WASHINGTON, 30 March 2003 — Despite setbacks along the road to Baghdad, President George W. Bush gave Americans yesterday an upbeat assessment of US military operations in Iraq, saying troops were less than 80 km from the capital and fighting the “most desperate” Iraqi Army units.
Bush also escalated US criticism of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s government, seeking to rally public opinion behind the war in the face of questions about military tactics, civilian casualties and the duration of the US-led campaign.
The president’s upbeat assessment of military operations to date contrasted with some reports from US officers in the field that commanders had ordered a pause of four to six days in their push toward Baghdad because of supply shortages and stiff Iraqi resistance.
Food rations have also been cut sharply for at least some front-line US units and fuel use has been limited, according to correspondents with the forces south of Baghdad.
Senior commanders at their Gulf headquarters in Qatar said there would be no pause in the overall air and ground campaign to overthrow Saddam.
The White House also played down the long-term cost to US taxpayers of rebuilding Iraq once the war has ended. A White House report predicted that the country’s oil reserves would pay for reconstruction, but critics accused Bush’s budget office of being overly optimistic.
In his weekly radio address, Bush accused Saddam’s “dying regime” of committing dozens of atrocities against its own people and prisoners of war, citing graphic reports of an Iraqi woman who “was hanged for waving at coalition troops.”
He said Iraqi forces were murdering citizens who refused to fight, brutalizing and executing prisoners of war and opening fire under the flag of surrender. Iraqis counter-attacked by accusing the United States of targeting a popular Baghdad market in an air raid they said killed more than 50 people.
“War criminals will be hunted relentlessly and judged severely,” said Bush, who was briefed for an hour yesterday by his war council, including national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, CIA Director George Tenet, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Despite criticism of the war strategy and tougher-than-expected resistance on southern battlefields, Bush said US and British forces were taking control of the country and closing in on the capital. “American and coalition troops have continued a steady advance and are now less than 50 miles from Baghdad,” he said. “The regime that once terrorized all of Iraq now controls a small portion of that country.”
US officials denied that the Iraqi resistance caught war planners by surprise and said second-guessing by critics had frustrated Bush.
The president ticked off a list of US advances. It included clearing mines from a vital waterway, taking control of the port city of Umm Qasr, getting humanitarian aid flowing, securing more than 600 oil wells, and preventing Saddam’s forces from launching missiles at their neighbors from key sites in western Iraq.
“We are now fighting the most desperate units of the dictator’s army,” he said.
The White House swung into damage control after the commander of the US Army’s V Corps was quoted on Friday as saying unanticipated Iraqi guerrilla tactics and overstretched supply lines pointed to a longer conflict than predicted.
The White House insists that Bush never put a timetable on the war, and likened the second-guessing to unjustified fears of a “quagmire” early in the successful military campaign to oust the Taleban in Afghanistan.
“I think the point here is, you’ve heard it repeatedly from administration officials that we cannot predict how long it will go,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
