statement, saying the meeting would take place sometime after Saturday. And State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said that the venue of the meeting had not yet been decided Meanwhile, a group of former senior U.S. officials endorsed a call yesterday for the Bush administration to share influence over postwar Iraq with other countries and a broad spectrum of Iraqis. The officials include: former secretaries of state Lawrence Eagleburger and Alexander Haig Jr., former defense secretary William Perry, former CIA director James Woolsey former House speaker Newt Gingrich, and former senators Bob Kerrey (a Nebraska Democrat) and Fred Thompson (a Tennessee Republican.) The statement said: "Only if the United States invests in helping Iraqis build a new Iraq will it have the moral standing and political authority to promote its other objectives in the region." * Salam Al-Rawi, Iraqi American businessman who owns restaurants in New York. * Dilip Hiro, journalist and author of 24 books including Iraq: In the Eye of the Storm 9:58-9:59 Outro and Credits Democracy Now! is produced by Kris Abrams, Mike Burke, Angie Karran, Ana Nogueira and Elizabeth Press with help Sharif Kouddous and Noah Reibel. Mike Di Filippo is our music maestro and engineer.