Bush Says Iraq Effort Progressing Steadily

A day after American forces killed Saddam Hussein’s sons, President Bush asserted Wednesday that the United States was making steady progress in pacifying postwar Iraq and that the sacrifices of U.S. troops were not in vain.

“Saddam Hussein’s sons were responsible for torture, maiming and murder of countless Iraqis,” Bush said in remarks at the White House Rose Garden. “Now, more than ever, all Iraqis can know that the former regime is gone and will not be coming back.”

The comments were the president’s first on the operation that killed Uday and Qusai Hussein, and it was his first progress report on the war since the beginning of the month. In the past three weeks, daily bombing and sniper attacks on U.S. forces have sapped morale among troops and support from the public.

“We know that our coalition forces are serving under difficult circumstances,” said Bush, who was flanked by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld; Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and L. Paul Bremer III, the top U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq.

“The families of our servicemen and women can take comfort in knowing that their sons and daughters and moms and dads are serving a cause that is noble and just and vital to the security of the United States,” Bush said.

There was a bright note for the administration Wednesday: U.S. forces captured another senior official from the deposed regime, Barzan Abd Ghafur Salayman Majid. Ranked No. 9 on the Pentagon’s most-wanted list, he had commanded the Special Republican Guard.

Otherwise, the news out of Iraq continued much as it has in recent weeks: Two U.S. soldiers were killed and eight were wounded, along with a civilian contractor, in a pair of ambushes -- one near the northern city of Mosul, where the Hussein brothers met their end, and the second in Ramadi, 60 miles west of Baghdad.

Three soldiers were also killed today during operations in northern Iraq, said Cpl. Todd Pruden, a military spokesman in Baghdad. The three are believed to have been attacked with small-arms fire and a rocket-propelled grenade.

And another audiotape purportedly made by Saddam Hussein was aired by Dubai-based Al Arabiya television. The recording, allegedly made by Hussein two days before his sons’ deaths, insists that the “battle is not over yet.”

“We tell our armed forces and our people that if America has achieved military superiority, it will not achieve supremacy in the battle of wills against the Iraqi people,” the voice said.

The White House has been looking for an opportunity to try to shake off questions about the rationale for war and the halting start of reconstruction efforts. The deaths of Uday and Qusai Hussein provided just such an opening in what had been weeks of bleak news.

“In the 83 days since I announced the end of major combat operations in Iraq, we have made progress, steady progress, in restoring hope in a nation beaten down by decades of tyranny,” Bush said in his Rose Garden remarks.

At the Pentagon, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz echoed that theme, saying the killings had helped “enormously” to “remove the blanket of fear that still covers” the Iraqi people.

Wolfowitz acknowledged that “the level of suspicion and paranoia [among Iraqis] is incredible.” But he said his recent visit to Iraq, along with Tuesday’s successful raid, persuaded him that “the progress that our troops are making is helping to lessen the grip of fear.”

“Make no mistake,” Wolfowitz said, “we are making a great deal of progress.”

But in a luncheon speech to the National Press Club, Bremer sounded a more cautious note, warning that the deaths of Hussein’s sons -- and even the possible death of Hussein -- “will not end attacks on our soldiers.”

“I don’t think it’s useful to hold out any hope that we can wave a magic wand over the field and suddenly do away with all our enemies,” Bremer said.

The Bush administration, particularly the Pentagon, has been criticized as having failed to plan adequately for the disorder and ruin that followed the war.

Bremer, who has been in Washington since the weekend to consult with the administration and Congress, used his speech to outline what Bush described as a “comprehensive plan” with “ambitious timetables and clear benchmarks” for the rebuilding effort.

In the next 60 days, Bremer said, he plans to:

* Restore a measure of security to Iraq, in part by recruiting a battalion of soldiers for a new Iraqi army; organize eight battalions of a new police force called the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps; reestablish the border guard and resume trials in Iraq’s Central Criminal Court.

* Restore electricity and health-care services to prewar levels, rehabilitate 1,000 schools and provide them with “de-Baathified” textbooks and help more Iraqi banks reopen.

* Work with the interim governing council, named this month, to call a constitutional congress so Iraqis can draw up a new constitution and hold national elections next year.

* Introduce a new currency Oct. 15, exchanging bills that are a decade old and, in some cases, of questionable value.

Bremer said the challenge the U.S. and its allies face in Iraq is of historic proportions -- more acute than the transition after the collapse of the Soviet Union, more complex than the rebuilding of Germany after the defeat of Hitler.

“Repairing the damage inflicted by Saddam -- the material, human and psychological damage -- is a huge task, a task which we will only succeed at if we have a real partnership between the coalition, the international community and the Iraqi people,” Bremer said.

To that end, the president, while insisting that the U.S. already enjoyed significant international support, made a direct appeal to countries around the world, asking them to contribute “militarily and financially.”

“Nineteen nations are providing more than 13,000 troops to help stabilize Iraq,” Bush said. “More than two dozen nations have pledged funds that will go directly toward relief and reconstruction efforts.”

Even so, Bremer predicted a $4-billion deficit next year for the rebuilding effort.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration got a boost from an unexpected source: former President Clinton.

Too much is being made of the administration’s mistakes in the weeks before the war, Clinton said, particularly Bush’s assertion in his January State of the Union address that Iraq had sought to buy uranium from Africa. The truth of that statement, attributed to the British, was questioned by the CIA.

“You know, everybody makes mistakes when they are president,” Clinton said Tuesday on CNN’s “Larry King Live.”

“I mean, you can’t make as many calls as you have to make without messing up once in a while. The thing we ought to be focused on is what is the right thing to do now.”

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Times staff writer Esther Schrader contributed to this report.