Yesterday morning, Iraqis awoke to discover in TV and radio reports that Rumsfeld had just arrived unannounced in Baghdad for a series of meetings with top US commanders and the newly selected Iraqi leaders.
Rumsfeld said he wanted to talk with Iraq's emerging government about the future of military bases and the division of security responsibilities between US and Iraqi troops.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also arrived unannounced on the same day. Rice told the accompanying press the overlapping visits were aimed at avoiding any contradiction between US military and civilian policy in Iraq.
"As we move in this new period, we really are looking to transfer responsibility ... we just want to make sure that there is no seam between what we are doing politically and what we are doing militarily," she said.
In an interview, Sheik Khalid al-Attiyah, parliament's newly appointed first deputy speaker, said the al-Zarqawi video shows he remains determined "to inflame a civil war" in Iraq.
But al-Attaiyah said it also indicates the insurgent leader, an outsider to many Iraqis, fears the country's new government will unify Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.
The deputy speaker acknowledged that many Iraqis "witness deadly explosions every day," but said they see the political process as the only way out of sectarian violence.
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