The following is an archived copy of a message sent to a Discussion List run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq.

Views expressed in this archived message are those of the author, not of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq.

[Main archive index/search] [List information] [Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq Homepage]


[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

[casi] News, 3-10/9/03 (3)



News, 3-10/9/03 (3)

US POLICY

*  Put the Iraqis in Charge - Why Iraq is proving much tougher than
Afghanistan
*  Halliburton's Deals Greater Than Thought
*  Latest Iraq threat: cash crunch
*  U.S. rushed post-Saddam planning
*  In north Iraq, a general with a civil touch
*  The sick smell of panic
 *  U.S. President expands executive order on property confiscation
*  Rumsfeld, on Iraq Tour, Cites 'Remarkable Progress'
*  Bush Seeks $87 Billion and U.N. Aid for War Effort
*  Dems Demand Details of Iraq Operations


US POLICY

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110003937

*  PUT THE IRAQIS IN CHARGE - WHY IRAQ IS PROVING MUCH TOUGHER THAN
AFGHANISTAN.
by  Bernard Lewis
Opinion, 29th August

At first sight one would have expected that Afghanistan would be difficult,
Iraq easy. In the one country, we ousted a religious regime, which had the
prestige of having liberated the country from the plague of warlordism; in
the other, we overthrew a universally detested Fascist-type tyranny.
Afghanistan is a remote, mountainous country, with poor and difficult
communications; Iraq consists largely of flat river valleys with quick and
easy communication. Afghanistan has a strong tradition of regional
independence and limited experience of central control; Iraq has known
millennia of centralized government, run by a sophisticated and ramified
bureaucracy. For these and other reasons, one might have expected that
running Afghanistan would be difficult, running Iraq comparatively easy. In
fact, the reverse has occurred. In Afghanistan, at first, things did indeed
go badly, and there are still problems, both in the country and in the
government, but they are manageable. Today with minimal help from the U.S.,
a central government is gradually extending its political and financial
control to the rest of the country and dealing more and more effectively
with the problem of the maintenance of order; in Iraq, after an easy and
almost unresisted conquest, the situation seems to grow worse from day to
day. While the Afghans are building a new infrastructure, Iraqis--or others
acting in their name--are busy destroying theirs.

Why this contrast? America's enemies are the same in both places, with the
same objectives. The main difference is that in Afghanistan there is an
Afghan government, while in Iraq there is an American administration, and
the cry of "American imperialism" is being repeated on many sides. Even the
most cursory examination will reveal that this charge is ludicrously inept.
America has neither the desire nor the skill nor--perhaps most
important--the need to play an imperial role in Iraq. But the
accusation--and its resonant echoes in the Western and even in the American
media--serve a very useful purpose for those whose complaints and purposes
against America are in reality quite different.

These anti-American forces fall basically into two groups. The first, and in
the long run the more important, come from the camp of al Qaeda and related
religious movements. For them, America is now the leader of Christendom, the
ultimate enemy in the millennial struggle which they hope to bring, in their
own time, to a victorious conclusion. In the writings and speeches of Osama
bin Laden and of his allies and disciples, hatred of America is less
significant than contempt--the perception that America is a "paper tiger,"
that its people have become soft and pampered--"hit them and they will run."
This perception was bolstered by frequent references to Vietnam, Beirut and
Somalia, as well as to the feeble response to subsequent terrorist attacks
in the 1990s, notably on the USS Cole and on the embassies in East Africa.
It was this perception which undoubtedly underlay the events of Sept. 11,
clearly intended to be the opening barrage of a new war against the
Americans on their home ground.

The response to this attack, and notably the operations in Afghanistan and
then in Iraq, brought a rude awakening, and that is surely why there have
been no subsequent attacks on U.S. soil. But the perception has not entirely
disappeared, and has been revived by a number of subsequent developments and
utterances. Compunction--unwillingness to inflict as well as to suffer
casualties--is meaningless to those who have no hesitation in slaughtering
hundreds, even thousands, of their own people, in order to kill a few
enemies. Open debate is obviously meaningless to those whose only experience
of government is ruthless autocracy. What they think they see is division
and fear--and these encourage a return to their earlier perception of
American degeneracy. Such a return could have dangerous consequences,
including a renewal and extension of terrorist attacks in America. By
terrorist attacks, they believe, they will encourage those whose response is
to say, "Let's get out of here"--perhaps even procure the election of a new
administration dedicated to this policy.

The other factor of anti-Americanism has quite a different origin, though
there are areas of overlap. During the last few months the fear has often
been expressed in Europe and America that democracy cannot succeed in Iraq.
There is another, greater, and more urgent fear in the region--that it will
succeed in Iraq, and this could become a mortal threat to the tyrants who
rule most of the Middle East. An open and democratic regime in Iraq,
inevitably with a Shiite majority, could arouse new hopes among the
oppressed peoples of the region, and offer a corresponding threat to their
oppressors. One of these regimes, that of Iran, purports to be Islamic, and
was indeed so in its origins, though it has become yet another corrupt
tyranny.

Some of these regimes are officially classified as our friends and allies,
and dealing with them presents a number of problems. There are no such
problems in dealing with Iran, an avowed enemy, and undoubtedly a major
force behind the troubles in Iraq, in Palestine and elsewhere. Some have
argued that the remedy is to "build bridges" to the present regime in Iran.
Even if successful, the best that such a diplomacy could accomplish would be
to establish the same kind of friendship with Iran as we have with Saudi
Arabia--hardly model. More realistically, such overtures could certainly
achieve two immediate results--to earn the contempt of the government and
the mistrust of the people. The calculation of the present regime in Iran is
well known, and dates back to the first Gulf War. If Saddam Hussein had
possessed nuclear weapons, the Americans would have left him alone, and he
would have kept Kuwait and probably other places too. It was then that the
mullahs decided that they must have these weapons, which would enable them
to enjoy the same kind of immunity as North Korea. They are working
desperately to that end, and the Middle East situation will take a
significant turn for the worse if they are given the time to achieve it.
Opinions may differ on how to handle them, but surely the worst of all
options is the line of submissiveness, which can only strengthen the
perception of American weakness.

What then should we do in Iraq? Clearly the imperial role is impossible,
blocked equally by moral and psychological constraints, and by international
and more especially domestic political calculations. An inept, indecisive
imperialism is the worst of all options, with the possible exception of
subjecting Iraq to the tangled but ferocious politics of the U.N. The best
course surely is the one that is working in Afghanistan--to hand over, as
soon as possible, to a genuine Iraqi government. In Iraq as in Afghanistan,
a period of discreet support would be necessary, but the task would probably
be easier in Iraq. Here again care must be taken. Premature
democratization--holding elections and transferring power, in a country
which has had no experience of such things for decades, can only lead to
disaster, as in Algeria. Democracy is the best and therefore the most
difficult of all forms of government. The Iraqis certainly have the capacity
to develop democratic institutions, but they must do so in their own way, at
their own pace. This can only be done by an Iraqi government.

Fortunately, the nucleus of such a government is already available, in the
Iraqi National Congress, headed by Ahmad Chalabi. In the northern free zone
during the '90s they played a constructive role, and might at that time even
have achieved the liberation of Iraq had we not failed at crucial moments to
support them. Despite a continuing lack of support amounting at times to
sabotage, they continue to acquit themselves well in Iraq, and there can be
no reasonable doubt that of all the possible Iraqi candidates they are the
best in terms alike of experience, reliability, and good will. It took
years, not months, to create democracies in the former Axis countries, and
this was achieved in the final analysis not by Americans but by people in
those countries, with American encouragement, help and support. Ahmad
Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress deserve no less.

Mr. Lewis, professor emeritus of Near Eastern studies at Princeton, is the
author, most recently, of "What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle
Eastern Response" (Oxford, 2002).


http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56429-2003Aug27?language=printer

*  HALLIBURTON'S DEALS GREATER THAN THOUGHT
by Michael Dobbs
Washington Post, 28th August

Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Cheney, has won
contracts worth more than $1.7 billion under Operation Iraqi Freedom and
stands to make hundreds of millions more dollars under a no-bid contract
awarded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, according to newly available
documents.

The size and scope of the government contracts awarded to Halliburton in
connection with the war in Iraq are significantly greater than was
previously disclosed and demonstrate the U.S. military's increasing reliance
on for-profit corporations to run its logistical operations. Independent
experts estimate that as much as one-third of the monthly $3.9 billion cost
of keeping U.S. troops in Iraq is going to independent contractors.

Services performed by Halliburton, through its Brown and Root subsidiary,
include building and managing military bases, logistical support for the
1,200 intelligence officers hunting Iraqi weapons of mass destruction,
delivering mail and producing millions of hot meals. Often dressed in Army
fatigues with civilian patches on their shoulders, Halliburton employees and
contract personnel have become an integral part of Army life in Iraq.

Spreadsheets drawn up by the Army Joint Munitions Command show that about $1
billion had been allocated to Brown and Root Services through mid-August for
contracts associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Pentagon's name for
the U.S.-led war and occupation. In addition, the company has earned about
$705 million for an initial round of oil field rehabilitation work for the
Army Corps of Engineers, a corps spokesman said.

Specific work orders assigned to the subsidiary under Operation Iraqi
Freedom include $142 million for base camp operations in Kuwait, $170
million for logistical support for the Iraqi reconstruction effort and $28
million for the construction of prisoner of war camps, the Army spreadsheet
shows. The company was also allocated $39 million for building and operating
U.S. base camps in Jordan, the existence of which the Pentagon has not
previously publicly acknowledged.

Over the past decade, Halliburton, a Houston-based company that made its
name servicing pipelines and oil wells, has positioned itself to take
advantage of an increasing trend by the federal government to contract out
many support operations overseas. It has emerged as the biggest single
government contractor in Iraq, followed by such companies as Bechtel, a
California-based engineering firm that has won hundreds of millions of
dollars in U.S. Agency for International Development reconstruction
contracts, and Virginia-based DynCorp, which is training the new Iraqi
police force.

The government said the practice has been spurred by cutbacks in the
military budget and a string of wars since the end of the Cold War that have
placed enormous demand on the armed forces.

But, according to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and other critics, the
Iraq war and occupation have provided a handful of companies with good
political connections, particularly Halliburton, with unprecedented
money-making opportunities. "The amount of money [earned by Halliburton] is
quite staggering, far more than we were originally led to believe," Waxman
said. "This is clearly a trend under this administration, and it concerns me
because often the privatization of government services ends up costing the
taxpayers more money rather than less."

Wendy Hall, a Halliburton spokeswoman, declined to discuss the details of
the company's operations in Iraq, or confirm or deny estimates of the
amounts the company has earned from its contracting work on behalf of the
military. In an e-mail message, however, she said that suggestions of war
profiteering were "an affront to all hard-working, honorable Halliburton
employees."

Hall added that military contracts were awarded "not by politicians but by
government civil servants, under strict guidelines."

Daniel Carlson, a spokesman for the Army's Joint Munitions Command, said
Brown and Root had won a competitive bidding process in 2001 to provide a
wide range of "contingency" services to the military in the event of the
deployment of U.S. troops overseas. He said the contract, known as the
Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, or LOGCAP, was designed to free
uniformed personnel for combat duties and did not preclude deals with other
contractors.

Carlson said the money earmarked for Brown and Root was an estimate, and
could go "up or down" depending on the work performed.

The Joint Munitions Command provided The Washington Post with an updated
version of a spreadsheet the Army released to Waxman earlier this month,
giving detailed estimates of money obligated to Brown and Root under
Operation Iraqi Freedom. Estimates of the company's revenue from Iraq have
been increasing steadily since February, when the Corps of Engineers
announced the company had won a $37.5 million contract for pre-positioning
fire equipment in the region.

In addition to its Iraq contracts, Brown and Root has also earned $183
million from Operation Enduring Freedom, the military name for the war on
terrorism and combat operations in Afghanistan, according to the Army's
numbers.

Waxman's interest in Halliburton was ignited by a routine Corps of Engineers
announcement in March reporting that the company had been awarded a no-bid
contract, with a $7 billion limit, for putting out fires at Iraqi oil wells.
Corps spokesmen justified the lack of competition on the grounds that the
operation was part of a classified war plan and the Army did not have time
to secure competitive bids for the work.

The corps said the oil rehabilitation deal was an offshoot of the LOGCAP
contract, a one year agreement renewable for 10 years. Individual work
orders assigned under LOGCAP do not have to be competitively bid. But Waxman
and other critics maintain that the oil work has nothing to do with the
logistics operation.

The practice of delegating a vast array of logistics operations to a single
contractor dates to the aftermath of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and a study
commissioned by Cheney, then defense secretary, on military outsourcing. The
Pentagon chose Brown and Root to carry out the study and subsequently
selected the company to implement its own plan. Cheney served as chief
executive of Brown and Root's parent company, Halliburton, from 1995 to
2000, when he resigned to run for the vice presidency.

At the time, said P.W. Singer, a Brookings Institution scholar and author of
"Corporate Warriors," it was impossible to predict how lucrative the
military contracting business would become. He estimates the number of
contract workers in Iraq at 20,000, or about one for every 10 soldiers.
During the Gulf War, the proportion was about one in 100.

Brown and Root's revenue from Operation Iraqi Freedom is already rivaling
its earnings from its contracts in the Balkans, and is a major factor in
increasing the value of Halliburton shares by 50 percent over the past year,
according to industry analysts. The company reported a net profit of $26
million in the second quarter of this year, in contrast to a $498 million
loss in the same period last year.

Waxman aides said they have been told by the General Accounting Office that
Brown and Root is likely to earn "several hundred million more dollars" from
the no-bid Corps of Engineers contract to rehabilitate Iraqi oil fields.
Waxman, the ranking minority member on the House Government Reform
Committee, had asked the GAO to investigate the corps' decision not to bid
out the contract.

After a round of unfavorable publicity, the corps explained that the sole
award to Brown and Root would be replaced by a competitively bid contract.
But the deadline for announcing the results of the competition has slipped
from August to October, causing rival companies to complain that little work
will be left for anybody else. Bechtel, one of Halliburton's main
competitors, announced this month that it would not bid for the corps
contract and would instead focus on securing work from the Iraqi oil
ministry.

In addition to the Army contracts, Halliburton has profited from other
government-related work in Iraq and the war on terrorism, and has a $300
million contract with the Navy structured along similar lines to LOGCAP.

Pentagon officials said the increasing reliance on contractors is
inevitable, given the multiple demands on the military, particularly since
Sept. 11, 2001. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is a champion of
"outsourcing," writing in The Post in May that "more than 300,000 uniformed
personnel" were doing jobs that civilians could do.

Independent experts said the trend toward outsourcing logistic operations
has resulted in new problems, such as a lack of accountability and
transparency on the part of private military firms and sometimes
questionable billing practices.

A major problem in Iraq, Singer said, has been the phenomenon of "no-shows"
caused by the inhospitable security environment, including the killing of
contract workers, including a Halliburton mail delivery employee earlier
this month.

"At the end of the day, neither these companies nor their employees are
bound by military justice, and it is up to them whether to show up or not,"
Singer said. "The result is that there have been delays in setting up
showers for soldiers, getting them cooked meals and so on."

A related concern is the rising cost of hiring contract workers because of
skyrocketing insurance premiums. Singer estimates that premiums have
increased by 300 percent to 400 percent this year, costs that are passed on
to the taxpayer under the cost-plus-award fee system that is the basis for
most contracts.

The LOGCAP contract awarded to Brown and Root in 2001 was the third, and
potentially most lucrative, super-contract awarded by the Army. Brown and
Root won the first five year contract in 1992, but lost the second to rival
DynCorp in 1997 after the GAO criticized the Army for not adequately
controlling contracting costs in Bosnia.


NO URL

*  LATEST IRAQ THREAT: CASH CRUNCH
by Ilene R. Prusher
The Christian Science Monitor, 3rd September

BAGHDAD -- The reconstruction of Iraq, Bush administration officials
predicted before the war, will pay for itself.

But hopes of using Iraq's own oil and resources to fund the rebuilding were
contingent on an ideal of postwar peace and security. Instead, a serious
budget crunch, combined with a vicious circle of violence, sabotage, and
economic instability is slowing reconstruction plans.

Many potential donor nations are shying away from getting involved. As
international aid groups pull personnel out in the wake of the UN bombing,
less foreign money is being pumped into the local economy. And,
significantly, oil revenues aren't flowing as expected. A coalition official
says that war damage and sabotage have stanched the flow to just $2.3
billion per year, down from an earlier estimate of $3.4 billion.

The cash shortfall means that here in Baghdad, officials are already seeing
reconstruction and development projects - including electricity, gas, and
water facilities - put on hold because they do not have the funds to start
work.

"There are substantial needs not met by this money," says a coalition
official, who asked not to be named. Paul Bremer, the top US civilian
official in Iraq, has been warning officials in Washington that this year's
budget will fall short "somewhere in the neighborhood of $3.5 billion" and
has warned that "tens of billions" more will be needed.

But the administration's congressional critics say they will demand a fuller
accounting of postwar operations, and a clear picture of the
administration's vision for achieving success in Iraq, before appropriating
more money.

Officials here say that some basic infrastructure severely damaged during or
since the war - as well as utilities neglected under the old regime - is
expected to remain unrepaired. These include utilities, leaving many Iraqis
with worse standards of living than they had under Saddam Hussein.

When college students across the country go back to school in a few weeks,
many can expect to find university campuses that have not recovered from the
looting and destruction that followed the Iraqi regime's downfall.

The future offers no immediate fiscal relief for the coalition. Iraq's
budget for 2004, according an internal document provided by an official in
the Coalition Provisional Authority [CPA], "has inadequate funds for
security, electrical, water, sewage, irrigation, housing, education, health,
[and] agriculture." For many middle and working-class Iraqis, basic services
like electricity, safe highways, and a living wage have disappeared. In
frustration, many Iraqis say, some of those struggling people are joining
the resistance movements.

Tuesday, as Shiites buried their assassinated senior cleric in Najaf, a bomb
went off at the Baghdad police headquarters, in an apparent attempt to
assassinate the police chief. One Iraqi police officer was killed; 15 others
were wounded.

The bloodshed, including bombings at the UN headquarters and the Jordanian
embassy here last month, are keeping investors and even small businesses
away. "If you cannot get money to fix security, electricity, and
infrastructure problems, that will prevent small businesses from wanting to
come here to start up, and it keeps foreign investment out," the CPA
official explains. "How can I run a business if I don't have a guarantee of
security?"

Already, the terrorism that Washington once accused Iraq of supporting
abroad is now plaguing Iraq at home - and grounding what the Bush
administration thought would be a solid take-off for the postwar economy.

Now, the UN, nongovernmental organizations, and other major groups like the
Red Cross are scaling back their operations in Iraq after the bombing of the
UN headquarters, representing a withdrawal of foreign cash and demand for
services that would have been pumped into Iraq.

With several tens of billions of dollars more needed, according to Bremer,
the US will need its allies to help foot the bill. A donor conference, to
that end, will be held near the end of October. But it is already proving
difficult to get countries to foot the reconstruction bill for a war that
many of them opposed outright.

The US is now forced to turn to countries it dismissed six months ago as
part of "Old Europe" to help pay for the new Iraq. Moreover, the experience
of drumming up pledges for reconstruction aid for Afghanistan at a January
2002 conference in Tokyo teaches the Iraq team that donors are not always
the most reliable bunch.

Even after countries make their pledges, most have to go back to their
legislatures and parliaments to fund them. Finance experts here say that
means that any money pledged in Madrid, Spain, next month will not show up
in Iraq's budget until 2005 or 2006."When you think about these things, it
just isn't going to happen," says the CPA officer. "I need other funds in
2004."

One of the Bush administration's hopes for rebuilding Iraq was that by
revamping the oil ministry and using seized Baathist funds and other assets,
a free Iraq would fuel its own renaissance. But oil revenues, have been
disappointing, in large part due to looting attacks on oil pipelines and
facilities by groups trying to derail US efforts here.

Saboteurs have also targeted power grids, cutting power to homes and
businesses that have become accustomed to having it for decades. Seized
assets, smaller than expected, have virtually run dry. Seized assets in the
US totaled about $1.7 billion, a US official here says, while only $795
million was seized in the country during the war, plus another $1 million
found with Mr. Hussein's sons.

The funds the US seized or won from congressional appropriations are being
used to try to close the gap for the second half of 2003. But even that,
many here say, is hardly covering all the bases. Beyond the most urgent
needs, projects that could build confidence in US intentions to help rebuild
Iraq are moving much more slowly, due to financial limitations, than many
Iraqis expected.

The Ministry of Higher Education, for example, only received about half of
what it asked for, or approximately $33 million, to carry it through the
rest of the year, says Farouk Darweesh, an adviser to the ministry sent here
by a US-funded program to bring exiled experts to Iraq.

When the students come back to school over the coming month, he says, "they
will see improvement, but not the extent that many hoped. I would expect
that they would, initially at least, be disappointed."

School labs and workshops, particularly in science courses that have the
most tangible equipment, "were stripped and are bareboned - there's hardly
anything there." Graduate level courses in need of such equipment will not
be held this year. Many Iraqis blame US forces for allowing the looting to
carry on as long as it did, and still speak with frustration of Bush
administration officials' acceptance of the chaos as an understandable
venting of anger.

"The funds allocated to the Ministry of Education, though welcomed indeed,
are not sufficient to effect restoration of everything inside for the next
academic year," says Mr. Darweesh


http://washingtontimes.com/national/20030903-120317-9393r.htm

*  U.S. RUSHED POST-SADDAM PLANNING
by Rowan Scarborough
Washington Times, 3rd September

A secret report for the Joint Chiefs of Staff lays the blame for setbacks in
Iraq on a flawed and rushed war-planning process that "limited the focus"
for preparing for post-Saddam Hussein operations.

The report, prepared last month, said the search for weapons of mass
destruction was planned so late in the game that it was impossible for U.S.
Central Command to carry out the mission effectively. "Insufficient U.S.
government assets existed to accomplish the mission," the classified
briefing said.

The report is titled "Operation Iraqi Freedom Strategic Lessons Learned" and
is stamped "secret." A copy was obtained by The Washington Times.

The report also shows that President Bush approved the overall war strategy
for Iraq in August last year. That was eight months before the first bomb
was dropped and six months before he asked the U.N. Security Council for a
war mandate that he never received.

Senior U.S. officials, including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, conceded in recent weeks that
the Bush administration failed to predict the guerrilla war against American
troops in Iraq. Saddam loyalists and foreign fighters have killed more than
60 soldiers since May 1, mostly with roadside bombs and rocket-propelled
grenades.

The Congressional Budget Office projected yesterday that the demands of
troop rotations globally will leave the Pentagon without any fresh Army
units for Iraq in 2004 unless tours are extended beyond one year.

The Joint Chiefs report reveals deficiencies in the planning process. It
says planners were not given enough time to put together the best blueprint
for what is called Phase IV - the ongoing reconstruction of Iraq.

The report does not name any individual. Most war planning was conducted by
Gen. Tommy Franks at U.S. Central Command; the Joint Chiefs of Staff, under
the direction of Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman; and the Pentagon
policy-writing shop led by Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith.

"Late formation of DoD [Phase IV] organizations limited time available for
the development of detailed plans and pre-deployment coordination," the
report says. "Command relationships (and communication requirements) and
responsibilities were not clearly defined for DoD organizations until
shortly before [Operation Iraqi Freedom] commenced."

In fact, the Pentagon was forced to scrap its original plan for rebuilding
as violence increased against U.S. forces and basic services were slow to
resume. L. Paul Bremer, a former ambassador, was tapped in mid-May to take
over as Iraq's American administrator.

On the weapons search - the prime reason Mr. Bush cited for going to war -
the Joint Chiefs report states: "Weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
elimination and exploitation planning efforts did not occur early enough in
the process to allow CentCom to effectively execute the mission. The extent
of the planning required was underestimated. Insufficient U.S. government
assets existed to accomplish the mission."

The initial search by military teams found no weapons at sites identified by
the CIA and other intelligence agencies before the war. The Pentagon then
replaced those teams with an overarching "Iraq Survey Group," which received
additional expert personnel and new intelligence assets. Former U.N. weapons
inspector David Kay is leading the search for weapons of mass destruction.

The report said the planning was poor because "WMD elimination/exploitation
on a large scale was a new mission area. Division of responsibility for
planning and execution was not clear. As a result planning occurred on an ad
hoc basis and late in the process. Additionally, there were insufficient
assets available to accomplish the mission. Existing assets were tasked to
perform multiple, competing missions."

A Pentagon spokesman declined yesterday to comment specifically on the
findings.

"We always look closely at everything we do to find ways to improve and do
better," the spokesman said, "and Operation Iraqi Freedom is no exception.
As to specifics of the lessons learned, it's still a draft document and
classified, so it would be inappropriate to comment on that."

The report, labeled "final draft," suggests that combat commanders, such as
Central Command, establish permanent cadres of specialists on weapons of
mass destruction. It also recommends that each operational plan contain a
section for dealing with such weapons.

On planning for the post-Saddam period, the interagency process, such as
between the Pentagon and State Department, "was not fully integrated prior
to hostilities." Before the war, "Phase IV objectives were identified but
the scope of the effort required to continually refine operational plans for
defeat of Iraqi military limited the focus on Phase IV."

The report also provides a classified timeline of events from September 11
leading to war. It says that on Aug. 29, 2002, Mr. Bush "approves Iraq
goals, objectives and strategy."

Three months earlier, the Pentagon began a series of war exercises called
"Prominent Hammer" to judge whether the force could win in Iraq and still
maintain a deterrent in other theaters, such as South Korea. On Nov. 24,
Gen. Franks, the Central Command chief, presented Defense Secretary Donald
H. Rumsfeld with "six major tasks for success." Central Command held a major
war game Oct. 4 and 5 to test Gen. Franks' plan.

The timeline also showed that the Bush administration stayed in close
contact with Israel about its plans. In mid-February, "key Israeli leaders"
received a briefing on the war plan. Shortly thereafter, CentCom began
sharing information in Tel Aviv via U.S. European Command, whose area of
responsibility includes the Jewish state.

The report states that the study looks at "the big issues - strategic
perspective," as opposed to lessons-learned reports that examine many
tactical issues.

The report awarded three grades. The worst was "capabilities that fell short
of expectations or needs, and need to be redressed through new initiatives."
Getting this low grade were the postwar planning and the search for weapons
of mass destruction, as well as the mix of active and reserve forces, and
the troop deployment to the region.

The next grade was "capabilities that demonstrated effectiveness, but need
enhancement." Public affairs, special-operations forces, finding bombing
targets and tracking the whereabouts of friendly troops received the grade.

The highest marks came under the category of "capabilities that reached new
levels of performance and need to be sustained and improved." Joint service
warfare, a key war fighting requirement of Mr. Rumsfeld, got this high
grade, as did global war-gaming.

The report also gave high marks to bombing "time-sensitive" targets. In the
2001 Afghanistan war, the report says, Gen. Franks and Mr. Rumsfeld had to
approve the target list. But in Iraq, the command improved guidance and
procedures so that commanders could launch strikes when targets emerged.


http://www.iht.com/articles/108853.html

*  IN NORTH IRAQ, A GENERAL WITH A CIVIL TOUCH
by Michael R. Gordon
International Herald Tribune, from New York Times, 4th September

RABIYA, Iraq: Colonel Michael Linnington's brigade fought its way across
Iraq. But one of its most unusual missions took place in this remote
northwestern corner of the country.

His orders were simple - to work out an agreement between local sheiks and
Iraqi customs officials to restore trade with Syria. What was unusual was
that the decision had been initiated not by the State Department or civilian
administrators in Baghdad, but by Major General David Petraeus, the
commander of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division and the dominant
political figure in Mosul and the surrounding areas in northern Iraq.

Three months later, there is a steady stream of cross-border traffic, and
the modest fees that the division set for entering Iraq - $10 per car, $20
per truck - have raised revenue for expanded customs forces and other
projects in the region.

A five-day trip through the 101st Division's large area of operation showed
that U.S. forces, not the civilian-led occupation authority in Baghdad, are
the driving force in the region's political and economic reconstruction.

The ethnic makeup of the north - a diverse blend of Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen
and tribes perhaps more interested in cooperating with the Americans than
with one another - is different from the troublesome area around Baghdad
known as the Sunni triangle, or the Shiite-dominated south. But that only
partly explains the military's relative success here.

Other elements are the early deployment of a potent American force large
enough to establish control, the quick establishment of new civil
institutions run by Iraqis, and a selective use of raids to capture hostile
groups or individuals while minimizing the disruption to local civilians.

Another factor has been an American commander who approached what has come
to be known as nation-building as a central military mission and who was
prepared to act while the civilian authority in Baghdad was still getting
organized.

Petraeus, who holds an advanced degree in international relations from
Princeton, was steeped in nation-building well before he arrived in Iraq. He
served as the assistant chief of staff for operations for SFOR, the
international peacekeeping force in Bosnia. His division is also well suited
for its mission. Unlike an armored unit, it has lot of infantry soldiers -
nearly 7,000 - to conduct foot patrols and stay in touch with the local
population. It also has 250 helicopters to travel across northern Iraq.

"We walk, and walking has a quality of its own," the general said. "We're
like cops on the beat."

Under Petraeus, the 101st established an Iraqi governing council for the
city of Mosul and the surrounding province of Nineveh before L. Paul Bremer
3rd, the head of the occupation authority, arrived in Baghdad.

The division has also established an employment office for former Iraqi
military officers, found grain silos for farmers and trained the local
police.

In some cases, like the creation of an internal Iraqi security force, the
division developed policies that Bremer's authority has only recently
embraced.

"If there is a vacuum in the guidance from Baghdad or from Washington,
Petraeus will study the situation and take action," said Gordon Rudd, the
historian for the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, the
civilian authority in Iraq before Bremer's appointment.

Hunain al-Qaddo, a member of the Mosul City Council and chairman of its
committee on humanitarian assistance, said he had never met with
representatives from Bremer's occupation authority; the real authority, as
far as he is concerned, is the 101st Division.

"They work hard to do the right thing, though sometimes they are inclined to
impose their will on us," he said.

Dick Naab, the northern coordinator for Bremer's occupation authority, said
in a response by e-mail that Petraeus "has been key to setting up and
running the Nineveh government."

But Naab noted that the occupation authority had provided millions of
dollars for the division's reconstruction efforts and had helped by
identifying potential projects.

"The 101st is 20,000-plus larger than CPA North," Naab added, using the
abbreviation for his northern office. "We are a very small force, but we do
our part very well."

The 101st Division's sense of mission is swiftly apparent at Petraeus's
command center inside a palace in Mosul.

"We are in a race to win over the people," a sign reads. "What have you and
your element done today to contribute to victory?"

The 101st has beefed up its team of military lawyers and focused on civil
projects. In the past three months, the division has spent more than $17
million on reconstruction and other civil tasks, using money provided by
Bremer's administration.

"Money is ammunition," reads one of the division's briefing slides. When his
units exhaust their funds, Petraeus arranges for additional cash from
Bremer's authority or from the division's coffers.

Each morning, Petraeus receives a status report from his commanders in an
hourlong radio conference. Told recently that a nationwide project to buy
police vehicles and radios for the police was held up in Baghdad, he told
his soldiers to press ahead. "Buy them with my funds," he ordered.

In terms of security, this region does not present as great a threat as the
area around Baghdad. But northern Iraq has its own dangers and challenges.
It was soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division who surrounded the house in
Mosul where the sons of Saddam Hussein, Uday and Qusay, were discovered and
who fired the 12 antitank missiles that killed them after commandos from
Task Force 20 withdrew under fire. That same week, six of the division's
soldiers were killed in guerrilla attacks, two more than died during the
fight to reach Baghdad.

The 101st's soldiers still come under attack by rocket-propelled grenades
and improvised explosive devices. Each day, its elements are involved in
three to five "hostile contacts."

In general, however, the division has stressed the selective use of force.
During raids, the soldiers do not just burst in. They surround the house and
then go to the door and knock. Outside of Mosul, brigade commanders have
been immersed in the effort to build trust. In his brigade's patrol area,
Colonel Ben Hodges encountered so many Iraqis who believed that the
sunglasses and night-vision goggles the soldiers wear enable them to see
through women's clothes that he invited local sheiks to come to his base and
try out the equipment.

For Linnington and his soldiers, reopening the border with Syria was the
priority. Salaries in Mosul were about to be paid using American dollars,
and Petraeus thought it would bring inflation unless the supply of goods
grew.

The 150 Iraqi customs officials who used to run the border crossing insisted
on keeping their jobs, while the local Shamir tribe also wanted control.
Financed by the border crossing fees, an additional 100 positions were
created to give to the tribe.

The next step was to notify Syria that trade was to be resumed. The
division's lawyers drafted a letter, which was handed across the border. It
was signed by Petraeus.


http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/4954.htm

*  THE SICK SMELL OF PANIC
by Jonathan Foreman
New York Post, 5th September

THE Bush administra tion's sudden decision to go to the U.N. Secu rity Coun
cil for a new Iraq resolution looks like bad news for America and for the
prospects of a democratic Iraq.

The resolution's specific contents ‹ and even whether or not it gets passed
‹ can't change that. (Indeed, yesterday's Franco-German dιmarche suggests
that we're simply in for another pointless Security Council pummeling.)

The issue isn't the further internationalization of the occupation.
(Thousands of foreign troops are already patrolling vast stretches of Iraq.)
It is symbolism and timing.

The hasty turn to the United Nations smells of panic, unwarranted panic at
that, and even worse, the foolish subordination of Iraq policy to electoral
concerns.

The administration may genuinely believe it isn't engaged in a humiliating
climbdown, but that is inevitably going to be the perception, here and
abroad.

The practical point of the move, to the extent it has any, is to obtain the
U.N. fig leaf that will make politically possible the deployment of troops
from India, Pakistan and Turkey.

But even if it were worth eating some humble pie to bring in three divisions
from those countries ‹ and that's debatable, given the horrifyingly brutal
counter-insurgency records of all three militaries ‹ the timing of the
pie-eating could hardly be more dangerous.

To go crawling back to the United Nations, tail between our legs, only a
week after the Najaf bombing, tells the world ‹ and, more importantly, the
people of Iraq ‹ that the bombings and attacks on U.S. troops have
succeeded. It signals that America is, if not exactly on the run, severely
rattled.

No, the Iraqi occupation has not yet turned into a 1993 Mogadishu or 1983
Beirut ‹ where America humiliated itself by fleeing after bloody setbacks,
and thereby encouraged the Khadafys, Milosevics and bin Ladens of the world
to believe that it was a paper tiger.

But to any Iraqi who was thinking of taking the risk of joining a
U.S.-organized militia, or the new police force or turning in a Ba'athist
guerilla, the message of the U.S. reversal is clear enough: The Americans
are irresolute and can't be trusted to hang in for the long term.

Or, as the Syrian dictator Hafez Assad said at the time of the Beirut
disaster, "The Americans are short of breath."

Furthermore, panic about Iraq is simply not warranted. Not only is the
situation there not deteriorating at an alarming rate, most of the country
is in fact remarkably stable and peaceful.

Unfortunately, the parts where the occupation is working don't get visited
by the media ‹ or, for that matter, by L. Paul Bremer.

How many people know that the 1st Marine Division, which administered the
vast South Central region (until handing it over to the Polish-led
multinational division Wednesday), suffered not a single combat death since
April 12? (This remarkable fact has gone entirely unreported despite the
Marines' repeated attempts to get foreign journalists to make the two-hour
journey from Baghdad to Babylon.)

Then there's the little-known success story of the North (even outside Iraqi
Kurdistan, which continues to be a beacon of stability and democratic hope).
In Mosul and the area around it, the 101st Airborne has done a superb job
(as reported by The New York Times' Michael Gordon, one of the few reporters
willing to do more than file carping stories from the capital) of winning
hearts and minds and getting the country back to work.

This is not to say mistakes aren't still being made. The Coalition
Provisional Authority is apparently almost as slow-moving and bureaucratic
as a U.N. administration would be, and it continues, almost suicidally, to
fumble the task of communicating with the Iraqi people.

And new troops are still often being sent to Iraq without the kind of
crowd-control, peacekeeping and policing training that was standard for GIs
deployed to Kosovo and Bosnia. They're also not getting the right equipment,
including suffient numbers of armored Humvees.

Still, overall conditions don't warrant the handing over of either military
or even civilian tasks to the United Nations. Especially as there is little
reason to assume that the U.N. will do a better job of administration,
constitution-framing or even humanitarian relief.

After all, the last time the United Nations tried to set up a democracy in a
devastated land ‹ in Cambodia ‹ the end result was the authoritarian Hun Sen
regime. Iraqis neither want nor deserve such a government, but they rightly
fear it could be the product of greater U.N. involvement in their country.

Indeed, Kofi Annan's secretariat is actively consulting neighboring Arab
states and pushing for their involvement in Iraqi political reconstruction,
despite those countries' opposition to the Bush vision of a viable
democratic state in Iraq, and even to the removal of Saddam Hussein.

For that matter, it would be naive to expect any of the powers outside the
present coalition to be on board when it comes to building a democratic
Iraq.

France, on whom the passage of a U.N. resolution depends, wants to see
America fail out of spite. And Arab leaders are terrified of U.S. success in
Iraq: The emergence of the Governing Council, more representative than any
governing body in the entire region (except Israel), is worrying enough.

Iraqis, Americans and their allies have already paid in blood for the hope
of establishing a stable, democratic Iraq whose existence could
revolutionize the Middle East.

Achieving this hope is certain to be a difficult task, but to go back on it
now would be a tragic waste. Worse still, the apparent admission of failure
could have disastrous consequences in the Middle East and around the world.


*  U.S. PRESIDENT EXPANDS EXECUTIVE ORDER ON PROPERTY CONFISCATION.
RFE/RL IRAQ REPORT, Vol. 6, No. 37, 5 September 2003

U.S. President George W. Bush expanded Executive Order 13303 (22 May 2003)
on the confiscation of assets and property belonging to former Iraqi
officials and their family members on 29 August, the U.S. State Department
announced on the same day (http://www.state.gov). The executive order
"broadens the scope of persons whose assets may be frozen under those orders
by adding the immediate family members of former Iraqi senior officials." It
also allows for the confiscation and vesting of some of the assets and
"provides for the transfer of all vested assets to the Development Fund for
Iraq." (Kathleen Ridolfo)


http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/06/international/middleeast/06RUMS.html

*  RUMSFELD, ON IRAQ TOUR, CITES 'REMARKABLE PROGRESS'
by Douglas Jehl
New York Times, 6th September

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 5 ‹ Hopping to Tikrit and Mosul and back to Baghdad
today, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld urged American soldiers and
their Iraqi allies to regard recent setbacks here as no more than temporary
obstacles in the American-led effort to build a new, democratic Iraq.

But even as he cheered on the American troops, there were new reports of
violence and deaths.

In northeast Baghdad early today, a gunman jumped out of a vehicle and
opened fire on a crowd of worshipers leaving the dawn prayer service at a
predominantly Sunni mosque in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood. Three
people were wounded, one seriously.

An American contractor announced today that one of its employees was fatally
shot in Baghdad on Wednesday while driving in a convoy escorted by military
personnel.

In northern Iraq on Thursday night, a British bomb disposal expert with a
mine-clearing charity was killed and an Iraqi who worked with him seriously
injured when gunmen attacked their vehicle, which bore the charity's logo,
near Mosul.

Mr. Rumsfeld was in that vicinity today, flying low in a helicopter over the
site of one notable success, the killing by American troops in July of Uday
and Qusay Hussein, Saddam's sons, who had taken refuge in a house in Mosul.

"You've helped to free some 23 million people," he told troops from the
101st Airborne Division there, "and that's an enormous accomplishment I
don't think you'll ever forget."

But he also spoke repeatedly of his concern that such triumphs were being
overshadowed by attention to setbacks. including recent major bomb attacks,
smaller roadside strikes aimed at American troops, and the failure of the
United States to track down either Saddam Hussein or evidence of
unconventional weapons that the administration cited as a main reason for
going to war.

In a videotaped address to the Iraqi people tonight, Mr. Rumsfeld spoke of
"remarkable progress" in the four months since the United States declared an
end to major combat operations, and promised that "snipers and car bombs
will not dissuade us from our mission."

Still, his visit was punctuated with reminders of work that remains undone
and questions that remain unanswered. Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno, commander
of the Fourth Infantry Division, whose area of operation includes Mr.
Hussein's birthplace, Tikrit, told reporters that he believed the former
Iraqi leader was probably "moving constantly" within that region.

"If he makes a mistake, we are going to be there, and that's what we're
waiting for," he said.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top American military commander in Iraq,
said tonight that the roadside bomb attacks were becoming "increasingly
sophisticated" and appeared almost certainly to be the work of foreign
fighters, possibly including members of the terrorist group Hezbollah, who
brought their bomb-making expertise to Iraq from Syria, Lebanon and other
countries.

In posing questions to Mr. Rumsfeld at a gathering in Mosul, some soldiers
from the 101st Airborne touched on issues that Mr. Rumsfeld seemed
uncomfortable answering, including why the United States has not found
evidence of illegal weapons program, and whether a decision had been made on
what unit would relieve the division when its scheduled year in Iraq ends in
February.

Mr. Rumsfeld said that Army planners were still trying to resolve the troop
rotation issue and that questions about illegal weapons were the purview of
the Iraq Survey Group, headed by a former weapons inspector, David Kay. That
group's focus has shifted from inspecting sites to interrogating former
weapons scientists, Mr. Rumsfeld said, because "there isn't any way in a
country this size to go out and find items that small."

Ultimately, Mr. Rumsfeld said of Mr. Kay's group, "I have a feeling that
they will continue to work the problem and over time produce the information
that will respond to your question."

Still, on Iraqi television, before the troops, and in a meeting in Mosul
with the elected leaders of a local government, Mr. Rumsfeld called
attention to the speed with which Iraq has moved under American leadership
toward embracing representative government and private enterprise, which he
called "a model to the entire region."

In a meeting with reporters, L. Paul Bremer III, the top occupation official
in Iraq, said that his Coalition Provisional Authority had already completed
work on 6,000 different reconstruction projects.

Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus of the 101st Airborne, the dominant political
figure in northern Iraq, pointed to that record as having helped to nourish
significant good will.

"Nobody loves an occupying army," General Petraeus told troops when he
appeared with Mr. Rumsfeld in Mosul. "But I think they love ours as much as
any has been loved."

General Petraeus's division has moved more quickly than any other American
unit in training units of the new Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, a force that
now stands at about 2,300 but should reach 15,000 by the end of the year,
Mr. Bremer said tonight, as part of an effort to speed up the deployment of
the Iraqi police and other forces.

Today's attack at the Qeepa mosque in the Al-Shab neighborhood was carried
out by men in two vehicles, said Qusay Muhammad, one of the armed guards
posted outside the mosque after the attack. A man with an AK-47 emerged from
a sports utility vehicle and began spraying the crowd leaving the mosque,
Mr. Muhammad said. The man then rushed back to the car while a gunman in the
other car opened fire to cover his retreat.

After the attack, Shiites from the neighborhood gathered at the mosque to
show their support for the Sunnis, and Shiite clerics joined with Sunni
clerics in calling for calm. In interviews, worshipers at the mosque and
residents of the neighborhood attributed the attack to outsiders trying to
instigate violence, and said that Sunnis and Shiites got along peacefully in
the neighborhood.

"No Shiite here would shoot at devout people at dawn prayers," said Mr.
Muhammad.

The employee of the American contractor, KBR, who was fatally shot on
Wednesday while driving in a convoy escorted by military personnel was not
identified. KBR is a subsidiary of Halliburton.

A mine-clearing charity, the Mines Advisory Group, today identified the
Briton killed on Thursday as Ian Rimell, 53, from Kidderminster and the
wounded Iraqi as Salem Ahmed Muhammad. It said in a statement that the Iraqi
employee was in critical condition.

It was not known who had attacked the vehicle.


http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/08/international/worldspecial/08PREX.html?hp

*  BUSH SEEKS $87 BILLION AND U.N. AID FOR WAR EFFORT
by Elisabeth Bumiller
New York Times, 8th September

WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 ‹ President Bush said tonight that he would ask Congress
for $87 billion in emergency spending for military operations and
reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that Iraq had now become "the
central front" in the campaign against terrorism.

In a nationally televised prime-time address, his first from the White House
since he announced the bombing of Baghdad on March 19, Mr. Bush said
defeating terrorists in Iraq "will take time, and require sacrifice," but he
left open-ended how long United States troops would remain in Iraq and how
much the conflict and occupation would ultimately cost.
Advertisement

"Yet we will do what is necessary, we will spend what is necessary, to
achieve this essential victory in the war on terror, to promote freedom, and
to make our own nation more secure," Mr. Bush said, speaking from the White
House Cabinet Room in a straightforward, unemotional manner that lacked the
drama of his major war speeches to the nation.

The president also said he would ask the United Nations for additional
international troops for Iraq.

Mr. Bush spoke at a time when the White House has come under intense
criticism from the Democratic presidential candidates for failing to present
a clear plan of the administration's course in Iraq, and for not attracting
major international help for the country's reconstruction. At the same time,
polls show voters' support for Mr. Bush declining as Americans continue to
die in Iraq and the country remains chaotic.

Mr. Bush's request for $87 billion was on the high end of what Congress had
expected. In recent days, administration officials have said they
anticipated asking Congress for an additional $60 billion to $80 billion for
the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. The financing, if approved by Congress,
would significantly add to the federal government's deficit, which is
approaching $500 billion.

The president said that $66 billion of the $87 billion would be for military
and intelligence operations over the next year in Iraq and Afghanistan "and
elsewhere," and that the rest would be for reconstruction in Iraq and
Afghanistan, including restoring basic services like water and electricity.
Mr. Bush did not say how the money would be apportioned between Iraq and
Afghanistan, but the bulk of it was expected to go to Iraq.

The $87 billion request for the next fiscal year would add to the amount
that Congress approved in a $79 billion bill last spring to pay the war
costs for the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign
Relations Committee, said he expected his fellow Democrats to go along with
the request, but not without pointing out the costs and tradeoffs that heavy
military spending would present.

"I personally think we have to do it, but I'm sure there's going to be an
alliance of liberals and conservatives who want him to eat a little bit of
crow here," he said in an interview after the speech tonight.

"The conservatives are going to be very skittish, because this will bump the
deficit to around $600 billion. And many of us are going to point out that
we can't afford to do this war the right way and have these massive tax cuts
become permanent."

The president's message was that the money was justified to defeat
terrorists who he said were making a desperate but calculated stand in the
heart of the Middle East.

"There is more at work in these attacks than blind rage," said Mr. Bush, who
delivered his remarks below a painting of the signing of the Declaration of
Independence. "The terrorists have a strategic goal. They want us to leave
Iraq before our work is done. They want to shake the will of the civilized
world."

In his 18-minute speech, Mr. Bush did not mention Osama bin Laden, who has
so far eluded American capture in Afghanistan. He also did not mention the
failure so far to find any unconventional weapons in Iraq, the major stated
reason that the United States went to war. Nor did Mr. Bush dwell on the
conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians, which he once predicted
would abate if Saddam Hussein was ousted from power in Iraq. That conflict
has worsened.

Tonight, Mr. Bush sought to tamp down the bad news with his most succinct
outline to date of the White House goals for Iraq.

"Our strategy in Iraq has three objectives: destroying the terrorists,
enlisting the support of other nations for a free Iraq and helping Iraqis
assume responsibility for their own defense and their own future," Mr. Bush
said.

Mr. Bush's appeal for help from other countries was a recognition that the
administration cannot unilaterally maintain its current level of 181,000
American troops in both Iraq and neighboring Kuwait.

He said the United States would introduce a resolution in the Security
Council encouraging Iraq's Governing Council to submit a plan and a
timetable for drafting a new constitution, and for free elections.

"From the outset, I have expressed confidence in the ability of the Iraqi
people to govern themselves," Mr. Bush said. "Now they must rise to the
responsibilities of a free people, and secure the blessings of their own
liberty."

The speech was Mr. Bush's first extended address about Iraq since he
declared an end to major combat operations in a May 1 speech. He was more
triumphal then, asserting that "the United States and our allies have
prevailed."

But 149 Americans have died in Iraq since then, compared with the 138 in the
invasion itself. The United Nations headquarters in Baghdad was bombed last
month, a low point in the United States' now five-month-old occupation.
Tonight, Mr. Bush sought to wrest back control of the debate as the White
House seeks money and support for the war from Congress and the United
Nations, and as he enters the first phase of his re-election campaign.

Much of Mr. Bush's speech served as an update of how he saw the events in
Iraq and represented his most detailed remarks so far about the country's
recent chaos. He drew a distinction between what he said was the relative
calm in the north and south of the country and the violence around Baghdad.

"The attacks you have heard and read about in the last few weeks have
occurred predominately in the central region of Iraq, between Baghdad and
Tikrit ‹ Saddam Hussein's former stronghold," Mr. Bush said.

But the president was vague about who was attacking American troops. He
called the assailants "a collection of killers," some of whom, he said, were
former members of Mr. Hussein's regime. Others he identified only as
"foreign terrorists, who have come to Iraq to pursue their war on America
and other free nations."

Mr. Bush added: "We cannot be certain to what extent these groups work
together. We do know they have a common goal, reclaiming Iraq for tyranny."

Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont whose campaign for the
Democratic presidential nomination has caught fire largely because of his
opposition to the war in Iraq, called the speech "outrageous," and said Mr.
Bush was "beginning to remind me of what was happening with Lyndon Johnson
and Dick Nixon during the Vietnam War."

Asked to explain the analogy to Vietnam, Dr. Dean said: "The government
begins to feed misinformation to the American people in order to justify an
enormous commitment of American troops, which turned out to be a tremendous
mistake."

Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat and presidential candidate, said
that Mr. Bush was refusing to face more important priorities at home. "He's
talking about spending $87 billion in Afghanistan and Iraq," Mr. Graham said
tonight on the CNN program "Larry King Live." "That's more than the federal
government will spend on education this year."

Mr. Bush never once used the word occupation in his remarks, and several
times emphasized that the ultimate American goal in Iraq was to turn the
country back to Iraqis.

"Our coalition came to Iraq as liberators and we will depart as liberators,"
Mr. Bush said.

He also spoke of two conferences for potential donor nations, one for Iraq
this month and one for Afghanistan in October, that Secretary of State Colin
L. Powell is to attend. Tonight, he asked some of those nations to help with
reconstruction.

"Europe, Japan and states in the Middle East all will benefit from the
success of freedom in these two countries, and they should contribute to
that success," he said.

At the same time, Mr. Bush was blunt about what he called the "duty" of
other countries to assist militarily.

"I recognize that not all our friends agreed with our decision to enforce
the Security Council resolutions and remove Saddam Hussein from power," he
said. "Yet we cannot let past differences interfere with present duties."
Members of the United Nations, the president said, "now have an opportunity,
and the responsibility, to assume a broader role in assuring that Iraq
becomes a free and democratic nation."

A theme of the address was Sept. 11, which Mr. Bush employed as a warning of
what must never happen again, and a reason, he said, to stay the course in
Iraq.

"For America, there will be no going back to the era before September the
11th, 2001, to false comfort in a dangerous world," he said. "We have
learned that terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength. They
are invited by the perception of weakness."

The "surest way" to avoid attacks on Americans, Mr. Bush said, "is to engage
the enemy where he lives and plans" so that "we do not meet him again on our
own streets, in our own cities."


http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20030909_84.html

*  DEMS DEMAND DETAILS OF IRAQ OPERATIONS
ABC News from The Associated Press, 9th September

WASHINGTON Sept. 9: Congressional Democrats' support for President Bush's
$87 billion request comes with a price: They want him to spell out details
of his overall Iraq strategy.

For months, many Democrats and some Republicans have complained that the
Bush administration has offered few details about how it will rebuild Iraq,
how much international support can be expected, how much American taxpayers
will have to pay over the years and how long U.S. troops will be based
there.

Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., said he will offer an amendment to the Iraq
spending bill that would bar money for relief and reconstruction until Bush
officially reports to Congress on his Iraq strategy.

"The president owes our troops and their families a plan before we give the
administration a blank check," Kennedy said in a written statement.

A Republican senator, Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, said he was confident the
administration would provide the details. "I don't think we have to ask for
it. I think they understand they need to provide it," he said.

Senators are likely to seek answers about the administration's Iraq plans
Tuesday as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Gen. Richard Myers,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appear before the Armed Services
Committee.

In a televised address Sunday, Bush said he would ask Congress for $87
billion for Iraq and Afghanistan in addition to the $79 billion that
Congress approved in April. Bush said the money is needed to stop terrorists
before they can strike again in the United States.

Republicans, who control the House and Senate, praised Bush's speech and
offered support for the plan. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.,
said the proposal "warrants the support of Congress." And House
Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young, R-Fla., whose panel will help
write Congress' version, said he would "aggressively expedite the
president's request."

Democrats will be hard-pressed to deny Bush the money he says is needed for
U.S. soldiers. "We obviously want to support our troops. That, I think, is a
given," said Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Armed
Services Committee.

They are already using the money request to argue that the administration
didn't plan adequately for the war's aftermath, was overly optimistic about
Iraqi and international cooperation and foolishly pushed through tax cuts
even as the war aggravated a growing deficit.

On the Senate floor, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said there isn't enough money
to meet Bush's own education goals, "and yet we're going to ask the American
taxpayers to keep coughing up money for this quagmire that we're in now in
Iraq."

"This may not be Vietnam, but boy, it sure smells like it," he said. "And
every time I see these bills coming down for the money, it's costing like
Vietnam, too."

Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations
Committee, is demanding that tax cuts for the wealthiest taxpayers be
postponed a proposal likely to face strong Republican opposition.

"Is this still a sacrificeless undertaking except those we send to Iraq?" he
said in an interview. "Or is there actually something that Americans are
going to be asked to do?"

Some lawmakers also said the $20 billion for Iraqi reconstruction would
receive particular scrutiny. Levin said that money would be wasted if the
Bush administration doesn't make a serious effort to secure help from other
nations. Administration officials say they want international participation,
but it's not clear how much authority they are willing to cede in Iraq to
secure it.

"If we don't get other countries involved, if we don't make a serious effort
in the U.N., which other countries say is essential for their participation,
then it increases the chances that the reconstruction money will be
ineffective," he said.

Rep. John Spratt of South Carolina, top Democrat on the Budget Committee,
said the $20 billion is well short of the estimated $50 billion to $75
billion needed for reconstruction.

"It is unrealistic now to think that our motley coalition will come up with
$50 billion, and even more dubious that our allies in Europe and Japan will
do so," he said.




_______________________________________________
Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq.
To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss
To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk
All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk


[Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq Homepage]