Days I do not want to forget.

I'm sorry for not posting yesterday, but that was for (good) reasons.

Day 6 the 25th of March 2003.

Today carried big headlinlies.
-Basra is a military target. This is what the British forces announced, together with full control of Om-Qasr and Basra international airport. News about an uprising in some areas of Basra.

-The coalition forces reach about 80 km. To the south of Baghdad and news about combating Al-Madina Al- Munawarar republican guard division. It seems that Baghdad battle is about to begin despite the continuing bad whether.

We still have water and power supply and phone lines are still working. There are no fuel crises its control on the. There’s still a large doubt among people concerning the final objectives of the operation behind this battle. “Are they serious this time” it’s not easy to imagine the possible consequences of the regime fall. It’s been here for 35 years. How would it look like without it? This is more than a dream and it’s more than we can imagine.

Today a friend of my father visited us. He works in a high position in the air defence command. My father started saying” you have to be more careful with those SAM missiles, they’re falling without any guidance and killing people ” the man said ” we do not run the system fully, we can’t let the radars work for a long time, because they’ll be targeted immediately! We just shoot these rockets without radar guidance to prove to Saddam that we are not traitors. He had put execution squads from the 'Fedayeen' in every missiles battery to watch the officers once the raids start. That’s why we fire those missiles and we know they may well cause serious damage and deaths, but we can’t disobey Saddam”
That officer was sure that this battle will bring with it the end of Saddam, and when we told him that most of the south is now under the control of the coalition forces from what we see on TV, and how the people are destroying Saddam’s pictures in Om-Qasr, we felt that he was afraid and wanted someone to tell him what would probably be the result because he was in a very sensitive position. He trusted my father’s judgment, so he came with many questions. I left them together so that he can feel free to ask without getting embarrassed.

The bombing continued all day and I was able this time to see the airplanes in the sky. They were flying relatively at a low altitude. They were their all the time.
-The raids today resulted in the destruction of the local TV station, which led to sudden stop of the broadcast. This is very important. They decided to carry on by broadcasting only through radio stations. People also depended on Al-Alam Iranian TV that we could easily get in Baghdad. This channel has become the favorite for many Iraqis since it shows news rather than stupid poetry and slogans like those of the Iraqi leadership. It seems Saddam thinks that he can win this battle by words, not to mention the 'patriotic songs' which we became famous in, as we, as people put it, the land of the million patriotic song, and of course all of those were devoted to glorify Saddam rather than Iraq.

Some of our daily routines started to change. We, now, sleep few hours at night and try to compensate by sleeping few hours in the afternoon. We prepare every day for a long gathering and discussion that never ends and crosses all the lines.
The night has become very long.

-By Mohammed.