US President Bush on Friday conceded for the first time that he had "miscalculated" the post-war situation in Iraq, but insisted that US strategy was flexible enough to deal with the insurgency.
The admission, in an interview with the New York Times, made news because Bush is not given to revisiting his decisions. Asked in April if he had made mistakes in office, he was unable to think of any.
However, a report on the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, released this week, put some of the blame for the "chaos" at the Iraqi prison on the administration's failure to prepare adequately for an insurgency. The report, by James Schlesinger, a conservative Republican and former secretary of defense, said the Pentagon's war plans had assumed a "benign" postwar environment.
In his interview, Bush said he had made a "miscalculation of what the conditions would be" in postwar Iraq. But he said that was the result of the "swift victory" against the Iraqi army, which collapsed so fast that it was able to melt away and stage a guerrilla insurgency.
Ivo Daalder, a former member of former US president Bill Clinton's National Security Council and now an analyst at the Brookings Institution, said Bush's remarks showed "a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation."
"If the Iraqi defenses fell quicker, we should have more troops in Baghdad. Had they had more troops there, they would have been able to deal with the insurgency more quickly and effectively," Daalder said. "This was not miscalculation. This was ignoring military advice."
Bush again refused to condemn a political advertisement by right-wing ex-soldiers -- the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth -- who claim that Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry lied about his war record.
Instead, he repeated his earlier call for all advertising by such non-party groups to be banned. But Bush made it clear he did not agree with the ad's central message.
"I think Senator Kerry should be proud of his record," he said. "No, I don't think he lied."
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not