As US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld zoomed around Iraq by
helicopter last week, he saw "breathtaking" progress where others
have seen a barely functioning country more than five months after
the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Flying out of Baghdad in a military cargo plane after dark last Saturday only hours after surface-to-air missiles were fired at a similar US Air Force C-141 cargo plane, Rumsfeld remarked to aides that the city looked like his native Chicago at night.
Almost every chance he got, he talked up how much has been done to get Iraq back on its feet, scolding the media for ignoring the "good news" in favor of a bleaker narrative of car bombings and steadily rising casualty tolls.
And everywhere Rumsfeld went, senior commanders said they were winning the fight against a shadowy foe and finding support among Iraqis at the grass roots.
"One battalion's worth of combat power from either a coalition element or a United States element can accomplish the task of defeating any threat that may surface in the coming months," General Ricardo Sanchez, the US commander in Iraq, told reporters.
US overseer in Iraq Paul Bremer also toted up the gains in rebuilding Iraqi institutions from scratch.
By Bremer's count, 85% of all towns in the country have elected a town council, including Baghdad.
The US-backed Governing Council has appointed a cabinet and a committee to prepare a constitutional assembly.
"Democracy is on the march in this country," he said.
"And it's on the march at the grassroots level where it really matters".
Alternately upbeat and exasperated by suggestions that he was viewing Iraq through rose-colored glasses, Rumsfeld told reporters that "the progress in four or five months is breathtaking".
It is a view that is starkly at odds with that of prominent members of the US Congress where President George W Bush is seeking approval for an additional $87-billion for Iraq and Afghanistan, mostly to support military operations.
"I think it's obvious now that the choice we've made is more expensive than we thought, more time consuming, more dangerous and more difficult," said Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island and a former military officer, yesterday.
"And I think also that we've put ourselves in the position where we have everything to lose and, it's becoming increasing apparent, very little to gain," he said.
Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, also insisted that the Pentagon had underestimated the challenge.
"The decay of the infrastructure is truly staggering. You have to see the second-largest city in Iraq, which is a total and complete slum, to appreciate the depth and expense involved," he said.
Those warring perceptions of Iraq seem certain to become the focus of debate as Bush heads into a presidential re-election campaign next year in which the war and ballooning deficits are already emerging as top Democratic issues.
The president and his aides appear to be positioning for the fight by seeking a belated UN mandate and casting Iraq as "the central front" of the global war on terrorism.
Rumsfeld fired a shot across his political opponents' bow on his flight home Monday at the end of a six-day trip to Iraq and Afghanistan.
He warned that the military's task in Iraq is being made more difficult by all the criticism, which he said could be an encouragement to terrorists.
"We can live with a healthy debate as long as it is as elevated as possible, as long as it is as civil as possible," he said.
Evidence of a "terrorist Super Bowl" in Iraq - as some football-loving military officers refer to it - remains vague, however.
US commanders in Iraq said they've captured foreign fighters in the country and project the threat from extremists as overtaking that now posed by regime loyalists.
Sanchez said the increasingly sophisticated attacks on US troops appear to involve imported tactics and techniques.
But US commanders said they do not know who is behind the large-scale car bombs that have rocked Iraq in recent weeks, how many foreign fighters are in the country, or what connections they have, if any, to the Baathists. – Sapa-AFP.
Flying out of Baghdad in a military cargo plane after dark last Saturday only hours after surface-to-air missiles were fired at a similar US Air Force C-141 cargo plane, Rumsfeld remarked to aides that the city looked like his native Chicago at night.
Almost every chance he got, he talked up how much has been done to get Iraq back on its feet, scolding the media for ignoring the "good news" in favor of a bleaker narrative of car bombings and steadily rising casualty tolls.
And everywhere Rumsfeld went, senior commanders said they were winning the fight against a shadowy foe and finding support among Iraqis at the grass roots.
"One battalion's worth of combat power from either a coalition element or a United States element can accomplish the task of defeating any threat that may surface in the coming months," General Ricardo Sanchez, the US commander in Iraq, told reporters.
US overseer in Iraq Paul Bremer also toted up the gains in rebuilding Iraqi institutions from scratch.
By Bremer's count, 85% of all towns in the country have elected a town council, including Baghdad.
The US-backed Governing Council has appointed a cabinet and a committee to prepare a constitutional assembly.
"Democracy is on the march in this country," he said.
"And it's on the march at the grassroots level where it really matters".
Alternately upbeat and exasperated by suggestions that he was viewing Iraq through rose-colored glasses, Rumsfeld told reporters that "the progress in four or five months is breathtaking".
It is a view that is starkly at odds with that of prominent members of the US Congress where President George W Bush is seeking approval for an additional $87-billion for Iraq and Afghanistan, mostly to support military operations.
"I think it's obvious now that the choice we've made is more expensive than we thought, more time consuming, more dangerous and more difficult," said Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island and a former military officer, yesterday.
"And I think also that we've put ourselves in the position where we have everything to lose and, it's becoming increasing apparent, very little to gain," he said.
Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, also insisted that the Pentagon had underestimated the challenge.
"The decay of the infrastructure is truly staggering. You have to see the second-largest city in Iraq, which is a total and complete slum, to appreciate the depth and expense involved," he said.
Those warring perceptions of Iraq seem certain to become the focus of debate as Bush heads into a presidential re-election campaign next year in which the war and ballooning deficits are already emerging as top Democratic issues.
The president and his aides appear to be positioning for the fight by seeking a belated UN mandate and casting Iraq as "the central front" of the global war on terrorism.
Rumsfeld fired a shot across his political opponents' bow on his flight home Monday at the end of a six-day trip to Iraq and Afghanistan.
He warned that the military's task in Iraq is being made more difficult by all the criticism, which he said could be an encouragement to terrorists.
"We can live with a healthy debate as long as it is as elevated as possible, as long as it is as civil as possible," he said.
Evidence of a "terrorist Super Bowl" in Iraq - as some football-loving military officers refer to it - remains vague, however.
US commanders in Iraq said they've captured foreign fighters in the country and project the threat from extremists as overtaking that now posed by regime loyalists.
Sanchez said the increasingly sophisticated attacks on US troops appear to involve imported tactics and techniques.
But US commanders said they do not know who is behind the large-scale car bombs that have rocked Iraq in recent weeks, how many foreign fighters are in the country, or what connections they have, if any, to the Baathists. – Sapa-AFP.
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