Posted on 04/04/2003 5:02:18 AM PST by JohnHuang2
WASHINGTON, March 29 (Reuters) - Despite setbacks on the road to Baghdad, President George W. Bush gave Americans on Saturday an upbeat assessment of U.S. military operations in Iraq, saying troops were less than 50 miles (80 km) from the capital and fighting the "most desperate" Iraqi army units.
The Pentagon also launched a graphic public relations offensive aimed at demonizing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his fighters and rallying public opinion behind the war.
So far, Bush appears to be picking up support at home despite questions about military tactics, mounting civilian casualties and the duration of the U.S.-led campaign.
A Newsweek poll published 10 days after the war began found that 74 percent of Americans think the Bush administration has a well-thought-out military plan. Bush's job approval rating also climbed 15 points to 68 percent.
Bush, who spent the second weekend of the war at the Camp David presidential retreat and led a videoconference with his war council, described the fighting as "fierce" and acknowledged: "We do not know its duration."
But the Newsweek poll found that 49 percent of Americans would support continuing military action against Iraq for more than a year if necessary.
Bush's upbeat assessment of military operations to date contrasted with some reports from the field that commanders had ordered a pause of four to six days in their push toward Baghdad because of supply shortages and Iraqi resistance.
Food rations have also been cut sharply for at least some frontline U.S. units and fuel use has been limited, according to correspondents with the forces south of Baghdad.
After a suicide bombing that killed four American soldiers, U.S. Central Command warned that its forces were facing Iraqi "terror behavior" that smacked of desperation.
But senior commanders at their Gulf headquarters in Qatar said there would be no pause in the overall air and ground campaign to overthrow Saddam.
"The big answer is 'no', there's not a resupply problem," Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, vice director for operations for the military's Joint Staff, told reporters in Washington.
The White House also played down the long-term cost to U.S. taxpayers of rebuilding post-war Iraq. A White House report predicted Iraqi oil reserves would pay for reconstruction, but critics said Bush's budget office was overly optimistic.
In his weekly radio address, Bush accused Saddam's "dying regime" of committing dozens of atrocities against its own people and prisoners of war, citing graphic reports of an Iraqi woman who "was hanged for waving at coalition troops."
He said Iraqi forces were murdering citizens who refused to fight, brutalizing and executing prisoners of war and opening fire under the flag of surrender. Iraqis counter-attacked by accusing the United States of targeting a popular Baghdad market in an air raid they said killed more than 50 people.
"War criminals will be hunted relentlessly and judged severely," said Bush, who was briefed for an hour on Saturday by his war council, including national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, CIA Director George Tenet, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell.
At the Pentagon, chief Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke played videotaped clips of a news documentary showing the effects of Iraq's use of chemical weapons against Kurdish villagers 15 years ago and of an interview of a woman who says her family was tortured by Saddam's government.
Despite criticism of the war strategy and tougher-than-expected resistance on southern battlefields, Bush said U.S. and British forces were taking control of the country were now "less than 50 miles from Baghdad."
"The regime that once terrorized all of Iraq now controls a small portion of that country," he said.
FIERCE FIGHTING
Bush ticked off a list of U.S. advances. It included clearing mines from a key waterway, taking control of the port city of Umm Qasr, getting humanitarian aid flowing, securing more than 600 oil wells, and preventing Saddam's forces from launching missiles at neighboring states. "We are now fighting the most desperate units of the dictator's army," he said.
The White House swung into damage control after the commander of the U.S. Army's V Corps was quoted on Friday as saying unanticipated Iraqi guerrilla tactics and overstretched supply lines pointed to a longer conflict than predicted.
The White House insists that Bush never put a timetable on the war, and likened the second-guessing to unjustified fears of a "quagmire" early in the successful military campaign to oust the Taliban in Afghanistan.
"I think the point here is, you've heard it repeatedly from administration officials that we cannot predict how long it will go," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
Asked to reconcile those remarks with Cheney's prediction earlier this month that the war would be "relatively quick ... weeks rather than months," Fleischer noted that Cheney also had said there was always the possibility of complications that could not be anticipated.
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