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This Week:
- Timeline: March 2003
- Places & Culture
- March Book Blog
After months of buildup, the United States government's plan to strike Iraq changed at the last minute. One day after Saddam Hussein defied President Bush's 48-hour ultimatum, intelligence officials gathered in the Oval Office to discuss what the CIA director George Tenet called some "pretty darn good intelligence" that Saddam was sleeping in a bunker in a Baghdad suburb, giving the U.S. a chance to strike that seemed "too good to be true." After a two-hour discussion, the president made the call to strike the bunker, and the war was suddenly on. The next day, while Saddam's fate remained in doubt, U.S. forces marched across the Kuwait border into Iraq, and missiles and bombs battered Baghdad. Advancing troops were welcomed in some liberated Iraqi towns, though as forces pressed on toward Baghdad, they were restrained by surprising resistance in the south, including some Iraqi soldiers who pretended to surrender before opening fire. Scenes of war were broadcast in blurry pictures by reporters "embedded" with U.S. troops as they advanced.
The war stirred a variety of passions in the U.S. The House of Representatives served "freedom fries" in their cafeterias instead of "french fries," such was their displeasure with France's opposition to the war. Protests across the country harkened to the days of Vietnam. In Philadelphia, meanwhile, the FBI found a written reminder of the freedom the President said we were fighting for, recovering one of the thirteen original copies of the Bill of Rights.
Earlier in March, the U.S. marked a major victory against Al Qaeda with the arrest of a key plotter of the September 11 attacks, whom authorities found sleeping in Pakistan. Evidence of Osama bin Laden emerged in Pakistan, while bin Laden's niece emerged in Britain aiming to launch a pop music career. U.S. officials dismissed a report that Al Qaeda planned to attack Pearl Harbor. While the world pondered the fates of bin Laden and Hussein, it remembered another tyrant on the 50th anniversary of the death of Stalin.
In March we learned that more than 300,000 Americans lost their jobs in February. At least three gained employment, as Bill Clinton and Bob Dole revived the point-counterpoint segment on "60 Minutes," while Chelsea Clinton also found work in Manhattan as a consultant. The value of making an honest buck was tainted by one British contestant who was discovered to have cheated on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire." But Broadway musicians returned to work after a strike that shut down Broadway. They surely knew the power of art to awaken us, which is what a Bryan Adams concert did to a woman who had been in a coma for seven years.
Other wonders unfolded in March. Scientists found a Jupiter-like planet orbiting a distant star and more evidence of a meteor collision with the Moon observed 50 years ago. People in four Midwestern states saw a meteorite explosion light up the night sky. But the most unlikely discovery may have been of 15-year-old Elizabeth Smart, who was still alive and returned home after nine months with the delusional self-proclaimed prophet who abducted her.
Few people lived as full a life as F. William Sunderman, who died in March at age 104 in Philadelphia. Sunderman, at one time or another in his life, was medical director for the Manhattan Project, president of the American Society of Clinical Pathologists, developed the Sunderman Sugar Tube to measure glucose in the blood of diabetics, saw Halley's Comet twice, discovered lost chamber music by Rachmaninoff in Moscow, played his Stradivarius at Carnegie Hall at age 99, and was honored as the nation's oldest worker at age 100, when he still drove to work and put in eight-hour days editing a medical journal at Pennsylvania Hospital. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who served in the U.S. Senate with erudition and a sense of humor, died in March at age 76. Edward Rogers advised Richard Nixon to make his career-saving "Checkers speech" in 1952. Elliott Jaques coined the term "midlife crisis." Adam Osborne's portable computer was the talk of Silicon Valley in 1981. Brooklyn Dodger Al Gionfriddo robbed Joe DiMaggio of a game-tying home run in the 1947 World Series. George Bayer was the only person to play both in the National Football League and golf's PGA Tour. Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American, was crushed by an Israeli Army bulldozer while protesting in the Gaza Strip. Dennis Williams, whose exoneration after 18 years on Illinois' Death Row inspired a statewide overhaul of capital punishment, died of unknown causes at age 46.
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