A year later, mission still not accomplished

One year ago Saturday, President Bush stood on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared major combat operations in Iraq over. What he and other administration officials may not have foreseen was that political combat for the soul of a shattered nation was just beginning.

Since then the US effort to rebuild Iraq has been caught in a cruel vise of time. To their surprise, provisional authority officials discovered that 30 years of oppression by Saddam Hussein had destroyed much of Iraq's civil society. Restoring a form of representative government would be harder than they had thought.

But the US hasn't had the luxury of time. The June 30 date to give Iraqis back limited sovereignty is looming nearer, while a determined insurgency wages a vicious battle to push Americans out and convince ordinary Iraqis that their gunmen own the future. Meanwhile, it's become obvious that for good or ill the US invasion of Iraq has loosed enormous change on the world. The security of the American people, the freedom of Iraqis, the very shape of the Middle East - all may hinge on the current struggle for Iraq's hearts and minds. "The days and weeks immediately ahead are fateful and they are perilous," said Sen. Joe Lieberman (D) of Connecticut in a speech at the Brookings Institution.

The May 1, 2003, appearance of Mr. Bush, wearing a flight suit and standing on the deck of a carrier in front of a "Mission Accomplished" banner, now seems premature to even the White House itself.

Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser, has since said that he regrets the use of the banner and its implication that the hard part in Iraq was over. He has insisted, however, that he believes the banner was meant to refer to the mission of the Abraham Lincoln itself.

Administration officials also insist that much of the country remains peaceful, and that the physical reconstruction of Iraq has continued apace, with oil production back to prewar levels, electricity coming back, schools reopening, and so forth.

Health care spending in Iraq is now 30 times what it was under the regime of Saddam Hussein, noted Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz in a recent congressional appearance.

Furthermore, the US has reversed itself on some initial occupation decisions that have turned out to be counterproductive. Baath Party officials from the old regime will no longer be automatically disqualified from government-related jobs. The use of former Iraqi Army generals to negotiate a possible end to the standoff with insurgents in Fallujah marks something of a turning point. "What that essentially reveals is how big a mistake it was to get rid of the old Army," says Pat Lang, the former head of Middle East intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency.

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