Monday, April 24, 2006
Car bombs killed 10 people and wounded 80 in Baghdad.
COMBINED DISPATCHES
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The U.S. ambassador urged war-weary Americans on Monday to dig in for the long haul: a years-long effort to transform Iraq and the surrounding region, now one of the world's major trouble spots.
"We must perhaps reluctantly accept that we have to help this region become a normal region, the way we helped Europe and Asia in another era," Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. "Now it's this area from Pakistan to Morocco that we should focus on."
Khalilzad, an Afghan immigrant to the U.S. who has for years advocated an aggressive effort to bring democracy to the Muslim world, predicted the long-term American effort to "shape the future of this region" will continue regardless of which party controls the White House, how many troops remain in Iraq and what tactics and strategies are employed.
"The world has gotten smaller and is getting smaller and smaller all the time," he said in the interview. "Isolationism, fortress America isn't going to deal with these problems of the kind that we're facing. "
Sectarian war
Originally justified as a search for weapons of mass destruction, the 2003 invasion of Iraq is now described by some U.S. officials as an attempt to bring democracy to the Middle East. But the toppling of Saddam Hussein's order has unleashed a Sunni Arab insurgency that evolved into a sectarian war between the country's Shiite majority and Sunni minority.
In other developments:
A string of car bombs rocked Baghdad on Monday, killing 10 people and wounding nearly 80 in an apparent campaign to discredit Iraq's new leadership. At least 15 people were killed in other bombings and shootings. Police also discovered the bodies of 28 people in the capital and the northern city of Mosul. They included 15 police recruits from Ramadi who were kidnapped Sunday and killed by insurgents, police said.
President Bush said Monday the United States has made some missteps in Iraq but that his decision to send in American troops to topple Saddam Hussein was the right call. "On the big decisions of sending the troops in, I'd have done it again," Bush told a questioner after a speech here on immigration.
A top aide allegedly told Saddam he intended to "change the social reality" in a Shiite town where the former Iraqi president came under attack, according to a tape prosecutors played in court Monday. Prosecutors identified Taha Yassin Ramadan -- a co-defendant in Saddam's trial -- as the man who said on the tape that "suspicious elements" in Dujail would be moved out and "replacements" brought in. On the tape, a voice said to be Saddam's replied, "Fine." The tape was played Monday in the trial of Saddam and seven co-defendants. A crackdown was launched in Dujail after Saddam's motorcade was shot at in July 1982. Hundreds were arrested in the sweep.