Iraq: Security Problems Slow Reconstruction

• Vice President Dick Cheney, in an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" on March 16th, said, "The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but that they want to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that."

• In an opinion piece for the Washington Post published February 13, 2002, former U.N. ambassador Ken Adelman said, "I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk. Let me give simple, responsible reasons: (1) It was a cakewalk last time; (2) they've become much weaker; (3) we've become much stronger; and (4) now we're playing for keeps."

• Christopher Hitchens, writer for Vanity Fair said on January 28, 2003, "This will be no war -- there will be a fairly brief and ruthless military intervention. The president will give an order. It will be rapid, accurate and dazzling ... It will be greeted by the majority of the Iraqi people as an emancipation. And I say, bring it on."

• Richard Perle, chairman of the powerful Defense Policy Board until his recent resignation amid accusations of financial conflicts of interest, said in a July 11, 2002 PBS interview, "Saddam is much weaker than we think he is. He's weaker militarily. We know he's got about a third of what he had in 1991. But it's a house of cards. He rules by fear because he knows there is no underlying support. Support for Saddam, including within his military organization, will collapse at the first whiff of gunpowder." This is the same Richard Perle who told David Corn in May of 2002 that Iraq could be taken with a light force of 40,000 American troops. "We don't need anyone else," he said.

Taheri: Could it come soon? And how long do you think the war would take?

Perle: My hunch is that it will come soon. My understanding is that we can wrap the whole thing in 30 days.

Taheri: So there is no chance that in November 2004 when there will be another U.S. presidential election we shall still have Saddam Hussein in power in Baghdad pointing to the scalp of a second President Bush on his wall?

Perle: No chance. Guaranteed.

Q: You're describing a vastly more invasive and widespread operation than even is remotely going on in Afghanistan. And we've been told that in Afghanistan there is no time set when the troops might come out; they'll be there for a long, long time. I know the answer is "as long as it takes," but are we talking months, years, decades?

Senior Defense Official: I'm talking -- I'll probably come back to hate this answer, but I'm talking months. But in Iraq you do have a somewhat more sophisticated country and a somewhat more structured country than you do in Afghanistan. And that -- and I think also, that -- even though it's been an oppressed country, it has the structure and the mechanisms in there to run that country and run it fairly efficiently. At one time, it was probably one of the most efficient countries in that part of the world, and a lot of that talent's still there

According to one US official, Mr Feith led "a group in the Pentagon who all along felt that this was going to be not just a cakewalk, it was going to be 60-90 days, a flip-over and hand-off, a lateral or whatever to Chalabi and the INC . The DoD could then wash its hands of the whole affair and depart quickly, smoothly and swiftly. And there would be a democratic Iraq that was amenable to our wishes and desires left in its wake. And that's all there was to it."