| AZIZIYAH: Cheering Iraqis handed out soft drinks and offered cigarettes to U.S. Marines on Saturday, warmly welcoming the troops and making throat-slitting gestures at pictures of President Saddam Hussein. The Marines rolled into this town, 50 miles southeast of Baghdad, to tackle any pockets of resistance from Saddam loyalists bypassed as the U.S. vanguard swept toward the capital in the last two days. Instead they saw hundreds of young men heading away from the capital, apparently deserting the Iraqi army. Senior officials of Saddam's Baath Party had fled the town. Happy crowds milled around the Marines' armored vehicles, asking in faltering English if they had come to free Iraq or take their oil, as the Iraqi leadership has repeatedly claimed. A loud hurrah went up as a Marine told the crowd that the U.S.-led forces had come to liberate them. "Thank you for coming, now I don't have to serve in the army," said Taha Ahmed, 35. "All of us have run away from the Iraqi army, we don't want to fight, we are tired of war." |