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IRAQ-U.S.: Fallujah Puts Bush in Crisis Mode

Analysis - By Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, Apr 13 2004 (IPS) - How do you know when the president of the United States is in crisis mode? When he cuts short his Easter holiday at his Texas ranch and returns to Washington to hold a rare press conference that he asks U.S. television networks to air on prime time.

The press conference will be only the 12th for President George W Bush after nearly three and half years in the White House, and the third to be televised in prime evening viewing hours.

"The president wants to give the American people an update on Iraq and talk about the way forward," said White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan on Tuesday.

An update indeed. In the past two weeks alone, 70 U.S. troops have been killed, compared to 139 who died during what Bush termed "major combat" last year. Thousands more have been maimed and injured.

At least some 700 Iraqis, including men, women and children have died, most of them in and around the Iraqi resistance hotbed of Fallujah, in the bloodiest fighting since the dictatorial regime of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein fell in April 2003.

You also know the president is in crisis mode when his often cocky secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, is pondering whether to add two brigade combat teams – between 10,000 and 14,000 soldiers – to an already huge force of 135,000 troops in Iraq, nearly one year after Bush declared major combat there over.

And in Iraq: a previously little-known young Shiite cleric named Moqtada al-Sadr, who leads thousands of eager, devoted fighters, declares, "I’m ready to die", while U.S.-trained Iraqi troops refuse to fight against their fellow citizens, and U.S. allies urge their citizens to quit the country the minute they can.

But developments around Fallujah, a name that has come to embody doubts over U.S. plans to hand over authority to an Iraqi provisional government in June, beg many urgent questions in the United States, not just an "update".

The Centre for American Progress, a think tank here founded by members of the administration of former Democratic President Bill Clinton, issued a list of questions it says Bush needs to answer during his press briefing.

"Are we embroiled in major combat operations?" reads one. "How is Iraq different from Vietnam? And, "Did you reach out to allies while on your vacation?"

On Tuesday, Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry wrote in the ‘Washington Post’ that recent developments in Iraq showed an advanced degree of "misjudgement" on Bush’s part.

The Democratic candidate, who will compete with Bush in November’s election, called for a ”de-Americanisation” of the occupation in Iraq and for Washington to hand over the civilian administration of the battered Arab country to the United Nations.

"The primary responsibility for security must remain with the U.S. military, preferably helped by NATO, until we have an Iraqi security force fully prepared to take responsibility," wrote Kerry.

"There is no one outside of the U.S. who doesn’t think that this is a total, utter, and unmitigated disaster," said Ivo H. Daalder of the Brookings Institution here at a discussion Monday. "Never has it been clearer that America needs international support and engagement in Iraq, and never has it been less likely that it will get that."

The crisis revealed itself again when news reports from Iraq cheered that the number of hostages taken was only one-half what had been originally believed – 40 in less than a week.

It grew as foreign diplomats flocked this week to the headquarters of, not the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council or the heavily fortified U.S. military barracks, but to the same Iraqi sector that Washington sought to undermine as it laid the path for U.S.-style secularism and democracy – the religious establishment.

The Muslim Scholars League, a moderate group of independent Iraqis, has been mediating the release of almost all of the several hostages freed so far.

And last but not least on the list of crisis makers for Bush: his administration is facing challenges at home to its Jun. 30 transfer deadline. Many in the United States, including from his own Republican Party, are calling on the president to delay the handover.

"If there is a chance to put this humpty dumpy back together – or to make a new one – the worst way to do it is to stick to the Jun. 30 deadline," said Daalder. "There is no government and nothing that is capable of keeping (Iraq) together other than us.. So why not just stay there?"

Little wonder then that Bush slashed one of his highly treasured holidays and was at long last getting ready to face the cameras.

"Last week’s events have to be a wake-up call to the Bush administration," said Brookings’ Kenneth M. Pollack at Monday’s discussion. "We have real problems, and if the administration is not willing to turn things around, those problems are going to get much worse in the future".