BAGHDAD, April 30 -- Forty-two days after U.S. forces invaded Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld paid a triumphant visit to Baghdad today, meeting his top ground commander in former president Saddam Hussein's opulent Abu Gharyb palace.
Rumsfeld, the highest-ranking administration official to visit since the war, flew first to the southern city of Basra for a meeting with British commanders. Then he came to Baghdad and met with commanders and other officials at the palace, taped a message to the Iraqi people, toured a power plant and addressed soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division during a boisterous town meeting in an aircraft hangar at the airport.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld greets U.S. troops at Baghdad's international airport, where he told them, "You've liberated a people."
(Luke Frazza -- AFP)
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"You've rescued a nation, you've liberated a people, you've deposed a cruel dictator and you have ended his threat to free nations," Rumsfeld told the troops. "You've braved death squads and dust storms, racing across hundreds of miles to reach Baghdad in less than a month. Some people called that a quagmire."
Joining in the celebratory mood, retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay M. Garner, the administration's top reconstruction official here, told reporters that they should focus less on demonstrations against the U.S. occupation and more on the "incredible" liberation of Iraq by U.S. forces.
"You all are reporting a lot about some demonstrations, and yeah, there's some demonstrations," Garner said. "That's the first step in democracy -- you're allowed to disagree. Damn fellas, we ought to be beating our chests every morning. We ought to look in the mirror and get proud and suck in our bellies and stick out our chests and say, 'Damn, we're Americans,' and smile."
Al-Quds Al-Arabi, an Arabic-language newspaper in London, published what it said was a faxed letter from Hussein calling on Iraqis to fight the U.S. occupation. "There are no priorities except kicking out the infidel, criminal, murderous and cowardly occupier," the letter said.
If authentic, the faxed letter would be the first evidence that the fallen Iraqi leader is still alive despite two U.S. attempts to kill him with bombs and missiles aimed at buildings where he was thought to be hiding. Fifteen of 55 senior Iraqi leaders wanted by the United States have surrendered or been taken into custody since the U.S. takeover. But no trace has been found of Hussein; his two sons, Uday and Qusay; or his most senior aides, former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan and Izzat Ibrahim, vice president of the Baath Party's ruling Revolutionary Command Council.
Maj. Gen. Buford C. Blount III, commander of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, said the overwhelming majority of Iraqis welcomed the invasion that destroyed Hussein's government and were not opposing U.S. forces. But he stopped short of calling Baghdad a "permissive environment," the military's way of describing an area where soldiers are under no threat.
"We've got a multitude of challenges out there, the first from just criminal acts," he said. "We stop a bank robbery every other day or so. There's random shootings -- we have one just about every day."
The city is also awash in weapons and ammunition distributed by Hussein shortly before the war began, Blount said, adding that U.S. forces are taking 40 truckloads of confiscated ammunition out every day.
Before meeting with Rumsfeld at the Abu Gharyb palace, Garner, who heads the Pentagon's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, said a humanitarian crisis in Iraq had been averted and that infrastructure was not as badly damaged as some believe. "In fact, Doctors Without Borders have gone home," Garner said, referring to the French relief organization, "and there's not much infrastructure problems here, other than connecting some stuff back together."
Rumsfeld heard a different story when he traveled by armed motorcade, past dozens of bombed-out trucks on the roads near the airport, to the South Baghdad power plant for briefings by Army engineers. OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopters escorted the motorcade on the 20-minute ride, during which some Iraqis standing along the road waved as he passed.
At the power plant on the Tigris River, Maj. Andy Backus, attached to an engineering group focused on restoring electric power, water and sewer services and irrigation, said Baghdad was running on about 40 percent of its regular power supply.
"Sir, when we arrived here, on the 12th of April, we faced a black-start situation," Backus told Rumsfeld, explaining that no power facilities were operating at that time. Now, Backus said, all three Baghdad power plants were running and power had been restored to all hospitals and 40 percent of residences.
Army Brig. Gen. Steven R. Hawkins, who commands Task Force Fajr -- the Arabic word for dawn -- said the sewage system was overloaded and was pumping raw waste into the Tigris. And Maj. Regan McDonald, a civil engineer trained in hydrology, told Rumsfeld that a model of the country's irrigation system was destroyed by looters who vandalized the Irrigation Ministry.
Rumsfeld began his trip in Basra, where Maj. Gen. Robin V. Brims, commander of British forces in Iraq, and other British commanders briefed him on conditions in southern Iraq over tea, coffee and cookies in the airport terminal.
"It's been 20 years," Rumsfeld said upon arrival, referring to his last visit to Iraq in December 1983, when he came as President Ronald Reagan's Middle East envoy to cultivate better relations with Hussein at the height of the Iran-Iraq war.
When a reporter traveling with him made a slip of the tongue and asked how it felt to be back on American soil, Rumsfeld quickly replied: "Iraqi soil, let there be no doubt."
"When we look back on this effort, I think what is significant is that a large number of human beings, intelligent and energetic, have been liberated, they are out from under the heel of a truly brutal, vicious regime, and that's a good thing," Rumsfeld said.
After arriving in Baghdad, Rumsfeld proceeded directly to Abu Gharyb, the palace serving as headquarters for Army Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, commander of ground forces in Iraq, who reports to Gen. Tommy R. Franks, head of the U.S. Central Command with responsibility for the Middle East. McKiernan offered a cautious assessment: "I'd say we still have a ways to go in terms of the security situation, but every day is progress."
Despite heavy bombing of Hussein's palaces and other so-called "leadership targets," Abu Gharyb was left largely intact, its cavernous, marble rooms and huge crystal chandeliers undamaged. Air war planners targeted only the palace's rear wing, dropping precision-guided bombs on a residential section and underground complex where they thought Hussein or other Iraqi leaders might be living.
"As you can see, he wasn't lacking for lifestyle," Air Force Maj. Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., the Central Command's operations director, said of Hussein. "Lifestyles of the rich and infamous, maybe."
Numerous members of Rumsfeld's staff expressed disbelief, after working virtually nonstop for months on the war, that they were inside one of Hussein's palaces in Baghdad. They took turns having their pictures taken in a vast throne-like chair with lion's heads on each arm.
"It is truly an historic event," one senior Pentagon official said. "The president was clear: 'We're going to liberate people.' We're here. We've done it."
In one small and relatively nondescript room in the palace, Rumsfeld taped a video message that will be broadcast to the Iraqi people from a mobile broadcasting station in Baghdad and from Commando Solo psychological operations aircraft.
"Back home in America, I have three children and six grandchildren. The youngest is just 1 year old," Rumsfeld said. "I want the same things for them that each of you want for your children and grandchildren: safety, security and a just society where they have freedom to pursue their dreams. Let me be clear: Iraq belongs to you. We do not want to own or run it. We will stay as long as necessary to help you do that -- and not a day longer."
