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White House answers criticism

WASHINGTON - The White House staunchly defended its Iraq policy Tuesday as new questions emerged about President Bush's prewar decisions and postwar planning. An impending weapons report undercut the administration's main rationale for the war, and the former head of the American occupation said the United States had too few troops in Iraq after the invasion.

Democrat John Kerry pounced on the statement by former Iraq administrator Paul Bremer that the United States had "paid a big price" for insufficient troop levels.

Kerry said there was a "long list of mistakes" that the Bush administration had made in Iraq.

Bush let his surrogates answer Kerry's charges.

"It's a comprehensive look at two very different records, one of accomplishment, and one of being on the wrong side of history over and over again," Bush campaign communications director Nicolle Devenish said.

In a speech on Monday to an insurance conference in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., Bremer said that when he arrived in Baghdad on May 6, 2003, after the fall of Saddam Hussein, there was "horrid" looting going on.

"We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness," Bremer said. "We never had enough troops on the ground."

In a Sept. 17 speech at DePauw University, Bremer said he raised his concerns about inadequate troop levels a number of times within the administration, but he should have been "even more insistent" when no action was taken.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan refused to say if Bremer had pleaded with Bush for more troops, saying, "We never get into reading out all the conversations they had."

Bush campaign spokesman Brian Jones said Bremer and the military brass clashed on troop levels.

"Ambassador Bremer differed with the commanders in the field," Jones said. "That is his right, but the president has always said that he will listen to his commanders on the ground."

Military commanders believed forces were adequate, said Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita.

Meanwhile, a day after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that he had not seen "any strong, hard evidence" to prove such a link, Rumsfeld said he had been misunderstood, and "there were ties between al-Qaida and Iraq."

In other news, the White House sought to put a bright face on the final report by the American weapons inspector in Iraq, Charles Duelfer, due out today. In earlier drafts, Duelfer found Saddam Hussein had left signs he had idle weapons programs he someday hoped to revive, but that he did not have stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

McClellan said Duelfer's final report would bolster the White House's assertions on Iraq.

The report will conclude "that Saddam Hussein had the intent and the capability, that he was pursuing an aggressive strategy to bring down the sanctions, the international sanctions, imposed by the United Nations through illegal financing procurement schemes," McClellan said. "The report will continue to show that he was a gathering threat that needed to be taken seriously, that it was a matter of time before he was going to begin pursuing those weapons of mass destruction," he said.

McClellan's use of the phrase "begin pursuing those weapons" marked a new attempt to back off the administration's once-firm assertions on Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction - the main justification for the invasion.

A House subcommittee investigating Iraq's oil-for-food program expanded its probe to the Bush administration Tuesday, agreeing to subpoena documents on the U.S. postwar management of oil revenues and, if necessary, audits on contracts for reconstruction projects, including one given to Halliburton Co.

Democrats on the House Government Reform subcommittee on national security said there should be a full investigation into the Bush administration's refusal to release audits of Halliburton's $1.5-billion, noncompetitive contract to repair oil production facilities. The oil services company was formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.

POPE MEETS FORMER HOSTAGES: Pope John Paul II received two Italian aid workers who were held hostage, telling the women Tuesday, "Thank God you are alive."

The pope met with Simona Torretta and Simona Pari and members of their families.

The Vatican released a video of the meeting, with the women kneeling before the pope and thanking him for speaking out.