Bush voices confidence in new Iraqi leaders

updated 11:33 a.m. ET May 1, 2006

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Monday that a report from his two top foreign policy officials on their visit to Baghdad shows that Iraq’s leadership is “more determined than ever to succeed” now that a new permanent government is in place.

“We believe we’ve got partners to help the Iraqi people realize their dreams,” Bush said outside the Oval Office after meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. “They need to know that we stand with them.”

But Bush said that Rice and Rumsfeld didn’t come back from their surprise joint visit to Iraq last week with all good news.

“There’s going to be more tough days ahead,” the president said, with Rice and Rumsfeld at his side. “It’s a government that understands they’ve got serious challenges ahead of them.”

Also Monday, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee proposed that Iraq be divided into three separate regions — Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni — with a central government in Baghdad.

In a speech in Philadelphia, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware suggested that a residual force would be left in place that would number about 20,000 — a force that presumably would prevent al-Qaida and jihadists “from essentially taking Afghanistan and moving it to the nether regions of Iraq.”

Powell questions planning
The White House on Sunday defended its prewar planning against criticism from an unlikely source — former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

In an interview broadcast Sunday in London, Powell revisited the question of whether the U.S. had a large enough force to oust Saddam Hussein and then secure the peace.

Powell said he advised now-retired Gen. Tommy Franks, who developed and executed the 2003 Iraq invasion plan, and Rumsfeld “before the president that I was not sure we had enough troops. The case was made, it was listened to, it was considered. ... A judgment was made by those responsible that the troop strength was adequate.”

Rice, who was Bush’s national security adviser at the time of the invasion, responded, “I don’t remember specifically what Secretary Powell may be referring to, but I’m quite certain that there were lots of discussions about how best to fulfill the mission that we went into Iraq.

“And I have no doubt that all of this was taken into consideration. But that when it came down to it, the president listens to his military advisers who were to execute the plan,” she told CNN’s “Late Edition.”

Rice said Bush “listened to the advice of his advisers and ultimately, he listened to the advice of his commanders, the people who actually had to execute the war plan. And he listened to them several times,” she told ABC’s “This Week.”

“When the war plan was put together, it was put together, also, with consideration of what would happen after Saddam Hussein was actually overthrown,” Rice said.

MORE FROM CONFLICT IN IRAQ

Conflict in Iraq Section Front

3 coalition soldiers die in Iraq attack Cookbook captures Iraqi culinary heritage 11 killed in Baghdad bombing Army units to go to Iraq for changing mission Sandstorms, drought hobble once-fertile Iraq Experts: Iraq invasion harmed Babylon Conflict in Iraq Section Front   Add Conflict in Iraq headlines to your news reader: