US soldiers faced more attacks in Iraq on Monday amid growing indications that Washington was ill-prepared to manage the occupation of the country in the wake of its military victory over Saddam Hussein.
As the United States and Britain continued to protest that their invasion of Iraq was fully justified, more US troops were called for duty there, despite mounting public opposition to their continued presence against the security turmoil in the war-ravaged country.
A day after four US soldiers were wounded in homemade bomb attacks, another American convoy was targetted in Fallujah, 50 kilometres west of Baghdad, Iraqi police and US officials said.
Police officer Ismail Ibrahim said the convoy of three or four vehicles was attacked about 10am (0600 GMT) on Monday in the town, where anti-US sentiment runs high, and ”the Americans opened fire blindly.”
Witnesses said they saw several US soldiers wounded, some seriously, but there was no official confirmation. An AFP journalist at the site saw one Humvee military vehicle damaged. Though a US soldier at the scene confirmed the attack, without mentioning any wounded, a military spokesperson in Baghdad said they had no report of the incident.
Witnesses in Khaldiyah, 80 kilometres west of Baghdad, meanwhile said US troops took heavy casualties in a firefight on Monday after their convoy came under attack from bombs and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).
The witnesses said several US soldiers were killed but there was no official confirmation of any deaths.
On Sunday, the US military said it had found four caches of weapons, including missiles, near Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit, 175 kilometres north of Baghdad.
The largest, found on the outskirts of Tikrit, included 23 Russian-made surface-to-air missiles, C-4 explosives, RPGs, hand grenades, smoke pots, blasting caps and rocket motors.
The rocket grenades are often stripped down by forces still loyal to Saddam and used to make homemade bombs, such as those that wounded four US soldiers earlier in the day in two separate attacks, north and south of the capital.
In a significant rebuke of the US intelligence community, US lawmakers said the White House relied on information that was circumstantial, fragmentary and filled with uncertainties to justify the Iraq war, according to US media reports.
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, after four months combing through 19 volumes of classified material used by the George Bush administration to make its case for war, found significant deficiencies in the intelligence community’s ability to collect fresh intelligence on Iraq, the Washington Post reported.
The CIA blasted the criticism, but the latest edition of the US magazine Newsweek said on Monday that while the Pentagon was focused on winning the war, the occupation was a second thought.
The weekly painted a picture of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld refusing to allow 16 out of 20 Pentagon experts to go to Baghdad because they were ”Arab apologists,” had positive opinions of the United Nations or other views not acceptable to the neo-conservatives running the US government.
While Pentagon officials derided the United Nations, the State Department was getting information from UN officials on the conditions of the infrastructure, especially the power grid, whose dilapidation took the Pentagon by surprise, Newsweek said.
”We have until Ramadan — which begins October 27 — to turn it around,” British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s emissary to the region, John Sawyers, told US officials. ”After that it will be too late.”
During a visit to Spanish and Latin American troops in Iraq, Spanish Defence Minister Federico Trillo defended the military campaign that toppled Saddam in April, but admittd that none of the occupying armies had a model for reconstruction that was suitable for a country like Iraq.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell for his part told ABC television that the United States will have a new resolution ready for the UN Security Council within two days, but is not counting on getting large numbers of foreign troops to help its forces in Iraq.
Tens of thousands demonstrated against the war in major capitals around the world at the weekend, capped by a protest by more than 3 000 in San Francisco who chanted, ”Bring the soldiers home!” and ”Money for schools, not for occupation!”
But Blair insisted he had no regrets at all about taking Britain into the war, despite increasing public dissatisfaction over the conflict.
”No. I would have done exactly the same,” Blair told BBC television when asked whether, with hindsight, he had any regrets about joining the US-led campaign to remove Saddam.
”I don’t think we have anything to apologise for as a country,” Blair said.
”I believe as powerfully as I did at the time that making sure that that man is no longer in charge of Iraq is a good thing for his country, the region and the world.” – Sapa-AFP