Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

Rumsfeld suggests part of Iraq might not vote

Let me get this straight only part of Iraq is to vote but more than all of Afghanistan is to vote. And Bush is plugging ahead because this big farce looks so good on his record. No one can possibly take these elections seriously and as such their results will be continually challenged and become the source of even more conflict.

In Afghanistan the number registered already exceeds the estimated total of eligible voters for the whole country.
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-Am

Allawi, Bush repeat election vow

Rumsfeld suggests part of Iraq might not vote

By Elisabeth Bumiller
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE

September 24, 2004



Reuters


WASHINGTON – President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi vowed in the White House Rose Garden yesterday that Iraq would hold free elections as scheduled in January, even though Bush acknowledged the "persistent violence" in some parts of the country and Allawi conceded that the elections "may not be perfect."

Similarly, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke openly for the first time yesterday about the possibility that the January elections might be held only in parts of Iraq.

"Let's say you tried to have an election, and you could have it in three-quarters or four-fifths of the country but some places you couldn't because the violence was too great," Rumsfeld said at a hearing on Capitol Hill. "Well, that's so be it. Nothing's perfect in life."

But on a day when both Republicans and Democrats used Allawi to reinforce starkly different campaign messages about Iraq, Bush and his ally presented, overall, a rosy picture of the country.

By contrast, Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, seized on the visit to paint a bleak portrait of Iraq and a Bush administration in disarray.

By the end of the day, it was clear that Allawi's trip to Washington, his first as Iraq's interim prime minister, was not simply a state visit but a politically charged moment with the debate on the course of the war intensifying.

"I stand here today as the prime minister of a country emerging finally from dark ages of violence, aggression, corruption and greed," Allawi told a joint session of Congress before his appearance at the White House. "Like almost every Iraqi, I have many friends who were murdered, tortured or raped by the regime of Saddam Hussein."

In the Rose Garden two hours later, Allawi and Bush cited progress in a nation that has been plagued by an emboldened insurgency, suicide bombings and the recent beheadings of two American hostages.

"You can understand it's tough and still be optimistic," Bush said. "You can understand how hard it is and believe we'll succeed."

Allawi, a former neurologist with close ties to the CIA, was selected as interim prime minister in May by a U.N. envoy under heavy pressure from the United States. He said in the Rose Garden that every day he receives a threat on his life, and that in the past month he has learned of four conspiracies to kill him.

Bush said polls asking Iraqis whether the country was on the right or wrong track showed more positive results than similar polls in the United States.

"I saw a poll that said the right track/wrong track in Iraq was better than here in America," Bush said, adding, "The people see a better future."

A Kerry campaign spokesman, Joe Lockhart, responded that Bush must be "unhinged from reality" to cite such a poll.

The poll was taken July 24 to Aug. 2 by the International Republican Institute, a nonprofit group that advocates the spread of democracy. The group queried 3,230 Iraqis nationwide in face-to-face interviews. The poll found 51 percent of Iraqis feel their country is headed in the right direction.

Bush said he and Allawi expected violence to escalate as the January elections draw closer, and that if the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. John Abizaid, asked him for more troops to secure the nation ahead of the election, "I would listen to him."

Abizaid told members of Congress yesterday that he anticipated the need for more Iraqi or international troops to help with the elections, but he did not rule out adding to the current 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

The president, when asked about Abizaid's statement, replied: "He was in my office this morning. He didn't say that to me, but if he were to say that, I'd listen to him. Just like I've said all along, that when our commanders say that they need support, they'll get support because we're going to succeed in this mission."

Top Pentagon officials, including Rumsfeld and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that as soon as Allawi took office in June he began moving to beef up Iraqi security forces, increasing the target for their eventual numbers and seeking to add armored units.

A significant part of the administration's recently requested shift of spending from reconstruction to security would be used to pay for that plan, the officials said.

Bush and Allawi asserted in the Rose Garden that there were nearly 100,000 fully trained and equipped Iraqi soldiers, police and other security officials in the country.

But Kerry said only 5,000 Iraqi soldiers had been trained.

Allawi said at the White House that of the 18 provinces in Iraq, "14 to 15 are completely safe" and that only three provinces had "pockets of terrorists" who were inflicting damage there and elsewhere in the country.

Allawi's assessment was at odds with the private view of some of Bush's senior advisers, who have said in recent days that the U.S. military's main problem is that it is not in full control of Baghdad.

Allawi said Fallujah, where Camp Pendleton-based Marines have suffered major casualties, was one of the pockets of terrorism. He told reporters that Fallujah sits in a "vast, very big" province called Al Anbar, where there are "many other important towns, such as Ana, such as Rawa, such as Ramadi" unmarked by such problems. But a number of U.S. troops have been killed in Ramadi.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040924/index.html?0.9618038904622126