"WE ARE NOT OCCUPIERS"

Secretary Powell makes good, common sense during Sunday's press conference.

What I expressed to the Governing Council was that the only way to get to where we have to be is with a deliberate process that first and foremost builds up the institutions of government. You can't just say you're a government, fine, go, you have full authority. Coalition Provisional Authority is responsible for security now, and it will be some time before any new government could take over the responsibilities inherent in being in charge of security.

You have to build capacity to govern.

And then governments, to survive, the kinds of government we want to see Iraq have, has to have legitimacy. And legitimacy comes from having a constitution, a constitution that's been ratified by the people. And once you have that constitution, you then give legitimacy to the new government through elections, elections that represent the view of the people...

So we are not hanging on for the sake of hanging on. We are hanging on because it's necessary to stay with this task until a new government has been created, a responsible government.

The worst thing that could happen is for us to push this process too quickly, before the capacity for governance is there and the basis for legitimacy is there, and see it fail.

We are not occupiers. We have come under a legal term having to do with occupation under international law, but we came as liberators. We have experience being liberators. Our history over the last 50, 60 years is quite clear. We have liberated a number of countries, and we do not own one square foot of any of those countries, except where we bury our dead.



Everybody would like to accelerate this. Everybody wants this to go fast. We don't want to stay here a day longer. It is expensive. Our young soldiers would like to get home to their families.