George Bush yesterday tried to stifle rising doubts on the occupation of Iraq by insisting yesterday’s bombings were a sign that life had improved under the United States’ watch.
With comparisons being made between the official justification for war in Vietnam and the administration’s media strategy in Iraq, the US president made a point of seeing reporters at the White House following a meeting with the chief US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer.
The appearance was in line with a new policy of speaking out to promote a more ”balanced” picture on Iraq.
Bush dismissed the notion that the rising violence could jeopardise efforts to rebuild Iraq, saying the bombings were the work of militants driven to desperation by America’s success.
”The more progress we make on the ground, the more free the Iraqis become, the more electricity is available, the more jobs are available, the more kids that are going to school, the more desperate these killers become; because they can’t stand the thought of a free society,” Bush said.
Washington had no intention of quitting Iraq, and he was confident the population would be won over by democratic ideals.
”The best hope for the coalition is that ordinary Iraqis will see a better path in elections and reconstruction,” he said.
Bush’s assertions follow a peculiar logic deployed by administration officials in recent days that dismisses the violence as blips on a graph of slow but steady progress. ”We’ll have rough days … but the overall thrust is in the right direction and the good days outnumber the bad days,” Bremer said.
However, with Congress balking at the $87-billion bill for Iraqi reconstruction, and growing resentment within Republican ranks at the prime mover of Washington’s Iraq policy, defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Bush had a difficult task yesterday to persuade Americans that all was well.
Republican Senator John McCain told Newsweek magazine that it was time the Bush administration faced up in public to its problems. The senator is a former US navy pilot and the son and grand son of admirals, and was shot down over Vietnam in 1967 and spent 5 years as a prisoner of war.
”This is the first time that I have seen a parallel to Vietnam in terms of information that the administration is putting out versus the actual situation on the ground,” he said.
”I’m not saying the situation in Iraq now is as bad as Vietnam, but we have a problem in the Sunni triangle. We should face up to it, and tell the American people about it.”
Such realisations may have penetrated the administration. Recent comments by officials have suggested doubts on the claimed successes in Iraq. On Sunday, Bremer departed from the administration line that attacks are the work of isolated supporters of the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, admitting that resistance would not necessarily end with his capture.
”It will be helpful, it won’t end the attacks,” he said. – Guardian Unlimited Â