Rumsfeld pays visit to troops
BAGHDAD -- Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld flew into Baghdad yesterday on a surprise eight-hour visit, venturing into the Abu Ghraib prison -- the center of the detainee-abuse scandal that has threatened to end his political career during the past two weeks.
Arriving with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard B. Myers, Rumsfeld told a packed hall of cheering soldiers that the shocking abuses had been the work of a tiny handful of American soldiers, who ''betrayed our values and sullied our country."
The applause from the crowd, seated in one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces on a military base near Baghdad Airport, grew quiet as Rumsfeld said: ''Like each of you, I'm sure, and like most Americans, I was stunned. It was a body blow."
Rumsfeld's trip focused largely on pep talks to American soldiers and seemingly a morale boost for himself, after a bruising fortnight in which some in Washington have pressed for his resignation.
The jocular and relaxed defense secretary was a stark contrast from the terse, embattled official who testified May 7 before the Senate Armed Services Committee about the explosive scandal sparked two weeks ago by the release of photographs showing prisoner abuse.
''I'm a survivor," he said to the soldiers, joking that he had ''stopped reading the newspapers. You've got to keep your sanity somehow."
Also yesterday, a CIA official said in Washington that the man who beheaded Nicholas Berg, a 26-year-old man from Philadelphia, appeared to be Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist in Iraq believed to be aligned with Osama bin Laden.
The CIA official said the assessment was based on technical analysis of the grisly video clip of the execution, which was published on an Islamic website Tuesday, three days after Berg's decapitated body was found hanging from a bridge in west Baghdad.
The chilling footage showed five masked men, one of whom read a statement threatening mass killings of Americans. The reader, wearing a headscarf and black ski mask, then dragged Berg aside and thrust a large knife into his neck, before holding his severed head up to the camera.
Berg, who had been in Iraq as a communications tower specialist, was apparently on his way home to Pennsylvania when he was kidnapped during heavy fighting last month.
Short clips of the video have aired on Arabic satellite channels, evoking a furious debate among some Iraqis about whether Berg's killing had become a propaganda coup for American forces.
''This video is timed so perfectly," said Wissam Hussein, 40, who owns the Rainbow electronics store in Baghdad's shopping district of Karrada. ''It comes just after the pictures of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, so it absorbs some of the anger among Iraqis."
Nader Sadiq, 40, a refrigerator salesman on the street, said he believed the US military's treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib had brought an inevitably gruesome killing. ''Evil creates evil, good creates good," he said. Still, he said the killing had shocked many Iraqis. ''The people who did this are not real Muslims," he said.
In Rumsfeld's rally to the troops yesterday, he told the soldiers gathered in the palace hall for what was billed as a town hall meeting: ''You folks have helped to liberate 25 million human beings. You've also performed any number of acts of kindness, generosity, and compassion to the Iraqi people that you have met, that you've worked with," he said.
That focus on rebuilding Iraq has been overwhelmed in recent weeks by the surge in violence.
With rising hostility among Iraqis over the American occupation, the soldiers last month fought their toughest front-line battles since the war erupted 14 months ago, suffering their largest monthly casualties of the entire conflict.
Rumsfeld's schedule did not include meetings with Iraqis, much like his four previous visits to Iraq since the fall of Hussein in April 2003, and like President Bush's unannounced trip to Baghdad in November.
As news of Rumsfeld's visit filtered through Baghdad yesterday afternoon, at least one Iraqi analyst expressed anger that the man whom Iraqis blame for the mistreatment of prisoners had sought to repair his image here.
''People in Iraq think he should be the first one who should go," said Sa'ad Jawad, professor of political science at the University of Baghdad. ''Iraqis want to see big heads rolling for this scandal. Instead he was sent to Baghdad to tell people he's still in his position, no matter what Iraqis say."
Jawad said Iraqis were particularly suspicious about hundreds of photographs taken by American soldiers inside Abu Ghraib, which Pentagon officials have declared too sensitive to release. Rumsfeld told reporters aboard the 90-minute flight from Kuwait to Baghdad that the accusations of a Pentagon coverup were ''garbage." He said some of the photographs involved only US soldiers, and that lawyers had judged them a violation of their privacy, presumably for their intimate nature.
Driving to Abu Ghraib prison in an armored convoy just a few miles from the airport's perimeter, Rumsfeld sped past the scores of Iraqis gathered at the prison gate, as they waited for permission to visit detained relatives inside.
As Rumsfeld walked into the Abu Ghraib prison, a few detainees held handwritten signs protesting their condition. Others looked on sullenly, according to the Associated Press. Rumsfeld did not talk to prisoners, and instead told reporters that the soldiers involved in the abuse would all be punished. ''The world will see how a free system, a democratic system, functions and operates," he said. ''Transparently, with no coverup."
Rumsfeld barely mentioned the ongoing fighting during his trip. In a breezy exchange with soldiers at his ''town hall meeting," the soldiers reminded their visitors of the lethal hazards they face daily.
Inviting questions from soldiers, Rumsfeld and Myers were asked why many of their Humvees were not armor-plated, and why the bulletproof vests left vulnerable parts exposed, despite the daily gunfire and explosive devices lobbed at the soldiers by Iraqis. Myers said the US military contractors for armored Humvees and body protection gear were racing to keep pace with the Army's demand in the drawn-out war. ''We are producing them and sending them over here as fast as we can," Myers said.
Among soldiers whose service in Iraq has stretched for months past their scheduled departure, some demanded to know whether the Pentagon would pay for their flights home.
One US Marine was killed in action yesterday in the so-called Sunni Triangle, which includes Fallujah and the surrounding areas west of Abu Ghraib. 