2026-03-13
27 分钟This is The Guardian.
How the Guardian Covered the Outbreak of the Iraq War By Ian Mays Read by Carl Queensborough The Allied attack on Iraq began on the 20th of March 2003.
The Guardian's 4 a.m.
edition on Friday the 21st of March carried the headline, Land, Sea and Air Assault.
The report was by Julian Bourget in Washington and Rory McCarthy in Camp Aselia on the outskirts of Doha,
the capital of Qatar.
It opened.
The ground war began in Iraq last night as British and American Marines stormed beaches on the Gulf Coast in an assault on the southeastern city of Basra,
while explosions lit up Baghdad under a heavy bombardment by cruise missiles.
The first British fatalities came shortly afterwards,
when a US helicopter crashed in Kuwait, killing all on board.
Suzanne Goldenberg's front-page report from Baghdad revealed that only two hours after the decapitation effort,
Saddam Hussein himself had made a defiant appearance on television.
A Guardian leader stated that the plain fact was this first surgical strike had missed its mark.
Even had it reached its target, it would have been difficult to applaud.
State-ordered assassination sets an abominable precedent that encourages unwelcome emulation.
The US must tread carefully, for the legal and moral grounds for this war are already very shaky."
By then, events had moved on.
The violent display of the shock and awe assault on the regime's infrastructure in and around the capital came that same night.
The headline on the Saturday 4 a.m.