(This is the concluding part of United Press International's seven-part series on the U.S. presence in Iraq.)
WASHINGTON, Aug. 1 (UPI) -- Up through May 1, the Iraq war for President George W. Bush was going nearly perfectly.
Certainly as he pointed out to reporters in the White House Rose Garden Wednesday, the sandstorms and delay in the first week the United States drove into Iraq had been troubling. But when Saddam Hussein's giant statue tumbled in the center of Baghdad on April 9, both Bush and the world felt the United States had triumphed.
A little more than a month later, danger signs of chaos and difficulty were clear at the White House, yet the plan to fly out to the USS Abraham Lincoln was already laid on and Bush went ahead with it, landing on the deck wearing a flight suit and declaring the major fighting in Iraq over. The world read that as the "war is won!"
But now, as Bush heads to his ranch in Crawford, Texas, the war against Iraq cannot be said to be over and nor really even won. The Iraq war has changed context for Bush, moving from a foreign policy decision, to a domestic issue; from a foreign adventure to one of two main issues that could control his re-election.
The wounding and killing of American soldiers is a major part of this problem. Since Bush declared the major fighting over on May 1, 108 U.S. soldiers have died in action or accidents. The deaths are neither glamorous nor sensible. A rocket-propelled grenade, a shot in the dark, a land mine triggered under a moving truck.
The U.S. command correctly points out that the bulk of the attacks have come in the Sunni Muslim "triangle" of cities and towns stretching north and west from Baghdad to Tikrit, Saddam's birthplace. But there have been other attacks, northeast of Baghdad and, in earlier weeks, south into the Shiite areas.
The first direct lesson for Bush was one learned by Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan: technological Western military power can defeat technological Western military power, but it remains vulnerable to an individual with a weapon.
Take Thursday's deaths in Baghdad. One soldier died and three were wounded when the armored-personnel carrier they were riding in struck an explosive device on the road between Baghdad and its international airport, despite the fact this road has been the scene for dozens of previous attacks. That was in mid-day. At 11:45 that same evening, nearly a hundred miles away, an American soldier was killed and two wounded in an attack on a military outpost. Four attackers, news accounts reported, were wounded and captured.
There are about 25 million Iraqis, some 40 percent are Sunnis or about 10 million people who might approve of that attack and a lot of others who don't care.
Beyond the deaths, being all the more worrisome and painful for Americans coming as a surprise is the nature of the U.S. troops. In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, Johnson was criticized for not calling up the National Guard and relying upon the draft to supply troops. He had foresworn the Guard because it was a major domestic political entity.
Bush has no freedom to make such a choice. A large part of the U.S. military's operations are now carried out by reserve units and Guard outfits. In order to smooth out the occupation of Iraq over what he has now convinced could be as long as a year, the administration has notified 20,000 National Guardsman they may be called up. A goodly number of the combat deaths in recent weeks have been of reservists serving in Iraq on short-term assignments.
From the day that Baghdad was entered by the U.S. Marines last April, it has become increasingly clear the United States had no adequate plans for the post war. The first American assigned there to direct, Jay Garner, was replaced by L. Paul Bremer, a 60-year-old former ambassador, who faultlessly wears a business suit in the heat of Baghdad. He came to Washington late last month to brief Bush on his plans.
The goals -- free elections, choosing a new government and U.S. withdrawal -- remained the targets, but the timetable has slipped if there ever was one. Bremer said this week that elections might be held in the fall of 2004. But other things must come first: water, telephone service, full electrical power, jobs and transportation.
Along with delays and dangers, the U.S. forces have been unable to find evidence of a weapons of mass destruction program with anything like the scope and immediacy that Bush sketched in the weeks before the war. The United States began, as soon as the first troops went into the country, sending along biological, chemical and nuclear weapons units to search for the equipment. They came up dry. Delta Force units were also sent out and found nothing.
Bush has remained sort of cheerfully confident, meeting this week with David Kay, a former U.N. weapons inspector who then went to Capitol Hill and gave an encouraging report to Congress.
But there are holes in this donut: the British said Saddam could launch a chemical attack in 45 minutes and it issued a report about African uranium which ended up in Bush's State of the Union Address.
Not only are American congressional committees looking into the derivation of these reports, but a British commission studying the death of a man accused of leaking government information may get into it.
When Bush finishes his August vacation, he will have 14 months to re-election. For the first time in the past two weeks, Democrats have clearly begun to feel that the president is vulnerable. In that atmosphere, Iraq along with the economy will become a major attack point. The problem for the Democrats is who can lead the attack.
(Concludes)
