‘A Good Day for the Iraqi People’

Here are excerpts of a news briefing by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

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Rumsfeld: This is a good day for the Iraqi people. There is no question but that there are difficult and very dangerous days ahead and that the fighting will continue for some period. But certainly anyone seeing the faces of the liberated Iraqis, the free Iraqis, has to say that this is a very good day

Watching them, one cannot help but think of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Iron Curtain. We are seeing history unfold, events that will shape the course of a country, the fate of a people, and potentially the future of the region. Saddam Hussein is now taking his rightful place alongside Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Ceausescu in the pantheon of failed, brutal dictators, and the Iraqi people are well on their way to freedom

But there is still a great deal of work to do and many unfinished missions to complete before victory can be declared. Baghdad is in the process of being liberated ... but other Iraqi cities are still being contested, and there will still be tough fighting and difficult tasks ahead.

We still must capture, account for or otherwise deal with Saddam Hussein and his sons and the senior Iraqi leadership. We still must find and ensure the safe return of prisoners of war ....We still must secure the northern oil fields, which have probably been wired for.

We still need to find and secure Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction facilities and secure Iraq’s borders so we can prevent the flow of weapons of mass destruction materials and senior regime officials out of the country.

We still must find out everything we can about how the Iraqi regime acquired its capabilities and the proliferation that took place by countries in the industrialized world. We need to locate Iraqi scientists with knowledge of these programs.

And we’re asking people to come forward and help in this effort. Rewards are available to those who help us prevent the disappearance of personnel, documentation and materials.

We must also capture or kill the terrorists still operating in Iraq and prevent them from gaining access to weapons of mass destruction.

We must locate Baath Party members, records and weapon caches. We must locate the records of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, the Special Security Organization, the Fedayeen Saddam death squads and the Special Republican Guards.

We must locate the wealth of the Iraqi regime inside of Iraq and outside of the country so it can be returned to the rightful owners, the Iraqi people.

And we must begin the process of working with free Iraqis, those liberated from portions of the country and those returning home from exile, to establish an Iraqi interim authority and help to pave the way for a new Iraqi government, a government to be chosen not by the coalition, not by the United States, but by the Iraqi people, based on democratic principles of political freedom, individual liberty and the rule of law.

And finally, to the Iraqi people, let me say this. There are a lot of reporters embedded with coalition forces in your country. This is your opportunity to tell them your stories so that history properly records the viciousness, the brutality, of that regime and so that history is not repeated.

Saddam Hussein’s Whereabouts

It is hard to find a single person. It is hard to find them when they’re alive and mobile. It’s hard to find them when they’re not well, and it’s hard to find them if they’re buried under rubble. We don’t know.

And he’s not been around. He’s not active. Therefore, he’s either dead or he’s incapacitated, or he’s healthy and cowering in some tunnel some place, trying to avoid being caught.

What else can one say?

Question: Will you get him?

Rumsfeld: Who knows? Time will tell. The important things that needed to happen will happen. The regime will change.

Weapons of Mass Destruction

Q: Are you concerned that those weapons might have been shipped out of the country?

Rumsfeld: You bet. The nexus between terrorist states with weapons of mass destruction -- in this case, chemical and biological and nuclear technologies and knowledge -- and terrorist groups is a critical link. And the thought that some of those materials could leave the country and [fall into] the hands of terrorist networks would be a very unhappy prospect. So it is important to us to see that that doesn’t happen.

Q: Is it a concern, or has it happened?

Rumsfeld: No, it’s a concern. It clearly would be unhelpful if terrorists got their hands on some of Iraq’s chemical or biological capabilities.

Q: What about the rationale for the war? Is it important in that sense that we find them?

Rumsfeld: Look, the -- we are in the process of trying to liberate that country. And at the moment where the war ends and the coalition forces occupy the areas where those capabilities, chemical and biological weapons, are likely to be, to the extent they haven’t been moved out of the country -- it obviously is important to find them

And we need help. We need people to come forward ... so we can find documentation that they’ve been spreading around the countryside on their weapons of mass destruction program. We need people to come forward and volunteer that information.

And we’re at a point now where they need not fear. If they’re in one of the liberated areas, they need not fear this regime, because this regime is not going to come back and occupy that country.

Humanitarian Aid

Rumsfeld: The more people who go into that country and see how serious the situation is ... they’re going to report there’s a humanitarian crisis, the implication [being] that it just occurred. It didn’t just occur. When they say one-third of the city doesn’t have sufficient water, compare that with six months ago when maybe half of the city didn’t have sufficient water.

Here’s just one: In Umm Qasr ... the population has increased from 15,000 to 40,000 due to the availability of supplies and employment. Water supply is above prewar levels. Electricity has been restored by U.K. engineers. Sufficient food is readily available. Medical facilities are sufficient and operating. UNICEF is providing supplies.

The port’s cleared of mines and open to limited operations. The channel needs dredging. Railway station is cleared by explosive ordnance detachment. Rail line is intact from there to Nasiriyah, and they intend to open a line within seven days, which will allow movement of bulk water up the Euphrates Valley.

So, I mean, there’s just one city.

Security Within Iraq

Myers: While Iraqis are beginning to celebrate in parts of Baghdad and several other areas, there are portions of Iraq still in the grip of fear. Out west, small numbers of regime death squads still exist and are harassing travelers and citizens.

The coalition may also have to remove regime forces from cities and areas in northern Iraq and to eliminate small pockets of resistance in other areas. And we’re currently doing just that .... More must be done in Baghdad as well. Fighting inside the capital presents a substantial risk to coalition forces, and we cannot and must not become overconfident.

Q: What sort of Iraqi forces are left to contend with?

Myers: In Baghdad city itself, still the Special Security Organization, Special Republican Guard, the death squads ... Baath Party members who use force and fear and intimidation to coerce the population.

In terms of regular army, there are about 10-plus regular army divisions left in the north, and perhaps as much as one brigade of a Republican Guards division up there, an infantry division. Now, they have been subjected to bombing by air power and will continue to be dealt with in that way for some time.

Rumsfeld: There are a number of cities that are still hotly contested, and will be for some time. There are some cities that are now under coalition control. There are also some that are partly under coalition control. So there’s a lot of work left to do. And I do believe that we’re seeing, in the case of Baghdad, it is tipping.

It doesn’t mean that it’s over, and again, it most assuredly is not over.

Q: What happened to the hundreds or thousands of regime loyalists that seem to have disappeared overnight from Baghdad?

Myers: I suspect that many were killed in the defense. I suspect some are still fighting in Baghdad. It’s also possible that they have tried to leave or blend in if they’ve lost their enthusiasm for supporting this regime.

And we’re taking steps to deal with that in terms of interdicting the roads out of Baghdad.

Syria

Q: What’s next in the Middle East? You have thrown down the gauntlet to Syria. Are they in the sights for military action?

Rumsfeld: No one’s thrown down the gauntlet. I’ve accurately observed that they would be well-advised to not provide military capabilities of Iraq. They seem to have made a conscious decision to ignore that. Senior regime people are moving out of Iraq into Syria, and Syria is continuing to send things into Iraq. We find it notably unhelpful. The question you ask, however, is not a question I can answer. It depends on people’s behavior. And certainly I have nothing to announce. We’re still dealing with Iraq.

We are getting scraps of intelligence saying that Syria has been cooperative in facilitating the movement of people out of Iraq into Syria. And then in some cases they stay there In other cases they’re moving from Syria to still other places. We also have seen in a number of instances people from Syria moving into Iraq, unhelpfully, as well as ... night vision goggles and that type of thing.

The United States’ World Image

Rumsfeld: There’s no question but that there are a number of, particularly television stations, as well as print, in [the Arab] world that have carried a message that was false. They’ve carried a message that tried to lead people in that part of the world to believe that we were fighting Iraq and the Iraqi people, as opposed to a vicious dictator; that we were anti a religion, which is totally untrue. But that’s going to be counterbalanced with the faces of people who are free. And the test is in the tasting. The United States is not going to stay in that country and occupy it. Truth ultimately finds its way to people’s ears and eyes and hearts. And there is, I am certain, among the Iraqi people a respect for the care and the precision that went into that bombing campaign. It was not a long air campaign. It didn’t last for weeks. And there was minimal collateral damage, unintended damage.

And the preciseness of the targeting was respected such that people could go out on the streets of those towns during bombing raids -- unless they were connected to a military regime facility.