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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (177938)	11/13/2003 11:31:39 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1577031

<font color=brown> You need to get over Clinton and focus on Bush.....that's where the real danger is.<font color=black> ******************************************************* Analysis New Urgency, New Risks in 'Iraqification' By Robin Wright and Thomas E. Ricks Washington Post Staff Writers Friday, November 14, 2003; Page A01 At least four factors forced the administration to overhaul its military and political strategy in Iraq, despite the danger that a new approach might actually diminish U.S. control over the country's future. The foremost factor is security -- from an Iraqi opposition that has become more intense, more effective, more sophisticated and more extensive. The other three are the failure of the Iraqi Governing Council to act, the looming U.N. deadline of Dec. 15 for an Iraqi plan of action and the U.S. elections just a year away, according to administration and congressional officials and U.S. analysts. All four factors produced a new sense of urgency in Washington. "In an atmosphere of heightened violence and instability, Iraq urgently requires a new political formula. The U.S. administration, increasingly alarmed at the turn of events, is considering a range of options. This will be its second chance to get it right; there may not be a third," the International Crisis Group, a nonpartisan watchdog, warned in a report issued yesterday. The new approach amounts to Iraqification, or the handing over of responsibility for both a deteriorating security situation and a stalled political process to Iraqis. The goal, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told reporters yesterday, "is that we find ways to accelerate the transfer of authority to the Iraqi people." "They are clamoring for it; they are, we believe, ready for it. And they have very strong ideas about how that might be done," she said. But Iraqification also poses significant hazards -- risks that emerge from the same security and political considerations that drove the administration's decision to change strategies. As the administration sorts out a plan in talks with the Governing Council over the weekend, the first test may be in averting the appearance that the United States intends to cut and run. U.S. officials already sound defensive. "We are not in a rush to leave. We will stay as long as we need to to ensure that Iraq is secure, that the hand-over makes sense and that a moderate Iraqi government emerges. And we're very capable of doing that," Army Gen. John Abizaid, the U.S. commander for Iraq and the Middle East, said at a news conference in Tampa yesterday. Abizaid used the word "prudent" four times to describe his plans for Iraq. President Bush said yesterday that the revamping of his policy was a "positive development" because it will get Iraqis "more involved" in the governance of their country. But others were more skeptical. "If the policy is to more rapidly Iraqify the situation -- as in Vietnamization during the Vietnam War -- then that is another version of cutting and running. One way to cut and run is to simply say we're pulling out. Another is to prematurely turn over security to Iraqi forces and draw down American forces. That's a near-term prescription for disaster," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee. "All the political body language coming out of Washington these days seems to show that we are going to cut and run," said Thomas Mahnken, the acting director of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University. "That is precisely the wrong signal to be sending." For an administration loath to concede it has made mistakes, redirecting U.S. policy is an open admission that the situation has reached a crisis point. Under mounting pressures, the White House had little choice but to effectively jettison the seven-point plan outlined by its own governor in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, just two months ago. "We so underestimated and underplanned and underthought about a post-Saddam Iraq that we've been woefully unprepared," said Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), a Vietnam War veteran and member of the Foreign Relations Committee who has frequently visited Iraq. "Now we have a security problem. We have a reality problem. And we have a governance problem. . . . And time is not on our side." washingtonpost.com