U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney wrapped up Tuesday a 9-day regional tour which took him to the announced destinations of Oman, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the West Bank and Turkey as well as the surprise ones of Iraq and Afghanistan, during which the issues of Iraq, energy, Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and inevitably, Iran, were discussed.
IRAQ: A HARD CLAIM OF VICTORY AFTER FIVE YEARS IN QUAGMIRE
Cheney, known as a major architect of the 2003 U.S. invasion into Iraq, arrived in Baghdad on March 17 on an unannounced visit, where he met Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and other political figures and said the United States has made a "successful endeavor" in Iraq, three days before the fifth anniversary of Iraq war, which falls on March 20.
"If you look back on those five years it has been a difficult, challenging but nonetheless successful endeavor ... and it has been well worth the effort," he said.
He also defended President George W. Bush's decision last summer to send some 30,000 extra troops to Iraq, saying that there was a significant progress compared with 10 months ago when he was here, adding security has improved dramatically and the Iraqi leaders have made progress in governing.
Cheney also promised Prime Minister Maliki the unwavering support of the United States.
Yet, he pointed out that "it's clear there is still a number of major issues that need to be addressed."
Bush's decision of launching the Iraq war has been widely criticized at home. According to a latest poll by Washington Post-ABC News, nearly two-thirds of Americans said that the war was not worth fighting and fewer than half think that the United States is making significant progress restoring civil order in Iraq.
On March 24, the U.S. military said with four soldiers killed in a bomb attack, the death toll in Iraq since the 2003 invasion has reached a grim milestone of 4,000. And about 90,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed over the past five years, according to Iraq bodycount, a website that traces the Iraqi war casualties.
Despite a relative lull in security situation since last summer, recently there is a resurge of violence in Iraq largely because of the al-Qaida operation in Iraq. What's more, the political progress in Iraq has made little headway, raising concerns that the security gains could be lost.
Nevertheless, on early Tuesday March 18, Cheney told U.S. troopsat Balad Air Base north of Baghdad, one of the largest U.S. air bases in Iraq, that the United States will stay the course in Iraq.
"All Americans can be certain that we intend to complete the mission so that another generation of Americans does not have to come back here and do it again," Cheney said.
SAUDI ARABIA: ENERGY BIG SHOT REVISITED
Another fallout of the Iraq war is reflected in the energy market. Five years after the 2003 invasion in Iraq, oil price reached above 100 U.S. dollars a barrel from the pre-Iraq war level of some 20-30 dollars a barrel.
Cheney arrived on March 21 in Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally which is the world's top oil exporter and the only OPEC member that can easily add significant amounts of extra oil to the market.
According to the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA), Cheney discussed with King Abdullah Bin Abdul-Aziz the latest developments in the region, among which the Palestinian issue and the situation in Iraq and Lebanon, as well as "prospects of cooperation between the two countries and ways of boosting them in all fields to serve the interests of the two countries and peoples."
An advisor to Cheney said before their meeting that their talks would include cooperation to stabilize the oil market.
Cheney's trip follows a visit to Saudi Arabia by President Bush, who came in January and urged the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to increase production, only to get rebuffed.
Though it has been a long-standing U.S. ally, Saudi Arabia had long warned about the consequences of an invasion into Iraq.
In an interview with BBC less than one month before the 2003 invasion, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal has said that any U.S. unilateral military action to topple the then Saddam regime would lead to the destruction of Iraq, and then would destabilize the entire Middle East region by the ensuing extremism and terrorism following the regime change.
Source:Xinhua
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