US: Americans are beginning to fret that Washington has no "plan B", writes Conor O'Clery
In a radio address on Saturday, President Bush presented a picture of progress in Iraq. The UN Security Council had endorsed a multinational force, he said. Nations had committed billions of dollars to reconstruction. The Iraqi people were moving steadily towards a free and democratic society.
Economic life was being restored to the cities. A new Iraqi currency was circulating. Local governments were up and running. And Iraq would soon begin drafting a constitution, with free elections to follow.
This was the fourth Saturday in a row that Mr Bush devoted his weekly radio address to good news from Iraq, an indication of his concern about how public opinion is turning against the war and its bloody aftermath.
Since he recorded the message on Friday, two American GIs were killed in a mortar attack north of Baghdad, a third soldier died from gunfire in Mosul, a Black Hawk helicopter was shot down in Tikrit, and a US army colonel became a fatality of the mortar attack on the Baghdad hotel where Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying.
Also over the weekend, three people were killed in a convoy of civilian contractors and a GI died from a "non-hostile" gunshot north-west of Baghdad, bringing the total of American soldiers killed in Iraq since the March 20th invasion to 348.
Americans are beginning to fret that Washington has no "plan B" should its current policy for Iraq fail. A poll to be published in Newsweek today shows 49 per cent of US voters think the Bush administration has no well thought-out plan for establishing stability in Iraq, compared to 39 per cent who do. Some 56 per cent said troops should start coming home, a theme taken up by anti-war demonstrators in Washington, San Francisco and other cities on Saturday, the first since before the war began.
Against this background, US policy is fast shifting to the "Iraq-isation" of the conflict, especially now that the prospect of a sizeable international force has receded, despite a UN resolution. Mr Wolfowitz has voiced second thoughts about Turkish troops bolstering the overwhelmingly American coalition force, given the strong opposition from Iraqis.
In Baghdad this weekend the Deputy Defence Secretary, regarded as the intellectual architect of the war, spoke instead of the need to accelerate a transfer of security to Iraqis as quickly as possible, even by recruiting members of Saddam Hussein's defeated Iraqi army. About 85,000 Iraqis are now serving in the police, army, border guards, civil defence and infrastructure protection, he said.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell, speaking yesterday on NBC of the post-war insurgency, admitted that "we didn't expect that it would be this intense or this long", and emphasised that security needed to come from Iraqi forces, "people who know their neighbourhoods". The US civilian administrator for Iraq, Mr Paul Bremer, told Fox News that "when you get to the city level, urban level, it is clear we need the help of the Iraqis".
Concern in the US about the cost of the war is also rising. The latest poll shows that 58 per cent of Americans think the US is spending too much on reconstruction, while 48 per cent said the huge costs would make them less likely to vote for Mr Bush.
The Madrid donor conference on reconstruction aid for Iraq last week brought pledges of $33 billion, of which $20 billion will come from the US. But the Republican-led Senate rebelled against the White House and voted that half the $20 billion should be in loans. A meeting between the President and senators ended with Mr Bush slamming his hand on a table in exasperation, saying, "This is bad policy."
While most Americans generally support the idea of a Marshall Plan-sized reconstruction package for Iraq, unease at the cost has been heightened by widespread allegations of corruption and cronyism in the awarding of Iraq-related contracts.
The decision of the Bush administration to award large uncontested contracts to defence contractors like Bechtel and Halliburton has led to numerous allegations of overspending, favouritism and corruption, according to an investigation by Newsweek.
Halliburton, once run by Vice President Dick Cheney, was accused of inflating prices on imported fuel, and, Newsweek said, cronies of the Pentagon-favoured Iraqi, Mr Ahmad Chalabi, were awarded much of a mobile telephone contract.
Criticism from Democrats has reached such a pitch that Halliburton president Mr Dave Lesar sent a memo to employees last week to contact newspapers and lawmakers to protest the charges, which he said were "distorting our efforts" to restore Iraq's oil industry. Asked about the report, Mr Powell said he was "not sure how these allegations can be levelled when the money hasn't been appropriated yet".
The Senate loan provision could disappear when the Senate and House reconcile their versions of the Iraq spending bill in the coming days, but the President now finds himself with the possible alternative of accepting defeat or vetoing a Bill that provides the $87 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan that he asked for.
The credibility of the Bush administration has also been eroded by the leaked memo from Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, painting a bleaker picture of the war than in Mr Bush's radio addresses, and by a scathing Senate Intelligence Committee report on the inadequacy of pre-war intelligence on unconventional weapons.
Sen Jay Rockefeller, leading Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, told CNN yesterday that the evidence now showed a predetermination to go to war, or faulty intelligence, either of which was a bad reason to put soldiers in harm's way.
But some key Republicans are also speaking out against the administration. Sen John McCain said yesterday the disconnect between the facts on the ground and the rosy view from the White House reflected the credibility gap of the Vietnam War.
Yesterday a new inter-party fight loomed for Mr Bush. The Republican chairman of the federal commission investigating the September 11th attacks, Mr Thomas Kean, threatened to subpoena the Oval Office for files relating to the attacks. The White House has been stalling on providing documents, leading to allegations it knew more about the threat before 9/11 than it is prepared to admit.