2000 – The US agreed to double the amount of money Iraq was allowed to spend to repair its oil industry and lifted holds on over $100 million in equipment.
2000 – A US federal judge awarded former hostage Terry Anderson $341 million from Iran, holding Iranian agents responsible for Anderson’s nearly seven years of captivity in Lebanon.
2003 – In the 6th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom US forces began strikes against the Medina Division of the Republican Guard guarding Baghdad. Hussein appeared on Iraqi TV as coalition forces held over 3,000 prisoners. 10 Marines were killed in combat around Nasiriya.
2003 – After Coalition forces have pushed further into Iraq securing most of the southern oilfields over the weekend, Kuwaiti fire fighters are able to enter Iraq and are able to extinguish one of the wellhead fires. Iraq’s southern fields represent about 40% of the country’s output. Damage is assessed to be relatively minimal. Some pockets or Iraqi resistance in the southern oilfields remain, however. Furthermore, heavy Iraqi resistance in some parts of Iraq gives rise to market speculation that the war could last longer than initially thought.
2003 – Arab League foreign ministers adopted a resolution that called for the US and Britain to withdraw their troops from Iraq immediately and without conditions.
2003 – In Georgia Pres. Shevardnadze confirmed that the US was flying U-2 spy planes over the Pankisi Gorge area to help fight Chechen rebel infiltration.
2003 – Saddam Hussein appeared on Iraqi TV telling his nation that “victory is soon.”
2003 – Iraqi state television showed two men said to have been the U.S. crew of an Apache helicopter forced down during heavy fighting in central Iraq. Chief Warrant Officer David Williams and Chief Warrant Officer Ronald D. Young Junior spent three weeks in captivity before they were released along with five other POWs.
2004 – A NASA unpiloted X-43A jet, part of its Hyper-X program, reached a record speed of 5,200 mph, Mach 6.83, after a rocket boosted it to 3,500 mph. It used a new engine called a supersonic-combustion ramjet, or scramjet.
2004 – Insurgents bombed an oil well in northern Iraq, sparking a fire that raged for 24 hours before being extinguished.
2005 – Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld announced the US will release $3.2 million in aid to Guatemala for its progress in overhauling a military once blamed for human rights abuses.
2005 – Canada denied a US deserter’s bid for asylum.
2011 – Lian Yang, a US citizen, pleads guilty to conspiring to violate the Arms Export Control Act by trying to sell radiation-hardened” military and aerospace technology to the People’s Republic of China.
https://thisdayinusmilhist.wordpress.com/2014/03/24/march-24/
