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The President Asserted Progress on Security and Political Issues.
Recent Reports Weren't Often So Upbeat.
By Glenn Kessler
The Washington Post
Friday 14 September 2007
In his speech last night, President Bush made a case for progress in Iraq by
citing facts and statistics that at times contradicted recent government reports
or his own words.
For instance, Bush asserted that "Iraq's national leaders are getting
some things done," such as "sharing oil revenues with the provinces"
and allowing "former Baathists to rejoin Iraq's military or receive government
pensions."
Yet his statement ignored the fact that U.S. officials have been frustrated
that none of those actions have been enshrined into law - and that reports
from Baghdad this week indicated that a potential deal on sharing oil revenue
is collapsing.
In a radio address to the nation less than a month ago, the president himself
complained that the Iraqi government was failing to address these issues. "Unfortunately,
political progress at the national level has not matched the pace of progress
at the local level," Bush said on Aug. 18. "The Iraqi government in
Baghdad has many important measures left to address, such as reforming the de-Baathification
laws, organizing provincial elections and passing a law to formalize the sharing
of oil revenues."
Bush also asserted that Baqubah, the capital of Diyala province, was once an
al-Qaeda stronghold but that "today, Baqubah is cleared." But in a
meeting with reporters on Aug. 27, the head of the State Department team in
Diyala said the security situation was not stable, hampering access to food
and energy, though he acknowledged that commerce was returning to Baqubah.
"Everything is based around security; if we have security, then we can
bring in agencies like USAID," John Melvin Jones said, referring to the
U.S. Agency for International Development. "It's going to take a while
before the security situation gets stable enough so that you can have a lot
of these other agencies involved."
Bush also thanked "the 36 nations who have troops on the ground in Iraq."
But the State Department's most recent weekly report on Iraq said there are
25 countries supplying 11,685 troops - about 7 percent of the size of the U.S.
forces.
At one point, the president cited a recent report by a commission headed by
retired Marine Gen. James Jones, saying that "the Iraqi army is becoming
more capable, although there is still a great deal of work to be done to improve
the national police."
But the report said Iraq's army will be unable to take over internal security
from U.S. forces in the next 12 to 18 months and "cannot yet meaningfully
contribute to denying terrorists safe haven." It also described the 25,000-member
national police force as riddled with sectarianism and corruption, and it recommended
that it be disbanded.
The commission also recommended that U.S. troops in Iraq be "retasked"
in early 2008 to protect critical infrastructure and guard against border threats
from Iran and Syria, while gradually turning responsibility for security over
to Iraqi forces despite their deficiencies - advice the president did not follow
in last night's speech.
The president also painted a relatively favorable picture of Baghdad, saying
that a year ago much of it "was under siege" but that today "ordinary
life is beginning to return." He did not mention that much of the once-heterogeneous
city has been divided into Shiite and Sunni enclaves.
The president also said that groups of "Iranian-backed militants"
are "being broken up, and many of their leaders are being captured or killed."
In congressional testimony this week, Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador
Ryan C. Crocker emphasized that Iran poses a looming menace in Iraq.
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