Brave Face Belies Administration's Panic

By Jim Lobe, deleted. Posted November 13, 2003.

This week's abrupt and unscheduled return here by L. Paul Bremer, Washington's proconsul in Baghdad, for top-level White House consultations, as well as the partial leak of a pessimistic Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) report on public attitudes in Iraq, pushed the Bush administration off balance.

The news that at least 15 Italian paramilitary and army troops, as well as 10 others, were killed in a suicide attack on the carabinieri headquarters in the hitherto relatively peaceful southern city of Nasariyeh on Wednesday seemed only to underline the sense here that resistance to the US-led occupation in Iraq is both growing and beyond control.

"It is a tough situation," Bremer, who heads the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), told reporters after emerging from the White House on Wednesday morning.

"I have said repeatedly in my discussions, both private and public, for six months that I am completely confident and optimistic about the outcome in Iraq, but we will face some difficult days, like today when we had the attack on the Italian soldiers in the south."

Asked about the CIA report that found growing popular disillusionment with the US occupation, Bremer was unusually uncertain. "I think the situation with the Iraqi public is, frankly, not easy to quantify."

The CIA report, whose existence was disclosed by the Philadelphia Inquirer, concluded that growing numbers of Iraqis believe that the occupation can be defeated and are supporting the insurgents.

The report, written by the CIA's station chief in Baghdad, was formally presented to top officials Monday, but word of its conclusions was also selectively leaked to various reporters, apparently, said the newspaper, to "make sure the assessment reaches Bush."

The Inquirer's source indicated frustration with Iraq hawks, including Vice President Dick Cheney and the Pentagon's civilian leadership, whose optimistic assessments of the situation had crowded out more somber analyses in White House discussions.

According to the newspaper, the report argued that public skepticism of US intentions in Iraq remained very high -- an assessment corroborated by recent Gallup polls in Baghdad -- and that the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), which was hand-picked by the CPA, has virtually no popular support.

It also warned that friction between occupation authorities and the Shia Muslim community, both in Baghdad and in the southern part of the country, was growing and could lead to open hostilities, a contingency that has been Washington's worst nightmare since last March's invasion.

Shiites account for at least 60 percent of Iraq's total population, more than twice as much as the Sunnis in central Iraq, the area that US officials have described as the main focus of Ba'ath Party "terrorists" who presumably remain loyal to ousted President Saddam Hussein.

The CIA report was obviously written before Wednesday's suicide attack on the carabinieri in predominantly Shiite Nasariyeh as well as an incident Sunday in which a US soldier shot and killed the US-appointed mayor of the overwhelmingly Shiite district of Baghdad, Sadr City, after a scuffle whose circumstances are being investigated by occupation authorities.

Administration officials have publicly described Bremer's two-day dash to Washington as routine, but circumstances belied that explanation.

In coming here, Bremer was forced to cancel a long-planned meeting in Baghdad with visiting Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller. Despite public opposition, Miller's government has supplied more troops to the occupation than any other country, except the United States and Britain, and last week lost an officer to hostile fire in Iraq.

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