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Bush Loyalist: Time to Leave Iraq "Snake Pit" •
Hot Topic: How U.S. Might Disengage in Iraq •
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The Scent of Fear
By Bob Herbert
The New York Times
Monday 10 January 2005
The assembly line of carnage in George W. Bush's war in Iraq continues unabated. Nightmares don't last this long, so the death and destruction must be real. You know you're in serious trouble when the politicians and the military brass don't even bother suggesting that there's light at the end of the tunnel. The only thing ahead is a deep and murderous darkness.
With the insurgency becoming both stronger and bolder, and the chances of conducting a legitimate election growing grimmer by the day, a genuine sense of alarm can actually be detected in the reality-resistant hierarchy of the Bush administration.
The unthinkable is getting a tentative purchase in the minds of the staunchest supporters of the war: that under the current circumstances, and given existing troop strengths, the U.S. and its Iraqi allies may not be able to prevail. Military officials are routinely talking about a major U.S. presence in Iraq that will last, at a minimum, into the next decade. That is not what most Americans believed when the Bush crowd so enthusiastically sold this war as a noble adventure that would be short and sweet, and would end with Iraqis tossing garlands of flowers at American troops.
The reality, of course, is that this war is like all wars - fearsomely brutal and tragic. The administration was jolted into the realization of just how badly the war was going by the brazen suicide bombing just a few days before Christmas inside a mess tent of a large and supposedly heavily fortified military base in Mosul. Fourteen American soldiers and four American contractors were among the dead.
Seven American soldiers were killed last Thursday when their Bradley armored personnel carrier hit a roadside bomb in northwestern Baghdad. Two U.S. marines were killed the same day in Anbar.
Brig. Gen. David Rodriguez told reporters at the Pentagon on Friday of an ominous new development in Iraq. "We've noticed in the recent couple of weeks," he said, "that the I.E.D.'s [improvised explosive devices] are all being built more powerfully, with more explosive effort in a smaller number of I.E.D.'s."
Mr. Bush's so-called pre-emptive war, which has already cost so many lives, is being enveloped by the foul and unmistakable odor of failure. That's why the Pentagon is dispatching a retired four-star general, Gary Luck, to Iraq to assess the entire wretched operation. The hope in Washington is that he will pull a rabbit out of a hat. His mission is to review the military's entire Iraq policy, and do it quickly.
I hope, as he is touring the regions in which the U.S. is still using conventional tactics against a guerrilla foe, that he keeps in mind how difficult it is to defeat local insurgencies, and other indigenous forces, as exemplified by such widely varying historical examples as the French experiences in Indochina and Algeria, the American experience in Vietnam, the Israeli experience in Lebanon, and so on.
But even the fortuitously named General Luck will be helpless to straighten anything out in time for the Iraqi elections. The commander of American ground forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, made it clear last week that significant areas of four major provinces, which together contain nearly half the population of the entire country, are not safe enough for people to vote.
"Today I would not be in much shape to hold elections in those provinces," said General Metz.
With the war draining the military of the troops needed for commitments worldwide, the Pentagon is being forced to take extraordinary steps to maintain adequate troop strength. A temporary increase of 30,000 soldiers for the Army, already approved by Congress, will most likely be made permanent. The Pentagon is also considering plans to further change the rules about mobilizing members of the National Guard and Reserve. Right now they cannot be called up for more than 24 months of active service. That limit would be scrapped, which would permit the Army to call them up as frequently as required.
That's not a back-door draft. It's a brutal, in-your-face draft that's unfairly limited to a small segment of the population. It would make a mockery of the idea of an all-volunteer Army.
Something's got to give. The nation's locked in a war that's going badly. The military is strained to the breaking point. And it's looking more and more like the amateur hour in the places that are supposed to provide leadership in perilous times - the Pentagon and the White House.
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Coble Suggests Pullout in Iraq
By Stan Swofford
News & Record, North Carolina
Sunday 09 January 2005
U.S. Rep. Howard Coble, dean of the state's congressional delegation and an avowedly strong supporter of President Bush, says it's time for the United States to consider withdrawing from war-ravaged Iraq.
Coble, a Republican from Greensboro, is one of the first members of Congress - Republican or Democrat - to say publicly that the United States should consider a pullout.
The 10-term congressman, head of the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, said he is "fed up with picking up the newspaper and reading that we've lost another five or 10 of our young men and women in Iraq."
Coble said he has noticed a shift among his constituents in the 6th Congressional District regarding their feelings about the war. Letters, phone calls and messages that had been overwhelmingly supportive of the war are now about even, his office said.
Coble, however, said most of his constituents still strongly support America's involvement in the war, as he does, and believe the United States invaded Iraq for the right reasons.
Nevertheless, Coble said a troop withdrawal should be an option if the Iraqi government is unable or unwilling to "shoulder more of the heavy lifting" for its own security.
There has been little or no indication that the Iraqi government can do that, he said.
"What we have are Iraqis killing Iraqis and American troops," Coble said. "All I'm saying is that a troop withdrawal ought to be an option. It ought to be placed on the table for consideration."
Coble said he is seriously considering raising the issue of a troop withdrawal with his subcommittee, although he acknowledged the panel might not be the forum for it.
"I'm going to keep talking about this," he said.
Coble said he is aware that few members of Congress have said openly that the country should consider withdrawing from Iraq.
Republican Rep. James A. Leach of Iowa may be the only other GOP congressman to call for a pullout, he said. Leach said on the House floor more than a year ago that the United States should complete a withdrawal that would be complete by the end of 2004.
Although many Democratic congressman have sharply criticized the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq, as well as its conduct of the war, most say the United States must now stay until the Iraqi government is strong enough to defend itself.
Only Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination, called for a U.S. troop withdrawal to be accomplished in 90 days.
Coble said he arrived at his position only after many months of searching in vain for evidence that the Bush administration had a post-invasion strategy to deal with the transition to Iraqi self-government. Insurgent violence against Iraqi security forces and Americans has increased as the Jan. 30 date for the country's national elections draws closer.
Coble, one of the most popular Republicans in North Carolina, has represented the 6th Congressional District, which touches counties from Alamance to Rowan, since 1984. He was interviewed last week not long after he learned that Iraqi insurgents had assassinated the governor of Baghdad and that five more Americans had been killed in combat.
Their deaths, and the deaths of other U.S. soldiers in Iraq, occurred a little more than a week after 18 Americans were killed and dozens were wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowded mess tent near Mosul in one of the deadliest attacks against Americans since the beginning of the war.
They were among the more than 1,200 Americans killed since U.S. forces first occupied Baghdad in May 2003, when Bush declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq. The number includes at least 886 killed since U.S. forces captured former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein on Dec. 13, 2003. According to figures compiled by Coble's office, 31 military men and women from North Carolina had died in Iraq as of Dec. 11, and 279 had been wounded.
Coble was part of the overwhelming majority of the members of Congress who voted Oct. 12, 2002, to approve a war-powers resolution allowing Bush to attack Iraq if he decided it was necessary. Coble said he thought then that Bush was correct in attacking Iraq, and that he still believes it was the right decision.
"We've done a lot of good over there," Coble said, "and you don't read much about that in the mainstream media."
Mainly, the United States captured Saddam, "the international terrorist, the tyrant, the snake," he said.
But Coble voted to grant Bush the sweeping war-making powers believing that the administration had a "post-invasion strategy." Apparently, there was none, he said.
"If there was, I wish someone would tell me what it is or show it to me," he said. "I'd like to see it."
Coble said that if he had known there was no post-invasion strategy at the time of the vote on the war-powers resolution he would have "insisted that we keep our powder dry while we do some probing and planning."
Coble said he simply assumed that the administration had a post-invasion plan.
"There was never any question that we could whip their butt," he said. "The question was what were we going to do after that.
"Obviously, somebody was asleep at the planning table."
Coble noted last week that he was outspoken in his criticism of the Bush administration's post-invasion plan, or the lack of one, during his re-election campaign.
Coble, a former Coast Guard officer who saw duty in hostile waters during the Korean War, is known as an astute politician quick to respond to the moods and needs of his constituents.
He said he began to detect a shift among people in his district about the war as early as March. Mail that had expressed overwhelming support for the war was then running only slightly in favor. Coble's office said last week that the 700 letters, calls and messages about the war received this year have been split almost evenly for and against it.
Coble said he believes most people in his district feel as he does about the war in Iraq.
"They believe we were right to go there, and they strongly support our troops," he said, "but they are getting increasingly tired of our young men and women getting killed every day.
"We got rid of Saddam the snake. Now it's time to let the Iraqis take care of the snake pit."
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Hot Topic: How U.S. Might Disengage in Iraq
By David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt
The New York Times
Monday 10 January 2005
Washington - Three weeks before the election in Iraq, conversation has started bubbling up in Congress, in the Pentagon and some days even in the White House about when and how American forces might begin to disengage in Iraq.
So far it is mostly talk, not planning. The only thing resembling a formal map to the exit door are a series of Pentagon contingency plans for events after the Jan. 30 elections. But one senior administration official warned over the weekend against reading too much into that, saying "the Pentagon has plans for everything," from a new Korean war to relief missions in Africa.
The rumblings about disengagement have grown distinctly louder as members of Congress return from their districts, and as military officers try to game out how Sunni Arabs and Shiites might react to the election results. The annual drafting of the budget is a reminder that the American presence in Iraq is costing $4.5 billion a month and putting huge strains on the military. And, of course, White House officials contemplate the political costs of a second term dominated by a nightly accounting of continuing casualties.
By all accounts, President Bush has not joined the conversation about disengagement so far, though a few senior members of his national security team have.
A senior administration official said in an interview this weekend that Mr. Bush still intended to stick to his plan, refining his strategy of training Iraqis, but not wavering from his promise to stay until the job is done.
"We are not in the business of trying to float timetables," the official insisted. "The only metric we have is when we can turn more and more over to local forces."
But all over Washington, there is talk about new ways to define when the mission is accomplished - not to cut and run, but not to linger, either. Several administration officials acknowledge that Mr. Bush will face crucial decisions soon after Jan. 30, when it should become clearer whether the election has resulted in more stability or more insurgency.
Already, the president found himself in a rare public argument last week with one of his father's closest friends and advisers, Brent Scowcroft, the former national security adviser. The election "won't be a promising transformation, and it has great potential for deepening the conflict," Mr. Scowcroft declared Thursday, adding, "We may be seeing incipient civil war at this time."
Mr. Scowcroft said the situation in Iraq raised the fundamental question of "whether we get out now." He urged Mr. Bush to tell the Europeans on a trip to Europe next month: "I can't keep the American people doing this alone. And what do you think would happen if we pulled American troops out right now?"
In short, he was suggesting that Mr. Bush raise the specter that Iraq could collapse without a major foreign presence - exactly the rationale the administration has used for its current policy.
Mr. Bush, asked Friday whether he shared Mr. Scowcroft's concerns about "an incipient civil war," shot back, "Quite the opposite."
"I think elections will be such an incredibly hopeful experience for the Iraqi people," he said.
But the president's optimism is in sharp contrast, some administration insiders say, to some conversations taking place in the White House Situation Room, in the Pentagon and in Congress. For the first time, there are questions about whether it is politically possible to wait until the Iraqi forces are sufficiently trained before pressure to start bringing back American troops becomes overwhelming.
Some senators are now openly declaring that Iraqi military and police units are not up to the job.
Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee, said last week after meeting with top Pentagon officials, "In my judgment, a great deal of work needs to be done to achieve the level of forces that will allow our country and other members of the coalition to reduce force levels."
Before the recess, other Republican senators, including Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and John McCain of Arizona, voiced skepticism about the Iraq policy.
And on "Fox News Sunday," Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House, said "we are now digging ourselves out of a hole" in Iraq.
Few in Washington missed Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's decision last week to send a retired four-star general, Gary E. Luck, to Iraq to assess military operations and Iraqi security forces. It was driven, administration officials say, by an urgent need to determine what has gone wrong with the training of Iraqi troops.
In an interview with a Dallas radio station last week, Mr. Rumsfeld said he did not want to send more American troops to Iraq "because then we'd look more and more like an occupying force."
In classified strategy sessions, other administration officials say they are asking whether the sheer size of the American force, now 150,000 troops, is fueling the insurgency.
One possibility quietly discussed inside the administration is whether the new Iraqi government might ask the United States forces to begin to leave - what one senior State Department official calls "the Philippine option," a reference to when the Philippines asked American forces to pull out a decade ago.
Few officials will talk publicly about that possibility. But in a speech on Oct. 8, Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, who had just completed a tour as commander of all marines in Iraq, said, "I believe there will be elections in Iraq in January, and I suspect very shortly afterward you will start to see a reduction in U.S. forces - not because U.S. planners will seek it, rather because the Iraqis will demand it."
General Conway, who is now the director of operations for the military's Joint Staff, was traveling this weekend and could not be reached for more comment on the issue.
Even if the new government wants the American forces to remain, some officials say there is a growing undercurrent of talk about whether to press the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own defense by giving them a rough timetable for gradual American withdrawal.
"It's clear to everyone that this has to become an Iraqi show, and it has to happen this year," a senior administration official said.
Military officers say actual security conditions, not schedules, will dictate any American troop reductions.
"It's truly hard to say what anyone might regard as a realistic date," one general in Iraq said in an e-mail interview on Saturday.
Even as military planners at the Pentagon and in the Middle East draft possible withdrawal schedules, other Pentagon officials and retired officers are projecting long American troop commitments in Iraq.
Army officials here are still drawing up plans to sustain future rotations of troops at today's levels, plans that can always be adapted, they said.
Gen. Tommy R. Franks, who commanded the invasion of Iraq, said on the NBC News program "Today" on Dec. 9: "One has to think about the numbers. I think we will be engaged with our military in Iraq for, perhaps, 3, 5, perhaps 10 years."
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