US:US VICE-president Dick Cheney yesterday declared the invasion of Iraq a "successful endeavour" during a visit to Baghdad, on the same day a woman suicide bomber killed 40 people.
"If you look back on those five years it has been a difficult, challenging but nonetheless successful endeavour . . . and it has been well worth the effort," Mr Cheney, an architect of the invasion, said after meeting Iraqi leaders.
The Iraq war is a major issue in the US presidential campaign. Entering its sixth year this week, it has cost the US $500 billion. Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton said yesterday the final bill could be $1 trillion.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis and nearly 4,000 US soldiers have been killed. The military said two more soldiers died yesterday when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle near Baghdad.
Shortly after Mr Cheney spoke, a woman wearing a suicide vest blew herself up in a cafe in the southern holy Shia city of Kerbala, killing 40 people and wounding 71, police and health officials said. Bombs in Baghdad killed four.
Mr Cheney arrived as Republican presidential candidate John McCain was meeting Iraqi leaders as part of a Senate Armed Services Committee fact-finding mission.
"I was last in Baghdad 10 months ago and I sense, as a result of the progress that has been made since then, phenomenal changes in terms of the overall situation," Mr Cheney said after meeting Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki.
Mr Cheney said there had been a "remarkable turnaround" in security after 30,000 extra US troops were sent to Iraq last year to help quell sectarian violence that threatened civil war. Despite the improved security, however, some four million Iraqis are still displaced, and the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a report yesterday that millions were still deprived of clean water and medical care.
- (Reuters)