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White House declares end of Saddam regimeLooting raises pressure to provide security
From John King
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- "The regime is gone." With those words Friday, the White House for the first time officially said it considered Saddam Hussein's regime to be removed from power. "There's no question that the regime has lost control and that represents a great turning point for the people or Iraq as the regime is gone," White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters. From a military standpoint, the statement is not all that significant. The war continues; Fleischer pointed out that Iraqi forces remain in control of some areas and U.S. forces remain in harm's way across much of the country. "We still are in the middle of a shooting war," Fleischer said. But from a political standpoint, the statement is significant because of the administration's promise to assume the burden of providing security and key services once the regime was removed, up to the point at which the so-called Iraqi Interim Authority can assume those responsibilities. The significance of that task was underscored by widespread looting in Baghdad and other cities since Wednesday's collapse of Saddam's regime. Fleischer said the administration does not condone such behavior, but he cast it in the context of the Iraqi people reacting to the end of an oppressive regime. And he compared the looting to similar actions earlier in an Iraqi city to the south. "The president is confident that as the security situation is enhanced, as the events unfold, just like what happened in Basra, that this amount of looting will diminish," Fleischer. The White House statement came on the same day that Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of the U.S. Central Command, said that Saddam and his regime are "either dead or running like hell." Franks spoke to reporters on the sidelines of a one-day visit to U.S. troops at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The Friday statements declaring the end of the regime will now raise pressure on the United States and its coalition partners to begin providing security and key services. Fleischer said he was not excusing lawlessness and looting, but believed much of it was focused on government buildings and homes of leading regime figures and that it was not to be unexpected given the repression, torture and other mistreatment of Iraqis by Saddam's regime. He said it was the president's view that there would naturally be a significant decrease in such activity, but also said the military was taking steps to improve security in areas where combat operations were over, or at least significantly reduced. Thursday, in a videotaped address to the Iraqi people, President Bush said, "The nightmare that Saddam Hussein has brought to your nation will soon be over." In that same statement, Bush promised that once the regime was ended, "Coalition forces will maintain law and order, so that Iraqis can live in security." Fleischer said there was not a major humanitarian crisis in Iraq. Bush spoke Thursday with the head of the Agency for International Development and determined that, though there are "pockets of Iraq with humanitarian problems, there is not a widespread humanitarian crisis in Iraq," Fleischer said. "Much of the humanitarian problems of Iraq existed because of Saddam Hussein's regime and the conditions he imposed on the Iraqi people before the first shot was fired in this war," Fleischer said.
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