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To: Knighty Tin who wrote (285937)	5/3/2004 11:04:38 PM
From: Pogeu Mahone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

This is a big surprise<VBG> U.S. changes course in Iraq BY CRAIG GORDON Staff Writer May 3, 2004, 10:10 PM EDT WASHINGTON -- At first, the U.S. Marines surrounding Fallujah were touting the move as a breakthrough -- the selection of an Iraqi general to put down the Sunni insurgency there. There was just one problem: Top officials at the Pentagon insisted they had never signed off on the idea. And Monday, the U.S. military in Fallujah indicated that it was changing course, preparing to push aside the first general in favor of a new one. For a Bush administration skilled at sticking to its message, it was a rare moment when the generals in the field and the policy-makers and politicians back home seemed to be at odds over what to do. And it came at a particularly bad time for the Pentagon, outside critics say, because it reinforced the impression that senior officials were grasping for answers in Iraq, stuck picking from a menu of bad choices just two months before a government handover. "I think the whole Fallujah situation ... shows the desperateness the administration finds itself in. There's no good solution there, and it just shows that, outside the military action to depose Saddam Hussein, that there was not a good plan in place for what to do next," said Charles Peña, a senior military analyst for the libertarian Cato Institute who has been critical of the war. David Mack, a former State Department official involved with Iraqi affairs, praised Marines for trying to find an Iraqi solution to the Fallujah crisis and questioned whether policy-makers in Washington were simply trying to distance themselves from the move, fearing it might not work. "In a situation where we don't have a lot of good options, it's probably the least bad option, to have an Iraqi sharing with us the burden of trying to bring some security to that area," said Mack, vice president of the Middle East Institute in Washington. The debate over which Iraqi general should patrol Fallujah – and the confusion surrounding it – is just the latest stumble for the administration as it heads toward a planned June 30 handover of power to an interim Iraqi government. Some problems date back to the decision not to put down looting that broke out after the war -- now viewed as emboldening the insurgency even today -- while others were more recent, like the move to extend tours and keep 135,000 troops there through the summer. The decision to even consider putting a former Iraqi general in charge of Iraqi troops was a significant reversal from the United States' original policy that barred former regime leaders and Baath party members from having any authority in a new Iraq. But a pair of Marine generals overseeing Fallujah said Thursday they had chosen Maj. Gen. Jassim Mohammed Saleh after he stepped forward and offered to organize a brigade of 1,100 men. But senior Pentagon leaders immediately sought to distance themselves from that move, denying any deal was finalized and finally saying Sunday that Saleh would not head the new brigade. That job now appears likely to go to Maj. Gen. Mohammed Latif, who once was imprisoned by Saddam Hussein. Some Iraqis complained that Saleh, a former member of Hussein's Republican Guard, may have been involved in the regime's repression, including putting down a Kurdish uprising in 1991. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, took the almost unprecedented move over the weekend of stating flatly that the Marine commanders' original plan would not stand. Judith Yaphe, a former CIA analyst in Iraq, said she believes the Pentagon may have come to realize that its initial plan for Fallujah – to go in with overwhelming force to put down the insurgency – simply was not workable. She believes Myers' comments showed that the situation on the ground "developed faster than he had control over" but that ultimately, even he saw that using Latif was better than "going in with a 75-pound sledgehammer." Patrick Clawson, deputy director for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said he feared the unusually public debate might look like Pentagon superiors undercutting commanders in the field. But he supported the move to use an Iraqi general and chided critics of the administration, saying that's the kind of move they have sought for months. "The idea is to work with anybody who believes ballots, and not bullets, decide the future of Iraq," he said. But Peña said he believes the difficulty in dealing with a hotspot that has developed in Fallujah is part of the continuing problem of pre-war predictions about the ease of invading Iraq. "They're stuck reacting to everything that was happening without being able to develop a real plan," he said. Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.