REMEMBER WHEN

GOLD COAST BULLETIN Monday, March 31, 2003

IT was the first sign of disturbing things to come in the war in Iraq, which was in its early days.

The war took a sinister turn, with Iraq officials warning that suicide bombings would be a routine battle tactic.

Four US troops were killed in an explosion when a man in a taxi asked them for help.

US officials, who said the war now felt “more like terrorism”, described the tactic as “cowardly”.

The bomber has been accorded posthumous medals by Iraq president Saddam Hussein.

Hussein applauded the bomber and awarded the man a posthumous promotion to colonel and bestowed on him two medals, the Al-Rafidin, or The Two Rivers, and the Mother of All Battles.

Iraq’s Vice-President, Taha Yassin Ramadan, warned that suicide attacks would become routine military policy, both in Iraq and the United States.

“We will use any means to kill our enemy in our land and we will follow the enemy into its land,” he said.

Mr Ramadan also claimed thousands of Arab volunteers had been pouring into Iraq since the start of the war to help repel the allied forces.

Major General Stanley McChrystal of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said suicide attacks would not change the way USled forces proceeded in the war, except that they would take more care in vulnerable locations, such as checkpoints.

“It looks and feels like terrorism,” he said.

Suicide bombing was a major tactic used through to the end of the US involvement in the Iraq conflict in 2011.