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The New York Times | Past Time to Get Real on Iraq    [

    Bush Iraq Plan Faces Democratic Challenge
    By Ann Flaherty
    The Associated Press

    Tuesday 09 January 2007

    President Bush is telling lawmakers that he will send thousands more U.S. troops to Iraq's two most troubled regions, but before he can unveil the plan it is facing stiff challenges from Congress' majority Democrats.

    Bush on Wednesday will announce a new war strategy, and has decided to call for 20,000 additional troops, said Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., who was among more than 30 senators briefed by the president on Monday.

    The extra forces would be sent to Baghdad, which has been consumed by sectarian violence, and the western Anbar Province, a base of the mostly Sunni insurgency and foreign al-Qaida fighters, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, said following the session with Bush.

    A day before Bush's nationally televised speech describing his proposal, Sen. Edward Kennedy, a longtime critic of Bush and the war, will propose legislation denying him the billions needed to send more troops to war unless Congress agrees first. Though it was unclear whether the bill would ever reach the full Senate, it could at least serve as a rallying point for the most insistent foes of the Iraq conflict.

    Democrats seem divided on whether to block funds for troop increases, but many were not ruling it out. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Democrats would "look at everything" in their power to curb the war, short of cutting money for troops already in the field.

    The bill by Kennedy, D-Mass., is guaranteed to fuel the debate among lawmakers on how far they should go to try to force the president's hand on the unpopular war.

    Under the Constitution, the president has broad war-making powers, while Congress controls spending. Democratic leaders have swiftly rejected any suggestion of withholding money from troops already in combat zones.

    Kennedy says his plan would prevent additional troops from being sent and not stop the flow of money to troops in the field now.

    "The best immediate way to support our troops is by refusing to inject more and more of them into the cauldron of a civil war that can be resolved only by the people and government of Iraq," Kennedy said in prepared remarks he was to deliver at the National Press Club on Tuesday.

    If brought to the floor by Democratic leaders, Kennedy's proposal would force Republicans to put themselves on record regarding the war for the first time since the Nov. 7 elections, when the GOP lost control of Congress to the Democrats in large part because of the war. Most Republicans say they back the president, or are at least willing to hear him out, but a few GOP moderates say there is no indication U.S. troops would make a difference.

    "The president's speech must be the beginning - not the end - of a new national discussion of our policy in Iraq," Kennedy said in his prepared remarks.

    According to senators who attended the meeting Monday with the president, a promise to send more troops to Iraq would be conditioned on criteria met by the Iraqi government, such as reaching political deals on sharing the nation's oil resources and dispatching more of its own troops to Baghdad.

    Bush told the senators that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki suggested the plan when the two met in late November in Amman, Jordan. The senators said the president expressed confidence that the Iraqi government could meet certain milestones in exchange for additional U.S. support.

    But several of the senators remained skeptical.

    "We've had these benchmarks before and to no avail," Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said after meeting with Bush. "Why should we increase our exposure to risk?"

    But whether Snowe and other GOP skeptics of Bush's plan, including Smith and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, will agree to Kennedy's plan is doubtful.

    "It would be a dishonorable thing for the Congress to budget away the bullets at a time when their commander in chief had ordered them to hold their place in the battlefront," said Smith.

    Collins, who recently returned from Iraq, said she remained unconvinced that more troops could help salvage the situation. She said one or two brigades might be needed in the Anbar province, which is showing signs of improvement, but that those forces could be reallocated from elsewhere in the country.

    Go to Original

    Past Time to Get Real on Iraq
    The New York Times | Editorial

    Tuesday 09 January 2007

    We've been down this road before. This time, it has to be different.

    There have been too many times that President Bush has promised a new strategy on Iraq, only to repeat the same old set of failed approaches and unachievable objectives. Americans need to hear Mr. Bush offer something truly new - not more glossy statements about ultimate victory, condescending platitudes about what hard work war is, or aimless vows to remain "until the job is done."

    If the voters sent one clear message to Mr. Bush last November, it was that it is time to start winding down America's involvement in this going-nowhere war.

    What they need is for the president to acknowledge how bad things have gotten in Iraq (not just that it is not going as well as he planned) and to be honest about how limited the remaining options truly are. The country wants to know how Mr. Bush plans to end its involvement in a way that preserves as much of the nation's remaining honor and influence as possible, limits the suffering of the Iraqi people and the harm to Iraq's neighbors, and gives Iraqi leaders a chance - should they finally decide to take it - to rescue their country from an even worse disaster once the Americans are gone.

    The reality that Mr. Bush needs to acknowledge when he speaks to the nation tomorrow night is that the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is feeding rather than restraining Iraq's brutal civil war. The Iraqi Army cannot be relied on to impose order even in Baghdad, while the Iraqi police forces - dominated by sectarian militias - are inciting the mayhem.

    Mr. Bush must acknowledge that there is no military solution for Iraq. Whatever plan he offers needs to start with a tough set of political benchmarks for national reconciliation that the Iraqi government is finally expected to meet. It needs to concentrate enough forces in Baghdad to bring some security to streets and neighborhoods, giving Iraq's leaders one last opportunity to try to bargain their way out of civil war.

    His plan needs to lay out tight timetables in which the Iraqis must take major steps to solve fundamental issues, including equitably dividing their oil wealth and disarming vengeful militias. There must also be a clear and rapid timetable for achieving enough stability in Baghdad to hand back significant military responsibilities to the Iraqis.

    The last time America presented Mr. Maliki with a set of political benchmarks, he bluntly rejected them. If he does that again, there is no way America can or should try to secure Iraq on its own. Mr. Bush must make clear to both Iraqis and Americans that without significant progress, American forces will not remain.

    We're under no illusions. Meeting those challenges is going to be extremely tough. And Iraq's unraveling may already be too far gone.

    For Mr. Bush, this means resisting any vague Nixonian formula of "peace with honor" that translates into more years of fighting on for the same ever-receding goals. Democrats in Congress should also resist euphemistic formulas like "phased redeployment," which really means trying to achieve with even fewer troops what Washington failed to achieve with current force levels.

    Nor can America simply turn its back on whatever happens to Iraq after it leaves. With or without American troops, a nightmare future for Iraq is a nightmare future for the United States, too, whether it consists of an expanding civil war that turns into a regional war or millions of Iraq's people and its oil fields falling under the tightening grip of a more powerful Iran.

    Mr. Bush is widely expected to announce a significant increase in American troops to deploy in Baghdad's violent neighborhoods. He needs to explain to Congress and the American people where the dangerously tapped-out military is going to find those troops. And he needs to place a strict time limit on any increase, or it will turn into a thinly disguised escalation of the American combat role.

    The Washington Post reported yesterday that just under 23,000 Iraqi civilians and police officers died violently in 2006, more than 17,000 of them in the last six months. That is a damning indictment of the Maliki government, and of current American military strategy.

    That is the Iraq that Americans want Mr. Bush to deal with tomorrow night.