DEADLY DAY

	March 31, 2004
	Nine Americans were killed by insurgent ambushes in Iraq today. Terence Smith discusses the violence with New York Times Baghdad bureau chief John Burns. Follow-up report.

TERENCE SMITH: In Fallujah, a Sunni Triangle city about 35 miles west of Baghdad, rebels ambushed two SUVs carrying contract workers for the coalition. MAN ( Translated ): The Mujahadeen attacked them while they were driving. They threw hand grenades, two at each car. Four of them have died. TERENCE SMITH: U.S. officials confirmed that all four were Americans. A gruesome scene unfolded as a shouting mob pulled the charred corpses from the burned vehicles, beat them with sticks, and dragged them through the town. The bodies were then hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River as the crowd chanted, "Fallujah is the graveyard of Americans." In Baghdad, a coalition spokesman reacted to the Fallujah residents who cheered the violence. DANIEL SENOR: The people who pulled those bodies out and engaged in this attack against the contractors are not people we are here to help. They are people who have a much different vision for the future of Iraq than the overwhelming majority of Iraqis. They are people who want Iraq to turn back to an era of mass graves, of rape rooms, and torture chambers and chemical attacks. TERENCE SMITH: In Washington, White House Spokesman Scott McClellan condemned the killings. SCOTT McCLELLAN: These are horrific, despicable attacks. We condemn these attacks in the strongest possible terms. The stakes are high in Iraq, and this is a time of testing. The enemies of freedom, the enemies of the Iraqi people are trying to shake our will, but they cannot. We will not be intimidated. Our will and our resolve are firm. Democracy is taking root and there is no turning back, and the Iraqi people want us to stay and finish the job, and we will. TERENCE SMITH: For more, we go to The New York Times' Baghdad bureau chief John Burns. John Burns, welcome. What can you tell us about this incident in Fallujah in terms of an update, in terms of who the victims were, what they were doing there? JOHN BURNS: Terry, I don't think we know a great deal more than you and the rest of America knows about that. We know that there were four Americans. We know they were civilians. We know that they were involved in some way in a reconstruction project financed by the United States in the Fallujah area. There were reports of dog tags, which suggested former military people. We know that the occupational authority, the coalition provisional authority does employ DOD civilians to provide security and to do other work. You may recall that only a couple of weeks ago there were two civilian American civilians killed on the road south of Baghdad: One of them a woman lawyer from Tulsa, the other a former Marine half colonel from Virginia, who were both civilian employees of the DOD. Much is not known about this, Terry. As to why they were there? One possibility is that because of a Marine offensive in Fallujah over the last ten days, a road that they might otherwise have taken through the city was closed ironically, paradoxically, by an American checkpoint that might have put them into an area of the city somewhat more dangerous than they might have chosen to be in. TERENCE SMITH: John, as you might imagine, the pictures of this incident have had quite an impact in this country. I wonder what impact it's had there. JOHN BURNS: Well, Iraqis who have seen the films, the Iraqis that I have spoken to are absolutely shocked, perplexed. They find it difficult to believe that any of their countrymen could behave like that. Of course, the effect on the foreign community here is absolutely chilling. Part of the American enterprise here depends not just on the use of arms to prevail against this insurgency, but providing electric lights that switch on and forces that provide running water, in other words on the reconstruction project in which the American taxpayer has pledged something in the region of $18 billion in the next two years. These attacks on foreign civilians -- and there have been quite a lot of them in the last two weeks -- to Finns, two Germans, four American civilians in the north, the list is quite comprehensive, quite extensive -- these attacks have the look of a concerted effort to knock the underpinnings from that second leg of the entire American enterprise here: That is to say to drive foreign civilians out, and to make it impossible to reconstruct Iraq. TERENCE SMITH: Was there any evidence, as far as you know, of the new Iraqi security forces in Fallujah? We see in the footage no sign of either U.S. troops or Iraqi forces coming to the scene. JOHN BURNS: I heard tonight from somebody who had seen one piece of film that there was at one point somebody wearing an Iraqi police uniform who appeared to be engaged in the jubilation. I have to say I have not seen this. This is the secondhand account but it was given to me by a foreign security official here, who I think is a fairly reliable person. If that's the case, it would be the second indication we've had recently that the new American trained Iraqi police force, about 90 percent of whom are veterans of Saddam Hussein's police force, are not a very reliable partner, in many respects, for the American forces who are increasingly seeking to hand over security duties to them. The American forces had withdrawn from Fallujah over the winter, saying that they were going to rely on Iraqi security forces to do the work there for them, and so as not to be provocative. The Marines, who took over authority for the Fallujah area from the 82nd Airborne Division, only last week changed the template. They decided to go back into Fallujah in force, and take a real crack at some of these insurgents. That resulted in a whole series of running battles last week, in which a number of Marines were killed. Quite a few Iraqi civilians, 16 in one day last Friday. Whether those events precipitated what happened today, it's difficult to say. But I think the principle message that I see in this, which must be evident to any American who sees these films, is if this kind of horror can occasion such joy, such celebration amongst so many Iraqis in the streets of Fallujah, what does that tell us about the prospects for the American military enterprise here on a wider basis? Yes, Fallujah is ground zero for Saddam. It's a bastion of Saddam -- it's a bastion of strongly pro-Saddam feeling. But the Americans have been telling us -- the generals, Mr. Bremer and others who have been telling us -- that represents only -- and I quote from today's news conference on this -- "a tiny, tiny minority even of the people in Fallujah." TERENCE SMITH: Indeed Fallujah, the whole Sunni Triangle remains, does it not, a very difficult area in terms of security? JOHN BURNS: It does -- and increasingly difficult in the last two weeks. The Americans have been telling us that the number of attacks on American forces across Iraq as a whole -- but this is mainly in the Sunni Triangle -- have gone down from a high of over 50 a day in November, to down as low as 18 to 20 a day. This month, March, we were told today it's 28 attacks. But we've seen in the last two weeks a sudden intensification of attacks in Mosul in the North -- very, very severe deterioration in the security situation there. A lot of attacks to the south of Baghdad, also in the Sunni Triangle in areas like the city of Hillah, the city of Karbala. So it's beginning to look as though the Saddam people are not on the back foot in the Sunni Triangle. TERENCE SMITH: Okay, John Burns of The New York Times, thanks very much.