To the Point

US Troops Approach Baghdad, Crisis in Basra

Despite Iraqi resistance and the weather, which have combined to slow the American advance on Baghdad, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld insists that all is going well. Meantime, the United Nations is warning about a humanitarian crisis in Basra, Iraq?s second largest city with a population of one million people. Who, or what, turned off the water supply and cut electricity? Will British forces help to provide relief? We talk to a reporter stuck in a dust storm with Marines, debate US strategy with a military expert and former government defense policy analyst, assess the humanitarian crisis in Basra with a spokeswoman for the International Red Cross, and hear about a new Saudi peace plan from a Persian Gulf specialist at the Brookings Institution. Making News: Bush Submits Wartime Appropriations Request At the Pentagon today, President Bush reminded workers of the September 11 attack on their building, and applied pressure to Congress for passage of his $75 billion request for war and rebuilding. Edwin Chen, White House correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, says the difficulty won't be in passing the wartime supplemental request but in keeping Congressional members from attaching additional monies for their own pet projects. Reporter?s Notebook: Stocks Rally, Fall with News from Iraq War Last week, on reports that the Iraq war might be quick and clean, stock markets rallied all over the world. Yesterday, all that came to an end. Today, the markets are up again. Are American troop movements inside Iraq the major cause of the advance and decline in world markets? Floyd Norris, chief financial correspondent for the New York Times, says the market's performance is often a cause-and-effect response to developing events.