``The warplanes attacked at 2230 local time (2:30 p.m. EDT) on Tuesday al-Ahrar, a remote village far from any military position, killed two citizens and destroyed a number of houses,'' the agency said.

The Pentagon said on Tuesday that U.S. warplanes had attacked targets in the region on Tuesday afternoon Washington time, but said the raids were on Iraqi military installations. The United States and Britain have stepped up their raids this month on what they describe as upgraded Iraqi air defenses in the ``no-fly zone'' in southern Iraq.

U.S., Britain step up attacks on Iraqi air defenses
By ROBERT BURNS, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (August 29, 2001 10:46 a.m. EDT) - U.S. and British strikes on Iraq's air defenses have intensified in recent days, indicating growing concern about the risk to pilots enforcing "no-fly" zones in the north and south.

The Iraqi News Agency, offering the Iraqi government's first reaction to the raid on al-Ahrar in Nasiriya province, said two civilians were killed and accused U.S. and British pilots of aggression. "This peaceful village was far away from any military site," the agency said.

Army Col. Rick Thomas, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for U.S. military operations in the Persian Gulf area, said Wednesday that the sites were legitimate military targets. "We don't track civilian casualties, or casualties of any kind, but what we targeted and what we struck yesterday were military targets," Thomas said. His office issued a statement Tuesday evening saying "command and control sites" in southern Iraq were attacked, but it provided no details.

U.S. Fighter Jets Attack Iraqi Site
By BOB BURNS, AP Military Writer
August 30, 2001, 3:16 AM EDT

WASHINGTON -- U.S. fighter jets attacked an Iraqi radar site at Basra airport Thursday, officials said. It was the third bombing of military targets in southern Iraq in the past week.

Four people reported injured in allied airstrike in southern Iraq
by Associated Press, 9/4/2001 14:25

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) A U.S.-British airstrike in southern Iraq injured four people Tuesday, the official Iraqi News agency reported.

''The U.S.-British warplanes targeted our civil and service installations in Al-Muthana province ... resulting in the injury of four civilians,'' an unidentified military spokesman told the agency.

U.S. defense officials said U.S. fighter jets attacked Iraqi air defense installations at As Samawah, capital of Al-Muthana province the fourth strike on southern Iraq in less than two weeks.

Wednesday September 5 12:03 AM ET
U.S. Jets Attack Northern, Southern Iraq - Pentagon

By Charles Aldinger
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. jets attacked anti-aircraft guns, missile sites and radars in ``no-fly'' zones in northern and southern Iraq on Tuesday in a campaign to disable Baghdad's air defenses, the Pentagon said. Navy F-18 and Air Force F-16 jets attacked Iraqi anti-aircraft artillery and missile sites at as-Samawah in the southern no-fly zone about 130 miles southeast of Baghdad, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told Reuters. In the northern zone, Air Force jets fired ``HARM'' high-speed anti-radiation missiles at three Iraqi air defense radar sites north of the city of Mosul after anti-aircraft guns fired at American planes, U.S. officials said.

We're in Iraq to Protect Kurds?
by Reggie Rivers

Imagine that Saddam Hussein had taken over the World Trade Center in New York, and there were 10,000 Americans trapped inside with him. In an attempt to force him out, we turned off the electricity so the building boiled during the summer and froze during the winter. Without electricity, there were no lights and no way to use any equipment that needed to be plugged in. We cut off the water supply, so there was nothing to drink, nothing to clean with and the toilets didn't flush. The longer the standoff lasted, the more unsanitary the situation became, leading to disease, malnutrition and death.

Would we support this strategy if it were happening on our soil to Americans? Of course not. But since it's Iraqi citizens on the other side of the globe, we'll applaud for a full decade while children continue to die because of the embargo that we instituted. We'll talk about the evils of Hussein while people die in hospitals from relatively minor injuries that went untreated because basic medical supplies were unavailable.

I've read that more than 1 million people have died in Iraq as a result of the decade-long embargo, and nearly half of those have been children under the age of 5.

We say that we're doing this because we want to hurt Hussein, but he's living in a well-appointed penthouse at the top of the Word Trade Center with a generator that provides everything that he needs. It's the people trapped in the floors below him who suffer. But we don't care about this genocide against the Iraqis because we've got to stand behind our government no matter what it's doing.

Last week, I asked how long we'd sit by while our government maintained no-fly zones in Iraq, and I've been swarmed with e-mails from people who complain that I don't understand the basic issue.

It's about the Kurds, they wrote. Saddam Hussein was killing the Kurds and our no-fly zones are part of a humanitarian effort to prevent further attacks.

There's no doubt the Kurds lead a tough life. They've basically been told to assimilate or die. They don't have political rights, freedom of speech or even the right to speak their own language. Nearly 2,000 Kurdish villages have been destroyed, forcing more than 2 million Kurds to flee into the mountains. Even there they are not safe, because the army pursues them for miles and miles and weeks at a time. The Kurds have been shot, bombed, gassed, raped, tortured, burned and dismembered, and tens of thousands have been killed. And that's just what Turkey has done during the past decade.

That's right. Turkey. Our ally.

While we've maintained the no-fly zone in the north to "protect" the Kurds, Turkey has continued its open extermination policy against the Kurds, routinely sending its army across the border into Iraq to get a better shot at the Kurds. We haven't done anything to stop them because Turkey is an ally.

We launch our planes from Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. So if the Turks want to kill a few Kurds, we're not going to complain. In fact, we'll arm them to the teeth so that they can do the job more effectively. The Turkish army is using Lockheed-Martin F-16 fighter planes, Textron-Bell Cobra and Super Cobra attack helicopters, United Technologies/Sikorsky Black Hawk troop transports and various U.S. tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery systems to attack Kurdish villages. Seventy-five percent of Turkey's arms came from the United States.

But we're in Iraq to protect the Kurds?

When it comes to foreign policy, we're a nation that mostly accepts whatever the government tells us without questioning, examining or debating. Even if you agree with the no-fly zones, how can you agree with an embargo that aims to unseat Hussein by killing off the youngest, oldest and most infirm people in Iraq?

Former Denver Broncos player Reggie Rivers (reggierivers@clearchannel.com) writes Thursdays on the Post op-ed page and is a talk host on KHOW Radio (630 AM, weekdays from 3 to 5 p.m.).
Copyright 2001 The Denver Post