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Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

Washington File

28 May 2003

Feith Says Iraqis Must Build Their Own Country

(Coalition must establish secure conditions for reconstruction) (5710)
The role for the United States and its coalition partners in Iraq is
to set conditions that will allow free Iraqis to build their own
country in their own way, says Under Secretary of Defense Douglas
Feith.
"The first step -- the first most important step in creating these
conditions -- was, of course, the destruction of Saddam's tyranny, and
this has been accomplished," Feith said during a Washington Foreign
Press Center briefing May 28.
While the disorder that initially followed the collapse of Saddam
Hussein's government was to be expected, Feith says the most
imperative task now is to restore security. "The coalition has to
protect the efforts of Iraqis to reconstruct their country from
Ba'athists, who are trying to ... create chaos and produce nostalgia
for Saddam, and also from anti-democratic interference from
neighboring countries," he said.
"It will be difficult for a free political life in Iraq to flourish
until the conditions are set, but it is a project that we're working
on," he added.
Feith said the coalition now has 45,000 troops in Baghdad, and that
21,000 of those troops are actively involved in security operations.
Efforts are under way to bring Iraqi police back to work, and the
coalition is actively seeking partners willing to send additional
stabilization forces to Iraq, he said.
"We hope by July to have two, perhaps three additional divisions come
to help contribute to security in the country," he said. One
multilateral division will be commanded by the British and another by
the Poles, he added.
Feith said that although some of the basic human services in Iraq are
in very bad shape -- including water, electricity, hospital services
and schools in different regions of the country -- the recent military
actions were not as significant a cause of these conditions as some
critics have suggested.
"The fact is that the war did cause some damage, but the really sorry
state of a lot of these institutions goes back before the war and, for
example, only 60 percent of Iraqis before the war had safe drinking
water. About half of Basra's water treatment plants didn't work. Iraq
before the war produced only 40 percent of its annual grain
requirement, and 23 percent of children under the age of five were
malnourished," he said.
Feith said that some of these problems are turning around, noting for
example that water in Baghdad is at approximately 75 percent of its
pre-war levels, and plans are in place for full restoration of water
supplies across all regions of Iraq.
"There is no food crisis. There are no major epidemics. There is no
major health care crisis in Iraq now," he said. "The Iraqi grain
harvest was just purchased, and the World Food Program is distributing
nearly half-a-million metric tons per month of food."
Primary schools in Iraq opened May 4, and other schools will be opened
shortly, he said.
Feith said that electricity is being restored and that all five major
power generating stations in the south are now working.
Lastly, Feith noted that renewed oil production is under way and
marketing should begin within the next few weeks.
Following is a transcript of Feith's briefing:
(begin transcript)
U.S. Department of State
FOREIGN PRESS CENTER
Washington, D.C.
May 28, 2003
BRIEFING WITH DOUGLAS FEITH, DEFENSE UNDERSECRETARY FOR POLICY
SUBJECT: ON IRAQI RECONSTRUCTION
MR. DOUGLAS FEITH: Good morning. It's a pleasure to have a chance to
meet with you this morning.
Last year, the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development within
the United Nations Development Program issued a report, and there were
a number of Arab intellectuals who put this report together, and they
identified what they called the "freedom deficit" as a key factor
holding back the development of Arab countries. Now, I'll just read
you a sentence or two from the report. They said that the wave of
democracy that transformed governance in most of Latin America and
East Asia in the 1980s, and Eastern Europe and much of Central Asia in
the late 1980s and early 1990s, has barely reached the Arab states.
This freedom deficit undermines human development, and is one of the
most painful manifestations of lagging political development.
Now, Iraq's current situation provides an opportunity for a large Arab
country to address these issues. Iraq has the chance to make a fresh
start, and can demonstrate that such a country can become politically
free and economically prosperous. Iraq can build on its natural
advantages, which is a talented population and huge natural resources.
This makes for an exciting moment in world affairs right now, and it
is an opportunity that we are focused on.
Now, the work that we're doing in Iraq has led a number of people to
raise questions about the administration's position on nation
building, and the term has gotten a lot of attention in part because
when the president was running for office he criticized nation
building, and I've been asked many times by people if the
administration doesn't like nation building then what exactly are we
doing in Iraq and what is our attitude towards our responsibilities
there. Similar questions were raised about Afghanistan, so I think
it's a good moment to clarify the point.
We don't like the term nation building in large part because it is, in
our view, disrespectful of the people in the country. In our view,
Iraq -- the Iraqi nation is going to be built by Iraqis, and it is not
for non-Iraqis to build Iraq. The role that we are playing there is to
help set conditions that will allow Iraqis to build their own country
in their own way.
The first step -- the first most important step in setting these --
creating these conditions, was, of course, the destruction of Saddam's
tyranny, and this has been accomplished. The collapse of the regime,
of course, was accompanied by disorder, which was not a surprise. The
disorder was magnified by, first of all, the release by Saddam
Hussein's regime since last fall of thousands of criminals from Iraqi
jails, and secondly by deliberate efforts by remnants of the Ba'ath
Party, remnants of the Iraqi regime, to make it as difficult as
possible for the coalition to stabilize the situation. And this has
been seen mainly, but not exclusively, in Baghdad.
The first and foremost responsibility of the coalition at this point,
in this task of setting conditions, is to restore security. The
coalition has to protect the efforts of Iraqis to reconstruct their
country from Ba'athists, who are trying to, as I noted, to create
chaos and produce nostalgia for Saddam, and also from anti- democratic
interference from neighboring countries.
It will be difficult for political -- a free political life in Iraq to
flourish until the conditions are set, but it is a project that we're
working on. I'll give you a few statistics momentarily to try to
illustrate something of our effort there.
Now, I know that many people in the countries that -- countries of the
Middle East, the countries that are your readership, disagreed with
the coalition's decision to use force to enforce the U.N. Security
Council's resolutions regarding Iraq and its disarmament, but whatever
the views were about how the war got started, I hope that everybody
appreciates that this is an opportunity to create a free and a
prosperous Iraq, and it's an opportunity that we should not miss and
we should do everything we can to increase its chances for success.
Now what I'd like to do is quickly run through a few items that one
could call a "situation report" and give you a few thoughts about
what's happening in different sectors of our work in Iraq.
First of all, on security, there are around 45,000 troops now in
Baghdad, about 21,000 of whom are actively involved in security
operations. There is an effort being made throughout the country to
work with Iraqi police to bring them back to the job, to work with
coalition forces. There are 500 or so daily patrols in Baghdad. The
Department of State is recruiting a thousand police advisors and
trainers. We have U.S. military police personnel growing from around
1,800 to 4,000, and we have been soliciting nearly 50 countries for
police advisors -- a number have already accepted. And efforts are
being made to restart the courts and get the judicial system
functioning.
There is a major effort that the United States and its coalition
partners have under way to recruit additional coalition partners to
send in stabilization forces. Fifteen countries have agreed to provide
stabilization forces for Iraq. We hope by July to have two, perhaps
three additional divisions come to help contribute to security in the
country. There will be a multinational division commanded by the
British. There will be a multinational division commanded by the
Poles, and we've recently gotten some good reports that there are one,
perhaps two additional countries that are thinking of organizing
divisions to perform stability operations in the country.
With regard to basic human services, there's a very important point
here that I don't think is widely understood. Some of the basic human
services in Iraq are in very bad shape -- water, electricity in
different parts of the country, hospital services, schools. And there
are many people who believe that these institutions are in bad shape
because of the war. And, the fact is that the war did cause some
damage, but the really sorry state of a lot of these institutions goes
back before the war and, for example, only 60 percent of Iraqis before
the war had safe drinking water. About half of Basra's water treatment
plants didn't work. Iraq before the war produced only 40 percent of
its annual grain requirement, and 23 percent of children under the age
of five were malnourished.
Now, in making this point, I want to emphasize, this was not the case
throughout Iraq, and it was not a problem that could be attributed I
think really to the U.N. sanctions because you didn't have this
problem and the malnourishment problem in northern Iraq, which was
under Kurdish governance, even though northern Iraq was under the same
U.N. sanctions regime as the rest of the country. The autonomous area
in the north under Kurdish governance did not have leaders that chose
to abuse and starve their people. And so the argument that this
terrible statistic is attributable to the sanctions I think is a false
argument.
Schools were in terrible shape before the war. There was an average of
six students per book, and 80 percent of schools were in poor
condition with up to 180 students per classroom.
Now, a word on progress to date. 
Baghdad now has water at about 75 percent of its pre-war levels, and
Ambassador Bremer's organization, the Office of Reconstruction and
Humanitarian Assistance, and UNICEF are planning to supply clean water
to all the regions of Iraq. There is no food crisis. There are no
major epidemics. There is no major health care crisis in Iraq now.
The Iraqi grain harvest was just purchased, and the World Food Program
is distributing nearly half-a-million metric tons per month of food.
Primary schools opened on May 4th. Other schools will be opened
shortly, and money has been approved, $10 million for the purchase of
math and science textbooks, reducing the student-book ratio by
two-thirds.
The -- with regard to electricity, the power system is -- in the south
is actually -- there are, as I understand it, there are five major
power generating stations in the south and they are all now working.
Those five have not all been working since before the first Gulf War
back in 1991. So, there's actually more electricity in the south than
was the case for a dozen years. Baghdad is not yet up to prewar
electricity levels yet, but it's being -- progress is being made daily
on that point. It's being worked on very hard.
On oil, the -- partly because of the speed with which the military
operations progressed, the oil wells that were wired and were set up
for destruction by Saddam Hussein did not get blown up, by and large
-- there were a few that did and were set on fire but most didn't. And
oil production is underway and marketing should begin within the next
few weeks -- the actual listing of the oil should begin within the
next few weeks.
There is dredging in Umm Qasr. The port is being dredged, and that
will facilitate humanitarian relief and commercial transactions.
Payments are being made to pensioners, civil servants. As you probably
all know, recently Ambassador Bremer issued a dissolution, an order
dissolving the defense ministry and the armed forces, telling people
who were in the armed forces that they can reapply for admission into
the new Iraqi corps that will be created for Iraq's self-defense.
There were severance payments made to the -- to the people affected by
that dissolution, and civil servants have been getting paid, and as I
said, pensioners likewise. And those payments are being made out of
the Iraqi assets that the coalition provisional authority controls.
I think -- there are more statistics I could give, but I think that
I'll stop there and take your questions, and if there are other
sectors that you would like to ask about, I'll be happy to see if I
can come up with specific answers for you.
Q Mr. Secretary, this is Umit Enginsoy with Turkey's NTV Television.
In terms of your efforts to bring stability to northern Iraq, what's
the status with your relations with Turkey and the Turkish army? Do
you see Turkey and the Turkish army as a de-stabilizer in the northern
Iraq in terms of their relations with the Kurds? And do you want the
Turkish army to pull back its troops from northern Iraq? Thank you.
MR. FEITH: We understand that -- and we understood all along that the
issue of Turkey's interests in northern Iraq and the relations with
the Kurds was an important subject that we had to address. We are
pleased that we were able to work things in the military operations,
in cooperation with the Kurds and in our cooperation with the Turks so
that one did not see any major clashes in the north between the Turks
and the Kurds, and that the key interests that the -- that everybody
had, that the Turks had with regard to the danger of possible large
refugee flows, and that the Kurds had -- were addressed satisfactorily
and without large scale violence. So, I think that is a success story,
and we're pleased that we were able to have the cooperation that we
got there.
We're working right now on stability. The security situation in the
north is reasonably good. There are still some problems that we're --
there were some -- there were some tensions in the area, especially
Kurdish-Arab tensions having to do with property claims. We are -- we
have announced -- the coalition has announced that there will be an
orderly process for resolving property claims. And this is especially
important in a place like Kirkuk, where the Saddam Hussein government
made a purposeful policy of driving the residents of various areas in
Kirkuk out and replacing them with their policy of Arabization. And
it's created a lot of bitterness and risk, and we're addressing that
through an orderly property settlement process that has international
participation and we hope will keep -- will keep things in an orderly
channel so that we don't have to have any kind of violence or, you
know, rough dislocations.
Q (Inaudible.) 
MR. FEITH: We have a dialogue going with Turkey on the security
situation in the area, and I'm not going to get into details on that
here.
Q My name is Saeb Erekat from al Quds Newspaper. Mr. Feith, in the
last few days, we have witnessed increased attacks on American forces
in Iraq. Do you attribute this to the dissolution of the Iraqi armed
forces? And was that wise to do? And in retrospect, do you think that
the policy -- not in retrospect, in effect, the policy of applying
de-Ba'athification to the entire bureaucratic infrastructure in Iraq
is really wise in terms of getting Iraq back on its feet since you
would need a lot of this talent and ability and technical capabilities
and so on? Thank you.
MR. FEITH: We view the de-Ba'athification policy not only as wise but
as indispensable to the effort to create a free Iraq. One of the
things that we have heard from Iraqis throughout the country was a
request, in some cases it came in the form of a demand, that we assume
our responsibility to liberate the country from the grip of the Ba'ath
Party that spread in various ways through all the major institutions
in the country. There was -- we got a lot of Iraqis coming forward and
saying that people would not feel comfortable cooperating with us,
talking to us, working with us, if they felt that they were going to
remain subject to retaliation by the Ba'ath Party elements. And it is
-- it is clear that the future of Iraq as a free country depends on
people in the country believing and seeing that the Ba'ath Party is
gone and that it's not going to come back, and that the remnants of
the Ba'ath Party are not going to be in a position to control the
administration of the country or to physically attack the people who
are going to be creating a free Iraq. So, this is something that was
an important element of our policy. It was clearly at the fore of
Ambassador Bremer's mind when he got to Baghdad, and he made it the
first major announcement and project of his when he arrived in the
country.
Q What about the increased attacks -- (off mike) -- ? 
MR. FEITH: No. I don't think -- it's not clear to me why one would
even think that there's any connection there at all. The Iraqi Army
was not defending the Americans, and I don't see any connection at
all. We know that there are elements of the country -- elements of the
old regime, from the military, from the intelligence, from other
institutions that remain at large, hostile, armed, and they're going
to try to attack us, and we are going to be defending ourselves, and
we're going to be working on, as I said, restoring security by the
range of forces that are needed to do that, police forces, military
forces, and the kind of gendarmerie forces in the middle.
We have -- in one of the contributions that we've received is
Carabinieri forces from Italy and Guardia Civil forces from Spain, who
will be able to contribute valuably to the security of the country.
MODERATOR: In the back. 
Q (Name off mike) -- from (el Norta Arabi ?) Magazine. Sir, what about
Ayatollah Hakim, who is apparently refusing to disarm his battle
brigade? And secondly, you said fifteen countries would contribute to
the -- by fifteenth of July -- by July to the stabilization force. Is
there any Arab country between them, or are you against any Arab
country participating in Iraq stability force?
MR. FEITH: There are -- I don't have the list in my head of the
fifteen countries that are participating. There different ways that
different countries are contributing to the stabilization force
project, and some are providing light infantry. Some are, as I
mentioned, providing gendarmerie type forces. Some are providing the
financial support necessary for some of the countries that want to
contribute forces to be able to transport and sustain those forces in
Iraq. So, we're getting different kinds of contributions from
different countries, and I do believe there are some Arab countries
that are participating.
Q What about the first question, about Ayatollah Hakim refusing to
disarm his battle brigade?
MR. FEITH: Oh, the Coalition Provisional Authority just issued an
order regarding weapons, and it makes a distinction between heavy
weapons and small arms, and it says that procedures will be set up to
require persons or organizations that have heavy weapons to turn them
in. This will be enforced, and it'll be enforced throughout the
country. The only exceptions will be granted by the Coalition
Provisional Authority on a case by case basis. But if there are any
organizations that have these types of weapons that have to be turned
in, they're going to have to turn them in.
With respect to small arms, there are regulations about carrying them
in -- you know -- on the street, and those regulations too will be
enforced as the local commanders put out the procedures. And so the
basic answer is we are going to be getting to the situation where
there will be control by the Coalition Provisional Authority of
weapons in the country by all the various individuals and groups, and
people will be required to comply with the regulations, as they should
in any orderly country.
MODERATOR: Over here. 
Q My name is Khaled Dawoud from Egypt's Al-Ahram newspaper. I'd first
like to ask on the reasons for the delay in forming an Iraqi
government, which is reportedly angering several factions there, and
they are seeking a speeding up of this operation. And my second
question is, don't you think that the model Iraq now presents to the
rest of the Arab world is a very bad model because of the disorder
that spread immediately after the fall of the government, in terms of
democratization, or any other cooperation with the United States?
MR. FEITH: I don't think that any thoughtful person believed that the
Saddam Hussein tyranny could collapse without a degree of disorder
arising in the aftermath. I mean, I just -- that's simply not a
serious notion. Everybody understood there would be a degree of
disorder. There has been after any revolution or war or any major
change in a political situation anywhere, and that was understood.
There has been a serious effort to address this, and the disorder is
getting under control. It's not fully under control yet, and as I
said, we're working hard on getting additional security forces in to
bring it under control throughout the country.
The security situation throughout the country is uneven. There are
places where essentially you have security. And then there are places,
in particular in Baghdad, where it's more difficult to get a handle
completely on the problem yet, but we're making progress steadily.
I don't think at all that the disorder that inevitably follows the
collapse of a tyrannical regime becomes in retrospect an argument for
the tyranny. One of the terrible things about tyranny you can argue is
that it always leaves a degree of disorder in its wake, but that is a
problem that one should lay at the feet of the tyrant and not the
liberators. And I think we're actually doing a good job in getting the
law and order situation estab -- under control.
Now, you asked a -- 
Q (Off mike.) 
MR. FEITH: On the issue of organizing an Iraqi administration, we
retain the intention and the policy that we have had of getting as
large a role, as much responsibility into the hands of Iraqis as early
as possible. This has been our view all along. Iraq belongs to the
Iraqis. And the coalition has no interest whatever in owning the
country and running the country, or -- there are all kinds of -- you
know -- wild reports that one reads about colonialist ambitions and
the like. That's nonsense. What we are interested in seeing is Iraqi
self-government.
We want Iraq to achieve freedom and prosperity and a place in the
world as a respected country, and a country that governs itself
proudly.
As I said, we have to set the conditions to make this possible.
Defeating and overthrowing Saddam was part of it. Getting rid of the
major instruments of repression in the country -- the military, the
intelligence service, the Ba'ath Party -- that's another part of it.
We have been asked by all of the Iraqis that we've -- that we've
spoken to who have focused on these kinds of problems, please make
sure that the United States and the coalition countries don't simply
overthrow Saddam and then run out quickly and leave the country in the
hands of the remnants of the former regime because Iraq will never get
going properly if that's the case. We're taking that admonition
seriously.
Some people had some unrealistic expectations about the ability to
turn responsibility over to the Iraqis in a matter of days. We hope
within a matter of some weeks that we will be able to begin to put
together the leadership of an Iraqi interim administration, to use the
terminology from the U.N. -- the recent U.N. Security Council
resolution. And we expect that the Iraqis are going to design their
own government. We expect they're going to design their own
constitution and their own judicial system, their own laws, their own
electoral system. And we expect that Iraqis are going to be
increasingly in a position to perform administrative responsibilities
with respect to ministries that we can transfer to Iraqi control. And
this is a project that is underway and we're talking with Iraqis about
it. And the speed with which we can progress is going to hinge to a
large extent on the ability of the Iraqis to get organized and assume
the responsibilities that we would like to transfer to them.
MODERATOR: Right here. 
Q Samir Nader with Radio Sawa. I'd like to ask you on Iran, there is a
report in the Washington Post says that the meeting that was supposed
to held Monday at the White House to discuss new strategy on Iran is
postponed at least until Thursday. First, is this meeting going to be
held? And the Pentagon, according to the reports in the Post and other
publications, is urging a new strategy to destabilize Iran because of
the al Qaeda elements with planning the recent bombings in Saudi
Arabia. So, can you tell us anything about this?
MR. FEITH: To tell you the truth, the calendar for inter-agency
meetings is so complex that I can't possibly keep it in my head. And
so I mean I just can't shed light on that for you, on which meetings
are on and which meetings are off, on what topics, in which
departments. That's a hopeless thing to try to memorize.
The -- what you have been hearing recently about Iran I believe is
mainly expressions of serious unhappiness on the part of the president
and administration officials about the harboring by Iran of
terrorists, an in particular important al Qaeda personnel. And after
the recent bombing in Riyadh, which killed Americans and people from I
don't remember exactly how many other countries, probably half a dozen
other countries, there is a -- there is a renewed intensity to the
reasonable demand that the Iranians stop harboring al Qaeda
terrorists. And this is something that it is -- it's a demand that it
is in Iran's interest to heed.
Q (Off mike.) 
MR. FEITH: It means allowing them to live in the country and to
operate there. And it's an important type of support that some states
provide to terrorists.
Q My name is Yasemin Congar. I'm with Turkey's (CNN ?) Turk and
Milliyet. I would like to follow-up on Iran first. Yesterday, the
secretary talking to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York said
that Iran should be put on notice that if it continues its efforts to
remake Iraq in Iran's image, those efforts would be aggressively put
down. First of all, I would like to ask you what he meant by that. And
is he putting on notice Teheran only, or is he also putting on notice
the pro-Iranian Shi'ite clerics in Iraq?
And secondly, I would like to ask you about the stability force. More
and more we hear from sources here in Washington that the Pentagon,
the top officials at Pentagon like yourself, are supportive of
Turkey's participation in the stability force in the south, but that
the State Department has some serious concerns about that, and that's
why there's no green light. Is there any truth to that? What's the
Pentagon's position about Turkey's participation in stability?
MR. FEITH: As you know, harmony reigns in the relationship between the
different departments of the U.S. government, so I am certainly not
going to be comment on inter-agency debates.
The -- as for what Secretary Rumsfeld meant when he said what he said
yesterday --
Q (Off-mike) -- could you tell me what the Pentagon's position is
regarding Turkey's participation in --
MR. FEITH: The only entity that has positions is the U.S. government.
And we're talking with the Turks, we're talking with our other NATO
allies, and we're talking with numerous countries around the world
about possible roles that they could play in contributing to the
reconstruction of Iraq, and I'm not going to get into any details on
what we're talking about with which countries.
Um, and I think that Secretary Rumsfeld's remarks were pretty clear,
and he's a pretty lucid spokesman for his own views, and I would not
presume to try to tell you what he meant. I mean, he said what he
meant, and I think it's a pretty clear statement. I mean, what you
read does not seem to require a lot of explanation.
Q This is -- (inaudible) -- from Turkish Daily. Mr. Secretary,
recently Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz gave us some interview for one of
the Turkish TV, and he uses some verse about, in this interview, about
the Turkish military is still discussing in the U.S. press and the
Turkish press. Nowaday, in the Turkish government, and also the
Turkish military has some kind of tension. Don't you think it's this
kind of remarks from the U.S. officials are adding to more tension and
the more political role in this late situation?
MR. FEITH: My understanding is that Paul Wolfowitz's remarks pre-dated
the recent issues that have arisen in the domestic Turkish politics.
And, my understanding of the remarks that Paul Wolfowitz made was very
different from the press accounts of it that I read. I think there
were some serious misunderstandings and kind of misreporting of what
he said.
I mean, one example, which came up at a congressional hearing that I
participated in the other day and I was asked about it, somebody said
that Secretary Wolfowitz had asked for an apology. And this was widely
played in Turkish newspapers that Secretary Wolfowitz had asked for an
apology, and that's just plain not correct. He never asked for an
apology. And it was -- I don't know whether it was a mis-translation
or a misinterpretation, but in any event, I'm glad -- as I was glad to
have the opportunity in front of the congressional committee to
clarify that, I'm glad to have that opportunity here too. So, I don't
see any problem at all with what Secretary Wolfowitz said whenever it
was -- a few weeks ago.
Q (Inaudible) -- Turkish military more powerful role has to play about
the Iraqi -- (inaudible) -- democratically elected parliament in the
new government?
MR. FEITH: I don't -- I don't that he -- I don't think he said
anything that should cause any problems in that connection.
Q Mr. Secretary, this Thomas Gorguissen of Al Wafd Egypt. You
mentioned in the related of disorder, that some un-democratic, you
refer to the Ba'ath first and then you say un-democratic interference
from neighboring countries. Can you be more elaborate about that?
The second thing which I want to ask you about it is you start your
remarks with the deficit of the freedom, and then you talk about the
status report -- (inaudible) -- most of the measurements were related
to the security. And as any thoughtful person you know, usually
security, excess security means deficit of freedom. How do you make
this harmony, let's say, inter-agency harmony between these two words?
MR. FEITH: Well, you're -- I mean, you're pointing out a very
interesting connection between two concepts, which is security and
freedom. Without security, there is no freedom. If the security forces
are excessive and oppressive, there's no freedom either. And obviously
you need to find the, you know, the golden mean, where a well ordered
society that is free has a proper amount of security and activity by
its security forces. It doesn't have too little, and it doesn't have
excessive amounts. And that's what we're aiming to see in Iraq. These
are ultimately decisions that Iraqis are going to make for their own
country, but as I said, we're hoping to lay a foundation for them that
will allow them to create a free country for themselves. And when they
do, we will be gone. We're not interested in hanging around in Iraq
and having any kind of interference in their affairs once the Iraqis
are in a position to run their own affairs -- which we hope will be
soon.
Q (Off-mike.) 
MR. FEITH: Well, one obvious example is Iran. 
MODERATOR: Unfortunately, that's all the time we have. Thank you, Mr.
Secretary.
MR. FEITH: Nice meeting with you. 
Q Mr. Feith, how long do you expect the United States to stay in Iraq?
MR. FEITH: (Off-mike) -- but our intention -- our intention is to put
the Iraqis in a position to be running their own country as soon as
possible. It's hard to say, and it's not prudent to be speculating
about dates like that. It's -- there are all kinds of bad things that
happen if you're speculating about stuff like that. What we're doing
is we're going about our business in a systematic way to try to make
the transition as short as possible.
MODERATOR: Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
(end transcript)
(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)



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