Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=06/26/03

TYPE=U-S OPINION ROUNDUP

TITLE=IRAQ POSTWAR TROUBLES

NUMBER=6-12985

BYLINE=ANDREW GUTHRIE

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

EDITOR=ASSIGNMENTS

TELEPHONE=619-3335

CONTENT=

INTRO: New violence in Iraq that took six British soldier's lives has again the attention of editorialists on the war of attrition under way there. Now here with a sampling is ___________ and today's U-S Opinion Roundup.

INTRO: The British deaths in Iraq has focused renewed attention on the problems of stabilizing the nation. The [U-S] press is becoming increasingly critical of the Bush administration and the Pentagon for a lack of post-war planning, the failure to find the alleged weapons of mass destruction or Saddam Hussein. We get a sampling now from V-O-A's ____________ in today's U-S Opinion Roundup.

TEXT: Judging from news reports, things are not going well in post-war Iraq. Oil-and-gas facilities are being sabotaged; the south populated by Shiite Muslims has now seen six British troops killed in a pair of attacks that also wounded other British troops.

Almost daily a U-S soldier is killed or wounded, often increasingly in carefully planned ambushes, and Saddam Hussein continues to avoid capture if, indeed, he is still alive. And weapons of mass destruction have yet to been found -- one of the main rationales by the United States and Britain for entering the war. More and more U-S and British papers are using these facts to criticize their respective governments. The news is discouraging Portland Maine's Press Herald.

VOICE: It's getting hard to tell that the war in Iraq is over. On Tuesday, six British soldiers were killed and eight more wounded.. The latest in a string of violence after the official end of the war. Iraqi insurgency is a natural symptom of a nation in chaos. It's one more urgent reminder that the [U-S] must swiftly enact plans for post-war reconstruction in the region, and . must remain committed for the duration of Iraq's rebirth.

TEXT: To Florida now, where The Saint Petersburg Times bitterly remembers President Bush's memorable arrival on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln via jet to proclaim the war over.

VOICE: On May 1, President Bush was the star of an elaborately staged event that may come to symbolize his administration's illusion-over-reality approach to the war in Iraq. ."Major combat operations in Iraq have ended," the president, surrounded by thousands of Navy personnel . told the world that day. Yet we now know . the president's assertion was, at best, premature.

Since the [president's declaration] . dozens of American and British soldiers have been killed or wounded . If anything, Iraqis opposed to the continuing presence of U-S troops have become more violent and better organized in recent weeks. . Thousand of undermanned U-S troops . continue to perform admirably in Iraq. But they have not received adequate support and guidance from their political leaders.

TEXT: Continuing on the same theme as The Saint Petersburg Times, Ohio's Akron Beacon Journal complains:

VOICE; {President] Bush insisted that American soldiers wouldn't be dispatched to perform duties for which they were not trained. They would fight. Yet, reports from Iraq consistently tell the story of American military personnel struggling with the unfamiliar issues of civilian governance. .They are ill prepared for the political realm. . For all the meticulous planning of the military offensive, too little thought was given to the aftermath. One official told The Washington Post this past week: "For a lot of the stuff we're doing, we're making it up as we go along."

TEXT: In defense of the allied rebuilding and stabilization effort, The Washington Times asserts:

VOICE: While it is admittedly difficult to exaggerate the tasks that confront the U-S-led occupation powers in Iraq, it is hard to overstate the depravity of the regime that the occupation . replaced. Beyond the Iraqi Kurds who were victimized by Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons in the north and the thousands and thousands of Shiites who were brutally exterminated in the south . there are the recently discovered killing fields that cumulatively comprise tens of thousands of murder victims, many of them children and many . buried alive.

As [columnist] Charles Krauthammer cogently observed not long ago: "The toppling of Saddam Hussein freed 25 million people from 30 years of torture, murder, war, starvation and impoverishment at the hands of a psychopathic family that matched Stalin for cruelty." So let this be understood: Iraq's pervasively broken condition did not develop overnight and cannot be put together in short order.

TEXT: The national daily, USA Today, published in a Washington, D-C suburb, sums up its view in this headline: "Mounting casualties expose [a] lack of post-war plans," and it calls the present day situation there "disturbing."

VOICE: Increasingly, the treacherous job of restoring peace to Iraq is making the war itself look like the easier task. Clearly, military planners failed to anticipate the need to quickly replace soldiers with experienced U-S civilians who could establish security, form a rudimentary system of justice and provide basic jobs. . while the ultimate judgment of U-S success or failure won't be made for years, it depends on the strength of the foundation now being laid and the structures that follow.

TEXT: Lastly, another defense of just how difficult the task is, from The New York Post which insists the problems must be placed in context.

VOICE: The administration and policing of a defeated country is, by its very nature, difficult and dangerous - - especially when it is being undertaken with the kind of delicacy and restraint that has characterized coalition forces' behavior in Iraq.

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TEXT: And as for those still-missing deadly weapons Saddam Hussein was thought to have, a highly critical Charleston West Virginia Gazette notes:

VOICE: Evidence continues to grow that the White House deliberately exaggerated its accusations against Iraq to muster public support for the war . If there was no truth to the White House claims that Iraq possessed horror weapons .[then] what was the real reason that [President] Bush started the war?

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TEXT: With that editorial comment we conclude this sampling of thought from the press on the current situation in Iraq.

NEB/ANG/MEM