MOSCOW. Aug 5 (Interfax-AVN) - The number of attacks on U.S. servicemen in Iraq may grow, Michael Donovan, expert with the Washington-based Center for Defense Information, said in an interview with Russia's Izvestia daily published on Tuesday.
Alongside with a few purely military mistakes, U.S. leaders have made some erroneous forecasts, Donovan said. They expected the infrastructure in Iraq to remain after Saddam Hussein's regime is toppled, and they did not expect the national police and the city services in charge of repairing sewerage and telephone networks to fall apart. However, these hopes turned out illusory, and now Iraq has to be rebuilt from scratch, he stressed.
According to him, U.S. administrator of Iraq Paul Bremer's statement that the U.S. may leave the country already in mid-2004 is too optimistic. Nobody can ensure the formation of a civil society in Iraq in such a short period of time, he argued.
The Shiite majority, the Sunnite minority, and Kurds have absolutely different visions of the future political power in the country, Donovan went on. Moreover, each of these groupings has a lot of internal contradictions.
In response to questions, Donovan said the people attacking U.S. servicemen are not always Hussain's former accomplices. There are a lot of Islamic mercenaries among them, who have come to Iraq to battle infidels. There are also Iraqi nationalists who would battle against any foreign invaders. Finally, there are those who want revenge for their relatives killed at war, he said.