Powell under fire for Iraq
2003-09-07 19:05
Washington - US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Sunday defended the Bush administration's policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, saying they have been successful.
But a top Democratic senator said Powell's characterisation "flies in the face" of daily attacks on US troops and recent bombings in Iraq, including attacks on the Jordanian embassy, the UN headquarters, an Iraqi police station and a Muslim mosque.
Powell, speaking on ABC's "This Week" hours before the president was to address the nation about his global effort against terrorism, said there was no need for a mid-course correction in Iraq or Afghanistan.
"We have a good strategy and we're executing that strategy," he said. "The results are that two despotic regimes are gone. The results are that there will be no more mass graves created ... that children are going back to school."
"We are trying to generate more support from the international community," the secretary said. "We know how to do this - we've done it before in our history. But we have to stay the course. Are there still difficulties? Yes. Are terrorists trying to take advantage of this situation? Yes. Are we taking casualties? Regrettably, yes."
But US Senator Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, said on the same program that the administration's strategy in Iraq is a failure and must be abandoned.
"The administration has to abolish its 'my-way-or-the-highway' attitude," Kennedy said. "For the secretary to suggest that we have a successful strategy flies in the face of the fact that we're seeing Americans killed daily" and have seen several recent bombings.
"We don't have an exit strategy," he said. "It's difficult to understand how you can have a successful policy in Iraq when you don't have an exit strategy."
Powell sidestepped a question about whether the administration's post-war planning was adequate.
"We now understand the nature of the task before us," he said. "We know there remain Fedayeen and Baathist elements. We know there are terrorists who are coming into Iraq. And we will now identify this enemy, and we will root them out."
Powell also said that with 29 nations participating in the Iraq coalition, "we're not there alone." And, he said, current efforts to secure a new UN resolution would broaden that coalition.
Kennedy said that the United Nations needed to be "fully engaged" in Iraq and not simply take a back seat to the Americans.
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz have been the current policy's biggest cheerleaders. Wolfowitz is widely believed to be the author of the Iraq strategy.
Asked if Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz should resign, as Rep. David Obey, D-Wisconsin, suggested last week, Kennedy said, "I think the policy should resign."
Kennedy said he hoped that President Bush's speech Sunday night would "recognize the failed policies of the past" and endorse full international co-operation.
"We should have stayed with the United Nations in the first place," he said.
Powell said that the United States has "no apologies" for launching the invasion of Iraq without the full backing of the United Nations, and said he believes Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction and programmes to develop weapons of mass destruction ... at the time we took the action that we took."
The president is expected to announce in his speech Sunday night how much money he wants for operations in Iraq. Kennedy predicted Congress would have questions about that figure.
"We shouldn't just be writing a blank check for this administration to continue to squander this money over there," he said. "That's not an issue of partisanship. That's an issue of national security. ... It's a makeshift operation over there and the people who are suffering are the American servicemen. That has to change."
- News24