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Troops hail rumsfeld conquering hero Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/international.cfm?id=494922003http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/international.cfm?id=494922003
US troops rally to hail Rumsfeld 'the conquering hero' in Baghdad
FOREIGN STAFF
DONALD Rumsfeld, the United States’ defence secretary, made an unannounced visit to Baghdad yesterday, savouring his moment as the liberator of Iraq in front of cheering US troops.
His tour of the country included a back-slapping meeting in Basra with British troops, and an address to the Iraqi people recorded in the ornate setting of one of Saddam Hussein’s former presidential palaces.
As George Bush, the US president, prepared to declare a formal end to hostilities in Iraq, Mr Rumsfeld’s tour marked a victory in a cause he had championed for years - the overthrow of Saddam. It came using a war plan he drafted and ardently defended when its success looked briefly in doubt.
"Iraq belongs to you," he told the Iraqi crowd, as he called on them to help track down former officials of the Baathist regime. "The coalition has no intention of owning or running Iraq."
The trip was not without some ironies. Mr Rumsfeld’s last visit to Iraq, he recalled, was 20 years ago - as Ronald Reagan’s emissary to Saddam. The two men were filmed shaking hands in a meeting that paved the way for the US re-establishing relations with Saddam as a bulwark against the Islamic leadership of Iran. Recently declassified documents show the US state department knew at that time that Iraq was making "almost daily" use of chemical weapons against Iranian forces in the Iran-Iraq war, and that the CIA suspected Saddam would try to build a nuclear bomb.
Mr Rumsfeld hammered home the public message yesterday that the US is not in Iraq to stay. He said: "Our goal is to restore stability and security so that you can form an interim government and eventually a free Iraqi government - a government of your choosing, a government that is of Iraqi design and Iraqi choice.
"We will stay as long as necessary to help you do that, and not a day longer."
Arriving in a special forces aircraft with elite, black-clad special operations soldiers acting as bodyguards, Mr Rumsfeld flew first from Kuwait to Basra to meet British commanders, including Brigadier Graham Bins, the commander of the 7th Brigade, 1st Armoured Division.
At a briefing in Basra airport’s marble-lined terminal, Brig Bins described the bloody fight for the key city.
The two men had tea on a low couch.
"It was hand-to-hand combat. Some of their fighters were climbing on to our tanks. It was brutal," Brig Bins said, adding that his forces had played "artillery table tennis" with the Iraqis.
In Baghdad, Mr Rumsfeld boarded a Humvee jeep and rode in a motorcade to Saddam’s former palace, now the US military headquarters. Later, he toured a renovated electricity plant.
Mr Rumsfeld’s views on Iraq had changed by the late 1990s. In January 1998, he co-signed a letter urging a Middle East strategy on Bill Clinton, the then president, that "should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power". In the Pentagon, serving his second term as defence secretary, Mr Rumsfeld helped a hawkish lobby push the case for war.
To cheers and applause from about 1,000 troops at Baghdad airport, Mr Rumsfeld yesterday could hail "possibly the fastest march on a capital in modern military history" - a mere 40 days after the war started.
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