Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a key architect of President Bush's Iraq policy, said yesterday that the ouster of Saddam Hussein has had a "shaming effect" on the Arab and Muslim world where other tyrannical rulers exist.
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The Pentagon's No. 2 official, a highly influential thinker in conservative quarters, called the allied ouster of Ba'ath Party rule in Iraq an "enormously important event."

Mr. Wolfowitz, along with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, was a strong advocate for removing Saddam Hussein by force.

He also said in yesterday's interview that fewer troops will be needed to keep the peace in Iraq than the 135,000 there.

"We're are not going to need as many people to do peacekeeping as we needed to fight the war," Mr. Wolfowitz said.

In a wide-ranging interview, Mr. Wolfowitz also said he is confident prohibited weapons will be found in Iraq, said that Syria allowed "killers" to cross its borders, and predicted the Iraqis themselves will impose penalties on countries that blocked U.S. action against Saddam, such as France.

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On Syria, Mr. Wolfowitz said he believes Damascus facilitated the flow of hundreds of foreign guerrillas into Iraq before and during the war.

"There's no question that paramilitaries crossed the border, and it's a pretty tightly controlled border, so I have to assume they had some degree of official sanction," he said. "That's why we expressed very strong concern about what was going on."

But since the fall of Baghdad, the Syrians appear to have stopped more paramilitary fighters from getting into Iraq. "There does seem to be a change in that respect," he said.

But the fact that Syria "should have had an indulgence in sending killers into Iraq to threaten our people, that was simply unacceptable," Mr. Wolfowitz said.
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Asked whether France and Russia would be penalized for opposing U.S. efforts to oust Saddam, Mr. Wolfowitz said, "I think there are going to be consequences."
"I suspect when Iraq has its own government and that government can make its own choices about who it wants to do business with, it's going to make some difference whether countries helped to liberate it or didn't help to liberate it," he said. "A lot of those kinds of consequences that take place in the real world."

» 'Shaming effect' on Arab world -- The Washington Times