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Politics : Attack Iraq? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (7159)	7/21/2003 3:40:36 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 8683

Bush Seeks International Assistance in Iraq Monday, July 21, 2003 CRAWFORD, Texas — With U.S. casualties becoming a near daily occurrence in Iraq (search) and criticism mounting, President Bush said Monday that he wants other nations to play a greater role in the country's peacekeeping and reconstruction. "Obviously, the more help we can get, the more we appreciate it. And we are continuing to work with other nations to ask their help and advice," Bush said from his ranch in Crawford, Texas, where he was meeting with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (search). "A free Iraq is a crucial part of winning the war on terror." Berlusconi and Bush see eye to eye on the situation in Iraq, and Bush thanked the premier for enduring criticism from its neighbors to support the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Bush said the two leaders discussed how to broaden the coalition in Iraq, but did not address the issue of Italy taking over a peacekeeping role from the U.S. troops on the ground. India and Russia say they may contribute troops if the United Nations (search) gives the U.S. and Great Britain a less dominant role in post-war Iraq. Berlusconi arrived at the ranch by helicopter on Sunday, where he was greeted by the president and first lady and taken to the house in the president's pickup truck. A trip to Bush's ranch is often seen as a reward for foreign leaders who have supported the president's policies. "We welcome the prime minister as a good friend, and he represents a country that is a strong ally," Bush said. "Defending freedom requires cost and sacrifice. The United States is grateful for Italy's willingness to bear the burdens with us." Italy was a strong supporter of war in Iraq. The only lack of agreement between Bush and Berlusconi on Iraq appears to be their view of weapons of mass destruction. Berlusconi has stated publicly that he believes Saddam Hussein did such an effective job of destroying the weapons of mass destruction they will never be found. The president says he's confident the weapons will be found. Back at the ranch, Berlusconi, the current president of the 15-nation European Union (search), spoke of the importance of healing the rift between the United States and many European nations that the war caused. "We really need to support and develop a culture of union and cohesion and certainly not nurture the culture of division," he said. "Selfishness, narcissism and division shall never win." Bush said he believed that a united Europe and United States would make it easier to fight terror. He pointed to Iran and Syria as two nations that continue to harbor terrorists, and said states that aid terror will be made responsible for their actions. "This behavior is completely unacceptable," Bush said from the Texas ranch. "States that continue to harbor terrorists will be held completely accountable." Bush said that terrorism is the root cause of instability and the failure to find peace in the Middle East. "Terrorism is the greatest obstacle to a Palestinian state," Bush said. "All leaders who seek this goal have an obligation to back up their words and real actions against terror. Leaders in both Syria and Iran say they're backing groups that are fighting for a Palestinian state -- and deny they are terrorist organizations. During a joint press conference, Bush also announced the arrival of 41 Marines to the West African nation of Liberia, where an on-again, off-again 14-year civil war was on again Monday in the capital of Monrovia. There, mortar fire hit the U.S. Embassy Monday, killing 60 people who had gathered outside the consulate seeking refuge. Bush said that the United States would work with the United Nations to help restore a cease-fire, but that no decision has yet been made on the composition of any American peacekeeping force. "We're concerned about our people," Bush said. "We continue to monitor the situation very closely." Bush also addressed the increasingly difficult situation in North Korea, which announced earlier this month that it has completed reprocessing 8,000 reactor fuel rods, used to make weapons-grade plutonium. North Korea already has one or two nuclear weapons already and could make another five or six by the end of the year. Bush said he wants to resolve the problem with North Korea's nuclear proliferation diplomatically, encouraging the neighborhood -- particularly China, South Korea and Japan -- to pressure North Korea to drop its nuclear ambitions. "I believe we can solve this issue diplomatically by encouraging the neighborhood ... to tell Kim Jong Il that a decision to develop a nuclear arsenal is one that will alienate you from the rest of the world," he said. The New York Times suggested this weekend that North Korea has a second nuclear reprocessing facility capable of producing more plutonium. The White House would not confirm that report, but said North Korea appears intent on building up its arsenal. South Korea dismissed the report, saying it would be difficult to build such a facility without being detected by U.S. spy satellites. Fox News' Mike Tobin and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

To: calgal who wrote (7159)	7/21/2003 3:43:06 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 8683

Senators: Bush Credibility at Stake Over Iraq Intelligence Monday, July 21, 2003 WASHINGTON — The credibility of President Bush and the nation are at stake with the information that led the United States into the Iraq war, two members of the Senate Intelligence Committee (search) say. DSL Speed for Dial Up Only $8.95/month ! Enter your zip code: Investigations under way by the committee's staff, the CIA and the FBI marked a good beginning, Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., said Sunday in a television interview. "Ultimately, the public needs to be reassured that, in fact, the intelligence the president was given ....(and) was used, and how he framed the debate and the decision to go into Iraq, was intelligence that they can have confidence in," Hagel said. "And that's, by the way, important for the world to have that same confidence in our word." A crucial question will be to determine how Bush's State of the Union (search) address on Jan. 28 came to include a reference to what U.S. intelligence had determined was an incorrect British report that Iraq was shopping for uranium in Africa. "There are plenty of investigations, and the question is, what's the point of them?" said Rockefeller, the intelligence committee's vice chairman. "The point of them is to find out if we were being misled, if somebody inserted that in" despite earlier objections by CIA Director George Tenet (search). On Fox News Sunday, Rockefeller said Bush could make the controversy go away by coming clean whether the justification for war was exaggerated. "It's just a question of was it right, or was it wrong?" he said. Rockefeller said the argument should not be personalized or politicized. Because of Bush's policy of maintaining the right of pre-emptive attacks against potentially dangerous governments, he said, "intelligence is the basis now of war-fighting." Therefore, Rockefeller said, "it's very important to intelligence to say that facts really do matter, they count, they have to be accurate." Rockefeller told CNN he requested FBI involvement in the case after the International Atomic Energy Agency (search) debunked the British report. He and Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., requested CIA and State Department investigations. The House Intelligence Committee is conducting its own probe. Hagel said ensuring that the American public and the world have confidence in the word of the United States "is the essence of the exercise here." Defending the administration, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said the decision to include the 16-word Iraqi uranium-shopping sentence "was made by the speechwriters and by the folks in the White House" using various intelligence sources that were thought reliable. White House officials have acknowledged the report should not have appeared in the speech and have issued varying versions of why it was. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice (search), has said no top White House officials knew of a report by a CIA emissary that said the report appeared to be bogus. But Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, a Democratic presidential candidate, said intelligence was available that should have made Bush realize the information in the uranium report was suspect. One source was Vice President Dick Cheney, he told CBS. "The vice president is the one who went to the CIA on several occasions. He asked specifically for additional information on the Niger-Iraq connection. The United States sent an experienced ambassador, who came back after a full review with a report that these were fabricated documents," Graham said. "You cannot tell me that the vice president didn't receive the same report that the CIA received, and that the vice president didn't communicate that report to the president or national security advisers to the president."

To: calgal who wrote (7159)	7/21/2003 4:07:59 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 8683

A Very Special Relationship Tony Blair comes to Washington and brings down the house. by Larry Miller 07/21/2003 12:00:00 AM Larry Miller, contributing humorist A LOT OF PERFORMERS disagree with me on this, but I hate it when audiences whoop to show their pleasure. Before the taping of an HBO special years ago, the producer walked out to whip the audience into a frenzy, which he thought was a good thing for a comedy show. "Are you going to get crazy tonight?!" he screamed. Each time they responded, he said it wasn't crazy enough, and that they had to get wilder and wilder, and actually had them practice howling. I watched from the wings, and when he walked off, he winked at me and said, "Ready?" And I told him not to start just yet. I took the microphone and walked onstage. The people dutifully started screaming like torture victims, but I quieted them down and said, "Please ignore everything the nice man behind the curtain just said. The poor thing wandered in off the street and doesn't even work here. We're going to give him a hot meal and send him to a decent motel. Tomorrow he will no doubt be the head of a major studio. But you don't need to whoop anymore. If something is funny tonight, please laugh, but don't bark. It will just annoy both of us. If something strikes you as especially funny, maybe you'll want to clap, but, on the whole, pretend you're an audience from fifty years ago. I'll do my best, and then we'll all get a drink." To me, when people whoop it means they aren't listening, and I like people who listen. Incidentally, the crowd was wonderful that night, and I think I was pretty good, too. But never mind me, I hate whooping no matter who's onstage. Once people are willing to whoop, they're just a baby step away from shouting advice, and that's way worse. I believe I witnessed one of the dumbest things ever yelled by an audience member in history, and I've seen some pretty good ones. In this case I was a member of the audience, too, back in my salad days. (By the way, how long do one's "salad days" last? Am I in my main course days? Are there dessert days? If so, when do they start? I hope I make it to my brandy and coffee days, or perhaps even the oh-come-on-just-one-more-quick-one-as-long-as-we've-got-the-sitter days.) So here's the dumbest thing I've ever heard said by an audient (what my friends and I used to call one, single audience member): It was somewhere in the mid-'80s. Linda Ronstadt had just done the movie "Pirates of Penzance" and embraced a completely different and new style. She was touring in concert halls doing the classic love songs of the American songbook from the '30s and '40s, using the great Nelson Riddle arrangements and accompanied by a full symphony orchestra in white dinner jackets. She was always a beautiful woman with a beautiful voice, but I remember reading that she had taken voice lessons to expand her range and craft. The tour was getting a ton of well-deserved publicity wherever it went, and was an emblem of elegance in a world that seemed to be more vulgar everyday. A comic friend of mine was opening for her, and I knew his manager, and they gave me two tickets to the Saturday night show. To accompany me I tapped one of the dozens of spectacular porn-star girlfriends I had in those days, all of whom waited breathlessly in line for their chance, each hoping against hope that she would be the lucky one I called next. (Yes, yes, I know, of course that's not true, but if that's how I choose to remember my early dating life, what is it your business to say no? Go make up your own myths.) Anyway, I had a date, and we both got all dolled up. It was at a big outdoor bowl-type-place, and thousands of other nicely dressed folks were stretched up the grassy hill on blankets with champagne and fluted glasses. My friend did his set, a good one, and then it was time for Linda's show. This was a very special performance, too, because Nelson Riddle himself was conducting. The lights went down, and the violins burst into a lush score, which, coincidentally, was exactly what I was planning later. And through the cascading strings, down came Linda to the stage in a slow, 50-foot descent, perched gorgeously on a glittering crescent moon. She was wearing a breathtaking gown with long, white gloves, and covered in diamonds. The moon stopped gently just above the stage, and she gracefully alighted, nodded her greetings, and glided to the microphone. The orchestra paused dramatically. She took a breath, closed her eyes, stretched out her hands . . . And from the middle of the audience, some guy screamed, "Rock and Roll, Linda!" I've quoted the great Bud Abbott before on this sort of thing: "How dumb can one get?" Everyone turned to see who the Fulbright scholar was. The parking guys craned their necks. I think even Nelson Riddle turned around. Then, in case any of us thought the whole thing had been an auditory hallucination from a past indiscretion (okay, that was just me), the same bonehead screamed, "Woooooo! Yeah!" In this case, everything was fine after that. The orchestra began again, Miss Ronstadt sang beautifully, and for some reason the idiot kept quiet. I like to think an audience member with good values held him down while another spirited patriot garroted him with piano wire, but that's just the romantic in me. So, to recapitulate: I dislike when people whoop and yell things, and I would never, ever do it myself. HOWEVER. If I had been in Congress last Thursday when Prime Minister Tony Blair made his magnificent speech, I would have stomped my feet and whooped myself hoarse. I would've howled like a love-sick beagle, and blown kisses like a camp-follower. I would've screamed every drooling sentiment I could think of, up to and including, "You go, girl," which is one I particularly loathe, second only to, "Don't go there!" I would've crawled after him and hung out at any door there was for hours just to be one of a thousand people waving. I would've howled, moon-walked, clapped, and danced. Was that guy something, or was that guy something? I heard most of it on the radio, thanks to Hugh Hewitt and some record-setting traffic. And I read the transcript this morning. I hope you have a chance to do the same. It was stirring, heartfelt, noble--and funny. Here are the last three paragraphs: That's what we're fighting for, and it's a battle worth fighting. And I know it's hard on America. And in some small corner of this vast country, out in Nevada or Idaho or these places I've never been to but always wanted to go--[laughter]--I know out there, there's a guy getting on with his life, perfectly happily, minding his own business, saying to you, the political leaders of this country, "Why me, and why us, and why America?" And the only answer is because destiny put you in this place in history, in this moment in time, and the task is yours to do. [Sustained applause] And our job? My nation, that watched you grow, that you fought alongside and now fights alongside you, that takes enormous pride in our alliance and great affection in our common bond--Our job is to be there with you. You're not going to be alone. We will be with you in this fight for liberty. [Sustained applause] We will be with you in this fight for liberty, and if our spirit is right, and our courage firm, the world will be with us. Thank you. [Applause, cheers] Pretty great. Now, admittedly, the English will always have a big leg up on us in speechifying. It's that accent. You know what I mean. I've flown 2 million miles and haven't paid attention to the seat-belt speech in 20 years, but whenever I'm on an English plane and the pilot comes on, I sit up and listen like a first-grader. Someone once said that an Englishman can read the instructions on a box of condoms and make it sound like the Magna Carta. (Which, incidentally, either says a lot for condoms, or very little for the Magna Carta. On the other hand, anyone who needs to read the instructions in the first place doesn't deserve the chance to use them.) The British Empire of history has taken a lot of cultural and political slams in the last 30 years. If the proverbial Martian landed at the United Nations--and what unlucky aim that would be for him; another few blocks either way and he could've been drinking in an East Side pub--he would think that all humans in the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including the French, Spanish, Portugese, and Dutch, were dancing through nature in merry brotherhood until the English enslaved them all with their tall helmets and bad teeth. It's not so. They were imperfect, we are imperfect, but the world was and remains a vicious place, and, make no mistake, every inch of moral progress we've made in the last 200 years is built on English Common Law and their tradition of freedom, and, yes, their victories in Europe and around the world. Here's how the prime minister put it: As Britain knows, all predominant power seems for a time invincible, but in fact, it is transient. The question is, what do you leave behind? And what you can bequeath to this anxious world is the light of liberty. Yeah, baby. You don't see that on a box of condoms. (Then again, maybe you do, and I've just never looked.) By the way, I really wouldn't have whooped and stomped. That's not my way. But I would have stood and clapped hard, and whispered into the din, "Thank you. God bless you. Good luck." Quite a guy, that Blair. Really shoots to pieces my theory that you can't trust a guy named Tony who's not Italian. I wonder how he pronounces "nuclear"? Larry Miller is a contributing humorist to The Daily Standard and a writer, actor, and comedian living in Los Angeles.

To: calgal who wrote (7159)	7/21/2003 4:08:18 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 8683

Bush Suckers the Democrats From the July 28, 2003 issue: Anatomy of a scandal that wasn't. by William Kristol 07/28/2003, Volume 008, Issue 44 KARL ROVE is a genius. No--Rove probably gets more credit than he deserves for political smarts, and the president gets too little, so let's rephrase that: George W. Bush is a genius. Almost two weeks ago, the president ordered his White House staff to bollix up its explanation of that now-infamous 16-word "uranium from Africa" sentence in his State of the Union address. As instructed, and with the rhetorical ear and political touch for which they have become justly renowned, assorted senior administration officials, named and unnamed, proceeded to unleash all manner of contradictory statements. The West Wing stood by the president's claim. Or it didn't. Or the relevant intelligence reports had come from Britain and were faulty. Or hadn't and weren't. Smelling blood, just as they'd been meant to, first the media--and then the Democratic party--dove into the resulting "scandal" head first and fully clothed. Belatedly, but sometime soon, the divers are going to figure out that they've been lured into a great big ocean--with no way back to shore. Because the more one learns about this Niger brouhaha that White House spokesmen have worked so hard to generate, the less substance there seems to be in it. As we say, George W. Bush is a genius. In its October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, the CIA concluded that Saddam Hussein remained "intent on acquiring" nuclear weapons; that actual development of an Iraqi nuclear weapon would be but several months to a year away if Saddam could acquire sufficient fissile material; and that Baghdad had, in fact, already begun "vigorously trying to procure" such stuff, uranium ore and yellowcake, either of which would speed Saddam along. This then-secret CIA report was filed one month after the British government had announced a similar judgment in public. Subsequently, a variety of American officials echoed this claim in public statements between October and January, in the context of repeated expressions of concern about Iraq's "continuing, and in some areas expanding," chemical, biological, nuclear, and missile programs, as the CIA put it in its October estimate. On January 28, the president said in his State of the Union address that "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Perhaps he should have said "the British government believes" rather than "has learned." But this statement was unremarkable at the time, and remains unremarkable today. And, contrary to the implications of George Tenet's disingenuous press release of July 11, the president said nothing that the Central Intelligence Agency had retracted or controverted in the months between the distribution of their October estimate and the State of the Union address. It now turns out the CIA had its doubts--though they were less than definitive. It also turns out the British are sticking by their claim. And it remains the case, most important, that the African uranium business, whatever the truth of it, was never more than a single piece of the otherwise voluminous evidence driving allied concern over Saddam and weapons of mass destruction. How important were those "significant quantities of uranium from Africa"? The White House now acknowledges, in retrospect, that the matter didn't merit mention in the State of the Union. There's your "scandal." American journalism's frenzy over the thing--the hyperbolic, rush-to-judgment, believe-the-worst character of the coverage--has been plenty bad enough. But the Democratic party has been even worse. Here, for example, is what unsuspecting Internet visitors learn from the Democratic National Committee's website: There has been "a year-long campaign of deception involving a bogus intelligence report on Iraq's nuclear program." And who has directed this deception, for reasons so terrible, apparently, that they cannot be identified? DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe has cracked the conspiracy: "This may be the first time in recent history that a president knowingly misled the American people during the State of the Union address," he says. And "this was not a mistake. It was no oversight and it was no error." What it was instead, according to former governor Howard Dean of Vermont, currently the Democratic party's leading candidate to replace President Bush in the White House, was a "pattern of distorted intelligence" that raises a real question whether the American people can confidently "retain their trust in their government"--or whether the United States "can retain its credibility as a moral force in the world." And the answer to these questions, adds Sen. Ted Kennedy, not to put too fine a point on it, is: no. "It's a disgrace," in the Sage of Hyannisport's expert assessment, that "the case for war seems to have been based on shoddy intelligence, hyped intelligence, and even false intelligence." There being no other conceivable case for war, so far as Kennedy is concerned, the Bush administration has therefore "undermined America's prestige and credibility in the world." Of course, were all this true--had Bush really sent American soldiers into combat against what he knew to be an imaginary, fabricated threat--then the nation would be ripe for yet another presidential impeachment drama, maybe. Not maybe, says Florida senator Bob Graham, one of Howard Dean's many rivals in next year's Democratic primaries: "My opinion is, if the standard that was set by the House of Representatives relative to Bill Clinton is the new standard for impeachment, then this clearly comes within that standard." Not that anyone in the Democratic party is prepared to defend Saddam's deposed regime, mind you. Or dares to propose that Iraq is worse off now that Saddam is gone. Or that America is worse off now that Saddam is gone. Or that the Middle East is worse off now that Saddam is gone. (Though Gov. Dean is agnostic on all counts.) No: The Democrats' problem is not that Bush judged Saddam a present danger. Their problem isn't even that Bush based this judgment on American intelligence estimates to that effect. How could it be, since Bill Clinton and Al Gore made the very same judgment, based explicitly on the very same intelligence estimates? George W. Bush's one great and unforgivable sin, it seems, was to have acted on the judgment that Saddam Hussein was a present danger--acted, as Clinton and Gore repeatedly threatened but failed to do, the way a serious president must. At his moment of decision, the American people supported Bush. They support him still. And the fact of that support--as the Democrats' hysterical attack on a 16-word sentence in the State of the Union suggests--is driving one of our two major political parties...stark, raving mad. God knows the Bush administration is not beyond criticism for either its prewar planning or its execution of postwar reconstruction efforts. And it would be a valuable contribution to our politics if such criticism were mounted by the Democratic party--acting as an intelligent, loyal opposition. But it's a free country, and if the Democrats prefer instead to act as a pathologically disgruntled lunatic fringe, then it'll be their problem more than anyone else's. Certainly the White House won't think it a problem. That muffled sound you hear coming from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is the sound of George W. Bush chuckling at the success of his nefarious scheme. Misunderestimated, once again. --William Kristol

To: calgal who wrote (7159)	7/21/2003 4:10:52 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 8683

The Future of Iraq, in Outline From the July 28, 2003 issue: Jerry Bremer, administrator in a hurry. by Stephen F. Hayes 07/28/2003, Volume 008, Issue 44 Baghdad SPEND ANY TIME with Jerry Bremer and you'll notice two things. He thinks and speaks in outlines. And he compresses any timetable he's given, often cutting it in half. So when Bernie Kerik, former New York City police commissioner and current security adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority, told Bremer he would need four years to "stand up" 70,000 police officers across free Iraq, Bremer had a counterproposal: 18 months. Bremer, President Bush's envoy to Iraq and the head of the Authority, discussed security--and almost a dozen other topics--in his office on July 17. Wearing tan hiking boots and a navy blue suit, he spoke for nearly an hour with six journalists traveling with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. Bremer's office is palatial, literally. It's located in what everyone here calls the "four-headed Saddam palace," so named for the massive sculptures perched atop the building's four towers featuring the deposed dictator in headgear resembling a pith helmet. The decoration is sparse, and the bookshelves that stretch to the 30-foot ceilings are mostly empty, except for a box of bran flakes and several books, including Rudy Giuliani's "Leadership." The furnishings are just the essentials--an oversized desk at one end and a round table with seven regal, high-backed armchairs at the other, a coat hanger with a handful of ties, a royal blue espresso maker. After a brief editorial comment about news reports to the effect that his team lacks a strategy--they're "nonsense"--Bremer shifted to his outline. "We've got to do three things," he began. "We have to establish a sense of security and stability in the country. We have to, secondly, begin the process of economic reform. And we have to move along on transition to a democratic political structure." Bremer poses questions and answers them. On security: "Where is our problem? Our problem is largely confined to what is called the 'Sunni Triangle' or the 'Sunni heartland.'" He continues: "What is our problem? There are two problems. They are both structural. One is, this is the one part of the country that we didn't fight over. By the time we got north of Baghdad, the two Republican Guard divisions that were stationed there faded away. So, we never conquered that area like we conquered the rest of the country. Secondly, this is the traditional support area for the Baath party. This is where Saddam's tribal base was. This is where a lot of the military industrial complex is located. . . . That's where the problem is. It's not elsewhere. It's there." The remnants of the regime, Bremer believes, are targeting coalition successes. Naturally, he gives three examples. The American soldier killed at Baghdad University "was killed because they don't want us to have the universities working." The mayor of Haditha and his son were executed because he was cooperating with the coalition. And the bombing at the police academy in Fallujah was the result of progress the coalition has made in establishing an Iraqi police force. On politics, Bremer argues that the process must have two characteristics. "It has got to be an Iraqi process, a constitution written by the Iraqis for the Iraqis. And it has got to be seen as a process which is legitimate in the eyes of the Iraqi people." Bremer has been reluctant to guess publicly how long this process will take. But in answering questions, he suggested that writing a constitution could take less than eight months. That compact time frame will be necessary if Iraq is to hold elections within a year, something Bremer hinted is possible. Bremer seems well aware of the skeptical coverage his efforts are receiving in the American media. He is eager to dispel myths before they gel into conventional wisdom, but for someone working 18-hour days and to whom the concept of "weekend" is a memory, his critiques are more matter-of-fact than bitter. "I keep reading in the press that we are somehow late or behind schedule," he says of the political transition. "I said when I got here on May 13 that we would have a political council, we then called it, inplace by the middle of July. We had iton July 13, basically right on schedule." Bremer told us that revitalizing the Iraqi economy would be the most difficult challenge his team faces. The destruction comes not from the war--"almost no damage from the war," he says--but from a "comprehensively mismanaged economy over 35 years." The devastation, Bremer contends, picking up his outline where he left off, "goes across the entire economy, and it means two things. Number one, the infrastructure is very fragile because there is almost no redundancy built in, which makes it very susceptible to political sabotage for the time being. And two, it means we are going to have to devote extraordinary amounts of money to rebuilding infrastructure in the next 5 to 10 years, which is going to be extremely expensive." If a 10-year time frame is realistic for infrastructure investment, the immediate priority of the coalition is evidently to turn over day-to-day governing responsibilities to Iraqis as soon as possible. When I asked one Bremer deputy about his boss's accelerated pace, he responded sarcastically: "You noticed?" Still, officials here bristle at the suggestion that they are preparing to leave anytime soon. "That's not going to happen," says one. Some members of the new 25-member Governing Council are discouraged that returning the country to Iraqis is not happening faster. Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, has made clear that he wants more Iraqi involvement now, particularly as the coalition continues to assemble security forces throughout the country. Bremer is realistic--"We do have a security problem," he says--but not discouraged. "When I got to Baghdad eight weeks ago," says Bremer, "the city was burning. It was on fire. There was no traffic in the city, other than coalition vehicles. And I slept with earplugs at night because of the gunfire. This is a remarkably better place in all three aspects." Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard.