Live from Baghdad

...That gratitude was obvious across all the communities we encountered, definitely including Sunni Arabs...

...you have to address these things together—our biggest remaining challenges are number one, electricity...

...There has been minimal damage to infrastructure—lots of regime damage over decades, but minimal war damage to infrastructure except for telecommunications, which we had to target...

...And they understand that helping the Iraqis build a free and democratic society will help make our children and grandchildren safer...

...I remember ten years ago, then-secretary Cheney commented that when he made visits to troops to lift their morale, he always came home with his morale lifted...

...They are brave when they have to fight—and they still have to fight—and they are caring and ingenious and extraordinarily imaginative when they deal with humanitarian and political and civil military challenges, which they are fortunately in a position to be doing in most of the country...

...There has been no environmental catastrophe, either from oil well fires or from dam breaks...

...There is no food crisis...

...we didn't have to do it...

...there isn't one...

...It's only a guerrilla war in certain similarity of tactics...

...When it came the turn of one old Arab to speak, in his black robes with the classic gold embroidery and a white kaffiyeh with a black band around his head, he began to talk about how "it wasn't just the Kurds who were oppressed by Saddam...

...Overall, we encountered a remarkably positive reception in the Shi'a heartland, the holy cities of Karbala and Najaf...

...Where there was once a lush landscape of productive, fresh-water marshes, there is now a wasteland the size of the state of New Jersey...

...fortunately, there isn't one...

...There is no refugee crisis...

...Make no mistake...

...Some conditions were worse than we anticipated, particularly in the security area, and there are three...

...The public food distribution is up and running...

...Their morale is high...

...And even in Fallujah, which is unquestionably the toughest area we've encountered, the 3rd Infantry Division is making notable progress...

...The second big impression I came away with is that the pervasive fear of the old regime is still alive in Iraq...

...Let me just conclude once more that it's not possible often enough to say "thank you" to the troops...

...We planned for a health crisis...

...One reporter with us compared it to the surface of the Moon—a parched, lifeless void...

...we were all oppressed by Saddam...

...There is no health crisis...

...The progress that our troops are making is helping to lessen the grip of fear...

...Third, and worst of all, it was difficult to imagine before the war that the criminal gang of sadists and gangsters who have run Iraq for thirty-five years would continue fighting—fighting what has been sometimes called a "guerrilla war...

...Second, the police turned out to require a massive overhaul...

...Lt.] General [Ricardo] Sanchez, the outstanding new commander [of coalition ground forces], is a veteran of Kosovo— he went in at the beginning and stayed there for a year...

...But some important assumptions turned out to underestimate the problem...

...Oil production has passed the one-million-barrels per-day mark...

...The Iraqi people want to build a free, secure, and democratic future...

...We planned for the possibility of massive destruction of this resource of the Iraqi people...

...We are committed to working with Iraqis and the international community to achieving the better government that the Iraqi people deserve...

...I raise these issues because one conclusion that I draw from this visit is that the history of atrocities and the punishment of those responsible are directly linked to our efforts to establish better security...

...In Al Hillah, villagers told us stories about how buses and trucks of people were led to a field where they were gunned down and buried dead or alive...

...It's still a fragile achievement...

...The entire south and north are impressively stable, and the center is getting better day-by-day...

...We had a very moving meeting with the members of the town council and a fewother independents that had been invited...

...In spite of a security situation that was difficult to anticipate, we are making significant progress, as yesterday's events [the killing of Uday and Qusay Hussein] demonstrate...

...And there has been no need for massive oil field repair...

...It strikes me that in many ways, Iraqis are like prisoners who have emerged from years of solitary confinement with no light, no news, no knowledge of the outside world, and they have just emerged into the blinding sun and the fresh air of freedom...

...Their obvious commitment to getting the job done right is having a positive effect on the people of Iraq...

...Would you mind jotting down for me some of those examples...

...There's been a lot of talk that there was no plan...

...He thanked the president and the coalition forces for their liberation, and I thought, "OK, and now comes `we Arabs deserve consideration as well.'" And the most extraordinary thing was this old Arab said the Kurds were driven out of their homes, and they're entitled to their homes back...

...In the center, the 3rd Armored Division in Baghdad and the 4th Infantry Division in what's sometimes called the Sunni heartland are demonstrating great progress, particularly in the critical area of getting intelligence that allows us to hunt down the mid-level Ba'athists who are hiring those killers...

...Inevitably, some of our assumptions turned out to be wrong...

...But even at the tactical level, I believe this will go down as the first guerrilla tactic in history in which contract killings, killings for hire, going out and soliciting young men for $500 to take a shot at an American, was the principal tactic employed...

...The school year has been salvaged...

...That may surprise some, but in fact, Saddam and his two evil sons practiced what I've called "equal opportunity" oppression...

...In the case of the Marsh Arabs, liberation came just in time to save a fragment of a civilization that goes back thousands of years...

...Ambassador [Paul] Bremer has an excellent, three-pronged strategy for addressing the way ahead...

...Medical supply convoys are escorted to and from the warehouses...

...Our biggest remaining challenges, beyond the security issue—and, in fact, you can't separate these from the security issue, because electricity shortages contribute to security problems, and sabotage contributes to electricity shortages...

...In our briefing he commented that things are happening in Iraq after three months that didn't happen after twelve months in Kosovo...

...Schools nationwide have reopened and final exams are complete...

...First, no [Iraqi] army units, at least noneof any significant size, came over to our side, so that we could use them as Iraqi forces with us today...

...So far—and I underscore "so far"—the Shi'a extremists and the Iranians don't seem to be getting much traction in the Shi'a heartland...

...Hospitals nationwide are open...

...I'm not going to take the time here to read through them, but just off the top of his head, he gave me a handwritten note with ten things that have already been accomplished in Iraq that had not been accomplished in Kosovo when he left after a year...

...But to do so, we need to remove the blanket of fear that still covers them...

...I don't know if that's representative, but it was powerful...

...That's not surprising, particularly when you have a chance to view first-hand the kinds of horrors that Saddam and his regime perpetrated, the effects of which are visibleeverywhere you turn in that country...

...There is no humanitarian crisis...

...The north and south are extraordinarily stable, and the 101st Air Assault Division and the 1st Marine Division are doing extraordinary civil-military work...

...There was a plan, but as any military officer can tell you, no plan survives first contact with reality...

...Today, the graveyard in Hillah is one of dozens that havebeen discovered throughout Iraq...

...Kirkuk now is run by its own police force, but we have to work every day to try to make sure that the appetite for correcting things—that the need for Kurds to get back to their homes, for example—is managed in a peaceful way...

...I said, "Well, that's interesting...

...What they do in a day's work is extraordinary, and it's a great tribute to the quality of people that serve this country...

...Doctors and nurses are at work...

...First, there is enormous gratitude on their part for American and British forces, and for President Bush and Prime Minister Blair personally, for what they have done to bring about the liberation of the Iraqi people from an incredibly evil and brutal regime...

...and number three, the domination of the local media by hostile sources, including, from the outside world, from al-Jazeera and al-Arabia [satellite television networks] and some other unhelpful foreign broadcasts...

...number two, jobs and unemployment...

...There are local town councils in most major cities and major districts of Baghdad, and they are functioning free from Ba'athist influence...

...Among the most horrific remnants of the brutality of that regime that I witnessed were the Marsh Arabs of the village of Al Taraba, the mass graves of Al Hillah, and the industrial-style execution process that was practiced in Abu Gharib prison...

...we are making a great deal of progress...

...I came away with two overwhelming impressions about the feelings of the Iraqi people...

...Fortunately, many things turned out to be much better than our assumptions, in no small measure, I think, because of a brilliant military plan that achieved extraordinary surprise...

...And I guess I can say the same today...

...That was part of my mission...

...In fact, while we were in the north, a field commander there told us they had just temporarily stopped the excavation of a newly discovered gravesite after unearthing the remains of eighty victims, including women and little children, some still with their toys...

...So, fortunately, much of what we planned for, much of what's captured in the title of the initial office—Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, what we planned for and budgeted for—has not proved necessary...

...There's a similar situation in the northern regions, and what was perhaps most remarkable—although I think it's still fragile—is the extraordinary stability that's been achieved in the city of Kirkuk, where we have feared from the beginning the possibility of ethnic conflict, perhaps the one place in Iraq where it is most likely, with large populations not only of Sunni Arabs but also of Sunni Kurds, of Turks, and of Christians...

...I might point out we planned for a food crisis...

...Our coalition troops continue every day to make remarkable progress in that direction...

...The killing of Qusay and Uday Hussein help enormously in that regard...