Bush-Blair war alliance gave an eloquent evidence of "week one wobble"

WASHINGTON, March 28 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Brushing aside questions about the war's duration, U.S. President George W. Bush said late Thursday, March 27, that time was not the question, ‘victory is’.

Urging the United Nations to resume its oil-for-food program to head off a potential humanitarian disaster, Bush and British Premier Tony Blair predicted certain - but not quick - victory over Iraq .

However, after meeting at the Camp David presidential retreat outside Washington , Bush and Blair appeared to have made little progress in defining the UN's post-war role in Iraq .

Standing shoulder to shoulder at a press conference, the two allies urged the UN Security Council to put aside stark divisions over the military invasion, before Blair headed for New York to meet with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

They will fight "however long it takes to win," said Bush. "This isn't a matter of timetable, it's a matter of victory."

"There is absolutely no point, in my view, of trying to set a time limit or speculate on it, because it's not set by time. It's set by the nature of the job," added Blair, whose country has some 45,000 troops in the Gulf.

According to the BBC online news service, this was not the message that Bush and Blair expected to be giving at the end of the first week of war.

It was a defiant reassertion of their joint determination to see the conflict through to the end; but the fact they had to spell it out was eloquent evidence of "week one wobble".

The wobble is caused by military voices warning that this war could last for months, and be bloodier than public opinion was led to expect.

Neither Bush nor Blair have been incautious enough themselves to predict that the Baghdad regime would collapse in a few days.

However, there had been a widely-held optimism that the huge imbalance of forces would produce a rapid collapse of Iraqi resistance, followed by vast crowds of cheering liberated people, according to the BBC.

At Camp David , Bush and Blair hammered at the need to restart the oil-for-food program, on which 60 percent of Iraq 's 27 million people are totally dependent. The initiative has been suspended since the invasion began a week ago.

"This urgent humanitarian issue must not be politicized," Bush said in an apparent warning to anti-war council members Germany , Russia , and especially France, which he blames for scuttling a Security Council resolution backing the war.

Critics of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq , notably Russia , have objected to any move to revive the oil-for-food program in a manner which might be seen as giving legitimacy to the military aggression.

The two principal allies in the war left undefined the UN's broader role in Iraq , amid signs of a schism between London and Washington , which has categorically rejected UN control of the country following the war.

" Iraq 's greatest long-term need is a representative government that protects the rights of all Iraqis," said Bush. "The form of this government will be chosen by the Iraqi people, not imposed by outsiders."

Iraqi Resistance Means Longer War

Stiff Iraqi resistance means longer war

Meanwhile, the top U.S. army ground commander in Iraq said Thursday that tougher-than-expected Iraqi forces have stalled the U.S. drive toward Baghdad , reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"The enemy we're fighting is different from the one we'd war-gamed against," the army's senior ground commander in Iraq , Lieutenant General William Wallace told The Washington Post at the Forward Operating Base Shell, in Iraq .

The commander of V Corps said that over-overextended supply lines combined with an enemy that is using unconventional tactics make a longer war look likely.

"The attacks we're seeing are bizarre - technical vehicles with 50 calibers and every kind of weapon - charging tanks and Bradley (fighting vehicles)," Wallace told the Washington daily. "It's disturbing to think that someone can be that brutal."

Wallace made his comments amid criticism from a growing number of former and retired military leaders who say a larger force is needed in Iraq . The Pentagon has announced the deployment of an additional 120,000 troops.

Wallace told The Post that Iraqis were willing to launch suicide attacks against U.S. forces. He also claimed intelligence reports that government loyalists had forcibly conscripted fighters by threatening their families.

"I'm appalled by the inhumanity of it all," he told The Post.

Altogether, the U.S.-led forces have taken a pause in the action pending reconfiguration of the logistical pipeline. The Post asked Wallace whether these factors bode for a longer war. "It's beginning to look that way," he said.