By Howard Wilkinson
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Rep. Steve Chabot's recent congressional fact-finding tour of Iraq convinced him that while there is still great danger to U.S. troops in Baghdad and areas where Saddam Hussein loyalists hold sway, "there is great progress being made.''

"You could see schools reopening, shops open, electric service being restored,'' the Cincinnati Republican told The Cincinnati Enquirer's editorial board Monday. "The country is getting back on its feet.''

But the five-term congressman also said he did not want to "paint too rosy a picture'' of what the United States faces in rebuilding and restoring order to Iraq.

"Sometimes members of Congress come back from Iraq and become cheerleaders for the administration; others come back just emphasizing the negative,'' said Chabot, who was accompanied on his October trip by seven other House members.

The Bush administration, Chabot said, must get more countries to put troops on the ground in Iraq and spend more time developing an Iraqi force to police the streets of its cities and patrol its own borders.

"We need to give the Iraqis more responsibility,'' Chabot said.

His main criticism of the U.S. handling of Iraq was that perhaps the Bush administration underestimated the amount of resistance that would remain after the collapse of Saddam Hussein's military in April.

"Perhaps not enough planning went into dealing with the post-war situation,'' Chabot said.

His congressional delegation spent its evenings in a Jordanian hotel and was flown into Iraq each day of the three-day trip on a military transport plane.

In his meeting with the editorial board Monday, Chabot said he believes the partial birth abortion ban signed into law last week by President Bush will probably be before the U.S. Supreme Court within a year.

But Chabot, one of the original sponsors of the law, said he is convinced it will hold up under court scrutiny. The law's language, he said, defines partial birth abortion "very narrowly'' and spells out how partial birth abortions are "never medically necessary, are dangerous to the woman in many cases and are, in fact, 'rogue medical procedures.'

"We very carefully wrote this legislation to make it as constitutionally sound as we could,'' Chabot said.

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E-mail hwilkinson@enquirer.com