Local lawmaker talks of his visit to Iraq

The Melbourne Republican said he is convinced the former Iraqi president stored enormous caches of weapons around the country to mount an insurgency against the occupied forces.

"If we lose our will to fight and leave, they will unearth all of this and seize power again," Weldon said Thursday. "It would be a tremendous human tragedy if that were to happen again."

Weldon predicted American withdrawal would create a "bloodbath" where Saddam's loyalists would kill those Iraqis who cooperated with the occupiers.

The congressman described firsthand the dilapidated state of the nation after the war and discovered how destitute the situation was even before American forces invaded this spring. Weldon, a practicing physician, took special note of the health-care crisis in Baghdad, where no equipment or medical libraries had been updated for two decades.

"Saddam was a very, very evil, wicked man," Weldon said. "He spent billions on palaces and weapons, but he essentially starved the local economy and did not invest anything in health care, education, sewers, or water."

Weldon and a delegation of nine other members of Congress landed in Baghdad early this week, where they were briefed by the leaders on the ground: Ambassador Paul Bremer, the top American administrator; Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of American forces; and David Kay, the chief weapons inspector in Iraq.

While the briefings, like those Weldon receives in Washington, were helpful, he was most concerned with getting a firsthand look at what is really going on in the streets of Iraq and with the American troops there.

What he found was a frustrated force -- especially in Baghdad -- because soldiers had no idea about their rotation schedules. Sanchez told him the 100,000 troops would be rotated out of Iraq over the next three to six months.

Weldon believes the overall troop level needs to be increased slightly, although he thinks that can be done with the help of other countries. But paramount in the military's mission should be ensuring that those there be relieved at least temporarily to get rest, he said.

While they were somewhat concerned about their safety, Weldon said the troops described many of the rebel attacks as "poorly coordinated" and "poorly executed." Weldon's convoy received a bit of a scare when its route to the airport was detoured because an explosive device was found on the road.

The congressional delegation -- which wore bullet-proof vests and were guarded by armored Humvees on its travels -- spent its nights in Amman, Jordan. Before returning to Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, the delegates made two more stops.

They went to Damascus, Syria, where President Bashar Assad was concerned about the ramifications of piece of legislation under consideration that would apply sanction on the Middle Eastern nation if leaders there do not take more action to stop terrorists.

Then they visited injured soldiers in Germany, who Weldon categorized as mostly upbeat and still supportive of liberating Iraq. He met with troops from Florida throughout his five-day trip, although he only found one soldier -- Adam Martin of Melbourne -- who was a constituent.

Weldon's lingering impressions of his trip focused on the northern part of the country, around Kirkuk, where he found many causes of optimism amid the fertile land that is also home to 6 percent of the world's oil reserves.

"That city and that region should be one of the most beautiful and prosperous regions in the Middle East," he said.