Chaos of war dying down in Baghdad

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The retired U.S. general appointed as Iraq's postwar administrator arrived in Baghdad on Monday, while two more top members of Saddam Hussein's regime were reported captured.\nThe New York Times reported Monday that a scientist who claims to have worked in Iraq's chemical weapons program told a U.S. military team that Iraq destroyed and buried chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment only days before the war began March 20.\nMembers of Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha said the scientist led Americans to material that proved to be the building blocks of illegal weapons, the Times said.\nMaj. Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the Army's 101st Airborne Division, said: "Though much work must still be done to validate the information MET Alpha has uncovered, if it proves out it will clearly be one of the major discoveries of this operation, and it may be the major discovery."\nThe White House had no immediate comment.\nLanding at the Baghdad airport from Kuwait, retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner said his priority was to restore basic services such as water and electricity as soon as possible.\n"What better day in your life can you have than to be able to help somebody else, to help other people, and that is what we intend to do," the 65-year-old Garner said in his first postwar visit to the capital.\nWith Baghdad slowly returning to normal after days of looting and arson, Marines pulled back Sunday and left the U.S. Army in control of the capital, where coalition-run radio announced an 11 p.m.-6 a.m. curfew.\nIn Texas, President Bush attended Easter services at Fort Hood, joined by two helicopter pilots who were among the seven prisoners of war rescued from Iraq a week ago. The five other former POWs spent the day with their loved ones at Fort Bliss.\nTensions appeared to ease between the United States and Syria, with Bush saying that Syria appears to be heeding warnings against sheltering escaped members of Saddam's regime.\nU.S. Central Command said forces had captured Abd al-Khaliq Abd al-Ghafar, Saddam's scientific research minister, on Saturday. Abd al-Ghafar was the four of hearts in the U.S. military's most-wanted deck of cards.\nSaddam's son-in-law and one of Saddam's bodyguards, both hiding in Syria, were persuaded to leave that country and surrendered to members of the opposition Iraqi National Congress in Baghdad, according to a spokesman for the group, Haider Ahmed.\nJamal Mustafa Abdallah Sultan al-Tikriti is married to Saddam's youngest daughter, Hala, and was deputy head of Iraq's tribal affairs office. He was the nine of clubs in the U.S. deck of cards.