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ny-iraq2003-sg

The United States began military operations in Iraq last night in what President <a href="/topics/George_W._Bush">George W. Bush</a> described as the "opening stages" of the campaign to drive <a href="/topics/Saddam_Hussein">Saddam Hussein</a> from power. 
In a brief televised speech from the Oval Office, <a href="/topics/George_W._Bush">Bush</a> said he had ordered the 300,000 U.S. and British forces now massed in the <a href="/topics/Persian_Gulf">Persian Gulf</a> region to begin striking "selected targets of military importance" in Iraq. The goal of the strikes, he said, was to undermine <a href="/topics/Saddam_Hussein">Hussein</a>'s ability to wage war. 
"My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger," <a href="/topics/George_W._Bush">Bush</a> said. "These are opening stages of what will be a broad and concerted campaign." 
The opening salvo of the campaign consisted of about three dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles that were launched from U.S. warships at Iraqi "leadership targets" in <a href="/topics/Baghdad">Baghdad</a> and other parts of the country, according to a senior <a href="/topics/The_Pentagon">Pentagon</a> official who spoke on condition of anonymity. <a href="/topics/Saddam_Hussein">Hussein</a> was among the targets, The Associated Press reported. 
Several hours after the attack began, <a href="/topics/Saddam_Hussein">Hussein</a> appeared on Iraqi television to condemn the "criminal attack." The strikes did not constitute an all-out assault, appearing instead to be limited to specific targets. There was no indication that ground forces had been involved. 
Bush spoke to the nation at 10:15 p.m., about 45 minutes after the Iraqi capital of <a href="/topics/Baghdad">Baghdad</a> awakened to the sound of air raid sirens blaring and anti-aircraft batteries firing, and slightly more than two hours after <a href="/topics/George_W._Bush">Bush</a>'s deadline for Hussein to yield power and go into exile expired without fulfillment. 
About 5:30 a.m. in the Iraqi capital, as light began to permeate the dust clouds that had hung over <a href="/topics/Baghdad">Baghdad</a> for 24 hours, the first burst of anti-aircraft fire erupted. Red tracers streaked across the sky followed by sporadic shootings and incoming missiles and bombs. The guns became silent after about five minutes, then continued sporadically. 
Shortly after the Baghdad sirens broke the dawn stillness, <a href="/topics/White_House">White House</a> spokesman <a href="/topics/Ari_Fleischer">Ari Fleischer</a> heralded the start of the campaign with a one-sentence statement delivered to waiting reporters in the <a href="/topics/White_House">White House</a> briefing room: "The opening stages of the disarmament of Iraq has begun." 
In his remarks, Bush vowed that the forces he has ordered into action would make every effort to spare innocent civilians, despite what he called Hussein's efforts to use Iraqi citizens as a shield - a tactic he called Hussein's "final atrocity against his people." 
The president warned Americans against expectations of quick or easy success. "A campaign on the harsh terrain of a nation as large as <a href="/topics/California">California</a> could be longer and more difficult than some predict, and helping Iraqis achieve a united, stable and free country will require our sustained commitment," he said."Now that conflict has come, the only way to limit its duration is to apply decisive force. And I assure you, this will not be a campaign of half measures and we will accept no outcome but victory." 
A senior administration official said Bush made the decision to order the strikes at a nearly four-hour meeting of his national security team that ended around 7:20 p.m. "There is no doubt the war has begun," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. 
As a silvery sun rose through the dust clouds at 6:30 a.m. in Baghdad, the bombardment had clearly begun. Initially, at least, the attacks were on the city's outskirts. 
One visible target was to the south of the city, in the vicinity of al-Daurra oil refinery. Several large mushroom clouds rose over the site and were blown away on the gentle morning breeze. The blasts were distant from the center of Baghdad but strong enough to set off some car alarms. 
The city's electricity supply continued to work as normal. In the streets there were few vehicles - a few taxis and some pickup trucks belonging to Iraq's security agencies. 
Central Baghdad, still hazy in the desert dust storm, remained apparently untouched by the attack. Next to the meandering River Tigris, one of Hussein's largest palace complexes, a likely target for American missiles or bombs, stood untouched. 
Staff writers Matthew McAllester in Baghdad, Stephanie McCrummen aboard the USS Constellation, Timothy M. Phelps in Washington and special correspondent Knut Royce contributed to this story. &nbsp;

ny-iraq1-story

U.S. begins war on Iraq

Iraq War -  Newsday  3/20/03

With tanks inching toward <a href="/topics/Iraq">Iraq</a>'s borders, foreign ministers of three key countries opposed to the U.S.-led strike sat in an ornate chamber here yesterday debating the fine points of UN resolutions and evaluating now-moot reports. 
The Security Council meeting, designed to allow chief UN weapons inspector <a href="/topics/Hans_Blix">Hans Blix</a> to deliver a final report, attracted only five foreign ministers of the 15 Security Council members. Secretary of State Colin Powell and British Foreign Secretary <a href="/topics/Jack_Straw">Jack Straw</a> were conspicuously absent, but ministers from Germany, France, Russia, <a href="/topics/Syria">Syria</a> and Guinea attended. 
Still, the ministers from Russia, France and Germany strongly reasserted their position that the coming war was not necessary. Russia stated that no Security Council resolution ever approved the overthrow of <a href="/topics/Iraq">Iraq</a>'s government, contradicting U.S. claims that previous resolutions authorized an attack if the Security Council found <a href="/topics/Iraq">Iraq</a> in material breach, which it did. 
"Not one of these decisions authorizes the right to use force against Iraq outside the UN charter," said Russian Foreign Minister <a href="/topics/Igor_Ivanov">Igor Ivanov</a>. "Not one of them authorizes the violent overthrow of the leadership of a sovereign state." 
French Foreign Minister <a href="/topics/Dominique_de_Villepin">Dominique de Villepin</a> said terrorism flourishes in environments afflicted by war. 
"To those who think that the scourge of terrorism will be eradicated through what is done in Iraq, we say that they run the risk of failing in their objective," de Villepin said. "An outbreak of force in such an unstable area can only exacerbate the tensions and fractures on which terrorists feed." 
Germany's <a href="/topics/Joschka_Fischer">Joschka Fischer</a> said the inspection process was working. 
"It is possible to disarm Iraq peacefully by upholding these demands with tight deadlines," he said. "Peaceful means, therefore, have not been exhausted." 
But U.S. Ambassador John D. <a href="/topics/John_Negroponte">Negroponte</a> and British Ambassador <a href="/topics/Jeremy_Greenstock">Jeremy Greenstock</a> said Iraq alone is to blame for any military conflict. 
Negroponte seemed to dismiss Blix's presentation of a program of work to resolve 12 disarmament tasks. He said the UN should focus on the humanitarian needs that would follow the U.S.-led attack and that the United States would play a large role in the cleanup. 
"The fact of the matter is that the situation on the ground will change, and so will the nature of the remaining disarmament tasks," he said. "Considering a work program at this time is quite simply out of touch with the reality that we confront." 
Iraq's ambassador, Mohammed Aldouri, said the Security Council must act when a UN member state is threatened with force, but stopped short of saying what the organization should do. 
"The threat of aggression against Iraq by the United States and Britain and the likelihood of its occurrence in fact within hours from now compels the council to immediately take the necessary steps to ensure international peace and security," he said, adding that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction. 
He said Iraq "hopes the council will continue to search for a peaceful solution and the continuation of the inspectors."

ny-iraq2-story

Council meets, still resolute; UN members stand firm against war

When President <a href="/topics/George_W._Bush">George W. Bush</a> said he could strike <a href="/topics/Iraq">Iraq</a> without UN approval, he set off a sharp legal debate, with a few experts finding license in UN resolutions and many others saying the move flouts the UN and tramples on the U.S. Constitution. 
"I think the U.S. action will skirt on the edge of legality," said David Scheffer, senior vice president of the <a href="/topics/United_Nations">United Nations</a> Association of the USA, a center for policy research and public outreach on the UN and multilateral issues. "It's not a clear yes or no issue." 
Scheffer, an international law expert and former ambassador at large for war-crimes issues in the <a href="/topics/Bill_Clinton">Clinton</a> administration, said the legality of the war, or at least world opinion of it, might be determined after the fact. If troops unearth hidden arsenals of banned weaponry, for example, or find new evidence of human rights violations by Iraq's leaders, that will play well for the United States. If not, condemnation may balloon. But other legal experts see the military action against Iraq as clearly outside the law. 
UN Secretary General <a href="/topics/Kofi_Annan">Kofi Annan</a> said he considers the attack on Iraq without UN backing to be "not in conformity with the UN charter," or against international law. The UN charter, the supreme document for the conduct of member nations, authorizes force if a state is under actual or imminent attack or if the Security Council approves it to maintain peace. 
"It is unequivocally illegal," said Roger Normand, executive director of the Center for Economic and Social Rights, a Brooklyn-based research and advocacy group that in January completed a fact-finding mission in Iraq. "It's an illegal war, and it's almost impossible to argue." 
Normand's group released a report Tuesday outlining what it considers the weak legal grounds for the president's new foreign policy doctrine of the "preventive" strike. The doctrine holds that in a post-Sept. 11 world, the United States may strike first at countries it believes may at some time attack it. 
Normand's report said a similar doctrine was outlawed in 1946 during the Nuremberg trials of Nazi aggressors. The tribunal declared: "To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." 
But at least one legal drive to stop the war, based on the constitutional provision that gives only <a href="/topics/U.S._Congress">Congress</a> the authority to declare war, was blocked Tuesday by a federal court. 
A lawsuit filed by three soldiers, the families of servicemen and women and 12 members of Congress, was all but ignored by a <a href="/topics/Boston">Boston</a> court that declined to decide the case on its merits. The three-judge panel said there would have to be a dispute between Congress and the presidency in order for the case to be heard. 
"If Congress did authorize this war, it did so only on the condition of UN approval," said John Bonifaz, lead attorney in the case. "And the president is proceeding without UN approval. This decision means the court is standing on the sidelines as the president proceeds to trample on the Constitution and lead this nation into an illegal and unconstitutional war." 
But <a href="/topics/Columbia_University">Columbia University</a> law professor <a href="/topics/Richard_Gardner">Richard Gardner</a>, a former ambassador to Italy and Spain, argues that a strict reading of the law makes the action technically legal, saying resolutions passed around the time of the Gulf War cease-fire make the legal case, to a point. 
"I take the view that we have the authority under [previous resolutions], including Resolution 1441," which gave Iraq a "final opportunity" to comply, he said. "Since <a href="/topics/Saddam_Hussein">Saddam</a> has violated the terms of the cease-fire agreement which terminated the Desert Storm war, we return to the original resolutions authorizing force." 
He said since Iraq was found in Resolution 1441 to be in material breach of those resolutions, which were the terms that governed a cease-fire, the firing may legally begin anew. But Gardner said that position is weakened by the fact that UN weapons inspectors and many members of the Security Council felt that Hussein had begun to comply with the terms of 1441 by disarming. 
"I think the legal case is there," he said. "That doesn't mean I am in favor of what we're doing. I think to go to war without more support is a dangerous thing to do." &nbsp;

ny-iraq3-story

Law experts debate legality of America's war

It's midafternoon in the desert and Marine Capt. John Grimm has chosen the moment to address C Company of the 8th Engineer Support Battalion, the unit picked to build temporary bridges in an invasion of <a href="/topics/Iraq">Iraq</a>. 
In the preceding 10 hours, in a convoy of dozens of trucks carrying everything from 15,000-pound bridging sections to razor wire to fuel and bulldozers, Grimm's company has readied itself and moved from the relative comfort of a base with running water, Bedouin-style tents and two hot meals a day to a more remote location so flat and abandoned that an oily haze on the horizon is the only geographic feature. 
"We need to disperse our vehicles, set security and ... dig in," says Grimm, a Coram native. 
The act of moving the company was no small task. There were delays, some confusion over the location of the new camp, an accident that severely damaged one of the trucks but did not result in injuries, and the substantial job of building a new base for more than 100 Marines. Work went on well after dark. 
"You just have to be flexible," said Grimm, 26, who graduated from <a href="/topics/North_Carolina">North Carolina</a> State University. "You try to stay on an even keel. If you lose your temper, you can't make a rational decision." 
The unit, based in <a href="/topics/North_Carolina">North Carolina</a>, has already been in <a href="/topics/Kuwait">Kuwait</a> for two months, a period of extensive training and endless readying of vehicles and equipment, with the lingering chance that their equipment will never be used. 
"People wonder why we can't just pick up and go," said Lt. Matt Ziegler of Somerset, Pa., the son of a funeral home director. "It's not that easy. It takes quite an effort." 
Lance Cpl. Jose Amador, 20, put it this way: "It's the <a href="/topics/US_Marine_Corps">Marine Corps</a> life - hurry up and wait. Adjust to the situation." 
Lt. Col. Rick Nelson, 44, of North Carolina, the commanding officer of the 8th Engineer Support Battalion, said the unit, which cleared minefields in the first Gulf War, could have an even more important role in the conflict. 
"Take a look out at the country of <a href="/topics/Iraq">Iraq</a>: there are crossings, culverts, canals, ditches and overpasses which require 'mobility sustenance,'" he said. 
"Also, after the first <a href="/topics/Persian_Gulf">Persian Gulf</a> War, the Iraqis rebuilt their infrastructure, but to what standard? So we may be needed because their bridges can't support armored vehicles." 
According to Nelson, bridging equipment has not been deployed in combat since the Korean War and has not been used in battle since <a href="/topics/World_War_II">World War II</a>, when temporary bridges over the Rhine were key to the Allied push into Germany. 
This deployment marks the widest use ever by the <a href="/topics/US_Marine_Corps">Marine Corps</a> of temporary bridges, and the first time that the Marines have assembled an entire bridging battalion. 
The relatively rapid assembly of the battalion put a strain on the unit. 
Much of the training took place here in <a href="/topics/Kuwait">Kuwait</a>. "I've gone from 10 to 120 Marines in about a month," said Chief Warrant Officer Raul Fiveash, 37, of <a href="/topics/New_Mexico">New Mexico</a>. "It's all happening a little too fast. Some aren't trained as much as they're supposed to be." 
Gunnery Sgt. Ricky Stroud, an instructor for four years in the engineering school at <a href="/topics/Camp_Lejeune">Camp Lejeune</a>, N.C., now with C Company of the 8th Engineer Support Battalion, said there are two kinds of bridges: those built on enormous folding metal floats, and girder bridges for narrow waterways and dry gaps. 
For those over waterways, folding pontoons are slipped into the water from trucks and then pushed into position by boats, which the unit transports on the backs of trucks. The Marines began to use the devices in the past decade, Stroud said. Shorter elements can also be used to make rafts. 
The bridges can be built in about a third of the time it takes to assemble older models because the individual sections do not require inflatable bladders to keep them afloat. 
"It's kind of graceful, like a swan," said Chris Dobie, 42, a former Marine who works as a technical consultant to the bridge unit. "They hit the water and open up. The weight of them unfolds them." 
According to Stroud, a bridge of just over 85 feet, including two ramps and four intermediate pieces, can be assembled in 20 minutes. The second bridge carried by the battalion is British-made and designed to be assembled almost entirely by hand. 
The device replaced the "Bailey Bridge," which was much more complicated. With this one, "you don't need anything but a truck to get it there," Stroud said. 
Until now, the work remained in the mundane realm of preparation and sentry duty through the night. "Out here, around 1 to 3, it gets very cold, and from 3 to 6, it gets very, very cold," said Lance Cpl. Radu Isai, 20, of Fullerton, <a href="/topics/California">Calif</a>. "We just talk about home." 
LOAD-DATE: March 20, 2003 &nbsp;

ny-iraq4-story

Bridge builders gird for action

The old man is roughly the same age as modern Iraq - "over 80," he said. 
Although now a little stooped, he has lived long enough to witness what will likely be another war and another change of government. Perhaps nothing he has seen, though, will be quite as dramatic as the war the United States launched this morning, as explosions rocked Baghdad, air raid sirens blared and jets roared overhead. 
"I was a police detective in the days of the last king," said the old man, whose name and other details cannot be published for fear that he could be identified by the still all-powerful Iraqi authorities. "In those days Iraq was peaceful." 
Not these days. Like the millions of other Baghdadis who remain in the city, the old man stayed in his yellow-brick house last night and waited for the sky to light up and the walls to shake as they did in 1991. Most of his family has fled the city, seeking refuge with relatives in the countryside outside the capital, but the old man has seen too much in his life to be bothered with running away. He spoke before the assault started. A closet monarchist to this day, the old man shares something with the present Iraqi government: stubbornness. 
"He refuses to leave," said his grown-up son, who yesterday gave up trying to persuade his father to move to a safer place and was staying with him. 
From old men quietly reaching the end of their natural days to younger men facing a possibly violent end to theirs, many Iraqis with sometimes different motivations stood their ground in Baghdad yesterday. 
President Saddam Hussein, who at 65 could be said to be at official retirement age, watched the hours tick by on the 48-hour stopwatch of his enemy President George W. Bush. Hussein's only chance of survival, Bush had said, was to leave Iraq before 4 a.m. today Baghdad time, 8 p.m. last night in New York. 
One of Hussein's senior deputies, Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, also stood his ground. During the day rumors flew around the world that Aziz, one of the most public faces of the Iraqi regime over the years, had defected to northern Iraq, an autonomous region controlled by Iraq's Kurds. By late afternoon, Aziz was meeting with some of the remaining journalists in Baghdad to prove that he was most certainly not in Kurdish hands. 
"For me, as well as for ... the courageous Iraqi leadership, we were born in Iraq and we will die in Iraq - either as martyrs, which is a great honor, or naturally," said Aziz, who wore his military uniform, just as his president had the previous evening on Iraqi television. 
An entire building full of other Iraqis also refused to leave Baghdad. The deputies of the Iraqi parliament - appointed by Hussein - met in an emergency session stage-managed to demonstrate that the center of Iraqi politics and power was holding. They chanted and declared their support for Hussein. There would be no backing down, they said, no abandoning their country or their president. 
The Iraqi people "stand united ... against treacherous forces and are ready for all sacrifices in their legitimate defense of their honor, principles and sanctities," said the parliament's speaker, Saadoun Hammadi. 
There were no reports of mass defections from frontline Iraqi troops, but a small number of them surrendered to American GIs near the Kuwait border. 
Most other Iraqi soldiers began to take their positions at the hundreds of bunkers that have sprouted all over the city in recent weeks. Carrying Kalashnikov rifles, the soldiers, security officers and militia members from the ruling Baath Party poked their heads over the sandbags and stood watching vehicles go by. 
On one downtown street, four white flatbed trucks went by in a convoy carrying two anti-aircraft guns. A soldier on one of the trucks gave a V sign, for the victory that his president insists will be Iraq's. 
But while all these men were staying in Baghdad to fight for their own survival - or because they are obeying orders from a government they dare not defy - the old man in his 80s was staying because this is the city where he has spent his life, where he has watched and taken part in the development of modern Iraq. 
Speaking on a recent evening in remarkably good English, given that he has not much used the language for 30 years, his memory flitted between decades, touching on the years of the monarchy, the decade of military governments that began in 1958, and the years of Baath Party rule that came with the revolution in 1968. 
He told of his times in London in the 1950s and '60s, recalling specific London street names, mentioning British friends as if he had seen them yesterday. "The first time I went to London I accompanied the king and his uncle," recalled the old man, who cuts a towering and dashing figure in black- and-white photographs from his youth. "They were received at Buckingham Palace by Queen Elizabeth." 
He also spoke of how, when King Faisal and his family were killed in the bloody revolution of 1958, the new authorities threw him in jail for three months. "They thought I might try to take vengeance," he said. 
Years later, he got his job back in the police force, although without the seniority he once enjoyed. 
Even today he has links to the police, helping them with his experience. He can't stand being idle. He reads all day, is a devout Muslim who prays five times daily and will spend this war in the only city he can call home. 
His beloved wife has been dead for many years and in spite of his son's encouragement, he refused even to consider remarriage. Last night, he had only his son to look after him as he waited for the bombs to fall.

ny-iraq8-story

A firm stand on shaky ground

'Ireally do believe that we will be greeted as liberators." That was <a href="/topics/Dick_Cheney">Dick Cheney</a> on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, speaking of the forthcoming U.S. occupation of <a href="/topics/Iraq">Iraq</a>. And when host <a href="/topics/Tim_Russert">Tim Russert</a> looked at him skeptically, the vice president said it again. 
Others differ. <a href="/topics/Wesley_Clark">Wesley Clark</a>, a retired four-star general, former supreme commander of <a href="/topics/NATO">NATO</a>, says, "The occupation is going to be very challenging." Clark, of course, remembers <a href="/topics/Vietnam">Vietnam</a>; he was there for two tours of duty. American GIs were well-enough received in 1965, but just a decade later, the last Americans had to be evacuated via helicopter from the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon. 
And that's the lesson: in the game of "liberating" and "peacekeeping," the last chapter is often different from the first chapter. 
As an Arab-world example, consider the fate of the Israeli and American expedition into <a href="/topics/Lebanon">Lebanon</a> just two decades ago. On June 6, 1982, Israeli forces rolled into southern <a href="/topics/Lebanon">Lebanon</a>. The mission of "Operation Peace for the Galilee" was to destroy Palestinian foes who had been raining down deadly rockets on northern <a href="/topics/Israel">Israel</a>. 
But to some, it was much more than a military operation; it was the beginning of a transformation. Just five days into the mission, <a href="/topics/New_York_Times_Company">New York Times</a> columnist <a href="/topics/William_Safire">William Safire</a> wrote, "Liberation, not invasion, is what is taking place in Lebanon today." <a href="/topics/William_Safire">Safire</a> went on to predict that <a href="/topics/Syria">Syria</a>, as well as the <a href="/topics/Palestine_Liberation_Organization">Palestine Liberation Organization</a>, would be driven out of Lebanon, ushering a new era for that civil-war-torn country. 
At first, the mission went well. Ze'ev Bak, an Israeli who served in the Israeli Defense Force as it entered Lebanon, recalls, "We received perfumed rice as we went by." But then, Bak remembers, the situation deteriorated. The petty grievances of military occupation - notably, checkpoints - took their toll. The Lebanese might have been happy enough to be liberated from the PLO, but they wanted out from under the Israelis as well. 
Then Murphy's Law kicked in, tragically. On Sept. 16-17, 1982, Christian militiamen invaded two Palestinian refugee camps, killing hundreds. The Israelis, including then-Defense Minister <a href="/topics/Ariel_Sharon">Ariel Sharon</a>, were accused of deliberately looking the other way. Amid international uproar, the U.S. decided to send troops to "stabilize" the situation, and Marines landed in <a href="/topics/Beirut">Beirut</a> 11 days later. As President <a href="/topics/Ronald_Reagan">Ronald Reagan</a> said, the Americans would stay only as long as they were needed, adding, "At such time as Lebanon says that they have the situation well in hand, why, we'll depart." 
Just two days later, a Marine was killed by a bomb in <a href="/topics/Beirut">Beirut</a>. Over the next 18 months, another 250 Americans would die, by suicide bomber and sniper (including 241 from a single truck bomb). The last Marines left on Feb. 26, 1984. Meanwhile, the Israelis were in a quagmire of their own. In 1985, they withdrew, having lost 654 of their soldiers. Some 17,000 Lebanese and Palestinians had died. The result of the three years of occupying and fighting was the complete elimination of Christian Lebanese influence in the country. Today, power in Lebanon is shared by <a href="/topics/Syria">Syria</a> and the Iranian-backed <a href="/topics/Hezbollah">Hezbollah</a> terrorist organization - determined, as ever, to strike at <a href="/topics/Israel">Israel</a>. 
The lesson seems to be that Arabs and Muslims don't like foreign overlords, no matter what their reason for being there. Who does? Americans may have liberated <a href="/topics/Afghanistan">Afghanistan</a>, but it's not clear that the Afghans view us as liberators. On Tuesday, unknown Afghans fired three rockets in the general direction of Americans in Gardez. Even more ominous is this report, straight from the <a href="/topics/The_Pentagon">Pentagon</a>'s own press service: "In another incident, an Afghan boy tried to stab a U.S. soldier with a syringe containing an unknown liquid. The soldier was not injured, and the young attacker escaped." 
Those who remember <a href="/topics/Vietnam">Vietnam</a> will recognize this sort of situation: The American, being good-hearted, does not want to shoot a child. But in Vietnam, the child, or the woman, every so often is carrying a grenade, and tragedy ensues. At which point, the vicious downward cycle begins. Soon enough, the foreign military power either leaves or commits itself to a protracted and bloody operation. <a href="/topics/Dick_Cheney">Cheney</a> says it won't happen that way in <a href="/topics/Iraq">Iraq</a>. Clark says it will. Over the next coming days - but also decades - we'll know for sure.

ny-iraq7-story

How quickly liberators turn into oppressors

As we all hope and pray that the war to rid <a href="/topics/Iraq">Iraq</a> of <a href="/topics/Saddam_Hussein">Saddam Hussein</a> is going to be short and successful, it is also critical that the second part of the equation, the rebuilding of <a href="/topics/Iraq">Iraq</a>, be long and successful. 
That is, if the turn to war is going to be worthwhile, the <a href="/topics/George_W._Bush">Bush</a> administration must be prepared for the difficult, expensive and long-term effort needed to rebuild a stable and democratic Iraq. If the administration believes that it can get away with a quick, practical effort such as was the case with <a href="/topics/Afghanistan">Afghanistan</a>, the result could too easily become a civil war that destabilizes the entire <a href="/topics/Persian_Gulf">Persian Gulf</a> region and leads to the emergence of another dictator who might or might not be friendly to the United States. 
Kenneth Pollack, who wrote the book that convinced many people that it was necessary to remove <a href="/topics/Saddam_Hussein">Hussein</a> from power ("The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq"), argues that only a willingness to build a new Iraq will ensure that the United States does not trade one threat for another. But that is going to take years and billions of dollars. At first Pollack says it will take a force almost as large as the one now about to invade Iraq, 250,000. And while that number can be drawn down after a few years, it is also going to take in the range of $10 billion in American aid - and that assumes considerable help from the allies. 
While there are many reasons to believe that rebuilding Iraq into a stable, democratic state is nothing but a desert mirage, there are Mideast experts such as Pollack, <a href="/topics/Fouad_Ajami">Fouad Ajami</a> of the <a href="/topics/Johns_Hopkins">Johns Hopkins</a> School of Advanced International Studies and <a href="/topics/New_York_Times_Company">New York Times</a> columnist <a href="/topics/Thomas_Friedman">Thomas Friedman</a> who have consistently argued that it is the key to transforming the Mideast. 
Of course, the obstacles confronting such an effort are daunting. Iraq, a British creation after <a href="/topics/World_War_I">World War I</a>, is a conglomeration of warring ethnic groups and tribes that without a brutal central authority has always tended to degenerate into its component parts. There are the majority Shiites in the south, the long-time ruling Sunnis in the middle of the country and the Kurds in the north. And just to make it that much harder, Iraq's neighbors have big stakes in who runs the country. <a href="/topics/Turkey">Turkey</a> fears a runaway Kurdish movement that would spread to its country, and <a href="/topics/Iran">Iran</a> not only has ties to the Shiites in the south but historical claims to some of the land. 
Pollack acknowledges all this, but argues that there are strong factors in favor of transforming Iraq. One is the obvious fact that Iraq is a wealthy country, especially once its oil wells are fully repaired from the 1991 war and this one. (A big and expensive job that could take five to seven years, especially if <a href="/topics/Saddam_Hussein">Hussein</a> does great damage to the fields on his way out). Iraq is also a nation that has the best agricultural conditions in the Mideast, a critical factor when trying to transform a nation from a feudal past to a modern future. And Iraq also has a relatively well-educated, secular-oriented population. 
Democracy in a country that could be torn apart by ethnic and religious differences and with no tradition of self-rule? Pollack says that Iraq must be allowed to develop an "Arab-style democracy," although he does not describe what that means. But there are nations in <a href="/topics/Asia">Asia</a> such as South Korea and <a href="/topics/Taiwan">Taiwan</a> that started as authoritarian regimes and have now transformed themselves into functioning democracies. It is a process that took nearly 40 years. But it happened. 
The Bush administration came into power disparaging the concept of nation building. Then President <a href="/topics/George_W._Bush">George W. Bush</a> delivered one speech in which he indicated that building a democratic state in Iraq would be his goal. But is he ready for a long-term commitment in terms of troops and money? From every indication, planning for Iraq's rebuilding is lagging well behind planning for Hussein's destruction. That's troubling. So is the break with allies whom <a href="/topics/George_W._Bush">Bush</a> will need for the reconstruction effort. 
The invasion of Iraq is only the first step in the battle for Iraq's future.

ny-iraq6-story

Klurfeld: Invasion is just prelude to long-term goals

At 8 o'clock last night, the Sikh in a blue turban in the subway change booth at 42nd Street gave me a little wave and I waved back. Suddenly, he was a front-line soldier in a war. I designate the subway at Times Square as a prime target in America in the war with <a href="/topics/Iraq">Iraq</a>. 
I had just been at the public library, where I discovered the speech that started <a href="/topics/World_War_II">World War II</a>. I print much of it here. It is darkly familiar to what we have been hearing here, when for the first time in American history we became all the things we ever hated and invaded another country. Herewith the speech: 
Address by Adolf <a href="/topics/Adolf_Hitler">Hitler</a> to the Reichstag, Sept. 1, 1939. For months we have suffered under the torture of a problem which the <a href="/topics/Versailles">Versailles</a> Diktat created - a problem that has deteriorated until it becomes intolerable for us ... 
As always, I attempted to bring about, by the peaceful method of making proposals for revision, an alteration of this intolerable position. It is a lie when the outside world says that we only tried to carry our revisions through by pressure. Fifteen years before the National <a href="/topics/Socialist_Party">Socialist Party</a> came to power there was the opportunity of carrying out these revisions by peaceful settlements and understanding. On my own initiative I have, not once but several times, made proposals for the revision of intolerable conditions. All these proposals, as you know, have been rejected - proposals for the limitation of armaments and, even if necessary, disarmament, proposals for the limitation of warmaking, proposals for the elimination of certain methods of modern warfare ... You know the endless attempts I made for peaceful clarification and understanding of the problem of Austria, and later of the problem of the Sudetenland, Bohemia and Moravia. It was all in vain. 
It is impossible to demand that an impossible position should be cleared up by peaceful revision, and at the same time constantly reject peaceful revision. It is also impossible to say that he who undertakes to carry out the revisions for himself transgresses a law, since the <a href="/topics/Versailles">Versailles</a> Diktat is not law to us. 
In the same way, I have tried to solve the problems of Danzig, the Corridor, etc., by proposing a peaceful discussion. That the problems had to be solved was clear. It is quite understandable to us that the time when the problem was to be solved had little interest for the Western Powers. But time is not a matter of indifference to us ... 
For four months I have calmly watched developments, although I never ceased to give warnings. In the last few days I have increased these warnings ... 
I made one more final effort to accept a proposal for mediation on the part of the British government. They proposed, not that they themselves should carry out the negotiations, but rather that Poland and Germany should come into direct contact and once more pursue negotiations. 
I must declare that I accepted this proposal and worked out a basis for these negotiations which are known to you. For two whole days I sat in my government and waited to see whether it was convenient for the Polish government to send a plenipotentiary or not. Last night they did not send us a plenipotentiary, but instead informed us through their ambassador that they were still considering whether and to what extent they were in a position to go into the British proposals. The Polish government also said they would inform Britain of their decision. 
Deputies, if the German government and its leader patiently endured such treatment Germany would deserve only to disappear from the political stage. But I am wrongly judged if my love of peace and my patience are mistaken for weakness or even cowardice. I, therefore, decided last night and informed the British government that in these circumstances I can no longer find any willingness on the part of the Polish government to conduct serious negotiations with us. 
The other European states understand in part our attitude. I should like all to thank Italy, which throughout has supported us, but you will understand for the carrying on of this struggle ... we will carry out this task ourselves. 
This night for the first time, Polish regular soldiers fired on our territory. Since 5:45 a.m. we have been returning the fire and from now on bombs will be met with bombs. Whoever fights with poison gas will be fought with poison gas. Whoever departs from the rules of humane warfare can only expect that we shall do the same ... until the safety, security of the Reich and its rights are secured. *** On that night, Hitler used this dry, unimaginative language to start a world war that was to kill 60 million, and they stopped counting. Last night, <a href="/topics/George_W._Bush">George Bush</a>, after speech after speech of this same dry, flat, banal language, started a war for his country, and we can only beg the skies to keep it from spreading into another world war.

ny-iraq5-story

Breslin: Familiar, haunting words

Newsday's coverage of Day 1 of the war in Iraq

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