2000 – In Iraq US and British warplanes bombed military sites in the south.
2001 – US diplomats met with 24 US crew members held by the Chinese military on Hainan island. Colin Powell issued a statement of regret over the loss of the Chinese pilot involved in the incident. Powell also sent a letter to China’s chief foreign policy official outlining ways of settlement.
2001 – The US Pentagon reportedly destroyed its last canister of napalm, a jellied gasoline used extensively during the Vietnam war. It was developed in 1942 by Harvard and Army chemists who combined naphthene and palmitate. It was made by Dow Chemical from 1965-1969.
2001 – Chinese President Jiang Zemin demanded the United States apologize for the collision between a U.S. Navy spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet; the Bush administration offered a chorus of regrets, but no apology.
2002 – Pres. Bush responded to British TV journalist Trevor McDonald’s question “Have you made up your mind that Iraq must be attacked?” by saying: “I made up my mind that Hussein needs to go.”
2002 – An Iraqi defector tells Vanity Fair that Iraq is developing a long-range ballistic missile system that could carry weapons of mass destruction up to 700 miles.
2002 – Yasser Esam Hamdi (22), a prisoner in Cuba, was reported to be a US citizen born in Louisiana. Hamdi was transferred to a jail in Virginia Apr 5. In 2004 Hamdi, held without charge since his 2001 capture, gave up his US citizenship and was released to Saudi Arabia.
2002 – Afghan officials reported that poppy farmers would be offered $500 per acre to destroy their crops. Refusal would still result in crop destruction.
2002 – It was reported that Saddam Hussein of Iraq had raised financial payments to the relatives of suicide bombers from $10k to $25k.
2003 – In the 17th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom thousands of Iraqis fled Baghdad as US forces seized the international airport to the west and armored convoys pressed in from the south.
2003 – A Marine unit found concentrations of cyanide and mustard-gas agents in the Euphrates River near Nasiriyah.
2004 – Muqtada al-Sadr issued a call to his followers to “terrorize your enemy.” Gunmen opened fire on the Spanish garrison in the holy city of Najaf during a huge demonstration by followers of al-Sadr, an anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric.
2008 – The United States Department of State renews the contract of Blackwater Worldwide to provide security in Iraq despite a number of ongoing investigations.
2012 – As part of the Obama Administration’s new Pivot to Asia, the first deployment of US Marines arrives in the Australian city of Darwin, Northern Territory.
2013 – Uganda’s military orders army units hunting for Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army in the Central African Republic to return to their bases, following political instability in the CAR. Meanwhile the United States has offered a $5 million bounty for information leading to his capture.
https://thisdayinusmilhist.wordpress.com/2014/04/04/april-4/
