Iraq will be governed by Iraqis, vows Rumsfeld
Even as Rumsfeld savoured victory in the campaign to oust Saddam Hussein, a leading Arabic newspaper published what it said was a letter from the ousted Iraqi leader in which he urged Iraqis to throw out US and British forces.
In Washington, the White House said General Tommy Franks, who headed the US war effort, had told President Bush that major combat operations were over. This did not signal a formal end to hostilities, spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
The bloodshed in Falluja provided a grim backdrop for the visit by Rumsfeld, who recorded a radio and television message saying US troops had no intention of taking over Iraq.
"Let me be clear: Iraq belongs to you," said Rumsfeld, speaking three weeks after US troops rolled into Baghdad.
"We do not want to run it...Our goal is to restore stability and security so that you can form...a government of your choosing," he said.
The letter purportedly written by Saddam it was dated Monday, his 66th birthday was printed in the London-based Al Quds newspaper and urged Iraqis to unite.
"There are no priorities except kicking out the infidel, criminal, murderous and cowardly occupier... Boycott the occupier, this is your duty under Islam, religion and the nation," said the letter, which Al Quds editor Abdel Bari Atwan said had been faxed to the newspaper. Atwan said he was confident the letter was authentic.
Rumsfeld, the most senior US official to visit Iraq since the war was launched on March 20, told about 1,000 US troops gathered in a hangar at Baghdad airport that they had changed the course of history.
"You've unleashed events that will unquestionably shape the course of this country, a fate of a people, and very likely affect the future of this entire region," he said.
In earlier remarks in the southern city of Basra, Rumsfeld hailed the removal of Saddam's "brutal, vicious regime."
"When one looks back on this effort, I think and pray that what will be significant is that a large number of human beings, intelligent and energetic, have been liberated," said Rumsfeld, who was last in Iraq 20 years ago as an envoy of President Ronald Reagan.
Jay Garner, the retired general in charge of US efforts to rebuild the country and launch a democratic government, briefed Rumsfeld and said afterwards the media should focus less on anti-American protests and more on the way US forces had triumphed with relatively little damage to Iraq's infrastructure.
"We ought to look in a mirror and get proud and stick out our chests and suck in our bellies and say: 'Damn, we're Americans'."
