BAGHDAD, 2 July 2003 — A group of senior US senators visiting Iraq said yesterday there could well be more deadly attacks on US troops before Washington can declare the war over.“The war is still on, the risks are still there and casualties could well be taken,” senior Republican Sen. John Warner, said.
But he said there was no need for more American troops in Iraq for now, despite the escalating violence which has killed at least 22 US soldiers and six British soldiers.
“The boots on the ground as of now are adequate,” said Warner, head of the Senate’s armed services committee.
He noted more than 30 foreign countries had promised to send troops or security forces to Iraq, where American troops have struggled to impose security after a US-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein on April 9.
US troops have come under attack mostly in central Iraq. American military officials blame the violence on Saddam loyalists who they say are bent on destabilizing Iraq.
Warner said US military commanders would call in more soldiers if increasing attacks threatened the US-led military presence in the country.
Carl Levin, the senior Democrat on Warner’s committee, said Washington could send some of its troops home if other countries sent in back-up forces.
“It is not weakness to invite other countries in...that is just wisdom,” Levin said.
Another Democrat, John Rockefeller, said briefings by military commanders in Iraq had driven home the message that US troops could be in Iraq “for the long run”.
“There is a probability that the American people are going to need to adjust, as Congress will also, to the fact that things could get worse before they get better,” said Rockefeller, vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Pat Roberts, the Republican heading the committee, said information from Iraqi informants that had been scant before the US-led invasion had now become “almost like a fire hose”.
But Warner said finding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction — whose existence was cited as the prime cause for the US-led war to oust Saddam — would take more “time and patience”.
