Give it six months, I said. It's not even 3 months since the Iraqi elections and it is clear that things are going from bad to worse towards plain hell.
U.S. generals issue grim outlook on Iraq
By John F. Burns and Eric Schmitt The New York Times
FRIDAY, MAY 20, 2005
BAGHDAD American military commanders in Baghdad and Washington have given a sobering new assessment of the war in Iraq, adding to the mood of anxiety that prompted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to make a trip to Baghdad last weekend for talks with Iraq's new government.
In interviews and briefings Wednesday, the generals pulled back from recent suggestions - including those by some of the same officers - that positive trends in Iraq could allow a reduction in the 138,000 U.S. troops in Iraq late this year or early in 2006.
A senior officer suggested that U.S. military involvement could last "many years."
General John Abizaid, the top U.S. officer in the Middle East, said in a briefing in Washington that one problem was the disappointing progress in developing Iraqi paramilitary police units cohesive enough to mount an effective challenge to the insurgents, which would allow U.S. forces to reduce their role.
President George W. Bush, in a speech delivered Wednesday evening in Washington, called for patience in assessing Iraq's progress toward democracy.
Abizaid, who speaks with Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld regularly, was in Washington this week for a meeting of regional commanders from around the world.
In Baghdad, a senior officer said in a background briefing that the 21 car bombings in Baghdad so far this month almost matched the total of 25 in all of last year.
Against this, he said, there has been a lull in insurgents' activity in Baghdad in recent days after months of some of the bloodiest attacks.
The trend suggested that U.S. pressure, including the capture of key bomb makers, had left the insurgents incapable of mounting protracted offensives.
But the officer said that despite the U.S. troops' recent successes in disrupting insurgent cells, which have resulted in the arrests of 1,100 suspects in Baghdad alone in the past 80 days, the success of American goals in Iraq was not assured.
"I think that this could still fail," the officer said at the briefing, referring to the U.S. effort in Iraq. "It's much more likely to succeed, but it could still fail."
He said much depended on the new government's success in increasing public confidence among Iraqis.
The officer said recent polls by Baghdad University had shown confidence flagging sharply, down from an 85 percent rating immediately after the elections.
"For the insurgency to be successful, people have to believe the government can't survive," he said. "When you're in the middle of a conflict, you're trying to find pillars of strength to lean on."
Another problem cited by the senior officer in Baghdad was the new government's ban on raids on mosques, announced on Monday, which the U.S. officer said he expected to be revised after high-level discussions on Wednesday between U.S. commanders and Iraqi officials.
The officer said the ban appeared to have been announced by the new defense minister, Sadoun al-Dulaimi, without wider government approval, and would be replaced by a "more moderate" policy.
To raise the level of public confidence, the officer said, the new government would need success in cutting insurgents' attacks and also addressing popular impatience for improvements in public services like electricity that are worse, for many Iraqis, than they were last year.
The U.S. officer emphasized the need for caution and the time it may take to complete the U.S. mission here, themes that recur often in the private conversations of U.S. officers in Iraq.
"I think it's going to succeed in the long run, even if it takes years - many years," he said.
Only weeks ago, in the aftermath of the elections, U.S. generals offered a more upbeat view, one that was tied to a surge of Iraqi confidence that one commander in Baghdad now describes as "euphoria."
But on Wednesday, five high-ranking officers, speaking separately at the Pentagon and in Baghdad, and through an e-mail exchange from Baghdad with a reporter in Washington, ranged with unusual candor and detail over problems now confronting the war effort.
The generals' remarks, emphasizing the insurgency's resilience but also U.S. and Iraqi successes in disrupting it, suggested that U.S. commanders might have seen an opportunity after Rice's trip to inject their own note of realism into public debate about Iraq.
In talks with Iraq's new Shiite leaders, Rice urged a more convincing effort to reach out to the dispossessed Sunni Arab minority, warning that success in the war required a political strategy that encouraged at least some Sunni insurgent groups to turn toward peace.
The generals said the buildup of Iraqi forces had been more disappointing than previously acknowledged. He noted the absence of any Iraqi government troops when a 1,000-member Marine battle group mounted an offensive last week against insurgent strongholds in the northwestern desert, along the border with Syria.
U.S. officers said that 125 insurgents had been killed, with the loss of about 14 U.S. troops, but acknowledged that lack of sufficient troops may have allowed many insurgents to flee across the border or back into the interior of Iraq.
The border offensive was concluded over the weekend, with an air of disappointment that some of wider goals had not been achieved - possibly including the capture of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Islamic militant who is America's most-wanted man in Iraq.
Abizaid said the Iraqi police, accounting for 65,000 of the 160,000 Iraqis now trained and equipped, were "behind" in their ability to shoulder a major part of the war effort.
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