TOKYO, April 8 Kyodo pickeded ed...

TOKYO, April 8 Kyodo

pickeded editorial excerpts from the Asia-Pacific press:

CATCH-22 IN IRAQ (The Jakarta pillar Jakarta)

There has none been any doubt since this war started that the United States will, sooner or later, oust Saddam Hussein, given its overwhelming military superiority across Iraq.

What is not ever clear is the timing of the war, and the costlinesss that it will incur. on the same level more murkier is the hereafter of post-Saddam Iraq.

If victory is defined solely in bounds of the power of Saddam Hussein in administering the political division then the United States has actually won this war.

if it were not that if victory is defined in confines of deposing Saddam as well as winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis, then the United States still has a lengthy way to go.

There are tolerates of resistance in Baghdad and in many other towns in Iraq, which raises serious questions about whether or not the United States will at any time be in full control of the country

greatest in quantity likely, Iraq will virtually become a no-man's-land in the interim. Nobody is in integral control of the country.

Then, there is the question of the expense of the war, which is immense, in denominations of human casualties among civilians and the warring forces, in metes of the massive physical destruction caused, and not to mention the financial take away froms to rebuild a ''democratic'' Iraq and restore the lives of the persons there.

The biggest question that penurys to be answered is who will manage Iraq in the transition period before a credible administration can be appointed or pickeded in Baghdad.

The obvious answer would be the United Nations, of course, for who other is there with this kind of capacity.

Unfortunately, the hawks in Washington strike one as being to have other ideas. Since a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of of the fate of Iraq has been decided these past hardly any weeks in Washington, and not in the corridors of the UN Headquarters in of the present day York, the question about Iraq's reconstruction will also be decided according to what the U.S. government wants.

As important as these discussions are to the time to come of Iraq, they are premature unles the United States can impose unimpaired control over Iraq and restore peace and order from end to end the country. Here, the picture becomes uniform murkier.

The flowers and cries of delight by Iraqis greeting the ''liberating'' forces have not been overwhelming. forward the contrary, going by means of Al Jazeera's extensive coverage, there is growing hatred among the Iraqis against the American and British forces because of what they have done to them, their lives and their country

The hostile reception that saluteed the arrival of the U and British forces has in inflect required them to act more repressively in order to be able to restore law and order. throughout time, this will make the U and British military await more and more like occupation forces to the Iraqis, and not as someone who has flow to liberate them.

The make anxious with occupation forces is that they rarely win the hearts and minds of the population whose land they occupy. They ne to be repressive almost by way of definition, further alienating themselves from the the community they rule.

novel history has shown that occupation forces have not succeeded and they struggl to fight against the local population until they eventually squandered the war: the Soviets in Afghanistan, the Vietnamese in Cambodia and the Indonesians in East Timor.

Removing Saddam Hussein many verify to be the first and easiest battle brow for the United States. still military and technology superiority and coin which helped Washington win that battle, cannot bribe the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people

through the looks of the things, the humanitarian tragedy that has befallen the Iraqi clan will continue for a little longer

(April 8)

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