A long, hard slog
US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld predicts "a long, hard slog" in Iraq. A few hours after a "brazen" attack on coalition headquaters in Baghdad, The International Herald Tribune reports that US Secretary of State Colin Powell conceded on Sunday that "we are still in a state of conflict," and that the administration had not expected insurgents to put up such an intense, increasingly sophistocated fight for such a long period of time. The Christian Science Monitor reports that US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz went to Iraq for a three-day visit designed to portray a nation on the mend, and ended up fleeing his heavily guarded hotel during the attack on coalition HQ at the Al Rashid hotel.
The situation in Iraq is definitely one of mixed messages. As European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana describes it, "the situation in complicated."
The administration is trying to do what it can. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Mr. Wolfowitz has pushed to realign hundreds of millions of dollars in spending to meet the needs on the ground in Iraq – getting better body armor to the troops, for example, and more armored Humvees. And whole regions of Iraq are peaceful, especially in the northern Kurdish areas, and the sectors controlled by the British.
The Associated Press reports that US soldiers, faced with enormous obstacles, are still trying to bring a mixture of "military might, generosity and democracy" through Iraq. Administration officials still say they believe that things will get better, especially after Iraqi troops are trained to take over from US troops. President Bush said Monday that it is the progress in Iraq that is actually making insurgents more desperate, resulting in a dramatic increase in the number of attacks.
But serious problems remain. Knight-Ridder reports that while life is safer for Iraqis, it's getting more dangerous for everyone else in Iraq. One problem is the quality of information the coalition forces are receiving. MSNBC reports that the US military intelligence gathering operation is being undercut by "a series of problems in using technology, training intelligence specialists and managing them in the field, according to an internal Army evaluation." The Christian Science Monitor reports that plans to replace US troops with Turkish troops foundered on the rock of strong Iraqi opposition to the idea.
A new poll shows that Iraqi attitudes towards the coalition forces (even towards peacekeepers) are becoming more negative. According to the poll conducted by the independent, privately funded Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies, 67 percent of Iraqis now see coalition forces as "occupiers," and only 18 percent see them as "liberators."
Perhaps more disturbing to the Bush administration, the Guardian reports, is the lack of support for Western-style democracy – 33 percent support a theocracy, and 23 percent an Islamic democracy similar to Iran. The BBC reports that Iraqis who support the US worry that public opinion in Baghdad has turned against the Americans because of the way US troops behave.
"Just this morning I saw a US soldier beat an Iraqi man in the street. Some time ago in Kadhimiya I saw a man being shot three times just because he was standing and staring at the soldiers. We ran away so I don't know what happened to him. We want to live in peace," said [Hala, who lives in Mansour]. "Why this harsh treatment? It is like Saddam."
The BBC reports that Iraqis and Americans alike are worried about the possibility of a full-scale Sunni-Shiites conflict. Tensions in the slums of western Baghdad have gotten so bad that gunfire between the Sunni and Shitte residents is common place. And the Financial Times reports that the attack Monday morning on the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Baghdad, which killed at least ten people, showed that no outside group is safe, even if it has no connection to coalition forces.
A United Nations representative said the attack, which was one of a series of blasts Monday that resulted in 39 deaths, was aimed at driving all foreigners out of Iraq. The European Union issued a statement saying that the attack on the Red Cross was also probably targeted to prevent aid from being distributed. And in fact, the ICRC announced a few hours after the blast that it was considering cutting back its staff and operations in Iraq.
Newsweek reports that Republican party insiders are worried about recent statements by US Senator John McCain, who compared Iraq to Vietnam in the sense of the way the administration was releasing information about military operation in Iraq. Mr. McCain has a very high standing among independents, a group much needed by President Bush in the 2004 elections. A Newsweek poll in the same issue showed that 59 percent of Americans still support the decision to go into Iraq, but 58 percent also think that too much money is being spent on the operation. The majority – 56 percent – think troops should be reduced and some should come home, up 7 points from the end of September.
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