Marine Lance Cpl. Marcco Ware carries an Iraqi soldier who was shot three times while trying to ambush a convoy of the 3rd Battalion, Fifth Regiment, in central Iraq. The attack left one Marine and about 40 Iraqis dead.

Sandstorm skirmish
The next day the unit took more "Machine Gun Alley" fire. The desert winds had kicked up a sandstorm, but the result was the same as the night before.

"We could see through thermal sites," he said. "You could see what was shooting at you. With our gun tube orientation, everybody kept their sector and we kept rolling and we engaged all the way through."

By Wednesday night, he was northeast of Najaf, guarding the Euphrates River bridgehead. The unit stopped there, waiting for reinforcements to catch up.

As reports showed an Iraqi convoy apparently moving their way, Wheatley stood watch. He could feel the blasts of B-52 bombers attacking the convoy. "The wind was blowing bad," he said, "you could feel it more than hear it."

Due to the B-52s, the Iraqi convoy did not reach his unit. Reinforcements arrived the following day.

Do not believe any commentator who says that a rising surge of "nationalism" is preventing Iraqis from greeting U.S. and British troops in the streets with open arms. What is preventing them from rising up and taking over the streets of their cities is confusion about American intentions and fear of the murderous brown-shirt thugs known as the Fedayeen Saddam, who are leading the small-arms-fire attacks on American and British soldiers. The coalition forces have an urgent need to send clear and unmistakable signals to the people of Iraq that unlike in 1991, there is no turning back from the destruction of Saddam Hussein. And in order to do this effectively they must turn to the Iraqi opposition, which has so far been marginalized.

• The rest of the 101st Airmobile has crossed into Iraq from Kuwait. Only one brigade had previously been engaged while the other two were still arriving in theater. DEBKA claims that the 101st has turned up west of Karbala preparing to open another front at Baghdad, but I'll want to hear some other confirmation of that.
  
• Some body of heavy troops (reportedly an armored battalion of the 1st Inf. Div.) will be airlifted into northern Iraq to the airfield "secured" yesterday by the 173rd Airborne Bde. Still no idea why there had to be a night parachute drop to "secure" an airfield well within Kurdish areas, and already held by Kurdish forces.
  
• I've no idea where the info came from, so take it for what it's worth, but that Iraqi convoy moving south from Baghdad was reportedly a real potential problem. It was composed of light vehicles of some type carrying Iraqi soldiers wearing uniforms "similar to those of the 3rd Inf Div.", according to Stratfor. It was attacked and apparently destroyed by naval aviation.
  
• The Iraqi attack south from Basra was apparently not as big as originally reported, and has gone back to Basra. Not sure what, if anything, this means. I could pretty much tag everything with that sentence, though.
  

It is wild here near the front of the American advance, 110 miles south of Baghdad. The ambushes are more frequent, the Iraqi soldiers more desperate, the Americans more jumpy. At night, the perimeter of the American camp echoes with the sound of mortar fire and the yips of wild dogs. "The closer we get to Baghdad, the crazier it gets," Sgt. Robert Gardner, a marine at a base here, said.

In the 1991 Persian Gulf War, nine Abrams tanks were damaged by mines but were repaired. No U.S. soldier has ever died in an Abrams.

The convoy of hundreds of vehicles including tanks, TOW missiles and armored personnel carriers was backed up along the road leading to a pontoon bridge, and Marines with scarves around their heads lay in the sand on either side of the line of traffic, pointing their M-16s toward the desert. Anyone who approached faced close scrutiny.

DEEP INSIDE SOUTHERN IRAQ - The triumphant road to Baghdad is littered with discarded combat boots and army uniforms, even hand grenades, as men from the Iraqi military throw away anything that could identify them as combatants.

U.S. military commanders continue to assure their troops and the international news media that Iraq's army is on the run. That might be accurate, but in the absence of massive surrenders by Iraqi forces in the south, another interpretation might be that Iraqi forces are retreating or going to ground. The move could be part of an Iraqi strategy to draw coalition forces close to Baghdad for an attack by elite Republican Guard divisions, while Iraqi security forces from the Kuwaiti border to Karbala attack U.S. supply and support forces over a 300-mile-long battlefield.