And even as Cheney feeds his tales of fantasy to gullible TV viewers...
Iraq outlook bleak, U.S. generals say
IRAQ WAR: Amid a surge of insurgent attacks, American military officials say a reduction in troops is unlikely for now.
BY JOHN BURNS AND ERIC SCHMITT
NEW YORK TIMES
BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. military commanders in Baghdad and Washington gave 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 to consult with Iraq's new government.
In interviews and briefings, the generals pulled back from recent suggestions -- including 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.
One senior officer suggested that U.S. military involvement could last "many years."
Gen. 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 and allow U.S. forces to reduce their role in fighting.
President Bush, in a speech on 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 the regional commanders from around the world.
In Baghdad, a senior officer said that the 21 car bombings in Baghdad so far this month almost matched the total of 25 in all of 2004.
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, a trend that suggested that U.S. pressure, including the capture of key bomb makers, had left the insurgents incapable of mounting protracted offensives.
But the officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that despite U.S. troops' recent successes in disrupting insurgent cells, which have resulted in the arrest 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 background 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 conducted 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."
To raise the level of public confidence, the officer said, the new government would need success in cutting insurgent attacks and addressing popular impatience for improvements in public services like electricity that are worse, for many Iraqis, than they were last year.
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, discussed with unusual candor and detail the problems confronting the war effort.
By insisting that they not be identified, the three officers based in Baghdad were following a Pentagon policy requiring U.S. commanders in Baghdad to put "an Iraqi face" on the war, meaning that Iraqi commanders should be the ones talking to reporters, not Americans. But that policy has been questioned recently by senior officers in Iraq, who say that Iraqi commanders have failed to step forward, leaving a news vaccuum that has allowed the insurgent attacks, not their failures, to dominate news coverage.
Abizaid, whose Central Command headquarters exercises oversight of the war, said Iraqi police -- accounting for 65,000 of the 160,000 Iraqis now trained and equipped in the $5.7-billion U.S. effort to build up security forces -- are "behind" in their ability to shoulder a major part of the war effort.
One of starkest revelations by the U.S. commanders involved the surge in car bombings, the principal insurgent weapon in attacks over the past three weeks that have killed nearly 500 people across central and northern Iraq, about half of them Iraqi soldiers, police officers and recruits. |
