2001 – Pres. Bush blamed the Chinese for the midair collision of the US spy plane and a Chinese jet and rebuffed demands to end reconnaissance flights off the coast of China.
2001 – The 24 crew members of a U.S. spy plane arrived in Hawaii after being held for 11 days in China.
2003 – The US Congress approved almost $79 billion to pay for the war in Iraq.
2003 – Finance officials from the seven richest industrial countries, meeting in Washington, agreed to support a new UN Security Council resolution as part of a global effort to rebuild Iraq and promised to begin talks on reducing Iraq’s massive foreign debt burden.
2003 – In the 25th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom US officials said 1,200 police and judicial officers will go to Iraq to help restore order. In western Iraq, US forces stopped a busload of men who had $630,000 in cash and a letter offering rewards for killing American soldiers. Baghdad Museum lost some 50,000 artefacts after 48 hours of looting. Unesco later reported 150,000 items lost with a combined value in the billions. It was later reported that losses were minimal and that curators had put away most valuables into vaults before the war began.
2003 – Lt. Gen. Amer al-Saadi (7 of diamonds), Saddam Hussein’s science adviser, surrendered to US military authorities. He insisted Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and that the invasion was unjustified.
2003 – Rescued POW Jessica Lynch returned to the United States after treatment at a U.S. military hospital in Germany.
2003 – North Korea hinted it could accept US demands for multilateral talks to discuss the communist country’s suspected nuclear weapons program.
2004 – Gunfire was largely silenced in the second day of a truce in Fallujah.
2009 – Captain Richard Phillips of the MV Maersk Alabama, who was abducted by Somali pirates, is rescued. On April 9, a standoff had begun between the USS Bainbridge and the pirates in the Maersk Alabama’s lifeboat, where they were holding Captain Phillips hostage. Three days later, Navy marksmen opened fire and killed the three pirates on the lifeboat, and Phillips was rescued in good condition. The actual lifeboat in which Captain Phillips was held hostage is now on display at the National Navy SEAL Museum in Ft. Pierce, FL.
https://thisdayinusmilhist.wordpress.com/2014/04/12/april-12/ 
