Flash Gordon Left Me The Keys

'Candy Bomber' Wants to Fly Over Baghdad... Make it sweet


DAYTON, Ohio (AP) -- The pilot known as the Candy Bomber for air-dropping handkerchief-tethered chocolate and gum to the children of Berlin in 1948 wants to do the same for the kids of Baghdad.

"I'd give my right arm to do it," said retired Air Force Col. Gail Halvorsen. "I've had the experience of the reaction of the kids on the ground. It's just incredible."

When the Soviets formed a blockade around Berlin after World War II, Halvorsen and other U.S. pilots airlifted food, medicine and other supplies into the city. During that time, Halvorsen collected rations from his Air Force friends and began to quietly drop little parachutes of candy to the children.

"I didn't have permission. I almost got court martialed," he recalled.

Halvorsen later got permission, and he and his colleagues air-dropped 23 tons of candy to the German children.

Halvorsen still makes his trademark candy drops.

In 1994, he flew a C-130 cargo plane over Bosnia and dropped candy-bar parachutes to the children there. And over the past year, he's made a dozen similar flights in the United States to demonstrate the drops to schoolchildren.

Halvorsen said he plans to ask his friends in the Air Force if he can make a candy drop over Baghdad once the war is over.

"I'm planning on how to do that when the dust clears," he said.

Halvorsen, 82, of Spanish Fork, Utah, was in Dayton to speak at an aviation symposium to mark the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers' first flight.

Halvorsen said the candy drops brought hope to the children of Berlin.

"That's what the airplane would bring to Iraq," he said. "They've been mistreated so long, with resources diverted to other things. The bottom line is it would lift their spirits."

Halvorsen said such a drop would be a humanitarian gesture rather than a propaganda move. And he believes it would show the Iraqi people how Americans feel about them.

"It would be a ray of hope, a symbol that somebody in America cares," he said. "That makes all the difference in the world on attitude."

'Candy Bomber' Wants to Fly Over Baghdad... Make it sweet


DAYTON, Ohio (AP) -- The pilot known as the Candy Bomber for air-dropping handkerchief-tethered chocolate and gum to the children of Berlin in 1948 wants to do the same for the kids of Baghdad.

"I'd give my right arm to do it," said retired Air Force Col. Gail Halvorsen. "I've had the experience of the reaction of the kids on the ground. It's just incredible."

When the Soviets formed a blockade around Berlin after World War II, Halvorsen and other U.S. pilots airlifted food, medicine and other supplies into the city. During that time, Halvorsen collected rations from his Air Force friends and began to quietly drop little parachutes of candy to the children.

"I didn't have permission. I almost got court martialed," he recalled.

Halvorsen later got permission, and he and his colleagues air-dropped 23 tons of candy to the German children.

Halvorsen still makes his trademark candy drops.

In 1994, he flew a C-130 cargo plane over Bosnia and dropped candy-bar parachutes to the children there. And over the past year, he's made a dozen similar flights in the United States to demonstrate the drops to schoolchildren.

Halvorsen said he plans to ask his friends in the Air Force if he can make a candy drop over Baghdad once the war is over.

"I'm planning on how to do that when the dust clears," he said.

Halvorsen, 82, of Spanish Fork, Utah, was in Dayton to speak at an aviation symposium to mark the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers' first flight.

Halvorsen said the candy drops brought hope to the children of Berlin.

"That's what the airplane would bring to Iraq," he said. "They've been mistreated so long, with resources diverted to other things. The bottom line is it would lift their spirits."

Halvorsen said such a drop would be a humanitarian gesture rather than a propaganda move. And he believes it would show the Iraqi people how Americans feel about them.

"It would be a ray of hope, a symbol that somebody in America cares," he said. "That makes all the difference in the world on attitude."

Desert Looting ...
U.S. Targets Saddam's Desert Hometown

CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, Qatar (AP) -- As resistance in Baghdad crumbles, U.S. forces are now targeting President Saddam Hussein's desert hometown, a redoubt bristling with loyalists who could be bent on making it the site of the regime's last stand.

U.S. Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks singled out Tikrit on Tuesday as one of the last Iraqi "strongholds."

Saddam, if he is still alive, may try to flee to his birthplace in the hope tribesmen with blood ties to him will fight to the death for their leader. Even if he is dead, experts fear Tikrit would remain a hotbed of resistance long after a new government is installed.

The town owes a lot to Saddam. Before his Baath Party came to power in 1968, it was a backwater. Thanks to government investment in infrastructure and business - largesse straight from the man at the top - Tikrit has grown into a sprawling town of 260,000 people.

Tikrit now hosts a huge army garrison for the Republican Guard, Iraq's best-trained troops, as well as an air base and air force academy.

Saddam has also studded the town with some of his largest and most elaborate presidential compounds. If he went into hiding there, regime watchers say he could easily vanish into the labyrinth of underground tunnels believed to link those sites to the eastern banks of the Tigris River.

Brooks said neutralizing Tikrit is an important step in breaking Saddam's power base. Although he would not go into details, Brooks said coalition forces were already hitting "command and control" facilities in the city.

The crash Monday near Tikrit of an American F-15E fighter jet was one sign of how the focus of the conflict may be shifting to Tikrit. If shot down, it would be only the second coalition plane taken out by Iraqi fire.

Central Command said the cause of the incident was under investigation and rescue crews were searching Wednesday for the crew.

U.S. special operations forces have been watching the roads leading north out of Baghdad to Tikrit to prevent possible attempts by Saddam to flee or any effort by the Republican Guard to regroup there.

But the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two main Iraqi Kurdish groups opposing Saddam, claimed on Tuesday that Saddam already was hiding in Tikrit. The party's newspaper said Saddam, his two sons and many of his top aides moved there after fighting intensified in Baghdad.

How much resistance Tikrit could muster is not clear.

Brooks said Tuesday that many of the Iraqi forces stationed in Tikrit early in the war have since moved south to meet the allied advance. And coalition troops have so far been able to overwhelm much bigger cities like Baghdad and Basra.

On the other hand, Tikrit is a power center for Sunni Arab tribes that may hold out for as long as possible out of fear of losing power to the nation's Shiite majority.

And if Saddam goes into hiding, he may be able to organize clandestine cells and launch a guerrilla war against U.S. troops similar to the one his Baath party waged in the 1950s.

"It is entirely possible that some residual elements of the Baath Party will reconstitute themselves as an underground revolutionary armed-struggle party that will launch terrorist attacks against U.S. forces and the interim authority," said John Pike, a military analyst at GlobalSecurity.org.

"Pacifying Tikrit is going to be a particular problem," he said.

In the Baath Party's early days, Saddam rose to prominence in 1959 by participating in a failed assassination attempt on then-Prime Minister Gen. Abdel-Karim Kassem.

Even back then, Tikrit served him well. After the botched assassination attempt, the young Saddam fled his hometown on horseback across the desert for neighboring Syria.





---

Widespread Looting Breaks Out in Baghdad.. A little late a Day Short...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Witnessing Saddam Hussein's power stripped away, hundreds of Iraqis rushed to take everything else Wednesday: They used pickup trucks and wheelbarrows to haul off everything from refrigerators to flower pots from government ministries, police stations and state companies.

Emboldened by the sight of U.S. troops taking control of the capital, they dared not only to loot but also to rejoice over Saddam's fall, to vandalize his image and to call him a criminal - offenses that just days or weeks ago could have brought arrest, imprisonment, torture, even death at the hands of the secret police.

They danced in the streets, waving rifles, palm fronds and flags, pumping their arms in the air and flashing the V-for-victory sign.

Among the sites plundered: the state-owned Oil Marketing Co., traffic police headquarters, and Iraq's Olympic headquarters, which was said to be the site of a torture center run by one of Saddam's sons. The looters took computers, appliances, tires, bookshelves, tables, even Iraqi jeeps.

There were no immediate reports of any attempts by the Iraqi government to restore order.
State-run Baghdad radio, though, was still on the air, broadcasting patriotic songs and excerpts from Saddam's speeches.

On a Baghdad street, a white-haired man held up a poster of Saddam and beat it with his shoe. A younger man spat on the portrait, and several others launched kicks at the face of the Iraqi president.

"Come see, this is freedom. This is the criminal, this is the infidel," he said. "This is the destiny of every traitor. He killed millions of us."

The outburst came after one of the quietest nights in Baghdad since the war began. The relatively light clashes raised hopes that the worst of the fighting was over and that Baghdad had fallen to the Americans.

"Today the regime is in disarray and much of Iraq is free from years of oppression," said Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, a U.S. Central Command spokesman. But he added: "There is still work to be done."

Central Command was "cautiously optimistic" about the jubilation in the streets.

"All of us have come to expect the absolute worst behavior from this dying regime, so it's important to remember that tough fighting may lie ahead," said Lt. Mark Kitchens. "However, we are heartened by what we are seeing, and feel a sense of warmth that the citizens of Baghdad are taking to the streets to celebrate their freedom."

Still, Kitchens said of the looting: "It is certainly something we discourage, and when and where we can make a difference, we will certainly try to do so."

At Saddam City, a poor, predominantly Shiite area that has long been considered a hotbed of anti-Saddam unrest, hundreds of Iraqis cheered American troops. Small bands of youths tore down portraits of Saddam and chanted, "Bush! Bush! Thank you!"

On Palestine Street, where Saddam's ruling Baath party as recently as a few weeks back held rallies and shows of force, gangs of youths and even middle-aged men looted the warehouses of the Trade Ministry, coming out with air conditioners, ceiling fans, refrigerators and TV sets.

By the afternoon, the looting spread to more parts of the city. On al-Saadoun Street in the heart of the capital, men, women and children broke into a furniture store and made away with mattresses.

Two young men stole gold-rimmed copies of the Quran from a bookshop.

One Iraqi, expressing his disgust at the looting, said: "We are now afraid of other Iraqis, not the Americans."

Overnight, only a few blasts shattered the quiet. Explosions, tank shelling and gunfire rang out after daybreak, but the fighting was described as only sporadic resistance to U.S. forces trying to expand areas of the capital under their control.

The Army was pushing across the city from the west and the Marines from the east, and they hoped to link up Wednesday. U.S. forces were securing routes into the capital, repelling ambushes and trying to hunt down roving bands of fighters made up of three or four people.

The majority of regular Iraqi army soldiers and Republican Guard troops are believed to have deserted and gone home. Uniforms, boots and weapons litter the streets and fill fighting positions throughout the city.

The Arab-language satellite TV station Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. reported from Baghdad that there was no sign of any Iraqi government or military presence in the city.

Neither Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf nor any ministry "minders" showed up at the Palestine Hotel, where hundreds of journalists are staying. The Iraqi government had assigned "minders" to escort journalists as they did their reporting, and Sahhaf gave daily briefings where he declared that Iraqi forces were slaughtering the invaders and on the verge of victory.

Brooks, the U.S. Central Command spokesman, had said on Tuesday that he fully expected looting in Baghdad and other places where there is "a vacuum in terms of control." But he added: "I think as time goes on, more law and order will be established. Ideally that goes by way of the Iraqi populations taking care of themselves."

Early Wednesday, shortly after midnight, a sudden flash of light illuminated the sky over Baghdad, accompanied by a loud clap. This time, though, it was not a continuation of the nearly three straight weeks of aerial attacks on Baghdad: It was a thunderstorm.

Thick black smoke rose from several areas, but more and more of the fires started by the Iraqis to cloak targets in the city have fizzled out in the past few days, possibly because the fuel has run out and the Iraqis are not able to reach them to replenish the fuel.

---

Loot here

Widespread Looting Erupts in Baghdad One Day Too Late...Where is the good stuff @?

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Widespread, often jubilant looting of government buildings erupted Wednesday in numerous Baghdad neighborhoods, a clear sign that Saddam Hussein's authority had collapsed. Marine tanks rolled into the commercial heart of the city, greeted by people cheering and waving white flags.

At police stations, universities, government ministries, the headquarters of the Iraq Olympic Committee, looters unhindered by any police presence made off with computers, furniture, even military jeeps. One young man used roller skates to wheel away a refrigerator.

"Thank you, thank you, Mr. Bush," some of the looters shouted. An elderly man beat a portrait of Saddam with his shoe, while a younger man spat on the portrait.

Even as the populace seemed suddenly to feel free of Saddam's control, U.S. officers said their forces faced continued resistance, fierce but disorganized, from small groups of holdout pro-Saddam fighters. The U.S Central Command reacted cautiously to the euphoria and chaos in Baghdad.

"There are still many days of perhaps fierce fighting to follow," said Capt. Frank Thorp, a command spokesman. "There are other areas of the country where we have yet to be at... So its not over. We're seeing good signs here, but I would definitely stay on the cautious side and say we still have more to come."
U.S. commanders also focused attention on other targets to the north - Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, still a stronghold of loyalist troops, and the northern city of Mosul. Kitchens said special operations forces and airstrikes were "actively engaging" Iraqi forces in both cities.

U.S. special forces and Kurdish fighters seized a strategic hilltop near Mosul; senior Kurdish leader Hoshyar Zebari called it the most important gain in the region thus far.

The fate of Saddam remained unknown; his supporters retained control of the upscale Baghdad neighborhood targeted by four 2,000-pound bombs in a U.S. strike aimed at killing the Iraqi president.

Elsewhere in the capital, however, U.S. forces steadily expanded their reach, securing a military airport, capturing a prison, setting fire to a Republican Guard barracks. They are now operating in every quadrant of the city.

The Marines pushed forward Wednesday, securing routes inside the city and pursuing roving bands of three or four Iraqis armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons.

Maj. Gen. Buford Blount II, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, visited a command post set up at the New Presidential Palace, overlooking the Tigris River in central Baghdad. Col. David Perkins, whose 2nd Brigade was at the command post, told Blount his forces can go anywhere in the city and meet only sporadic sniping.

The two commanders discussed what buildings could be used to house U.S. military units and a new government to replace Saddam's.

"That's the next mental jump, is for the Iraqis to realize that even if he (Saddam Hussein) is still alive, he's not in charge anymore," Perkins said.

There were signs that the Iraqi government's efforts to sustain its public relations campaign had collapsed. State television went off the air Tuesday, and on Wednesday, foreign journalists said their "minders" - government agents who monitor their reporting - did not turn up for work.

Also, there was no sign of Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, whose daily briefings have constituted the main public face of the regime during the war.

While intent on completing the takeover of Baghdad, U.S. commanders also were turning their attention to Tikrit, Saddam's hometown in the desert about 90 miles to the north. Defended by well-trained troops, and home to many of Saddam's most devoted followers, the city of 260,000 is considered one of the few remaining strongholds of the Iraqi regime.

The Central Command said coalition airstrikes were targeting the Republican Guard's Adnan division in Tikrit, "shaping the battlefield" before U.S. ground forces move in.

Coalition rescue teams were searching Wednesday for the crew of a F-15E fighter jet that went down on a mission near Tikrit. Central Command said the cause of the incident was unknown.

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two main Iraqi Kurdish groups opposing Saddam, claimed Tuesday that Saddam already was hiding in Tikrit. U.S. officials said they didn't know if he had escaped Monday's bombing of a site in Baghdad's al-Mansour neighborhood where he and at least one of his sons reportedly were meeting.

Residents of al-Mansour estimated that 14 people, including at least seven children, were killed and scores wounded in homes and shops adjacent to the targeted site.

The toll of journalists killed in the war reached 10, with three killed in U.S. military strikes in Baghdad on Tuesday

Two cameramen, one from Ukraine and one from Spain, were killed when a U.S. tank fired into the Palestine Hotel, where hundreds of journalists are based. U.S. officers initially said hostile fire had been coming from the building; journalists said they witnessed none.

Also, a Jordanian reporter was killed in a U.S. airstrike on the Baghdad office of the Arab television network al-Jazeera, which contended the attack was deliberate.

On Wednesday, the U.S. branch of Amnesty International joined in the criticism.

"Unless the U.S. can demonstrate that the Palestine Hotel had been used for military purposes, it was a civilian object protected under international humanitarian law that should not have been attacked," Amnesty said.

In the southern city of Basra, which was taken over by British forces this week, looters have been plundering government buildings, universities, even hospitals. A Red Cross representative said the looting could delay relief efforts in the city of 1.3 million.

The Pentagon said the U.S. military's death toll from the war rose to 96, while eight Americans were missing and seven held as prisoners. Thirty British personnel have been killed; the Iraqi forces' death toll is unknown, but believed to number in the thousands.
Editor's Note: This story was written by David Crary in New York, based on reporting from Ellen Knickmeyer, Ravi Nessman, Chris Tomlinson, Alex Zavis and Hamza Hendawi in Baghdad and other AP reporters in Iraq and elsewhere.