Condoleezza Rice to run Iraq

[Rspaight]

Source: White House to expand role in Iraq recovery
Follows two days of unruly protests
Monday, October 6, 2003 Posted: 1:21 PM EDT (1721 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The White House is planning to take a more direct role in Iraq's reconstruction, a senior administration official said Monday.

The official, who called the plan a "new phase" in the rebuilding effort, said the White House is creating an Iraq Stabilization Group that would be responsible for handling the day-to-day administration of Iraq and be headed by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, according to the official.

Each of the four deputies reporting to Rice would be responsible for a particular area: fighting terrorism, developing the economy, overseeing political affairs and working with the news media, the official said. Each group will have among its members undersecretaries from the State, Defense and Treasury departments, and senior staff from the CIA.

The counterterrorism group will be led by Frances Townsend; the economic group by Gary Edson; the political group by former ambassador to India Robert Blackwill; and the media group by National Security Council communications director Anna Perez.

The Pentagon would remain the lead agency, with L. Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, still reporting to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

"This is not meant to diminish the Pentagon's effort but support it," the official said.

The announcement comes as the administration is looking to Congress for $20 billion in reconstruction and $67 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The official -- who spoke on condition of anonymity -- acknowledged that such changes are needed. "This is the recognition of [a] different phase," the official said.

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina responded to the White House announcement with a jab at the Bush administration.

"I have long argued that we needed better planning for Afghanistan and Iraq, and it's appalling that the president waited so long to take even this most basic step," Edwards said in a written statement.

He repeated calls for expanding the size and scope of the force in Afghanistan, and for doing a better job enlisting help from the United Nations and allies in Iraq.

Word of the reorganization comes amid encouraging progress reports about Iraqi reconstruction, but also as deadly attacks continue against coalition forces and Iraqi civilians.

At a cost of $140 million, 1,061 schools have been renovated and 723 more are awaiting final inspection and approval, according to the provisional authority. Slogans from the former Baathist regime and pictures of Saddam Hussein have been removed from the schools, the coalition said.

A provisional authority official told Reuters news service Monday that Iraq's electricity supply levels have exceeded levels from before the war.

But U.S. and other coalition soldiers continue to be killed by improvised explosive devices, many of the attacks coming in the so-called Sunni triangle region centered around the ancestral homeland of toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Saddam loyalists are suspected in the attacks.

A total of 199 coalition military -- mostly U.S. forces -- have been killed in both hostile and nonhostile situations since the end of major combat operations was announced by President Bush on May 1, according to the Pentagon.

Iraqi civilians and United Nations officials have also become targets of deadly attacks. In August, two large bombs killed dozens in separate attacks.

On August 19, the U.N. special representative in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and 17 others died after a car bomb ripped through the organization's headquarters in Baghdad.

Ten days later, 124 people and Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim -- one of Shiite Islam's top clerics -- were killed outside the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf in the deadliest attack in Iraq since the fall of Saddam's regime.

A week earlier, about a half-mile from the mosque, a bomb exploded at the house of an uncle of the ayatollah.

Two days of protests in two cities

On Sunday, hundreds of former Iraqi conscripts from Saddam's army scuffled with U.S.-led coalition troops and Iraqi police for a second straight day in Baghdad and the southern city of Basra.

In Baghdad, at least one U.S. soldier was slightly injured and five demonstrators were arrested during scuffles in Damascus Square.

Though all 440,000 ex-soldiers were to have received one-time $40 payments from the Coalition Provisional Authority by Saturday, coalition officials said the deadline passed with only 320,000 getting paid.

The payments -- totaling about $18 million -- made by provisional authority over a series of months are coming from formerly frozen Iraqi funds.

"The conscripts were told to come Sunday and get their money," said Capt. Bassem Issa, a spokesman for the Iraqi chief of police. But "there was no money to be given out."

The U.S.-led administration in Iraq officially disbanded the country's army in May, leaving hundreds of thousands of conscripts unemployed.

In Basra, about 200 disgruntled former Iraqi soldiers demonstrated Sunday, said British military press officer Maj. Neil Greenwood.

The ex-soldiers burned tires and threw stones at British forces, who dispersed the crowd by firing rubber bullets. None of the British soldiers was hurt and six demonstrators were arrested, Greenwood said.

Coalition Provisional Authority official Charles Heatley said Saturday the violence was sparked by former Baathist officers who spread rumors that the coalition authority "didn't have enough money to pay them all."

On Saturday, a doctor at Yarmouk Hospital in Baghdad reported one Iraqi died and five others were wounded in the protests, including two Iraqis with gunshot wounds to the chest. At least 20 others were treated for minor injuries, said Dr. Abbas Jaffer.

At least two U.S. soldiers and four Iraqis were wounded in Saturday's mayhem, the Coalition Provisional Authority said.

Other developments

• Iraq's Ministry of Communication announced Monday that AsiaCell Consortium, Orascom and AtherTel have been chosen to build the nation's first cell phone system and are expected to begin offering services within weeks. Construction of the mobile telephone systems will bring Iraq hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign investment, the ministry said.

• Iraq's Central Bank unveiled the country's new currency, which will have images of Iraqi historical figures instead of Saddam Hussein. The bills will go into circulation October 15 and Central Bank officials said Iraqis will have three months to exchange old money for the newly-designed bank notes. Ahmed Salman Mohammed, deputy governor of the Central Bank, displayed the notes, which will be available in six denominations -- 50, 250, 1,000, 5,000, 10,000 and 25,000 dinars.

[mikenycLI]

Now we are in REALLY BIG trouble !

One of the head inmates, is running the asylum !

If this is supposed to give us more confidence in Bush's Iraq policy, DUH, I don't think this is going to do it. I guess, preaching to the converted, is Bush's way of stemming the eroding public confidence. Amazing !

[Rspaight]

Rummy wasn't in the loop, and he's pissed...

Iraq Shake-up Skipped Rumsfeld
Confidential Memo Was First Alert, Defense Secretary Says

By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 8, 2003; Page A10

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that he was not told in advance about a reorganization of the Iraq reconstruction, which he heads. He said he still does not know the reason for the shake-up.

Rumsfeld said in an interview with the Financial Times and three European news organizations that he did not learn of the new Iraq Stabilization Group until he received a classified memo about it from national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on Thursday.

Rumsfeld was asked several times why the changes were necessary. "I think you have to ask Condi that question," he said, according to a transcript posted on the Web site of the Financial Times.

Pressed, he said: "I said I don't know. Isn't that clear? You don't understand English? I was not there for the backgrounding."

Rumsfeld's tart remarks offer a window on the tensions among members of President Bush's war cabinet, which are vividly described by administration officials but are rarely visible to outsiders. Rumsfeld's bluntness has occasionally rankled allies and caused headaches for the White House, but Bush is said to remain supportive.

The new group, headed by senior Rice aides at the National Security Council, gives the White House a stronger role in overseeing the reconstruction effort, which is under attack on Capitol Hill as poorly planned and unexpectedly expensive. Republican sources said the White House realizes that the consequences could be dire if the pace of the reconstruction does not improve markedly before the 2004 presidential election campaign begins.

Rumsfeld said he has not talked to Bush about the changes. When an interviewer said it sounded as though Rumsfeld had not been briefed about the changes before the memo and an interview Rice gave the New York Times, he replied, "That's true."

"She gave a background, she said what she said, and the way I read the memorandum is that it is basically what the responsibility of the NSC is and always has been, which is what's been going on," he said.

Rumsfeld said Rice's new system looks like a restatement of "the job of the National Security Council, to coordinate among different departments and agencies."

"Unfortunately, it's a classified memo. It shouldn't be. There's nothing in it that's classified," he said. "I kind of wish they'd just release the memorandum."

One source said the perception among some in the administration was that the Pentagon had been "neutered" by the changes, inasmuch as the White House now will be involved in budget and other decisions that had been the sole province of L. Paul Bremer, the civilian administrator in Iraq, who reports to Rumsfeld.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters Monday that Rumsfeld had been "very involved" in the overhaul. McClellen said last night, "This did not come as a surprise to the secretary because, as he noted in his interview, 'That is what is the charter of the National Security Council.' "

Bush's aides noted that the new group is a Washington support group for Bremer and that it was not meant to undercut him but to clear bureaucratic bottlenecks. "This is still being led by the Pentagon," McClellan said.