BAGHDAD, 23 October 2006 — The United States has shown “arrogance” and “stupidity” in Iraq, a senior US diplomat said in an interview aired yesterday, after US President George W. Bush said he was flexible on tactics, if not strategy.
US military deaths in Iraq in October reached 80 this weekend, making it the most deadly month for Americans this year and raising pressure ahead of nest month’s Congressional elections in which Bush’s Republican party could lose its majority in both houses.
“We tried to do our best (in Iraq) but I think there is much room for criticism because, undoubtedly, there was arrogance and there was stupidity from the United States in Iraq,” senior US State Department official Alberto Fernandez told Al Jazeera, according to a Reuters reporter who heard the interview, which was conducted in Arabic.
Earlier, the State Department had said that the same English translation of the comments posted on Al Jazeera’s English language website had misquoted Fernandez, its director of public diplomacy in the bureau of Near Eastern affairs. “What he (Fernandez) says is that it is not an accurate quote,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. Asked whether he thought the United States would be judged as being arrogant, McCormack said “No.”
Al Jazeera’s English language website also quoted Fernandez as saying Washington was ready to talk with any Iraqi group except Al-Qaeda in Iraq to end violence.
The Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki has been meeting Shiite leaders this week to enlist their support in calming militia infighting in southern Iraq as well as sectarian violence between Shiites and Sunnis.
Disarming militias such as the Mehdi Army, loyal to powerful young leader Moqtada Al-Sadr, is seen as crucial by the United States but has proved difficult for Maliki who relies on the support of the political groups linked to the militias.
Jeffrey White, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, suggested a substantial policy revision was being weighed. “It looks to me like this supertanker is turning,” he said. “It takes a long time but I think the turn is beginning to be made.”
Prince Philip, husband of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, made a surprise visit to British troops near the southern Iraqi city of Basra yesterday, officials said. The 85-year-old Duke of Edinburgh met soldiers from The Queen’s Royal Hussars in his role as the regiment’s colonel-in-chief. Prince Philip told the troops he thought most people in Britain had “a great deal of sympathy for those of you at the sharp end who are trying to do your best to make life civilized and tolerable for the locals”.
“And I’m quite sure that a great many locals do very much appreciate what you are trying to do for them,” he said.
A bomb blast and an ambush by gunmen on a convoy of buses near the town of Baquba killed 13 police recruits yesterday and several more recruits were kidnapped, a local official said.
Another 25 police recruits were wounded, the official said, in an attack that highlights the problems the Iraqi government faces in building a strong and independent police force capable of bringing security to Iraq.
The official said the buses were taking the police recruits to Baghdad from a base that was attacked by insurgents using mortars and rifle fire on Saturday. The attack on Saturday left many dead and 80 casualties, the official said.
Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, is in an area with a mixed population of Shiites and Sunni Arabs and it has seen relentless sectarian bloodshed in recent months.
On Saturday, bombs rigged to bicycles followed by a barrage of mortars killed 16 people and wounded 60 in a market in Mahmudiya, a town in the Sunni insurgent “Triangle of Death” south of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said. Gunmen killed a man there yesterday who the police said was responsible for the attacks.
There were reports of bombings and shootings in Baghdad and around the country yesterday, but it was a relatively calm day ahead of the Eid holiday marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. A roadside bomb killed three people and wounded six, including a police officer, in central Baghdad, police said. A car bomb killed six elsewhere in Baghdad.
The US military death toll in October rose to 80 yesterday with the announcement a Marine was killed in western Anbar province on Saturday, and a soldier was killed and three more wounded on Saturday in Salaheddin province.
