Rumsfeld arrives at desert marine base in Iraq
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-10-10 15:52

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld swept into an airbase in Iraq's western desert on Sunday to make a first-hand evaluation of operations to quell a raging Iraqi insurgency in his first such visit in five months.

Rumsfeld, in an unannounced trip, landed at al-Asad airbase near Haditha, 200 km (125 miles) northwest of Baghdad, aboard a C-17 transport plane from Bahrain to meet top marine commanders and address about 1,500 marines.

It market Rumsfeld's sixth visit to Iraq since U.S.-led forces drove Saddam Hussein from power in April 2003.

Rumsfeld was accompanied on his trip by Iraqi Defence Minister Hazim al-Shalaan.

Chief Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said: "This is his (Rumsfeld's) opportunity to get his own sense of things.

"It's an opportunity for him to get an update from General (George) Casey and the commanders to hear about the development of Iraqi security forces and arrangements being made ahead of the elections," Di Rita said.

Casey is the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

Rumsfeld, a key architect of last year's invasion, last visited Iraq on May 13, when he went to the notorious Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad amid a mushrooming scandal over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of U.S. forces.

Rumsfeld's trip comes about three weeks before the U.S. presidential election. President George W. Bush's Democratic challenger John Kerry has accused Bush of mismanaging the war and launching it on the pretext of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that even Washington now admits did not exist.

The U.S. military death toll in the war is now creeping toward 1,100 in almost 19 months of fighting and U.S. fatalities have increased each month since the turnover of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government on June 28.

The Pentagon is eager to improve Iraqi security ahead of January elections and Rumsfeld met with Defense chiefs from 18 other countries on Saturday aboard a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Gulf to provide details on his strategy in Iraq.

The marines are responsible for security in a wide swathe of Iraq, including big portions of its Sunni Muslim heartlands, as well as the flashpoint Shi'ite Muslim holy city of Najaf.

Rumsfeld was meeting Lieutenant-General John Sattler, the marine commander in Iraq and other senior marine officers.

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