09:35 PM CST on Sunday, November 16, 2003

By Shern-Min Chow / 11 News

HOUSTON -- It took two days in Iraq to change her mind. Democratic Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee was one of this country's most vocal opponents to U.S. Troops in Iraq. Now she says Americans should stay, and stay much longer than the proposed exit date next June. That dramatic turn around comes during her trip with a congressional delegation to Iraq.

The world has known Kirkuk as a hotbed of instability. On Sunday a nine-member congressional delegation saw it first- hand and the ethnic religious hurdles any governing force faces.

"The question is whether or not a provisional government formed by the Iraqis would have the strength to bring all of these groups together who have traditionally been intimated by each other and suspect of each other," said Congresswoman Jackson Lee.

Amid the escalating violence came Saturday's announcement that the U.S. authority plans turn over power to the Iraqis by June. "High-ranking military that we spoke with indicated they did not believe that they could transfer over in the summer of 2004," said Jackson Lee. "In fact they may need to go over to 2005 or over

Jackson Lee's concern is that the fragile peace cannot survive without a strong military presence -- American or coalition. The representative who used Congress and the media to oppose U.S. troops in Iraq finds herself now in an about face. "This if a very difficult position for any of us to be in who took a very strong position," she said.

Clearly what she saw has impressed her and that included a visit to the now-named Freedom Hospital. Delegates met doctors who have had no continuing medical education since 1986. But they have heard of Houston's medical center. "The doctors and the military ask, "Why can we come to Texas and be trained by the Texas Medical Center?"

When she returns next week Jackson Lee will ask local teaching hospitals to host Iraqi doctors for two to three week training sessions.