(Publicado en Washington Post)

A massive U.S. aerial bombardment of Baghdad began today as the Pentagon escalated the war against Iraq into a new phase intended to “shock and awe” the Iraqis into submission.

Television images from the Iraqi capital showed immense explosions and pillars of smoke all across the center of the city, on a scale that seemed to rival or even exceed the attacks of Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Dozens of government buildings could be seen going up in flames.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon briefing that the objective was “to end the regime of [Iraqi President] Saddam Hussein by striking with force on a scope and scale that make clear to Iraqis that he and his regime are finished.”

Iraq’s rulers, he said, “are starting to lose control of their country.”

Because it was after 9 p.m. in Baghdad when the attacks started, and a Friday, the Muslim day of prayer when government offices are closed, it was unlikely that many workers in the targeted buildings were at their posts. Rumsfeld said that the targets, and the weapons used to strike them, had been carefully chosen to minimize casualties among ordinary Iraqis.

The deafening blasts in Baghdad, and similar explosions reported in the major northern cities Kirkuk and Mosul, signaled the onset of the overwhelming military onslaught that U.S. officials had warned Iraq it would face. The Pentagon is hoping that the scale and ferocity of the attacks will break whatever remains of Iraq’s will to resist.

“Several hundred targets will be hit in the coming hours,” said Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Rumsfeld repeated his appeal to Iraqi officers to recognize that “the regime is history” and lay down their arms. So far, there is no sign of mass surrender, he said, despite scattered reports that some units in southern Iraq had given up as U.S. and British forces approached. Earlier today, U.S. and British marines captured Umm Qasr on the Persian Gulf, Iraq’s only deep water port, and U.S. infantry units rolled northward toward Baghdad as the United States and Britain expanded their campaign to oust President Saddam Hussein across several fronts. Myers said elements of the 3rd Infantry division were nearly 100 miles inside Iraq, about one third of the way to Baghdad from their starting point in Kuwait.

U.S. Marines also seized control of the giant Rumailah oil field near Basra in southeastern Iraq, the country’s largest and a prime strategic target.

Reports of the 3rd Infantry streaking across the desert unimpeded and Iraqi troops surrendering created the impression of a cakewalk, but in southeastern Iraq, British and U.S. marines reported surprisingly stiff resistance as they advanced toward key oil installations and port facilities. At one point U.S. Marines were pinned down in a two-hour firefight as Iraqi troops opened fire with machine guns and anti-tank rockets.

“We must not get too comfortable,” Myers said. “We are basically on our plan and moving toward Baghdad, but there are still many unknowns out there.”

Two U.S. Marines were killed in fighting inside Iraq, the first casualty of hostile fire since the war began on Wednesday, according to military spokesmen. One died in a firefight with Iraqi troops guarding an oil pumping station, the other in the advance on Umm Qasr. Their identities have not been released. Earlier, eight British marines and four Americans died in the crash of CH-46E Sea King helicopter.

U.S. troops were reported to have captured two airfields in far western Iraq, near the Jordanian border, but details were scanty about what units were involved or what resistance they might have encountered. In addition, only fragmentary and unconfirmed information was available this afternoon about two crucial subjects: the fate of Saddam Hussein and his sons, targets of a U.S. “decapitation attack” by the United States on Wednesday, and the major oil fields around Kirkuk, in northern Iraq, where some reports said U.S. Special Forces had landed to seize the oil facilities.

Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf acknowledged to reporters in Baghdad that one of Hussein’s residences was hit by U.S. bombs or missiles in earlier attacks, but he said no one was hurt. Sahhaf, the only Iraqi official to speak publicly today, blasted “the criminal George Bush and his gang.” The United States is “the superpower of villains, the superpower of Al Capone,” he said.

Iraqi state television, which remained on the air through the bombardment this evening, showed Saddam Hussein and one of his sons, but there was no way to establish when the pictures were shot.

A U.S. flag was raised briefly over Umm Qasr after U.S. Marines entered the city, but it was quickly taken down on orders of U.S. commanders who want to avoid giving the impression of conquest, reports from the region said. The U.S. message to Iraq’s people is that the troops are coming as liberators, not conquerors.

British Defense Minister Geoff Hoon said in London that joint British-U.S. Marine campaign to take control of the Faw peninsula in the southeasternmost corner of Iraq, at the border with Iran, was “a significant strategic success.” He said it ensures that oil storage facilities, pumping stations and pipelines there will not be destroyed.“

The seizure of the objectives will help enable the U.S. and British forces to establish a supply route for humanitarian aid as early as next week while protecting critical oil facilities from sabotage and heading off a repeat of the environmental disaster of 1991 when Saddam Hussein’s troops released waves of oil into the Persian Gulf, coalition officers said.

”That reflects entirely one of the main aims of the campaign, which is to give back to the people of Iraq the ability to feed and clothe and look out for themselves,“ said Lt. Col. Jamie Martin, the senior British liaison to the U.S. Marine regional headquarters in the northern Kuwaiti desert.

Preventing the destruction of Iraq’s oil wells and oil distribution facilities has been a primary objective of U.S. and British military planners. Some oil wells in Southern Iraq are reportedly in flames, but the scale of damage appears minuscule compared to the wreckage retreating Iraqi troops inflicted on Kuwait’s oil fields as they retreated from the country in 1991. Rumsfeld firefighters will be brought in to extinguish the blazes ”in fairly short order.“

Hoon told the BBC that Marines who entered the southeastern region-some by helicopter, some overland-met ”stiff resistance. There is real fighting going on. There is no suggestion that [Iraqi] resistance in the south is collapsing.’“ So far, however, there is also no indication that the Iraqi population at large is resisting the allied forces. At Safwan, another town in the southeast, Iraqis waved in celebration as members of the 1st Marine Division hauled down giant portraits of Saddam Hussein. ”We’re very happy…Saddam Hussein is a butcher,“ said a man in the back of a pickup truck, identifying himself only as Abdullah. A woman fell at the feet of the Americans and embraced them, touching their knees, the Associated Press reported.

At least 60 and as many at 250 Iraqis surrendered. Col. Steve Cox of the British Marines told the Reuters news agency that U.S. Marines under British command captured 250 Iraqis near Umm Qasr. Television images from other parts of Iraq also showed Iraqi prisoners, marching in single file with their hands behind their heads. Sahhaf, the Iraqi information minister, said the images were fabricated. ”Those were not Iraqi soldiers at all,“ he said. ”Where did they get them from?“

As Rumsfeld stated again today, the United States has undertaken a major effort to persuade Iraqi troops to lay down their arms, offering them amnesty and constructive place in postwar Iraq if they do so and vowing to destroy them if they resist.

”There are signs of continuing Iraqi desertions, and disagreement and division at all levels of the regime,“ British Prime Minister Tony Blair said at a news conference in Brussels. ”But I should warn that our forces will face resistance, and that the campaign necessarily will not achieve all its objectives overnight.“ The Iraqi troops who confronted the American and British marines in the Southeast used only conventional infantry weapons, such as machine guns. Three Iraqi missiles were launched overnight; one fell into the Persian Gulf, one landed inside Iraq and the third was destroyed by a Patriot missile defense battery at Camp New Jersey, a U.S. outpost in Kuwait. As in the last war with Iraq, Operation Desert Storm in 1991, there has been no sign of any Iraqi use of poison gas or biological weapons-the alleged possession of which is the U.S. justification for the current conflict.

Asked why not, Myers said, ”Don’t know.”