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Politics : Stop the War! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tsigprofit who wrote (11154)	4/9/2003 4:20:30 PM
From: Mike M	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21614

story.news.yahoo.com <<Bush Pleased but W.House Says U.S. Still at War 38 minutes ago Add Top Stories - Reuters to My Yahoo! By Patricia Wilson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House called scenes of joyful Iraqis welcoming U.S. troops in Baghdad on Wednesday and toppling a huge statue of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) an historic moment but warned Americans against "leaping too far ahead." As the pictures played out on television screens in the executive mansion, President Bush (news - web sites) kept a low profile and the watchword was caution. "At this given moment in time ... we are still in the midst of a shooting war," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer (news - web sites) said. There was no sign of celebration. Fleischer said he did not know if Bush had yet seen the pictures of jubilant crowds swarming into Baghdad streets, looting and defacing images of the Iraqi president, but that he had been briefed about them. The president, who has no planned public appearances on Wednesday, stuck to his announced schedule of discussing the war and domestic issues over breakfast with congressional leaders. They left without speaking to reporters. Later, Bush met President Rudolf Schuster of Slovakia, whose country has sent non-combat troops specializing in chemical warfare decontamination to Iraq (news - web sites). Aides in the White House press office watched spellbound as Iraqis toppled a giant statue of Saddam Hussein in the heart of Baghdad and dragged its head through the streets. "Clearly the scenes that people are watching on television now are heartening signs of military progress and mankind's taste for freedom and the Iraq people's yearning to be free," Fleischer said. "It's an historic moment." Bush's rationale for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq had shifted perceptibly in recent weeks from disarmament to liberation. He spoke more and more of the brutalities of the Saddam regime and less and less about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. There have been no confirmed findings of banned arms so far. 'POWERFUL TESTAMENT' "Freedom's taste is unquenchable," Fleischer told reporters. "I mean, this is a powerful testament to mankind's desire to live free and that includes, of course, the Iraqi people, as the president always said it would." But he said Bush also wanted to make the point that what Americans were seeing on television in parts of Baghdad "is only that, one section of Baghdad" and that other sections and other places remained risky for U.S. armed forces. "I want to urge caution on leaping too far ahead. There are still cities in Iraq that are under regime control and what you are watching on television is only that which the lens can see at that given moment," Fleischer said. A senior U.S. official said Bush was heartened by continuing good military reports from the field but he added, "As well as things have gone, this is still a military mission and therefore lives are still at stake." Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, told ABC's "Good Morning America" program, "It's clear that the end is very much in sight and today I think Americans should be very proud of their leadership, of their technology, but most of all the men and women in the military." The senior official also warned Iraq's neighbors against harboring Saddam or his top aides. Asked about reports that efforts were under way to smuggle a badly wounded Saddam and his son Uday into Syria, he said: "No go. He had his opportunity to leave the country and he didn't take it." "We don't know if he's alive or dead," the official added. A CIA (news - web sites) official said it was not known whether Saddam and his sons had survived an attack on Monday in which a B-1 bomber dropped four 2,000-pound (900-kg) bombs on a building in the Baghdad district of Mansur.

To: tsigprofit who wrote (11154)	4/9/2003 4:22:32 PM
From: Mike M	Respond to of 21614

story.news.yahoo.com << Top Stories - Reuters U.S. Identifies 43 Iraqi Leaders for Meeting 51 minutes ago Add Top Stories - Reuters to My Yahoo! By Jonathan Wright WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has identified about 43 Iraqi politicians -- 14 former exiles and about 29 from inside the country -- to take part in a meeting in southern Iraq (news - web sites) on the political future of the country, a leading Iraqi politician said on Wednesday. Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi told Reuters the meeting would take place on Saturday at the Ali ibn Abi Talib airbase outside the town of Nassiriya. Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) also had said it would be on Saturday but his office said afterward it would be later, depending on the state of security on the ground. Three U.S. officials -- White House special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Ryan Crocker and an unidentified special adviser to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- are expected to chair the one-day session, Chalabi said from Nassiriya in a telephone interview. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the venue of the meeting was also uncertain. "(It) depends on the circumstances of security, of the fighting, of what goes on inside Iraq ... It's just not decided yet," he told reporters. Chalabi, who flew to Nassiriya on Sunday with U.S. special forces, complained that the list of participants was weighted toward tribal leaders and people from rural areas. "Tribal leaders are very important of course but Iraq is an overwhelmingly urban society and I think there should be more representation for the urban people," he said. "Baghdad is not sufficiently represented and I think there can be some refinements of the people chosen from the various areas. ... The composition at this time looks like Noah's Ark but that is fine at this stage," he added. Cheney said the meeting would begin planning for an interim Iraqi government. "We will bring together representatives of groups from all over Iraq to begin to sit down and talk about planning for the future of this Iraqi interim authority and getting it up and running," he told a meeting of U.S. newspaper editors. NO 'CORONATION' But Chalabi said he did not expect the gathering to make any major decisions. "There is a general statement of intent about the Iraqi interim authority that the United States wants to express to the people," he added. Boucher said the meeting would not be a "coronation" for any Iraqi politician, a reference to Chalabi, and that it would not choose the future Iraqi government. "It's an opportunity for coalition officials to meet with free Iraqis from inside and outside Iraq to discuss their vision of the future. ... It's not a meeting of organizational leaders or of political figures," he added. The United States sees the meeting as the first of a series of regional meetings that will culminate in a conference in Baghdad to form the interim authority, he added. But after the absence of party politics inside Iraq for more than 30 years, the gathering could by default set a precedent for representation in the interim authority. Because of Iraq's oil reserves and the concentration of resources in the hands of the state, whoever acquires power first in the country will be well placed to retain it. Chalabi's group won a head start over its rivals last weekend when the U.S. military flew him and some 700 INC members to Nassiriya to start political operations. U.S. television channels on Tuesday showed the U.S. military distributing rifles and grenade launchers to some of the 700 men, whom the INC calls the Free Iraqi Forces. Chalabi and his aides declined to say when the group planned to move from Nassiriya to the capital Baghdad, where the authority of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) appeared to have completely collapsed on Wednesday. "The Iraqi National Council is a national movement and Baghdad is the capital city," one of his aides said. The INC received a delegation on Wednesday from the office of retired Lt. Gen Jay Garner, named by the Bush administration to run civil affairs in Iraq under U.S. occupation. "They seemed to be doing some assessment. They were just asking questions like 'What's your view of the situation?"' said one of Chalabi's aides. Cheney said Garner would start by finding out what the existing Iraqi ministries can do. "What kind of shape are they in? What kind of resources have they got? How soon can we get the health ministry up and running? How soon can we get the oil ministry up and running?" he said. "Are there people left in those bureaus and agencies that can be part of the new Iraq? Have we gotten rid of all the Baath party folks in there who were Saddam Hussein cronies?" The United States has repeatedly said the United Nations (news - web sites) will have a vital or important role in rebuilding Iraq but Cheney said again on Wednesday that the United Nations would not run the reconstruction operation. "The question of whether or not we're going to turn everything over to the United Nations and put them in charge of this process, the president has made it clear that we're not going to do that," he said.