The latest news from the front: “Saddam Hussein International airport” has a new name. Earlier this morning, coalition troops who quickly renamed it “Baghdad International.” But U.S. forces at the doorstep of the city seem in no rush to go in. Saddam Hussein would like to see the battle for Bagdad turn into another Stalingrad, where a ragtag group of determined Russian defenders held off a better equipped German army.
Saddam is promising coalition forces a defeat at the gates of the city and urging Iraqis to fight troops “with their hands.” But a suicide bombing near a coalition checkpoint in western Iraq, and recently uncovered chemicals may provide darker hints about what a battle in the city might look like.
Guests:
Owen Cote, Associate Director of MIT’s Security Studies Program and Co-Editor of International Security and Adjunct Lecturer at the JFK School of Governement at Harvard University
Thanassis Cambannis, Boston Globe correspondent currently in Kuwait
James Blaker, senior fellow at the Democratic Leadership Council in Washington, DC
John Reppert, executive director of the Belfer Center at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Ann Barnard, Boston Globe correspondent at Central Command, in Kuwait City.