[A-List] !!! Bremer announces: We won't stay where we're not welcome.

["Stan Goff" <sherrynstan@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

US may pull out of Iraq: Bremer
By Roy Eccleston in Washington and agencies
May 15, 2004

WASHINGTON'S overseer for Iraq, Paul Bremer, last night aired the
possibility of an American pullout from the country, saying the US did
not stay where it was "not welcome".

"If the provisional government asks us to leave we will leave," he said,
referring to a post-June 30 administration after the handover of
sovereignty.

"I don't think that will happen but obviously we don't stay in countries
where we're not welcome," he said at a working lunch in Baghdad with
Iraqi officials.

The comments came after US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld publicly
admitted for the first time that the US mission in Iraq could fail.

Speaking ahead of his surprise visit to Iraq on Thursday, Mr Rumsfeld
said on the transfer of authority: "Will it happen right on time? I
think so. I hope so. Will it be perfect? No ... Is it possible it won't
work? Yes."

The Defence Secretary visited Iraq to boost morale amid the damaging
abuse scandal that has deeply embarrassed the US administration.

His visit preceded the release yesterday of about 315 prisoners from the
infamous US-run Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad, who left detention
with more allegations of torture.

One prisoner said two American soldiers had sex in front of him in the
complex's hospital wing and another said he saw wires attached to the
tongue and genitals of a cousin who was also being held.

"They kept me in solitary confinement for six days. They hung me by my
hands from the wall for five hours," said Abu Mustafa, 24, who claimed
he was arrested 10 months ago and accused of being a leader of a
terrorist group.

In Washington, two of the US's top military officials were forced to
concede that the "stress and duress" interrogation techniques used on
prisoners in Iraq would violate the Geneva Conventions.

Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and the Pentagon's No2, General
Peter Pace, admitted under questioning before a congressional committee
that it would be a violation of the conventions if US prisoners were
forced to squat naked with bags over their heads and arms lifted up for
45 minutes. Democrat senator Jack Reed, reading from a copy of the
interrogation orders approved by the top US general in Iraq, Ricardo
Sanchez, said:

"Precisely that behaviour could have been employed in Iraq."

The document, provided to Congress this week, showed prisoners could be
denied sleep for up to three days and kept in stress positions for up to
45 minutes, with the commander's approval.

There could also be sensory deprivation. "That would be a bag over your
head for 72 hours," Senator Reed said.

"Is that humane?" he asked Mr Wolfowitz, who tried to avoid the
question.

But Senator Reed snapped: "No, no. Answer the question, Mr Secretary, is
that humane?"

Mr Wolfowitz replied: "I don't know whether it means a bag over your
head for 72 hours, Senator. I don't know."

Senator Reed: "Mr Secretary, you're dissembling, non-responsive. Anybody
would say that putting a bag over someone's head for 72 hours, which is
..."

Mr Wolfowitz: "I believe it's not humane."

Meanwhile, The Los Angeles Times reported that the first US soldier to
be court-martialled over the abuse scandal at the Abu Ghraib jail,
Specialist Jeremy Sivits, has told military authorities how a group of
guards joked and mocked naked prisoners, beat and kicked them, and
forced them to hit one another.

Senators on both sides of politics challenged Mr Wolfowitz when he
revealed that US funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2005
would require at least twice as much as the $US25 billion ($35.7
billion) US President George W. Bush asked for last week.

Republican senator John McCain and Democrat Hillary Clinton said
Congress would not sign a "blank cheque".

The Australian