As President Bush heralded the deaths of Saddam Hussein’s sons as a potentially crucial step toward stability in Iraq, a top Pentagon official made a rare admission Wednesday that faulty assumptions by U.S. war planners contributed to postwar looting and unrest.
After weeks of criticism that the case for war against Iraq had been exaggerated, Bush used a morning appearance at the White House to praise the work of U.S. troops in a Tuesday firefight that killed Udai and Qusai Hussein.
“Yesterday, in the city of Mosul, the careers of two of the regime’s chief henchmen came to an end,” Bush said. “Saddam Hussein’s sons were responsible for torture, maiming and murder of countless Iraqis. Now, more than ever, all Iraqis can know that the former regime is gone and will not be coming back.”
But in a day of mostly upbeat talk, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz acknowledged that after the U.S.-led invasion took control of the country, “some conditions were worse than we anticipated, particularly in the security area.”
“Inevitably, some of our assumptions turned out to be wrong,” he told reporters at the Pentagon.
The statement was a departure from past assertions by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other military officials that civil unrest in Iraq was a relatively minor problem that had been anticipated by the military and overblown by the media.
Wolfowitz cited three surprises that have contributed to instability in Iraq in the war’s aftermath.
“No [Iraqi] army units, at least none of any significant size, came over to our side so that we could use them,” he said.
“Second, the police turned out to require a massive overhaul. Third, and worst of all, it was difficult to imagine before the war that the criminal gang of sadists and gangsters who have run Iraq for 35 years would continue fighting, fighting what has been sometimes called a guerrilla war.”
Wolfowitz also said several problems that had been planned for — such as an exodus of refugees, food shortages or sabotaging of oil fields –were prevented or did not materialize.
Despite acknowledging problems, Bush, Wolfowitz and Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, spent most of the day emphasizing progress in rebuilding the Middle East nation and laying out ambitious plans for its future.
Bush praised U.S.-led teams for renovating schools, preparing to introduce a new Iraqi currency, taking tentative first steps toward self-governance and restoring water, electrical and communication systems.
“Rebuilding Iraq will require a sustained commitment,” Bush said. “In the 83 days since I announced the end of major combat operations in Iraq, we have made progress, steady progress, in restoring hope in a nation beaten down by decades of tyranny.”
Heads up to taxpayers
At the same time, officials made clear that transforming Iraq into a stable, prosperous democracy will take years and cost billions, much of it from the United States.
Bremer, who has been in Washington this week briefing Congress, administration officials and reporters, said that restoring Iraq’s electrical and water systems would cost an estimated $29 billion.
“I do believe that the American taxpayer is going to almost certainly be asked to spend some more money so that we can be sure we consolidate the peace in Iraq and carry out this very fundamental transformation,” he said in a midday speech to the National Press Club.
The United States has assumed control of Iraq’s national budget, and the estimated deficit for 2004 is nearly $4 billion, Bremer said. As oil production returns to prewar levels, the budget gaps should disappear after 2004, he said.
In the next 60 days, he said, U.S.-led teams will focus on improving security by training recruits in a new, volunteer Iraqi army, establishing an Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, opening a police academy, re-establishing a border guard, starting trials before a Central Criminal Court and beginning training seminars for judges.
The U.S.-led team is paying out almost $200 million a month in salaries, pensions and emergency funds to Iraqis and also will provide thousands of new jobs in the next two months for development projects, he said.
Bremer expressed a strong desire for U.S. troops to press on with the hunt for Saddam Hussein.
“I think it is important to kill Saddam or capture him, because his continued uncertain state has allowed people to play on that uncertainty and make the argument that in some fashion, the Baathists would come back,” he said.
$500 bounty on GIs
The now-banned Baath Party, once Hussein’s political apparatus, is suspected by U.S. officials of coordinating guerrilla attacks against U.S.-led troops. Wolfowitz on Wednesday blamed Hussein loyalists for using “contract killings” as a principal tactic — paying $500 to young Iraqi men to fire on U.S. troops.
In a bit of good news for weary troops, Defense Department officials announced a 12-month rotation policy for service in Iraq.
The first unit to enter Baghdad, the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division based at Ft. Stewart, Ga., will leave by September, said acting Army Chief of Staff Gen. Jack Keane. Its 9,000 soldiers will be replaced by elements of the 82nd Airborne Division based at Ft. Bragg, N.C.
At the White House, the president made no direct reference to the so far futile search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but his aides fended off allegations that the president overstated the case for the Iraqi invasion.
White House officials admitted for the first time Tuesday that the CIA had warned them last October that the claim that Iraq was trying to purchase uranium in Africa could be erroneous, but it was included in Bush’s State of the Union address in January anyway.
Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley took the blame for failing to delete the claim from the speech, saying he had forgotten about the CIA warnings.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Wednesday that questions about the uranium claim do not change the fact that “there was a mountain of evidence about the threat that Saddam Hussein posed, and that it was important that we act on this threat.”
McClellan said it was “nonsense and, in some cases, outrageous” that Democrats who supported a congressional resolution backing the war are now trying to accuse Bush of rushing into war. And anti-war critics are only trying to “justify their opposition to the war,” he said.
