Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
April 10, 2008 By Thom Shanker and Steven Lee Myers
WASHINGTON — The recommendation by the top American commander in Iraq to suspend troop reductions reflects a bleak assessment that Iraqi forces remain unprepared to take over the mission of securing their own nation, senior administration and military officials said Wednesday.
In a second day of Congressional testimony, the commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, left Democrats and some Republicans again frustrated as he steadfastly declined to spell out what more would have to happen on the ground before he would endorse withdrawals to take the number of American troops far below the 140,000 set to remain there after July.
In almost 20 hours of testimony over two days, General Petraeus and Ryan C. Crocker, the ambassador to Iraq, were much less specific than they were last September in assessing progress, prompting complaints that they presented no clear way for Congress or the American public to judge when or whether more troops might be on their way home.
In contrast to the information presented in September, the charts that General Petraeus offered in his testimony did not include any showing combat troops dipping below the 15 combat brigades to remain in Iraq when the troop buildup ends in July.
Since a significant number of support and aviation troops that accompanied the five extra brigades into Iraq will remain, nearly 140,000 American military personnel — more than the 132,000 before the buildup — will be in place well into the fall and probably through Election Day.
But under questioning from Representative Silvestre Reyes, a Texas Democrat, General Petraeus said he did not anticipate requesting another “surge” of troops even if security deteriorated. “That would be a pretty remote thought in my mind,” the general said.
Iraq has scheduled elections for October, raising questions among members of Congress about whether the American military would increase force levels as it has for past voting.
Several times since the invasion of 2003 the military headquarters in Baghdad has added troops without ordering a surge by holding combat brigades set for departure from Iraq for several weeks past their scheduled departure dates and accelerating the arrival of others; General Petraeus’s comments clearly were in keeping with that tested logistical tactic.
In his testimony on Wednesday, Mr. Crocker said his embassy was still preparing a report that would measure progress toward the 18 benchmarks that Congress set last year to help assess progress on the ground.
As the testimony concluded, President Bush was preparing to lay out his plans for Iraq when he speaks from the White House on Thursday morning.
Senior officials said the president would almost certainly endorse General Petraeus’s desire for sustained troop levels for at least 45 days after the final brigades from the troop increase leave. They said the White House and the Pentagon shared General Petraeus’s assessment that Iraqi forces remained unprepared to take over the security mission.
But Mr. Bush is also expected to acknowledge the strain on the military by announcing that the current 15-month deployments to Iraq will be reduced to 12 months by August.
The president is not expected to detail the specific conditions on the ground in Iraq that would allow him to order large numbers of troops home before he leaves office.
The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, voiced his party’s criticism of the president’s strategy on Wednesday, saying in a statement that “based on everything we have heard, we can reach only one conclusion: With 160,000 courageous American troops serving in Iraq, President Bush has an exit strategy for just one man — himself — on Jan. 20, 2009.”
A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the administration had abandoned the benchmarks as a strict standard of progress because establishing a secure Iraq would also depend on factors other than political and military progress.
Over two days of testimony, General Petraeus repeatedly was asked to explain the conditions that would allow further withdrawals, but he answered that they were not based on some easily defined measurements.
Asked for elaboration, the senior administration official said, “It’s a very hard concept to explain publicly because it doesn’t feature a sort of setting of the dial. It features what we call a running assessment.”
The transition to Iraqi control — the chart General Petraeus showed in September — remains the core strategy, officials said, and leads toward the goal of American forces standing back to a position of “strategic overwatch.”
“The challenge is that even in overwatch you can have security issues,” the official said.
Col. Steven A. Boylan, who is General Petraeus’s spokesman, said no dates for future troop reductions past July were presented on the charts to Congress because the decision could be made only after assessing conditions after the fifth troop-increase brigade left.
“A lot of people are speculating,” Colonel Boylan said, but no decisions can or will be made “until the assessment of the conditions” is made, as part of a process that will begin 45 days after the troop increase ends.
General Petraeus said Iraqi security forces today were “a very, very mixed bag across the board.” During the recent Basra mission, Iraqis showed they could move around the country in ways they could not even six months ago. But the combat operation proved that many units were unprepared, he said.
The speed of the future force reductions has divided the military, though officials said that all had signed off on the approach Mr. Bush will endorse Thursday.
“Some officers who would prefer more rapid drawdowns have suggested that the idea of holding at 15 brigades through the end of Bush’s term is the ‘Cadillac’ approach, keeping a luxury force in Iraq at the expense of other more pressing needs,” Frederick W. Kagan, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who advised the White House on the buildup, wrote in a report late last month.
“It is not. The current projected force levels are either the bare minimum needed under fairly optimistic assumptions to make success likely or else they are slightly below that bare minimum.”
General Petraeus made his caution clear when he was asked at the House Armed Services Committee what he would recommend to a new commander in chief who wanted to begin withdrawals within 60 days of taking office next January. “My response would be dialogue on what the risk would be,” he said. “And this is about risk.”
Later, at the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, General Petraeus described himself and Mr. Crocker as “minimalists,” but added that his minimalist view of withdrawals stopped with the removal of those additional troops sent in last year.
“We’re not after the Holy Grail in Iraq,” he said. “We’re not after Jeffersonian democracy. We’re after conditions that would allow our soldiers to disengage. And that is in fact what we are doing as we achieve progress, as we have with the surge, and that is what is indeed allowing us to withdraw the surge forces.”
April 10, 2008 By Thom Shanker and Steven Lee Myers
WASHINGTON — The recommendation by the top American commander in Iraq to suspend troop reductions reflects a bleak assessment that Iraqi forces remain unprepared to take over the mission of securing their own nation, senior administration and military officials said Wednesday.
In a second day of Congressional testimony, the commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, left Democrats and some Republicans again frustrated as he steadfastly declined to spell out what more would have to happen on the ground before he would endorse withdrawals to take the number of American troops far below the 140,000 set to remain there after July.
In almost 20 hours of testimony over two days, General Petraeus and Ryan C. Crocker, the ambassador to Iraq, were much less specific than they were last September in assessing progress, prompting complaints that they presented no clear way for Congress or the American public to judge when or whether more troops might be on their way home.
In contrast to the information presented in September, the charts that General Petraeus offered in his testimony did not include any showing combat troops dipping below the 15 combat brigades to remain in Iraq when the troop buildup ends in July.
Since a significant number of support and aviation troops that accompanied the five extra brigades into Iraq will remain, nearly 140,000 American military personnel — more than the 132,000 before the buildup — will be in place well into the fall and probably through Election Day.
But under questioning from Representative Silvestre Reyes, a Texas Democrat, General Petraeus said he did not anticipate requesting another “surge” of troops even if security deteriorated. “That would be a pretty remote thought in my mind,” the general said.
Iraq has scheduled elections for October, raising questions among members of Congress about whether the American military would increase force levels as it has for past voting.
Several times since the invasion of 2003 the military headquarters in Baghdad has added troops without ordering a surge by holding combat brigades set for departure from Iraq for several weeks past their scheduled departure dates and accelerating the arrival of others; General Petraeus’s comments clearly were in keeping with that tested logistical tactic.
In his testimony on Wednesday, Mr. Crocker said his embassy was still preparing a report that would measure progress toward the 18 benchmarks that Congress set last year to help assess progress on the ground.
As the testimony concluded, President Bush was preparing to lay out his plans for Iraq when he speaks from the White House on Thursday morning.
Senior officials said the president would almost certainly endorse General Petraeus’s desire for sustained troop levels for at least 45 days after the final brigades from the troop increase leave. They said the White House and the Pentagon shared General Petraeus’s assessment that Iraqi forces remained unprepared to take over the security mission.
But Mr. Bush is also expected to acknowledge the strain on the military by announcing that the current 15-month deployments to Iraq will be reduced to 12 months by August.
The president is not expected to detail the specific conditions on the ground in Iraq that would allow him to order large numbers of troops home before he leaves office.
The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, voiced his party’s criticism of the president’s strategy on Wednesday, saying in a statement that “based on everything we have heard, we can reach only one conclusion: With 160,000 courageous American troops serving in Iraq, President Bush has an exit strategy for just one man — himself — on Jan. 20, 2009.”
A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the administration had abandoned the benchmarks as a strict standard of progress because establishing a secure Iraq would also depend on factors other than political and military progress.
Over two days of testimony, General Petraeus repeatedly was asked to explain the conditions that would allow further withdrawals, but he answered that they were not based on some easily defined measurements.
Asked for elaboration, the senior administration official said, “It’s a very hard concept to explain publicly because it doesn’t feature a sort of setting of the dial. It features what we call a running assessment.”
The transition to Iraqi control — the chart General Petraeus showed in September — remains the core strategy, officials said, and leads toward the goal of American forces standing back to a position of “strategic overwatch.”
“The challenge is that even in overwatch you can have security issues,” the official said.
Col. Steven A. Boylan, who is General Petraeus’s spokesman, said no dates for future troop reductions past July were presented on the charts to Congress because the decision could be made only after assessing conditions after the fifth troop-increase brigade left.
“A lot of people are speculating,” Colonel Boylan said, but no decisions can or will be made “until the assessment of the conditions” is made, as part of a process that will begin 45 days after the troop increase ends.
General Petraeus said Iraqi security forces today were “a very, very mixed bag across the board.” During the recent Basra mission, Iraqis showed they could move around the country in ways they could not even six months ago. But the combat operation proved that many units were unprepared, he said.
The speed of the future force reductions has divided the military, though officials said that all had signed off on the approach Mr. Bush will endorse Thursday.
“Some officers who would prefer more rapid drawdowns have suggested that the idea of holding at 15 brigades through the end of Bush’s term is the ‘Cadillac’ approach, keeping a luxury force in Iraq at the expense of other more pressing needs,” Frederick W. Kagan, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who advised the White House on the buildup, wrote in a report late last month.
“It is not. The current projected force levels are either the bare minimum needed under fairly optimistic assumptions to make success likely or else they are slightly below that bare minimum.”
General Petraeus made his caution clear when he was asked at the House Armed Services Committee what he would recommend to a new commander in chief who wanted to begin withdrawals within 60 days of taking office next January. “My response would be dialogue on what the risk would be,” he said. “And this is about risk.”
Later, at the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, General Petraeus described himself and Mr. Crocker as “minimalists,” but added that his minimalist view of withdrawals stopped with the removal of those additional troops sent in last year.
“We’re not after the Holy Grail in Iraq,” he said. “We’re not after Jeffersonian democracy. We’re after conditions that would allow our soldiers to disengage. And that is in fact what we are doing as we achieve progress, as we have with the surge, and that is what is indeed allowing us to withdraw the surge forces.”