Bush to Ask for Multinational Iraq Force Story aired: Wednesday, September 03, 2003
The Bush administration has decided to ask the U.N. to take a greater role in postwar Iraq. Secretary of State Colin Powell will begin negotiations with the Security Council in an effort to craft a multinational force that will still be under U.S. command.
The move to work with the U.N. is a major policy reversal and comes as a Congressional Budget Office report warns that the Army lacks sufficient active duty forces to maintain its current staffing level of 150,000 beyond next spring.
One U.S. official says the White House envisions a peacekeeping operation "that will look like the kind that is familiar to us."
Canadian Retired Major General Lewis Mackenzie knows what that picture is, as he was the commander of U.N. troops in Sarajevo in 1992. Mackenzie joins Here and Now to discuss the future of peacekeeping in Iraq.
