Word: bremer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Meeting last month at a sweltering u.s. base outside Doha, Qatar, with his top Iraq commanders, President Bush skipped quickly past the niceties and went straight to his chief political obsession: Where are the weapons of mass destruction? Turning to his Baghdad proconsul, Paul Bremer, Bush asked, "Are you in charge of finding WMD?" Bremer said no, he was not. Bush then put the same question to his military commander, General Tommy Franks. But Franks said it wasn't his job either. A little exasperated, Bush asked, So who is in charge of finding WMD? After aides conferred...
...says, "you are going to increase the numbers of confrontations and engagements that you have." More worrying is an alternative explanation: that the coalition's heavy-handed actions are acting as a recruiting sergeant for disaffected Iraqis. Sadly, that may be the case. A U.S. official says Paul Bremer, head of the Office of the Coalition Provisional Authority, has ordered a get-tough policy to assure Iraqis that the U.S. is serious about taking on Saddam's Baath Party. It's how that has been done that is problematic...
...When it comes to the interim government, which the U.S. wanted in place sometime later this month, Coalition Provisional Authority chief L. Paul Bremer may have a case. U.S. officials want to keep the ultimate decision-making power in their hands during the transition. They are justifiably concerned that Iraqi parties have scant experience with pluralism and may mess things up. Iraq's Kurdish factions used to go to war over smuggling revenues, so you can imagine what kind of scrum there might be over Iraq's oil wealth. Anyway, the U.S. plan isn't to exclude Iraqis altogether...
...would demand further sacrifice of American lives and treasure. That's because for all the reasons the Bush Administration went to war in Iraq, retreat is not an option. The implications of the President's commitment may have been clarified in reports Wednesday that his viceroy in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, has asked Washington to send more troops and civilian administrators to Iraq to help turn around the security and infrastructure crises there. Key senators from both parties have been warning in recent weeks that success in Iraq will require more troops, whether sent by the U.S. or by its allies...
...understand why a power that was able to vaporize Saddam's regime within three weeks has been unable to guarantee the electricity supply to Baghdad. They want their immediate problems addressed, and they want to see a clear timetable and program for restoring their country to Iraqi rule. While Bremer has prudently avoided prematurely transferring power to an interim government dominated by pro-U.S. exiles, his decision to appoint an Iraqi consultative body rather than allow a governing structure to emerge from a national assembly is facing mounting criticism from all sides. The most serious blow came this week...