Though the US has not formally declared victory in Iraq, US Defence Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld hosted a "town-hall meeting" at the Pentagon yesterday to congratulate staff on the toppling of the regime of Saddam Hussein. Conor O'Clery, North America Editor, reports
Both Mr Rumsfeld, and Gen Richard Myers, chief of the general staff, warned that shooting continued and people were still being killed.
"The war is not over," said the Defence Secretary, but the speed and execution of the war plan had been "amazing" and they should be congratulated on an "enormous accomplishment".
Anticipating guerrilla attacks against US forces in the days ahead, Gen Myers made a point of portraying future armed opposition in Iraq against US-led forces as terrorism.
American combat operations in Iraq were "the most humane in the history of warfare" and "conducted with the utmost respect for international law and the dignity of each individual," he said.
Those who did not welcome their success, however, "will come after us in the most immoral and underhand manner possible".
In response to a staff member worried that a find of weapons of mass destruction would be greeted with scepticism by critics of the US, Mr Rumsfeld made it clear he did not see any role for the UN inspections team in verifying discoveries.
There were teams present with US forces who "will have people to validate things", he said, in an apparent rejection of a call by Dr Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, to allow his team back into Iraq.
The Defence Secretary also seemed to rule out any central role for the UN in the restructuring of Iraq.
It was a difficult task, he said, and he had heard of "at least one member of the Security Council with veto powers that would veto that kind of a role for the UN." President Bush recognised that "having done what we've done and taken that regime out, this county and other coalition countries have an obligation to see this thing through" and create a representative government. "We'll probably find some sort of blend," he said.
The Defence Secretary called the war "a giant laboratory from which we will learn many lessons," one of which was how to prevent friendly fire accidents. Up to last week 18 of the 149 fatalities suffered by US and British soldiers were the result of errant strikes by coalition forces.
Gen Myers judged the policy of bringing hundreds of embedded journalists with the troops a success, because journalists would have a different impression of the armed forces. "That may get us away from some of the cynicism that has been around since Vietnam."