Operation Iraqi Freedom

This is an undated photo released Thursday, March 20, 2003 of the British Royal Marines, from 539 Troop, during exercises off the coast of Kuwait with members of 42 Commando. British Prime Minister Tony Blair told his countrymen Thursday that British forces have joined the U.S.-led war in Iraq ``from air, land and sea.''

A flight deck crewman gives a signal as an F/A-18 Hornet is launched off the flight deck aboard the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk in the Gulf, Friday night March 21, 2003. Planes from the ship flew missions in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Maj David "Bull" Gurfein, of New York City, right, with 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, tears down a portrait of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein while Sgt Jason Lewis, 4th Reconnaisance Battalion Company, from Denver, Co., looks on, in the southern border city of Safwan, Iraq, Friday, March 21, 2003.

British Royal Air Force ground crew load bombs onto a Harrier GR7 on its base in Kuwait prior to its mission over Iraq Friday, March 21, 2003. A barrage of explosives crashed down Friday night on Baghdad, sending enormous fireballs and clouds of smoke billowing high into the night sky above the Iraqi capital.

An unidentified U.S. soldier gives candy to Iraqi boys as he patrols in the southern border city of Safwan, Friday, March 21, 2003. Waving Iraqi civilians greeted members of the 1st Marine Division as they entered the town of Safwan.

"You just arrived," he said. "You're late. What took you so long? God help you become victorious.

I want to say hello to Bush, to shake his hand. We came out of the grave."

U.S. soldiers keep their rifles ready as they search surrendered Iraqi soldiers near the southern border city of Safwan, Friday, March 21, 2003.

Soldiers from the 3rd Brigade of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division rest in fox holes by their convoy in a staging area in the Kuwaiti desert Friday, March 21, 2003. Allied forces missions continue as combat units rumbled across the desert into Iraq from the south and bombed limited targets in Baghdad.

Pilots from the VF-113 Hornet squadron watch network coverage of the U.S. air strikes on Baghdad on a large screen in their ready room on board the USS Abraham Lincoln, Friday, March 21, 2003. A total of 29 fighter and support airplanes left for a 3 hour mission over Iraq, during the first major airstrike of the war.

A Royal Navy Tomahawk Land Attack Missile is launched at a target in Iraq, and seen through the periscope of the firing submarine, Thursday March 20, 2003.

Iraq native Ramzi Suliman, now an American citizen, is a Christian Iraqis in Las Vegas who believes war is necessary to oust Saddam Hussein.

"I'm pro-Bush and I'm pro-United States," Suliman said. "I'm against those rallies 100 percent. They don't know the torture going on in Iraq. They don't know what it's like not to be free. They're free."

Suliman, now an American citizen, still has nightmares that he is again living in Iraq. He recalls stories of Saddam's oldest son, Udai, who keeps four lions in his yard. Anybody who lands on the wrong side of the family is thrown to the lions, Suliman said.

He told stories of Udai's admiration for soccer and his reputation for demanding players to show up at his home in the middle of the night for a match. Few dared not to attend and those who played poorly had their head shaved or were humiliated in the town square, Suliman said.

"They kill whoever they don't like or whoever doesn't follow orders," Suliman said.

Antiwar rallies in downtown Las Vegas and along the Strip have triggered debates about whether the war is about oil or Bush's sincere attempt to disarm Iraq of his weapons of mass destructions.

Tom Eramya, a Las Vegas mechanic, doesn't care about the reason as long as Saddam is ousted.

"They're doing OK to liberate Iraq," Eramya said.

When Eramya finished college he was given 40 days of military training and placed on the front lines in the Iran-Iraq war between 1984 and 1986. He is convinced he was thrust into the heart of the fighting because he was raised in the Christian village of Chaldraen in Northern Iraq.

After the eight-year war finally ended in 1988, Eramya walked nine days through the desert and finally escaped into Iran. Ten years later he arrived in Las Vegas.

Friday he ducked into Suliman's store to learn the latest on the war.

"Everybody wants to surrender," Eramya, 38, said of the Iraqi troops. "Except maybe the 5,000 soldiers who live with the president. They've been brainwashed. They don't know who their mom or their dad is anymore."

Suliman studied an Arabic television news program that showed an interview with an Iraqi soldier, who laughed and boasted that his troops would win the war.

"The man said, 'You know why I'm laughing? Because we're going to win the war,' " Suliman said, interpreting the interview. "He meant the people, not the government. I could read his mind."

Eramya, Mekha and Suliman questioned whether the man who appeared on Iraqi television the night the first bombs dropped was really Saddam. Mekha had never seen the president read from a notebook.

Suliman had never seen him wear glasses.

"He used to have 12 doubles," Suliman said. "Most of them were killed; now there are only two left."

The three Iraqi natives did agree that the war wouldn't last more than two weeks.

And unless Saddam is removed from power, Mekha predicted Iraqi soldiers and citizens will be looking to escape the country.

Few will be as fortunate as Mekha, who landed in Southern Nevada in 1998 after his name was one of 10 chosen in a visa lottery held in Iraq every two years.

"I don't want to say I'm lucky," Mekha said, peering outside his liquor store.

"If I was lucky, I'd go to that casino over there and win a million dollars. God didn't want me to be over there anymore. I prayed to live in a peaceful place."