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Rumsfeld, Bremer
and WMD inspectors cast shadow on war
The Independent, Rupert Cornwell
President George Bush's rationale for the Iraq war, and his
subsequent handling of the conflict, have been separately
undermined by two of his own top officials handing precious
new ammunition to the Democrats as the election campaign
enters a crucial phase.
The first blow came when Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence
Secretary and a prime architect of the war, told foreign
policy experts that he had never seen "strong, hard evidence"
linking Saddam Hussein with al-Qa'ida.
His words, answering questions at a Council of Foreign
Relations meeting in New York, implicitly take issue with one
of Mr Bush's long-standing arguments to justify the March 2003
invasion. They were also likely to be seized upon by John
Edwards in his debate last night with Vice-President Dick
Cheney, who has laid special stress on the Saddam-al-Qa'ida
connection.
Hours later, the man who was the US pro-consul in Iraq for 15
months until June 2004 complained that the Bush administration
failed to send a large enough force to deal with the violence
and looting after Saddam had been toppled. "We never had
enough troops on the ground," Paul Bremer told an insurance
conference in West Virginia. Yesterday the Democratic
challenger, John Kerry, leapt on the admission by Mr Bremer,
who headed the Coalition Provisional Authority until it was
disbanded. "Now we learn that America's top official in Iraq
acknowledges that we didn't deploy enough troops and didn't
contain the violence I hope that Mr Cheney can acknowledge
those mistakes tonight," Mr Kerry declared.
Mr Bremer tried to repair the damage, issuing a statement that
he was referring only to the immediate post-war period and
that he fully supported current efforts to train an Iraqi
force to take over security duties. But the damage was done,
with the remarks from a man who has been a staunch supporter
of the President.
In an earlier and hitherto unnoticed speech at DePauw
University in Indiana last month, Mr Bremer confessed he
"should have been even more insistent" in his advice to the
administration. Had he been so, the situation today in Iraq
might be much improved, he said.
If that were not enough, almost every day brings new reminders
of how Mr Bush's main rationale for the war the threat posed
by Saddam's supposed arsenal of illicit chemical, biological
and nuclear weapons has crumbled. At the weekend, The New
York Times published new evidence that the administration
presented Saddam's purchase of aluminium tubes as proof that
he was reconstituting Iraq's nuclear programme even as it
was being told by its own experts that the tubes were destined
not for centrifuges to enrich uranium, but for much smaller
(and perfectly legal) artillery rockets.
Today, Charles Duelfer, the chief US arms inspector in Iraq,
is due to present a 1,500-page report to Congress concluding
that Iraq neither had weapons of mass destruction, nor
significant WMD production programmes at the time of the
invasion. The only crumb Mr Duelfer can offer the White House
is that Saddam intended to reactivate his plans to produce
such weapons once UN sanctions were lifted.
The array of challenges to his Iraq strategy comes at a bad
moment for the Bush campaign, as the President tries to regain
the ground lost after his heavily panned showing in his first
debate with Mr Kerry.
The debate's topic of foreign policy was assumed to favour Mr
Bush. Instead the President appeared testy, lacklustre and
poorly prepared. Mr Kerry by contrast shone, and has now
pulled back level in the polls.
In a sign of the mounting concern at the White House, Mr
Bush's handlers abruptly tore up a speech on medical liability
he was due to deliver in the swing state of Pennsylvania
today. Mr Bush will now make a "significant" address dealing
with the economy and the "war on terror" the latter is still
his strongest suit, polls say.
Whether Mr Rumsfeld's candour will change the way the country
thinks is another matter. A CNN/Gallup poll has found that 42
per cent of Americans still believe that the former Iraqi
leader was involved in the attacks, and an astonishing 32 per
cent that Saddam had planned them in person.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=569200
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