Wolfowitz Is Cheering and Cheered in Iraq

By THOM SHANKER
NYTimes

KIRKUK, Iraq, Oct. 25 — Paul D. Wolfowitz, deputy defense secretary and intellectual architect of the plan to oust Saddam Hussein, wrapped a flak jacket over his button-down blue shirt on Saturday, and went out on foot patrol with paratroopers in volatile northern Iraq.

A little girl ran up and shouted, "Saddam is a donkey!" Mr. Wolfowitz laughed.

A young woman hugged him. He responded with Ramadan greetings in the smattering of Arabic he has taught himself.

A money changer plying his trade from a card table held up an old note with Mr. Hussein's picture, jubilantly tearing it to pieces. Mr. Wolfowitz, a former graduate school dean and not a politician, responded by discussing the progress in introducing a new Iraqi currency.

In the bustling marketplace of Kirkuk, Mr. Wolfowitz was cheered, exactly the kind of response that he desired and that his weekend trip to Iraq was devised to demonstrate to the American public, to skeptical members of Congress and to American allies.

But like the two Apache helicopter gunships that whirled overhead in a heavy security force, policy questions also shadowed his visit.

Almost six months since President Bush declared that major combat operations had ended, the administration is being dogged by questions about what America's mission is today in Iraq, and how well it is being accomplished.

"I think I'm a realist, as well as an optimist," said Mr. Wolfowitz, who visibly agonizes over reports of daily violence, attacks and death, but argues that perspective is missing in assessing the strides made in stabilizing and rebuilding Iraq, and pointing it toward democracy.

"If you measure this place by unrealistic standards, you can get discouraged," he said. "If you measure it by the horror it's been through for the last 35 years, it's already an enormous breakthrough. And if you measure it by the quite impressive progress it has made in just six months, again it is encouraging."

He did not deny that problems remained. But he appears indefatigable in making others take note of progress in creating a stable and democratic Iraq. He is undeterred by the continued attacks on American troops and Iraqi security forces, the setbacks in securing foreign commitments for more troops, and the sense of the long slog ahead that darkens Congressional debate and even appeared in a recent internal memo by his boss, Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Mr. Wolfowitz is a man in a hurry to make his point.

He is devoting a grueling weekend trip of 18-hour days to throwing a spotlight on a nascent women's rights movement, on easing ethnic and religious tensions, on the growth of Iraqi security forces, and on steps to improve quality of life by bringing power plants back online.

No big change in strategy is needed, he said, but only a greater determination to push onto the Iraqis responsibility for their own security and economy.

Along the way, he asked every Iraqi he met if a relative had been killed under Mr. Hussein's rule and if they were better off today. He asked every member of the new Iraqi security force he met whether they were getting what they needed, and he clearly hoped Congress would listen as they described their needs.

Security remains a priority. A week before Mr. Wolfowitz's visit, two paratroopers were killed in an ambush outside of Kirkuk. Early Saturday, a Black Hawk helicopter that had landed to support an American patrol outside Tikrit was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade and damaged, military officials said. Its crew was evacuated.

Even one of Mr. Wolfowitz's motorcades in Baghdad was rerouted when the Iraqi police set up a roadblock after an improvised explosive device was found along the route four hours before his arrival, senior military officers said. Officials emphasized that there was no intelligence linking the bomb to the visit.

Mr. Wolfowitz's focus was on the steps being taken to turn Iraqi security over to Iraqis, and he visited a neighborhood police station in Kirkuk. Its officers and patrolmen were trained at a special academy run by the 173rd Airborne Brigade.

"We've worked ourselves out of a job," said Lt. Col. Dominic Caraccilo, in charge of training the Kirkuk police, describing how the new force allows his troops to step further out of harm's way.

"They control the city," he said of the force. "We're in the antiterror business."

During a morning visit with members of the new Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, Mr. Wolfowitz complimented the young Iraqis who "are stepping forward to fight for their country alongside our people. "There are things they can do that we can't do," he said. "They can read the local situation, read the population in ways that we can't. Iraqis come forward with information much more readily than they do with us."

Senior officials traveling with Mr. Wolfowitz carry reams of statistics describing efforts in Iraq, as if they are tracking futures of a stock they are certain will grow and in which they have invested heavily.

Prewar electricity production was 3,300 megawatts, officials said, which had dropped to 200 megawatts on May 1, the day Mr. Bush declared the end of major combat. Power production is now up to 4,417 megawatts.

About 85,500 Iraqis are now in the ranks of the new border patrol, the police, the civil defense corps, the infrastructure protection service and the new army. The goal is to reach 170,300 people filling those rosters by next year, officials said.

In a session with 11 Islamic clerics at a new museum in Kirkuk, Mr. Wolfowitz spoke of his time as ambassador to Indonesia, with its population of 200 million Muslims. After the expected pleasantries, the clerics — who were Arab and Turkmen and Kurd, but all Sunni Muslim — complained about alcohol sales since the fall of the old government. They asked why mosques in Tikrit, which Mr. Wolfowitz also visited on Saturday, were getting more money than those in Kirkuk.

They saw nothing odd about asking Mr. Wolfowitz, the son of a Polish-Jewish émigré to America, to intercede with Islamic leaders in Baghdad to declare the start of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month that begins with the sighting of the first sliver of the new moon.