Facing concerns about the progress of the war in Iraq, the Pentagon on Thursday ordered deployment of an additional 100,000 troops to its combat force as President Bush rejected criticism of his war plan and declared that the U.S. and Great Britain would fight to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime “however long it takes.”
In a summit at Camp David, Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair reasserted that victory over Hussein’s regime was certain and agreed that the United Nations would play a role in rebuilding postwar Iraq, though they declined to detail the scope of that involvement.
As Pentagon officials said they would double the nearly 100,000 troops already deployed in Iraq facing Hussein’s forces, the two leaders dismissed criticism that the U.S.-led forces miscalculated the intensity of Iraqi opposition they would face and delivered an optimistic assessment of the opening week of the war.
“However long it takes,” Bush declared tersely, declining to answer repeated questions about how long the war could last. “It isn’t a matter of timetable. It’s a matter of victory.”
Dominating a joint news conference with Bush, Blair conceded that difficult days lie ahead in the war but insisted that the allies would not be deterred by setbacks on the battlefield.
“Once again our primary focus now is, and must be, the military victory, which we will prosecute with the utmost vigor,” Blair said.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld signed orders Thursday for thousands of troops that had been alerted earlier that they would be deployed to the Persian Gulf region, Pentagon officials said. The order came after the commander of Army forces in the gulf region acknowledged that the war was likely to last longer than the Pentagon had anticipated.
“The enemy we are fighting is a bit different than the one we war-gamed against,” said Lt. Gen. William Wallace, the commander of Army V Corps, while visiting troops in Iraq. “We knew they were here, but we did not know how they would fight.”
In combination with the pending arrival of other heavy ground forces that were supposed to be ready to invade Iraq weeks ago, the new deployment will more than double the number of U.S. troops fighting in Iraq, the officials said. Some 250,000 U.S. and another 45,000 British troops already are in the region, most of them outside Iraq.
“A lot of firepower is ready to roll into this,” a defense official said.
Sensitive to criticism that Rumsfeld and his commanders had underestimated the need for troops to confront Iraqi irregular forces, Pentagon officials insisted all was occurring as planned and that the U.S. troops ordered to move had known for some time they were likely to go to Iraq.
Nonetheless, the role facing the incoming troops will be far different from the one originally imagined, an Army official said.
“The context was for `shock and awe’ to cause the [regime] to collapse,” the Army official said, referring to a phrase Pentagon officials have used to describe the war’s opening.
“That hasn’t happened,” the official said, speaking on condition he not be identified. “What has happened was the shock and awe did not cause the center to collapse. So what we are faced with now is having to approach them in a more conventional fashion. Now the Army guys and Marines have to go in and root them out.”
The Army official said a lull in action may come as troops wait for reinforcement. The lull may well work in the coalition’s favor and is not cause for panic.
“We now have a chance to build up, resupply and refuel,” the official said. “Saddam does not. He is stuck with what he has.”
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A Pentagon official said deployment orders went to the 1st Armored Division from Germany and Ft. Riley, Kan.; the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment from Ft. Polk, La.; and the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment from Ft. Carson, Colo.
The 4th Infantry Division was supposed to have been in place a month ago to attack Iraq from the north–a plan that was blocked by the Turkish parliament. Now the division is moving toward Kuwait and will enter Iraq from the south.
But the delay has caused a logistical logjam. Another division of tanks and troops–the 1st Cavalry Division from Ft. Hood–has been prevented from acting on deployment orders because it was supposed to use the same ships currently transporting the 4th Infantry’s equipment. That means it could be months before the 1st Cavalry makes it to Iraq.
In their first meeting since the U.S. and Britain went to war in Iraq on March 19, Bush and Blair discussed Middle East peace and urged the UN to restart immediately its oil for food program in Iraq, which was suspended when the fighting began. The effort feeds more than half of Iraq’s 22 million people.
“This urgent humanitarian issue must not be politicized,” Bush said, a reference to France, Russia and other nations that the White House believes are expressing their war opposition by scrutinizing the food distribution program.
Bush and Blair held the first wartime meeting between an American and British leader at the presidential retreat atop the Catoctin Mountains in Maryland since President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill planned the D-Day invasion there during World War II, some 60 years ago.
While mourning the casualties from their respective countries and praying for the safe release of allied prisoners of war, the two leaders spoke repeatedly of the atrocities committed against the Iraqi people by Hussein as they made their case for a war still opposed by many around the world.
Blair chastised Hussein’s loyalists for executing two British soldiers, calling it “beyond the comprehension of anyone with an ounce of humanity in their souls.”
Bush, often deferring to his British visitor as Blair spoke passionately about the war and allied aims in Iraq, echoed the view that difficult days lie ahead for U.S. and British forces.
“Slowly but surely, the grip of terror around the throats of the Iraqi people is being loosened,” Bush said. “We’re now engaging the dictator’s most hardened and most desperate units. The campaign ahead will demand further courage and require further sacrifice.”
In visiting the United States, Blair sought to define his position that the UN should take a greater role in establishing postwar Iraq. The alliance with the Bush administration on Iraq has caused Blair political turmoil at home, but he is trying to curb criticism by pushing for aggressive UN involvement after the fighting.
“No doubt, the United Nations has got to be closely involved in this process,” Blair said, adding that “there are huge numbers of details to be discussed with our allies as to exactly how that is going to work.”
On his flight from London to Washington, the prime minister told reporters that he hoped the Bush meeting would focus on discussions about the plans for the future of Iraq, not merely on the status of the war. Blair also wanted the U.S. to commit to a time frame for laying out a road map to peace in the Middle East.
Left unresolved, the official said, were specific questions about political reforms in a postwar Iraq, including who would create and control an interim government.
“The form of government will be chosen by the Iraqi people, not imposed by outsiders,” Bush said earlier Thursday. “The prime minister and I are confident that a free Iraq will be a successful nation.”
During the summit, the leaders also received a joint military briefing by their war commanders in London, Washington and Qatar. Later, they spoke to leaders of Australia and Poland, which also have troops fighting with the allied forces in Iraq.
After leaving Camp David, the prime minister traveled to the United Nations in New York to lobby Secretary General Kofi Annan to provide humanitarian relief to Iraqis. Annan said Thursday that he is committed to resuming distribution of food and other aid but he said it could be done only when the fighting subsides and relief workers can safely reach the region.
As the fighting raged in Iraq on Thursday, diplomatic tensions also were high at the UN. U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte marched out of the Security Council meeting, protesting the Iraqi envoy’s claim that allied troops were plotting the mass murder of civilians in Iraq.
The Iraq envoy, Mohammed al-Douri, charged that the U.S., Britain and Australia were ready “to start a real war of extermination that will kill everyone and destroy everything.”
After listening politely through much of the address, Negroponte walked out.
“I didn’t hear anything new in what he had to say and of course can’t accept any of the preposterous allegations he put forward,” he said. “I think I had heard enough.”