Posted on 04/09/2004 4:19:39 PM PDT by anniegetyourgun
WASHINGTON (AP) - As a week of mounting U.S. casualties in Iraq drew to a close, the Bush administration pledged Friday to take the fight to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and other Iraqi resisters.
"We're worried, but I am not panicked about it," said Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage of the upsurge in resistance to U.S. occupation.
"They've chosen to fight," Armitage told the semiofficial Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram. "We'll fight. And they will see that we understand strength as well."
The cleric's militia has been in battle with U.S. and other coalition forces this week. Armitage dismissed the al-Sadr offensive as inevitable.
"Sooner or later this was going to happen," he said. "Sooner or later we were going to have to disarm the militias. There is no question."
In the fight, Armitage said, Iraqi civilians are being killed "and our soldiers are as devastated as anybody."
"We do not want to use force indiscriminately," he said. "We bleed when this happens."
Secretary of State Colin Powell, meanwhile, took an upbeat message into an interview with ABC-TV.
"Cities are increasingly coming back under coalition control," he said. "The enemy has suffered a number of casualties. So have we."
But, Powell said, "we have got to defeat these Sunni remnants in the Sunni triangle, and we've got to deal with the forces of al-Sadr in the South."
The Sunni triangle is an area near the capital, Baghdad, where the population belongs overwhelmingly to the Sunni Islamic sect. Although a minority to the Shiites, the Sunni traditionally have ruled the country, especially under the decades of rule by President Saddam Hussein's Arab Baath Party.
Powell said U.S. forces were going about their mission in a systematic way, and he was confident "our military will bring this under control."
Powell said he worried about the abduction of two Japanese aid workers and a Japanese journalist. He spoke by telephone to Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi, and a State Department spokesman, Adam Ereli, called the hostages' plight a tragic situation.
Vice President Dick Cheney left Friday for Asia, carrying a personal appeal to Japanese leaders to resist pressure from the kidnappers to withdraw peacekeeping troops from Iraq.
Powell described this week's offensive as stronger than anything he had seen previously. "I must say it was more than I had expected," he said.
"Nevertheless," Powell said, "I think our commanders have got a handle on it, and they are going to be able to deal with it."
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