Iraqi People

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The trial of Saddam Hussein that ended yesterday with a guilty verdict and death sentence for the former Iraqi leader, once viewed as a means of reconciliation and justice, instead seemed to fuel the sectarian division that grips the country. Some Shiites and Kurds celebrated. Some Sunnis mourned angrily. For large swaths of the Iraqi people, Hussein has ceased to be the mesmerizing patriarch who once towered over their nightmares and lives. Many interviewed yesterday and in recent months said they had laid him to rest long ago, more worried about the internecine violence racking the country.

WASHINGTON - President Bush taunted the armed groups in Iraq that have killed more than two dozen U.S. soldiers in the past two months, saying "bring them on," and vowed yesterday that the United States would stay committed in the war-torn nation until it becomes a "free country run by the Iraqi people." A combative Bush addressed the deteriorating security situation in Iraq by saying the United States would not be run out of the country by the continuing lethal attacks on U.S. forces.

WASHINGTON -- The White House said yesterday that it has demanded information from the Pentagon about a secret U.S. military offensive to plant stories in the Iraqi media, and senators are planning to meet privately today to hear details about the information operations campaign in Iraq. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the White House was "very concerned" about reports that a defense contractor in Iraq, working with U.S. troops, was paying newspapers in Baghdad to run positive stories written by U.S. soldiers.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S.-led occupation of Iraq sustained hits on its military and civilian flanks yesterday when 62 Americans were injured in three attacks and the Iraqi Governing Council defiantly announced the firing of a governor chosen by U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer III. Two suicide bombings targeted U.S. military facilities, the first before dawn outside a compound in Tall Afar, near the northern city of Mosul, injuring 59 soldiers. The second occurred at a base in Husseiniya, 15 miles northeast of Baghdad, where a man blew himself up, wounding at least three soldiers.

TEARING DOWN the Abu Ghraib prison won't dispel the haunting images of American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners. It won't renew the reputation of the United States among the Iraqi people or rehabilitate its image around the world. And more to the point, it won't heal the psychic wounds of the Iraqis battered there. President Bush's offer, made in his speech Monday night, to demolish the infamous prison and replace it with a state-of-the art prison system shows a lack of understanding of how best to deal with the political fallout of the prisoner abuse scandal.

FALLUJAH, Iraq - U.S. troops pressed forward yesterday in a new campaign combining military raids against suspected loyalists to Saddam Hussein with high-visibility relief projects for Iraqi civilians. Commanders said they hoped the two-sided approach would help eradicate armed resistance against U.S. forces. Hours after soldiers carried out raids in Baghdad yesterday, military engineers set out to build soccer fields for children in the same neighborhood. But in a sign of continued resistance, several U.S. soldiers were wounded yesterday when their convoy was attacked about 50 miles north of Baghdad, near the city of Balad.

WASHINGTON - During the next six months, the world is going to be treated to two remarkable trials in Baghdad. It is going to be the mother of all split screens. On one side, you're going to see the trial of Saddam Hussein. On the other side, you're going to see the trial of the Iraqi people. That's right, the Iraqi people will also be on trial - for whether they can really live together without the iron fist of the man on the other side of the screen. This may be apocryphal, but Mr. Hussein is supposed to have once remarked something like: Be careful; if you get rid of me, you will need seven presidents to rule Iraq.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Facing relentless guerrilla attacks on his security forces and on fellow government officials, including car bombings yesterday that killed more than 25 people, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi vowed yesterday that Iraq would hold national elections as scheduled Jan. 30. "We are quite aware of the concerns of people regarding the security situation, but we will not allow terrorists to derail the political process," Allawi said at...

YANBU, Saudi Arabia -- Saudi Arabia has decided to accept and shelter all Iraqi refugees now under American and Saudi control in the south of Iraq and is building a camp to accommodate as many as 50,000 people, a senior Saudi official says.The official, Lt. Gen. Khalid ibn Sultan, a prince who commanded the Arab forces in the coalition that ousted Iraq from Kuwait, also reaffirmed yesterday the kingdom's commitment to abide by international law and "Islamic humanitarian tradition" in handling nearly 14,000 Iraqi prisoners of war who do not wish to return to Iraq.

The United States' top military officer said last night that Iraq is at a critical juncture that could yield prosperity or could devolve into civil war, amounting to perhaps his gloomiest assessment to date. Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called Iraq "a place that is having some real difficulties right now" and said the country's direction will likely be determined by how it emerges from those difficulties. His comments, offered during an address to the Baltimore Council on Foreign Affairs, were a clear retreat from his statement a week ago that the war is "going very, very well."