Posted on 08/20/2003 9:59:55 PM PDT by JustPiper
WASHINGTON -- When a truck bomb exploded Tuesday at the United Nations compound in Baghdad, Iraq, Sen. Jim Inhofe was just a few miles away, meeting with U.S. officials and doing telephone interviews with reporters back home in Oklahoma. "I'm not sure I heard it," Inhofe, R-Tulsa, said in a brief interview with The Oklahoman as he left Baghdad. "There are a lot of explosions around here."
Inhofe, a member of the Armed Services Committee, was one of several U.S. lawmakers in Baghdad at the time of the bombing; none were hurt. Inhofe said they were taken by helicopter to a military transport plane, then flown to Kuwait a few hours after the attack. The senator already had been scheduled to leave Iraq on Tuesday.
Inhofe had been in Baghdad most of Tuesday and said in an interview later from Kuwait that he is impressed with the progress toward rebuilding Iraq, even though it is unstable there. The bombing didn't change his overall perception that things are improving, he said.
Traffic was heavy, commerce was resuming and "people were upbeat and friendly toward the United States," he said.
"I felt much better (about the progress) after being there. My overall assessment is things are going very well."
Inhofe said the strategy of targeting the United States and others, in addition to U.S. troops, will "backfire" with the Iraqi people.
He left the United States on Sunday and went to Israel before arriving in Baghdad early Tuesday. He was scheduled to leave Kuwait late Tuesday for Bulgaria, where he is planning to meet with U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James Jones, commander of the European Command, about troop strength and readiness issues.
Donald Hamilton, who recently left the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism in Oklahoma City to work in Baghdad for the Coalition Provisional Authority, said in an e- mail to associates Tuesday that Inhofe was in his office at the time of the explosion, talking on the telephone.
Hamilton said unexploded ordnance -- shells that didn't go off when fired -- is usually detonated every half hour. When the truck bombing occurred, Hamilton commented that the explosives technician's watch must have been fast.
Inhofe was accompanied at times by a former aide in his Washington office, Greg McCarthy, who is a major in the Marine Corps Reserve and now stationed in Iraq.
McCarthy said by e-mail Tuesday that the U.S. lawmakers spent most of their time in the old Republican Palace, which is the main headquarters for the Coalition Provisional Authority. L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, briefed them. They attended a reception at a hotel with members of the Iraqi Governing Council.
Both locations are inside a secure zone protected by numerous checkpoints, said McCarthy, who also worked for former U.S. Rep. J.C. Watts, R-Norman.
After the bombing, there were discussions about canceling the reception with the governing council, but it went on "under much tighter security and tension," McCarthy said.
Danny Finerty, Inhofe's communications director, said Inhofe is scheduled to return to the United States on Thursday.
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