I looked to see if any other threads of this have been posted --- if I missed them please post this in there...

I think its a shame that Petraeus is not going to author this report...

The White House spin will gravely undermine the credibility of the report even it turns out to be more honest than anticipated.

An Early Clash Over Iraq Report
Specifics at Issue as September Nears

By Jonathan Weisman and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, August 16, 2007; A01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...1501281_pf.html

Senior congressional aides said yesterday that the White House has proposed limiting the much-anticipated appearance on Capitol Hill next month of Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker to a private congressional briefing, suggesting instead that the Bush administration's progress report on the Iraq war should be delivered to Congress by the secretaries of state and defense.

White House officials did not deny making the proposal in informal talks with Congress, but they said yesterday that they will not shield the commanding general in Iraq and the senior U.S. diplomat there from public congressional testimony required by the war-funding legislation President Bush signed in May. "The administration plans to follow the requirements of the legislation," National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in response to questions yesterday.

The skirmishing is an indication of the rising anxiety on all sides in the remaining few weeks before the presentation of what is widely considered a make-or-break assessment of Bush's war strategy, and one that will come amid rising calls for a drawdown of U.S. forces from Iraq.

With the report due by Sept. 15, officials at the White House, in Congress and in Baghdad said that no decisions have been made on where, when or how Petraeus and Crocker will appear before Congress. Lawmakers from both parties are growing worried that the report -- far from clarifying the United States' future in Iraq -- will only harden the political battle lines around the war.

White House officials suggested to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week that Petraeus and Crocker would brief lawmakers in a closed session before the release of the report, congressional aides said. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates would provide the only public testimony.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) told the White House that Bush's presentation plan was unacceptable. An aide to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) said that "we are in talks with the administration and . . . Senator Levin wants an open hearing" with Petraeus.

Those positions only hardened yesterday with reports that the document would not be written by the Army general but instead would come from the White House, with input from Petraeus, Crocker and other administration officials.

"Americans deserve an even-handed assessment of conditions in Iraq. Sadly, we will only receive a snapshot from the same people who told us the mission was accomplished and the insurgency was in its last throes," warned House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.).

"That's all the more reason why they would need to testify," a senior Foreign Relations Committee aide said of Petraeus and Crocker. "We would want them to say whether they stand by all the information in the report." He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not cleared to speak to reporters.

The legislation says that Petraeus and Crocker "will be made available to testify in open and closed sessions before the relevant committees of the Congress" before the delivery of the report. It also clearly states that the president "will prepare the report and submit the report to Congress" after consultation with the secretaries of state and defense and with the top U.S. military commander in Iraq and the U.S. ambassador.

But both the White House and Congress have widely described the assessment as coming from Petraeus. Bush has repeatedly referred to the general as the one who will be delivering the report in September and has implored the public and Republicans in Congress to withhold judgment until then. In an interim assessment last month, the White House said that significant progress has been shown in fewer than half of the 18 political and security benchmarks outlined in the legislation.

Several Republicans have hinted that their support will depend on a credible presentation by Petraeus, not only of tangible military progress but of evidence that the Iraqi government is taking real steps toward ethnic and religious reconciliation. One of them, Sen. John W. Warner (Va.), left for Iraq last night with Levin for his own assessment.

Petraeus and Crocker have said repeatedly that they plan to testify after delivering private assessments to Bush. U.S. military and diplomatic officials in Baghdad appeared puzzled yesterday when told that the White House had indicated that the two may not be appearing in public. They said they will continue to prepare for the testimony in the absence of instructions from Washington. "If anything, we just don't know the dates/times/or the committees that the assessment will be presented to," a senior military official in Baghdad said in an e-mail yesterday.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee aide said that, ideally, both Crocker and Petraeus would testify before that panel. The Senate committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee have also requested that Rice appear at a separate hearing but have received no response. A spokeswoman for Levin said that the senator expects at least Petraeus to testify before the Armed Services Committee but would be happy to have Crocker as well.

Although the reports from Petraeus and Crocker are the most eagerly awaited, several other assessments are also required by the May legislation. The Government Accountability Office is due to report on Iraqi political reconciliation and reconstruction by Sept. 1. An independent committee, headed by retired Marine Gen. James Jones, has been studying the training and capabilities of the Iraqi security forces and will report to Congress early next month. Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, said that the chiefs are making their own assessment of the situation in Iraq and will present it to Bush in the next few weeks.

Speaking to reporters traveling with him in Iraq yesterday, Petraeus said he is preparing recommendations on troop levels while getting ready to go to Washington next month. He declined to give specifics.

"We know that the surge has to come to an end," Petraeus said, according to the Associated Press. "I think everyone understands that, by about a year or so from now, we've got to be a good bit smaller than we are right now. The question is how do you do that . . . so that you can retain the gains we have fought so hard to achieve and so you can keep going."

Staff writer Josh White contributed to this report.

Surge' general won't be muffled, Dems told

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WASHINGTON - Under fire from Democrats, the White House insisted yesterday that it planned all along for Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker to testify publicly next month about whether the Iraq troop surge is working.

"I think everyone expects Ambassador Crocker and Gen. Petraeus to offer a very candid assessment of the situation on the ground in Iraq .... I don't think there will be any constraints in their testimony whatsoever," said White House national security spokesman Gordon Johndroe.

He was responding to published reports that House and Senate Democrats were angered at suggestions Petraeus and Crocker would talk to them only behind closed doors about their long-awaited Sept.15 progress report.

Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Karen Finney issued a statement saying the White House "should keep its word and follow the law by allowing open testimony."

Johndroe scoffed at suggestions the duo would only testify in private. "It's unfortunate that anyone would [try] to start a fight where there really isn't one, because this has always been the plan, and in fact it's even called for in the legislation," he said.

Kenneth R. Bazinet
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_report/...ems_told-1.html

I am not even worried so much about the credibility in Congress -- I do not think the American people will trust a White House report...on Iraq...

However, I think one way to get some credibility back would be not for Petraeus to address the Congress ---- but for his deputy...Col. H. R. McMaster -- who penned a book on the lies told by the military in Vietnam --- this man is a truth teller --- not prone to exaggeration and the Democrats should demand he be there to give the assessment...

August 14, 2007
The General
For Top General in Iraq, Role Is a Mixed Blessing
By JOHN F. BURNS
NEW YORK TIMES

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/world/mi...agewanted=print

BAGHDAD — Gen. David H. Petraeus looked out from a Black Hawk helicopter at the vistas of Baghdad rushing by 150 feet below on a recent summer evening, pointing at bustling markets, amusement parks and soccer fields scattered through neighborhoods where miles of concrete barriers stood like sentinels against the threat of suicide bombers.

Pressing the talk button on his headset, the slightly built, 54-year-old general, the top American commander in Iraq, said glimpses of the normal life that have survived the war’s horrors have helped to boost his own flagging spirits, especially on days when signs of battlefront progress are offset by new bombings with mass casualties, the starkest measure of continuing insurgent power across Iraq.

Then, he said ruefully, he wondered whether he “should have taken that civilian job” before accepting what many see as the most unpromising command since that of Gen. Creighton W. Abrams Jr. in Vietnam — who took charge, in 1968, when that war was going badly and American opinion was running strongly in favor of a pullout.

General Petraeus’s task may be tougher still. When he was appointed six months ago and promoted to full general, President Bush cast him as a man known for aggressive, innovative thinking on counterinsurgency warfare who could take the nearly 30,000 extra troops deployed to Iraq in January and turn the war’s tide with a “surge” aimed at securing Baghdad and its surrounding “belts.”

At the time, Mr. Bush compared General Petraeus to an audacious, offense-minded football coach with a record of turning around losing games.

The general echoed that mood. “Hard is not hopeless,” he said in a message to American troops on his arrival in Baghdad.

Since then, Mr. Bush has often sounded as though his Iraq commander offers a fount of credibility on the war that can compensate for the president’s poor poll ratings. In war speeches, he cites General Petraeus like a talisman. At a news conference at Camp David this month, he used the general’s first name three times. “I look forward to what David’s going to say,” he said, referring to the Sept. 15 deadline for General Petraeus and Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador in Iraq, to give a comprehensive status report to the White House and Congress.

The date, for Mr. Bush, has become a kind of firebreak — the right moment, he says, for lawmakers locked in a showdown over the war to decide whether to support a continuation of the American military effort here.

But for General Petraeus, being cast as the president’s white knight has been a mixed blessing. While he talks with Mr. Bush once or twice a week, in interviews he depicts himself as owing loyalty as much to Congress as the White House and stresses the downside, as well as the upside, of the military effort here.

His view, he says, is that he is “on a very important mission that derives from a policy made by folks at one end of Pennsylvania Avenue, with the advice and consent and resources provided by folks at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. And in September, that’s how I’m going to approach it.” Whether to fight on here, he says, is a “big, big decision, a national decision,” one that belongs to elected officials, not a field general.

The importance of sober assessments — and, by implication, of shedding the rose-tinted view of the war that has strained Congress’s patience with Iraq commanders in the past — has been one of his themes. Talking to American officers this summer during a counterinsurgency course at Taji, 15 miles north of Baghdad, he put it squarely. “We need forthright reports. We’re not trying to sugarcoat things, or put lipstick on a pig, or anything like that.”

American officials say he has carried this unvarnished approach into his dealings with the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. The men have differed over a range of issues, particularly the American command’s push to recruit former Sunni insurgents into the Iraqi security forces or tribal auxiliaries. It is a move General Petraeus sees as having the potential for dealing a decisive blow to Islamic militant groups linked to Al Qaeda, but which Mr. Maliki, a Shiite, fears will empower Sunnis for an eventual civil war with the ruling Shiite majority.

General Petraeus, in an e-mail message, played down reports that the relationship had been stormy, with Mr. Maliki threatening on one occasion to ask Mr. Bush to appoint a new American commander. “Actually, I have a very good relationship with the p.m., and I think he’d echo that assessment,” he said. “In fact, only on one occasion, several months back, have I ever been anything other than my normal easygoing self with the p.m. And that was while both of us were seated.”

More than 30 years ago at West Point, where he married the former Holly Knowlton, daughter of the academy’s superintendent, General Petraeus was cited in his class yearbook as “always going for it in sports, academics, leadership and even his social life.” Since then, he has won a broad Army following that helped him assemble a star cast of officers who accompanied him to Baghdad, including one, Col. H. R. McMaster, who wrote a widely acclaimed book about the failures of the Army’s highest-ranking officers to give an honest accounting of the state of the war in Vietnam.

But General Petraeus has been dogged, too, by detractors within the Army who say he is prone to overstate his accomplishments. His two previous Iraq tours, one as a two-star general commanding the 101st Airborne Division in the northern city of Mosul, another as a three-star general in Baghdad leading the effort to rebuild Iraq’s security forces, drew praise at the time.

His pacification of Mosul proved short-lived. The rapid, $19-billion Iraqi force buildup produced, on his watch, battalions impressive for the numbers trained and the huge arsenal of weapons handed over by the Americans, but the Iraqi soldiers were often unreliable, and their units prone to infiltration by militias when deployed.

Now, in the face of a stubbornly brutal conflict and declining war support at home, General Petraeus has pulled back from the pulsating sense of self-confidence that fellow officers say has been his hallmark — that he can prevail against any odds.

He has become strikingly cautious, avoiding on-the-record comments on many politically contentious issues. Shunning generalizations on the war in interviews, he lays out colored charts and graphs that show falling numbers of suicide attacks, other bombings and civilian casualties, when comparing January’s figures with those in June and July. But he eludes anything that might signal what broader conclusions he will be carrying to Washington in September.

His caution extends to the most fundamental question: whether the war can still be won. “Obviously, what we’re going to try and do is win it,” he says. “What we’re trying to do right now is generate enough hope to give it a chance. But the problem is, it’s likely to muddle along for quite a long time.” A campaign plan the general and Ambassador Crocker recently sent to Washington envisages an American troop presence of some size here at least through 2009.

Despite the challenges, some of the old bullishness has survived. When asked which American generals he most admires, General Petraeus names two remembered for turning around wars that were going badly: Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, hero of the Civil War; and another Army legend whose biography the general read on a recent 14-hour flight from Washington to Baghdad: Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway, who reversed Chinese advances in Korea in 1951.

In Baghdad, he goes for regular five-mile runs in the 120-degree heat, and thrives on outpacing younger officers. His do-or-die competitiveness is legend in the Army. Fifteen years ago, he carried on during maneuvers at Fort Campbell, Ky., after being struck by a rifle bullet in the chest, until a commander ordered him taken away on a stretcher. Laughing about it now, he says he would have died if the bullet had hit the ‘A’ in Army, over his heart, instead of the ‘a’ in Petraeus on his nametag.

One issue on which the general, like Mr. Crocker, is likely to part with proponents of an early American withdrawal is on the risk of much higher levels of violence if the troops leave quickly. In an interview last month, Mr. Crocker compared the killing to a five-reel movie, saying that “as ugly as the first reel has been the other four-and-a-half are going to be way, way worse.”

Speaking to the officers at Taji, General Petraeus put the matter just as bluntly. “If you didn’t like Darfur, you’re going to hate Baghdad,” he said.

The US needs a diplomatic Col. McMaster in the Middle East


09 August 2007


Editorial
http://www.zawya.com/Story.cfm/sidDS090807...7D00D0B74A0D7C/


The combined capacity of the United States' political leadership and armed forces to create havoc and prod strife and extremism in the Middle East is well documented. The recent experience of one army unit in Iraq, though, suggests that Americans also have the capacity to use military force and political acumen to generate positive results in a wider context of human respect. A Washington Post article a few days ago chronicling the counter-insurgency successes of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Tal Afar, a town of 290,000, offers important insights into some basic principles of foreign policy, military strategy, human decency and just common sense. The capacity of Americans to be efficient and sensible is not in doubt; what is puzzling is why these values do not often translate into American foreign policy as a whole, especially in the Middle East.

The 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment's recent successes largely reflect the leadership provided by Col. H. R. McMaster, who recently took command and began to train the unit for its return to Iraq. He told the Post that the key to counterinsurgency is focusing on the people, not the enemy. He instituted a series of principles that have proven very effective, and have seen the Iraqis of Tal Afar cooperate with American and Iraqi troops to beat back the insurgents and terrorists.

American officials at the highest level should grasp the underlying principles that explain success on the ground. One principle is that you treat people decently, not humiliate them, especially when you detain them. Treating people fairly, and treating all people alike, is shorthand for applying the rule of law in any society. Another key to the success of this unit is to listen to people, learn their language, understand their values and ethics, and act accordingly. Respecting local customs generates a powerful foundation for the tough political choices that must be made in this sort of situation. A third key is to engage with the people you are trying to protect, work with them rather than ordering them around. When these principles are applied, as Col. McMaster has tried to do in Tal Afar, the result is significant cooperation from the local Iraqis, fewer attacks, and more security and stability. This is another way of showing that people can rule themselves if they are given an opportunity to do so, and are treated as human beings, not as captives or disposable targets.

The McMaster principles should be studied more carefully in Washington and applied in American foreign policy initiatives throughout the Middle East. If such an approach were used in places like Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iran or other parts of the region - if rule of law and democratic values were to drive policy, rather than fear, ignorance and vengeance - we would see this region transformed into something very different, and much better than what exists today. The concepts at play here are not very complex or obscure. They are anchored in basic common sense, and the sort of respectful human behavior that any parent normally teaches a child. It's also called the Golden Rule of treating others as you'd want them to treat you. It works, when applied by conquering armies or friendly diplomats alike.


Article originally published by The Daily Star 09-Aug-07

URL: http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,496140,00.html

TWO MORE YEARS
US Is Seen in Iraq Until at Least '09
By Michael R. Gordon

The American command in Baghdad has prepared a detailed classified plan that calls for restoring security in local areas by the summer of 2008.


Getty Images
US General David Petraeus with his entourage on foot patrol in Baghdad. The American command has prepared plans for establishing security in Iraq by 2009.
While Washington is mired in political debate over the future of Iraq, the American command here has prepared a detailed plan that foresees a significant American role for the next two years.

The classified plan, which represents the coordinated strategy of the top American commander and the American ambassador, calls for restoring security in local areas, including Baghdad, by the summer of 2008. "Sustainable security" is to be established on a nationwide basis by the summer of 2009, according to American officials familiar with the document.

The detailed document, known as the Joint Campaign Plan, is an elaboration of the new strategy President Bush signaled in January when he decided to send five additional American combat brigades and other units to Iraq. That signaled a shift from the previous strategy, which emphasized transferring to Iraqis the responsibility for safeguarding their security.

That new approach put a premium on protecting the Iraqi population in Baghdad, on the theory that improved security would provide Iraqi political leaders with the breathing space they needed to try political reconciliation.

The latest plan, which covers a two-year period, does not explicitly address troop levels or withdrawal schedules. It anticipates a decline in American forces as the "surge" in troops runs its course later this year or in early 2008. But it nonetheless assumes continued American involvement to train soldiers, act as partners with Iraqi forces and fight terrorist groups in Iraq, American officials said.


FOUND IN...


This article has been provided by the New York Times as part of a special agreement between NYTimes.com. You can also find SPIEGEL stories at the New York Times on the Web. The goals in the document appear ambitious, given the immensity of the challenge of dealing with die-hard Sunni insurgents, renegade Shiite militias, Iraqi leaders who have made only fitful progress toward political reconciliation, as well as Iranian and Syrian neighbors who have not hesitated to interfere in Iraq's affairs. And the White House's interim assessment of progress, issued n July 12, is mixed.

But at a time when critics at home are defining patience in terms of weeks, the strategy may run into the expectations of many lawmakers for an early end to the American mission here.

The plan, developed by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior American commander, and Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador, has been briefed to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. William J. Fallon, the head of the Central Command. It is expected to be formally issued to officials here this week.

The plan envisions two phases. The "near-term" goal is to achieve "localized security" in Baghdad and other areas no later than June 2008. It envisions encouraging political accommodations at the local level, including with former insurgents, while pressing Iraq's leaders to make headway on their program of national reconciliation.

The "intermediate" goal is to stitch together such local arrangements to establish a broader sense of security on a nationwide basis no later than June 2009.

"The coalition, in partnership with the government of Iraq, employs integrated political, security, economic and diplomatic means, to help the people of Iraq achieve sustainable security by the summer of 2009," a summary of the campaign plan states.

Military officials here have been careful not to guarantee success, and recognized they may need to revise the plan if some assumptions were not met.

"The idea behind the surge was to bring stability and security to the Iraqi people, primarily in Baghdad because it is the political heart of the country, and by so doing give the Iraqis the time and space needed to come to grips with the tough issues they face and enable reconciliation to take place," said Col. Peter Mansoor, the executive officer to General Petraeus.

"If eventually the Iraqi government and the various sects and groups do not come to some sort of agreement on how to share power, on how to divide resources and on how to reconcile and stop the violence, then the assumption on which the surge strategy was based is invalid, and we would have to re-look the strategy," Colonel Mansoor added.

General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker will provide an assessment in September on trends in Iraq and whether the strategy is viable or needs to be changed.

The previous plan, developed by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., who served as General Petraeus's predecessor before being appointed as chief of staff of the Army, was aimed at prompting the Iraqis to take more responsibility for security by reducing American forces.

That approach faltered when the Iraqi security forces showed themselves unprepared to carry out their expanded duties, and sectarian killings soared.

In contrast, the new approach reflects the counterinsurgency precept that protection of the population is best way to isolate insurgents, encourage political accommodations and gain intelligence on numerous threats. A core assumption of the plan is that American troops cannot impose a military solution, but that the United States can use force to create the conditions in which political reconciliation is possible.

To develop the plan, General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker assembled a Joint Strategic Assessment Team, which sought to define the conflict and outline the elements of a new strategy. It included officers like Col. H. R. McMaster, the field commander who carried out the successful "clear, hold and build" operation in Tal Afar and who wrote a critical account of the Joint Chiefs of Staff role during the Vietnam War; Col. John R. Martin, who teaches at the Army War College and was a West Point classmate of General Petraeus; and David Kilcullen, an Australian counterinsurgency expert who has a degree in anthropology.

State Department officials, including Robert Ford, an Arab expert and the American ambassador to Algeria, were also involved. So were a British officer and experts outside government like Stephen D. Biddle, a military expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The team determined that Iraq was in a "communal struggle for power," in the words of one senior officer who participated in the effort. Adding to the problem, the new Iraqi government was struggling to unite its disparate factions and to develop the capability to deliver basic services and provide security.

Extremists were fueling the violence, as were nations like Iran, which they concluded was arming and equipping Shiite militant groups, and Syria, which was allowing suicide bombers to cross into Iraq.

Like the Baker-Hamilton commission, which issued its report last year, the team believed that political, military and economic efforts were needed, including diplomatic discussions with Iran, officials said. There were different views about how aggressive to be in pressing for the removal of overtly sectarian officials, and several officials said that theme was toned down somewhat in the final plan.

The plan itself was written by the Joint Campaign Redesign Team, an allusion to the fact that the plan inherited from General Casey was being reworked. Much of the redesign has already been put into effect, including the decision to move troops out of large bases and to act as partners more fully with the Iraqi security forces.

The overarching goal, an American official said, is to advance political accommodation and avoid undercutting the authority of the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. While the plan seeks to achieve stability, several officials said it anticipates that less will be accomplished in terms of national reconciliation by the end of 2009 than did the plan developed by General Casey.

The plan also emphasizes encouraging political accommodation at the local level. The command has established a team to oversee efforts to reach out to former insurgents and tribal leaders. It is dubbed the Force Strategic Engagement Cell, and is overseen by a British general. In the terminology of the plan, the aim is to identify potentially "reconcilable" groups and encourage them to move away from violence.

However, groups like Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a Sunni Arab extremist group that American intelligence officials say has foreign leadership, and cells backed by Iran are seen as implacable foes.

"You are not out there trying to defeat your enemies wholesale," said one military official who is knowledgeable about the plan. "You are out there trying to draw them into a negotiated power-sharing agreement where they decide to quit fighting you. They don't decide that their conflict is over. The reasons for conflict remain, but they quit trying to address it through violence. In the end, we hope that that alliance of convenience to fight with Al Qaeda becomes a connection to the central government as well."

I saw that yesterday.
I was too stunned for words. So, in here I decided to keep silent waiting for someone else to post it up. In other forums, I allowed myself to let go and froth on the mouth a bit, not to mention lambasting Cardin and Mikulski in their web-forms, using http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_info...enators_cfm.cfm . Saying something about being gutless if they don't show their outrage for this.

Then I used this http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW.shtml to find my contact for Congess.

xyzse:

Making government work for you...good for you.

It's no longer even worth bothering with our "leaders" in each state.

It is now obvious they have abandoned ship and the insane are running the asylum.

It is more than obvious the democrats will do nothing for the remainder of Bush's term(even if it is forever).

And it is more than obvious that every single member has to be forced out.

It means his report will be meaningless.
Bush will spin it the way he wants, and will increase the # of troops.

And Hillary will start the draft.
Because they would rather kill all the kids, then have those kids protesting on the streets

graham youve become so hostile. The administration has done what it has wanted the last six years.
Remeber Bush had to go find Petraeus because he said he would listen to his generals and they wanted to leave Iraq. So Bush found a general who said what he wanted to hear.

Regarding Hillary her web site has a speech she just gave in Iowa that breaks her beleifs down.
Now is she lying, I don't know but I do know the Bush administration has lied and continues to lie.

Now about white house writing the report I think they mean Dick Cheney. Bush was a C student in grade school, high school and college. I was a C student also that means we are average and not great minds but occasionally have one good idea. So I look over all Bush has done and think he was not so smart running for President.
Now Cheney he is scary and secretive and hard line. There are eleven permanent bases in Iraq and an Embassy that cost a fortune. The intent of Bush is not to leave, the intent of Cheney is not to leave.
Have not heard a lot from Condi Rice lately so Bush isn't listening to her anymore.

Rumor says Petra's believes its not working so it only make reason that he will not be writing a report that bush or Cheney want.

Graham ; instead of name calling and quoting negatives go find me a candidate and policy and a reason to remain an American and Vote. Go find me someone who is telling the truth and tell me why they excite you.

I am sorry Al Gore is not going to be running, I am even sorrier when I see poll numbers for those who will take global warming into consideration when they consider a candidate.

Graham you were a teacher use those skills to find something and someone to believe in and then come back and teach us about the person and why.
Everday history is being made, what do we want history to say about us?

I wasn't a teacher, a couple of other posters were/are. Wish I had been.

I am hostile to what is going on, and frustrated with our leaders from top to bottom. Almost 90 percent (or more) are not doing what the public wants.
The vote in 2006 wasn't for this.

Bush(and I know W is not the leader, only the puppet), its either his father or Cheney working for the family running the show.
I half expect Cheney himself to become President soon

None of the major candidates except for Kucinich, Gravel,Paul want to change the back structure.
Gore seems to have been silenced. We hear nothing at all from him, why I don't know. But silence is not what is needed.

And its not Iraq anymore, because it is obvious Iran is coming...
I have no answer anymore.

All you say is reasonable...do you see anyone in government that speaks to you.
I am sure you will vote and if you think you wouldn't I would beg you to review that decision.

I get a little peeved at move on .org as they have a strong backing but will not consider the middle.

I spend time these days with reading UNICEF, Darfur information and civil liberties information.
I have one fund for earth and wildlife I support.

I send letters and pass on information when I can.

Today my frustrations with US Democracy are as great as everyones, I am afraid that it needs to be rebuilt but even with a Democrat in Office the power in the Executive Branch created these last six years have so unbalanced the constitution.

I love Taz quotes Madison and the Federalist it helps.

This is what is so insane about the Republican POV recently --- it flies in the face of many principles supported by conservatives for years --- Bush claims to be a conservative --- but he's off the scale in that regard...

"Compassionate Conservative"

He is neither.

"Uniter not a divider"

Wrong again

BushCo has turned governance into public relations.

All spin all the time.

Facts?

Truth?

Who cares?

Surprise! Surprise! From the moment Bush does this, I think the time is right to raise our voices for a serious push to bring impeachment proceedings against this entire administration.

This is what incenses me so much about the Republican party at this time.

The fact that they haven't the courage to come out publicly and state that the Bush Administration has perverted our principles of governance and that they were duped into believing with the Democrats in this trumped up need for security ---

BUt they persist with their ideas of continuing in Iraq --- railing against passage/implementation of the complete 9/11 Commission recommendations...despite the fact that their presidential candidates talk little if at all about BUsh...

To me this is a blatant lack of integrity --- and intellectual honesty.

Bush should be rejected in toto by the Republican party...

He could give new meaning to the phrase --- "What a Crock-er?

What Will Crocker Report In September?
Posted August 22, 2007 | 08:03 AM (EST)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-weigan...t-_b_61361.html

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Last week, I wrote an article which detailed why General Petraeus' upcoming report to Congress may not be as trustworthy as it's been built up to be. This week, I would like to look at the other side of the coin -- American Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker's companion report to Congress.

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Comment
Now, initially everyone though these were going to be two separate reports, but the White House has announced in the meantime that there will only be one report to Congress, and that -- by the way -- Petraeus and Crocker will have input to this report, but the White House will be actually writing this report. Unfortunately for Congress, they had written this into the law -- the text actually said:

(A) The President shall submit an initial report, in classified and unclassified format, to the Congress, not later than July 15, 2007, assessing the status of each of the specific benchmarks established above, and declaring, in his judgment, whether satisfactory progress toward meeting these benchmarks is, or is not, being achieved.

( The President, having consulted with the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Commander, Multi-National Forces Iraq, the United States Ambassador to Iraq, and the Commander of U.S. Central Command, will prepare the report and submit the report to Congress.

The White House even tried to stop Petraeus from testifying before Congress in the open (as opposed to a secret hearing), until they noticed that the law specifically said that he would be made available to Congress for testimony in both "open" and "closed" settings. The White House quickly backpedaled on that one, thankfully, which means that both Petraeus and Crocker will indeed be answering Congress' questions in public, in open hearings.

I'm actually kind of surprised President Bush didn't try to claim executive privilege, which seems to be his knee-jerk reaction to anyone testifying before Congress. Even if Bush thought he'd eventually lose in court, it would take months if not years to resolve, just like all his other executive privilege claims

[Note to Senator Patrick Leahy: It's time to stop behaving like a gentleman and start issuing contempt of Congress citations -- one for every time Bush has done this].

But I digress. Everyone has already guessed what Petraeus is going to say -- some version or another of: "The Iraq glass is half-empty, half-full; so you should just give the surge another six months to a year to see what happens." It's not going to come as any surprise when he stands up in front of the klieg lights and says this. Both sides of the aisle are already sharpening their rhetoric to deal with this situation, as it is seen as pretty much inevitable at this point.

But what is Ambassador Crocker going to say?

Democrats have already been openly admitting that the "surge" is working, to some degree or another. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been quoted saying so in the past week. The Edwards campaign (to their credit) stongly denounced such remarks, correctly saying "By cherry-picking one instance to validate a failed Bush strategy, it risks undermining the effort in the Congress to end this war." What all Democrats (even Hillary and Barack) also strongly state, though, is that there has been little to no progress (to date) politically in Iraq. Which makes Crocker's report crucial to the upcoming Congressional debate about the war.

In Iraq, Prime Minister Maliki is convening a conference of all the political parties in Iraq -- Sunni, Shi'ite, and Kurdish -- in a desperate effort to produce some sort of tangible progress he can present to America to convince us that political progress is being made. The problem is, he's starting from a pretty deep hole, since ministers have been abandoning his cabinet in the past few months (much like rats from a sinking ship), as well as parliament members who are boycotting his government entirely. So just to get back to where he was when the surge began would look like progress to him. But not to America, and (assumably) not to Ambassador Crocker.

It should be noted that Democratic Senator Carl Levin (who is also Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee) has just publicly called for Iraqis to get rid of Maliki, signaling his assessment of the political situation for Iraq's central government as basically hopeless until they get someone new to run things.

The White House, meanwhile, had to give a report to Congress last month which itemized progress in Iraq (both military and political) on 18 benchmarks which Congress had previously laid down. When most of the mainstream media looked at the benchmark assessment the White House released in July, the grades were reported thusly: out of the 18 benchmarks, eight are graded "satisfactory progress," eight are graded "unsatisfactory progress," and two are graded "incomplete."

The grading is actually a little more complex. For the benchmark "Enacting and implementing legislation addressing amnesty," for instance, the White House reports: "The prerequisites for a successful general amnesty are not present; however, in the current security environment, it is not clear that such action should be a near-term Iraqi goal." This is counted as "unsatisfactory progress," however it seems that the White House is arguing that this one shouldn't even be on the list.

The two "incomplete" are actually fractional grades -- one benchmark is broken down into four parts, three of which are "unsatisfactory" and one "satisfactory." The other benchmark is graded half and half. So the real total should be eight and three-quarters (8.75) "satisfactory" and nine and one-quarter (9.25) "unsatisfactory."

But the real question is what the numbers will be in September. The law states that Bush has to report "following the same procedures and criteria" as the July benchmark report. Which means that to show any "political progress" to Congress, they're going to have to report better numbers in September.

There are three benchmarks from the list of 18 which I just can't see the White House attempting to claim any progress on: de-Ba'athification, amnesty for insurgents, and disarming the militias. I just don't think the White House could, with any credibility, claim that any of those three are going to have "satisfactory progress" come mid-September.

There are five benchmarks that the White House might try to claim "satisfactory progress" on, as well as fractional parts of two others. Remember, they don't have to claim that these benchmarks have been fully "completed," just that "satisfactory progress" is being made on them. With Maliki attempting his desperate last-ditch conference, it is conceivable that progress could be claimed on any or all of these.

The first is the oil revenue-sharing law. For obvious reasons, this is number one on Bush's list of things he'd like to see accomplished. I have written before chronicling Bush's cheery predictions -- for over a year, now -- that success is right around the corner on this issue. So whatever leverage the U.S. has on Maliki (and the Iraqi government at large) will obviously be brought to bear on this issue first. Whether they actually can pass anything through their parliament remains to be seen, but if they even get a bill out of committee, Bush will (not surprisingly) claim "satisfactory progress" has been made. But it's doubtful that even this minor progress can be accomplished, given the importance of such a law to the differing Iraqi factions.

The second one is to turn over full authority to Iraqi commanders to make tactical and operational decisions. This one is rather vaguely worded, so it would be easy for Bush to claim progress, even if not much progress has been made.

Next is also rather vague: "Ensure that Iraqi Security Forces [ISF] are providing even-handed enforcement of the law." The argument that "we're making progress with the Sunnis in al-Anbar" might be used to justify marking this one as "successful progress" being made.

The next one is numeric, so it will be harder to fudge. Increase the number of ISF units capable of operating independently. This is more a military assessment than political, meaning that the White House is less likely to try to claim progress if there has been none. But it remains a possibility.

The last one is kind of strange, but again, who knows what could come out of Maliki's conference? "Ensuring that Iraq's political authorities are not undermining or making false accusations against members of the ISF." If the conference announces any sort of progress on this front at all, then Bush can claim it is "satisfactory."

There are also two fractional issues which the White House could conceivably claim progress on. One-fourth of the benchmark which deals with provisional elections is "establishing provincial council authorities." And the other one has two goals: "reducing the level of sectarian violence," and "eliminating militia control of local security." They've already claimed in the July report that the Iraqis are making "satisfactory progress" on reducing sectarian violence, so the other half of that really depends on how you define "militia." Once again, al-Anbar will be held up as a shining example. But what we have done in al-Anbar is essentially turn local security over to the local (Sunni) militias. If you define "militia" as "Shi'ite militia," however, then it's even conceivable that the White House may try to claim progress, but this seems doubtful, since the southern city of Basra is currently sinking into a Shi'ite-on-Shi'ite militia war.

When you total it up, it could be as many as 14 benchmarks in which "satisfactory progress" is being made, three with "unsatisfactory progress," and one still half-and-half. That would be (numerically, at least) substantial progress to tell the media about. Realistically, I think the numbers may be closer to: 11 satisfactory, four unsatisfactory, and one incomplete. That would show some progress, but not enormous amounts of progress. Bush may even try to claim a handful of the benchmarks are fully complete, which would further bolster his case.

But the problem with the benchmark list is that it doesn't accurately measure progress on the ground for average Iraqi citizens. For instance, there is no mention in the list of benchmarks provided by Congress (for the White House to report on) of any measure of providing sufficient electricity and clean water to the public. There is no mention of training enough engineers, technicians, and maintenance personnel to keep the reconstruction projects running properly, after the American companies who build them inevitably leave. There is no mention of levels of security for the general public. There is no mention of getting Iraq's oil output up past pre-war levels. There is no mention of getting a banking system up and running in Iraq. There is no mention of "stopping the ethnic and sectarian cleansing" which is turning Iraq into enclaves of Sunnis, Shi'ites, and Kurds -- even while the "surge" continues. There is no mention of securing Iraq's porous borders. There is no mention of the steadily growing problem of Iraqi refugees which are fleeing by the millions to neighboring countries. There are a lot of problems Iraq faces which this list of benchmarks does not even address, in other words.

Congress could most assuredly have better worded the benchmark reporting law, in order to get clearer answers from the Bush White House. But that should be seen as water under the bridge, at this point.

While it might be expected that Crocker is going to toe the line and report as rosy an Iraq scenario as can possibly be spun from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the reality may be different next month. Crocker is quoted in a recent article from McClatchy saying "The progress on the national level issues has been extremely disappointing and frustrating to all concerned -- to us, to Iraqis, to the Iraqi leadership itself... We do expect results, as do the Iraqi people, and our support is not a blank check." The whole article is sobering, and worth a read.

Now, this may be a shameless attempt to "lower the bar," so if he reports anything next month to Congress even slightly better than the grim scenario he speaks of in this article, then he (and Republicans everywhere) can claim: "See, it's not as bad as Crocker was thinking just a few weeks ago."

Or it may be his actual, honest opinion. Which means his report to Congress may have just as grim (and refreshingly reality-based) an outlook.

One way or another, I predict that Crocker's report is ultimately going to be more influential than even Petraeus' report to Congress, in terms of defining the war debate that is sure to follow in the halls of the Capitol. And any tantalizing signals he gives to the press in the meantime bear watching closely.



[The full July White House report on progress on individual benchmark progress in Iraq can be read at the White House's website, or downloaded as a PDF file. I have posted a summary (cut-and-pasted, not edited) of all 18 benchmarks on my blog, which is easier to read.]

[Egotistical Program Note: Last week's article was cited in a "look what the crazy leftists are saying" editorial, written by Michael Goldfarb, who is an editor over at Rupert Murdoch's Weekly Standard. If I'm annoying the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy™ then I guess I must be doing something right...]

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August 22, 2007
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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p...toryId=13852120



Watching Washington
By Ron Elving
The Petraeus Report: Already History?


Spencer Platt
Gen. David Petraeus is briefed on operations in the restive Sunni neighborhood of Ghazaliya, Iraq, Aug. 18, 2007. Getty Images




“So much has been freighted on this one man, this one report and this one point in time that it is no longer possible for the 'Petraeus report' to fulfill its original purpose.”

NPR.org, August 21, 2007 · About a century ago, French statesman Georges Clemenceau said war had become too important to be left to the generals.

Now, it seems, the Bush White House has decided the upcoming report on the Iraq war by Gen. David Petraeus has become too important to be left to the general.

This vaunted progress report, due to Congress by Sept. 15, was always to be a joint product with U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker. But beyond this co-authorship, we are now told, the White House expects other officials to weigh in on the document, as well. The final report will include these viewpoints as well as the first-hand judgments from the front that everyone has been waiting for.

At one point, it was even suggested that this "Petraeus report" might be publicly presented by someone else, someone in whom the administration had total faith. The name of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was mentioned, as were other political appointees. The general and the ambassador, it was suggested, might be available to Congress only for closed-door briefings.

To its credit, the White House this week pulled down this last trial balloon, assuring reporters traveling with the president to Canada that Petraeus and Crocker would appear live and in person to give testimony to relevant congressional committees on Sept. 11 or 12. Care to bet which day the administration will pick?

But questions remain regarding the content and authorship of this momentous report. Critics pounced on the news of additional hands involved in the preparation, charging the final product would come from "White House hacks." Journalists in general wondered whether the president's speech writers would be working their magic on the final text.

Clemenceau, of course, would not be surprised. The "Petraeus report" has become such a linchpin of the administration's defense of this war that the White House cannot afford to gamble on its contents, its presentation or even its public reception.

The report must be hopeful and persuasive enough to win the White House at least another six months of Hill support for the troop surge. Otherwise, this last stab at salvaging something from the debacle in Iraq will be over.

Part of this is the president's own doing. He has publicly invoked the general's name scores of times in talking about the war in Iraq — as often, in fact, as he used to invoke the name of Saddam Hussein. When in mid-July the Senate spent all night debating a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, Republicans pleaded for two more months — just 60 days more — so as to hear this crucial report from this fine man in uniform.

In fact, so much has been freighted on this one man, this one report and this one point in time that it is no longer possible for the "Petraeus report" to fulfill its original purpose. It cannot be a frank assessment of where things stand, militarily or politically, because the administration and its allies can no longer afford to have that assessment be negative or neutral — or even insufficiently positive.

The White House knows it's not enough if the report talks up the results of higher troop levels in Anbar province but admits the Maliki government in Baghdad has fallen apart. It's great for the general to say his tactics are working and Sunnis are turning on al-Qaida in Fallujah and Ramadi. But even that may not be good enough if the general and the ambassador also admit they see no progress on the political front.

After all, the surge is not for its own sake. Military success is meant to make possible a political solution. Otherwise it's all just a holding operation, one that will necessitate a large U.S. occupation force for years to come. And Petraeus may be too honest not to say so.

He is, after all, a professional soldier, as Crocker is a career diplomat. Whatever their loyalties to the boss, both men are thought to have personal integrity. This implies at least some independence. So while we should expect them to say much that the White House wants to hear, we should expect to hear other things, too.

If in fact we do, it will be hazardous for politicians in Iraq and in this country as well. That is why the White House wants to batten and couch it, to contain potential damage.

That is why many people believe the real "Petraeus report" is, in effect, already on display in Iraq itself — apparent to all willing to look. What we will see and hear next month from the general, the ambassador and all their collaborators will be something else.

Clemenceau would understand.

Alright, so far in these terms I see the following:

1 - The Military surge has given some stability in the areas that it has been assigned.
a - It allows for Iraqi police and counter-insurgency training.
b - It acts like a lid to supress the actions of insurgents and foreign fighters in the area.
c - Those that we train might at one point use that training and equipment against us. Iraqi milities, police and military have been infiltrated by insurgents.
d - Insurgents get acclimated to the amount of troops in a particular area, we draw down in one place, it tends to give them license to attack even more. Take the British occupied area, they drew down their troops and the area has become worse than before.
Summary - More and more, I think that the surge is a tragic mistake. I am beginning to compare Iraq to a giant pressure cooker. We probably can finish this up in terms of bringing a stable Democracy in Iraq, but it would take over 10 years to do.

The problem now, is that I think that insurgents have become used to the amount of troops in a particular region, they pull back even slightly, it would get worse than before. So saying that, is America prepared to keep this level of troops at a sustained pace for another few years? I am not quite sure of that. Then consider the other instability that this occupation has fomented. Iran is becoming bolder, and so is N. Korea. Israel and Pakistan is a mess as usual, who knows when the next blow up comes. America's infrastructure itself is flailing, and domestic issues are now coming to the fore... Needless to say, it is a bad situation. I still think we should give a dead-line to force the Iraqi government and others to shape up. At least one in terms of shifting our occupation in to a containment.

2 - Al-Maliki and Bush are correct that the Iraqi government must be run by Iraqis and that Levin's call for Maliki's ouster is wrong.
a - Regardless of how it is, it was a democratically elected body and we must respect it. We must show them more respect than we have shown the win of Hamas, which was also a democratically elected body. That is the essence of democracy after all, people have to deal with the consequences of their decisions.
b - Even if we shouldn't force them to do what they need to do or tell them what to do, we are allowed to position ourselves with what we can do, if we want to influence them. Meaning, there must be consequences to their actions or inactions. Much like this Admin must have accountability and go through the consequences of their actions.

Alright I should stop for now.

I think Levin's call for Mailiki's ouster is correct.

Ayad Allawi agrees.

He is worthless.

His credibility is gone.

He is unwilling to back peace but only Shi'a dominance.

As a result he should go.

Editorial: Iraq's unity statement meaningless
August 28, 2007
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vpi...0,1010604.story

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is protesting too much - and still doing too little of consequence to create unity in his dysfunctional government. His shrill attacks Sunday against Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who called for his replacement, were the intemperate cries of someone who knows he's wrong but is either unable or unwilling to make any changes.

Maliki said the senators made no sense and should respect Iraq's sovereignty. But Clinton and Levin simply reflected the consensus of senior U.S. military commanders and the intelligence community. A sobering new intelligence estimate last week found that Iraqi leaders "remain unable to govern effectively" and are unlikely to repair violent sectarian divisions before the U.S. troop surge wanes next spring.

Maliki's lame response was to sign a joint statement of broad political unity by two major Kurdish parties, two Shia parties and a parliamentary block of minor Sunni groups. Though the White House latched onto this empty statement of intent as a major sign of progress, the document was cobbled together just after the secular political alliance Iraqiya, led by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, pulled out of the government Friday. So much for unity.

Iraq may be a sovereign nation, as Maliki says, but it has yet to prove it can function as a state - after thousands of U.S. troops have lost their lives and the U.S. Treasury has shelled out hundreds of billions of dollars trying to prop it up.

reality check

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp...sdate=8/24/2007

First published: Friday, August 24, 2007

What did President Bush mean, exactly, when he told the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Wednesday that Iraq could be "free"? The implication that the attainment of such freedom requires perseverance, though others might say stubbornness, reminiscent of that in Vietnam is unsettling.
Yet there was Mr. Bush, warning the country not to give in to the "the allure of retreat" from Iraq, lest there be death and destruction on a level like that in Vietnam and Cambodia a generation ago. It requires considerable gall for the President to use the Vietnam War and its aftermath as an argument for fighting a seemingly unwinnable war in Iraq and yet overlook the consequences for America. It's critical to remember that more than 55,000 Americans died in the misguided U.S. adventure in Vietnam.

Mr. Bush is myopic about Iraq, just as President Johnson and President Nixon were about the war they fought.

"Our troops are seeing this progress on the ground," Mr. Bush says. "And as they take the initiative from the enemy, they have a question: Will their elected leaders in Washington pull the rug out from under them just as they are gaining momentum and changing the dynamic on the ground in Iraq?"

The emptiness of such rhetoric is exposed by U.S. intelligence analysts. In a report released Thursday, they warn that Iraq remains all but ungovernable. The country where President Bush is all too willing to suffer still more U.S. casualties is about to become even more dangerous, according to the latest National Intelligence Estimate.

Iraq is as violent as ever, the report concludes, with tensions between rival Shiite and Sunni factions unresolved and the terrorist group known as al-Qaida in Iraq quite capable of continuing high-profile attacks resulting in staggering numbers of deaths.

Nor can the "free" nation Mr. Bush envisions maintain much in the way of order. The Iraqi Security Forces can't function without U.S. and other outside forces, according to the collaborative assessment of the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and the intelligence organization of each military service. How can Mr. Bush ignore them?

The President should take particular note of the report's assessment of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the alarmingly ineffective leader he was nonetheless praising Wednesday as "a good guy, a good man with a difficult job." Here's what the intelligence report has to say about that: "The strains of the security situation and absence of key leaders have stalled internal political debates, slowed national decision making, and increased Maliki's vulnerability to alternative coalitions."

Mr. Maliki himself, meanwhile, is showing a petulant streak. He said at a news conference in Syria that he could easily find other allies if the United States ceases to support him.

"No one has the right to place timetables on the Iraq government," he said. "It was elected by its people."

This is the state of affairs that Mr. Bush suggests can blossom into such a thriving democracy, on the model of Japan and South Korea. Then, again, the President is citing all the wrong lessons of Vietnam as he fails to see Iraq as it truly is.

The question he can't bring himself to ask, let alone answer, was raised in the waning days of the Vietnam War by Sen. John Kerry, then a disillusioned veteran of it: "How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a mistake?"

THE ISSUE: The President sees progress in Iraq; his intelligence analysts do not.

THE STAKES: The American people need to decide if they're willing to repeat the experience of Vietnam.

The Anbar Awakening

Aug 24, 2007

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/08/24/...le3201627.shtml
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Political Animal) THE ANBAR AWAKENING....Josh Patashnik has other problems with National Review's latest editorial about Iraq, but it's this passage that makes me want to bang my head against the wall:
The fact is that the surge is President Bush's policy, and one that he implemented over the vociferous opposition of Democrats who thought the best strategy against al Qaeda in Iraq was to begin to leave. Now the surge has helped turn Sunni tribes against al Qaeda, advancing the goal that nearly everyone in the U.S. notionally shares of routing the terror group from Iraq.
Say it slowly: This. Is. A. Lie. The Sunni tribes began turning against AQI nearly a year ago. They did it on their own, not as part of any American military plan. They did it before the surge started. They did it before Gen. Petraeus was even a gleam in George Bush's eye. Here's the truth:
The turnabout began last September, when a federation of tribes in the Ramadi area came together as the Anbar Salvation Council to oppose the fundamentalist militants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

....The council sought financial and military support from the Iraqi and American governments. In return the sheiks volunteered hundreds of tribesmen for duty as police officers and agreed to allow the construction of joint American-Iraqi police and military outposts throughout their tribal territories.

....Beginning last summer and continuing through March, the American-led joint forces pressed into the city, block by block, and swept the farmlands on its outskirts. In many places the troops met fierce resistance. Scores of American and Iraqi security troops were killed or wounded.

....The fact that Anbar is almost entirely Sunni and not riven by the same sectarian feuds as other violent places, like Baghdad and Diyala Province, has helped to establish order. Elsewhere, security forces are largely Shiite and are perceived by many Sunnis as part of the problem. In Anbar, however, the new police force reflects the homogeneous face of the province and appears to enjoy the support of the people.
The Anbar Awakening is genuinely good news, but (a) it had nothing to do with the surge, ( it's happening only in homogeneous Sunni areas, and © it involves arming and training Sunni forces who are almost certain to turn against both us and the Shiite central government as soon as they've finished off AQI. Pretending otherwise is simply fraudulent.

The grim reality...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/world/mi...agewanted=print

April 29, 2007
Uneasy Alliance Is Taming One Insurgent Bastion
By KIRK SEMPLE
NEW YORK TIMES

RAMADI, Iraq — Anbar Province, long the lawless heartland of the tenacious Sunni Arab resistance, is undergoing a surprising transformation. Violence is ebbing in many areas, shops and schools are reopening, police forces are growing and the insurgency appears to be in retreat.

“Many people are challenging the insurgents,” said the governor of Anbar, Maamoon S. Rahid, though he quickly added, “We know we haven’t eliminated the threat 100 percent.”

Many Sunni tribal leaders, once openly hostile to the American presence, have formed a united front with American and Iraqi government forces against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. With the tribal leaders’ encouragement, thousands of local residents have joined the police force. About 10,000 police officers are now in Anbar, up from several thousand a year ago. During the same period, the police force here in Ramadi, the provincial capital, has grown from fewer than 200 to about 4,500, American military officials say.

At the same time, American and Iraqi forces have been conducting sweeps of insurgent strongholds, particularly in and around Ramadi, leaving behind a network of police stations and military garrisons, a strategy that is also being used in Baghdad, Iraq’s capital, as part of its new security plan.

Yet for all the indications of a heartening turnaround in Anbar, the situation, as it appeared during more than a week spent with American troops in Ramadi and Falluja in early April, is at best uneasy and fragile.

Municipal services remain a wreck; local governments, while reviving, are still barely functioning; and years of fighting have damaged much of Ramadi.

The insurgency in Anbar — a mix of Islamic militants, former Baathists and recalcitrant tribesmen — still thrives among the province’s overwhelmingly Sunni population, killing American and Iraqi security forces and civilians alike. [This was underscored by three suicide car-bomb attacks in Ramadi on Monday and Tuesday, in which at least 15 people were killed and 47 were wounded, American officials said. Eight American service members — five marines and three soldiers — were killed in two attacks on Thursday and Friday in Anbar, the American military said.]

Furthermore, some American officials readily acknowledge that they have entered an uncertain marriage of convenience with the tribes, some of whom were themselves involved in the insurgency, to one extent or another. American officials are also negotiating with elements of the 1920 Revolution Brigades, a leading insurgent group in Anbar, to join their fight against Al Qaeda.

These sudden changes have raised questions about the ultimate loyalties of the United States’ new allies. “One day they’re laying I.E.D.’s, the next they’re police collecting a pay check,” said Lt. Thomas R. Mackesy, an adviser to an Iraqi Army unit in Juwayba, east of Ramadi, referring to improvised explosive devices.

And it remains unclear whether any of the gains in Anbar will transfer to other troubled areas of Iraq — like Baghdad, Diyala Province, Mosul and Kirkuk, where violence rages and the ethnic and sectarian landscape is far more complicated.

Still, the progress has inspired an optimism in the American command that, among some officials, borders on giddiness. It comes after years of fruitless efforts to drive a wedge between moderate resistance fighters and those, like Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, who seem beyond compromise.

“There are some people who would say we’ve won the war out here,” said Col. John. A. Koenig, a planning officer for the Marines who oversees governing and economic development issues in Anbar. “I’m cautiously optimistic as we’re going forward.”

A New Calm

For most of the past few years, the Government Center in downtown Ramadi, the seat of the provincial government, was under near-continual siege by insurgents, who reduced it to little more than a bullet-ridden bunker of broken concrete, sandbags and trapped marines. Entering meant sprinting from an armored vehicle to the front door of the building to evade snipers’ bullets.

Now, however, the compound and nearby buildings are being renovated to create offices for the provincial administration, council and governor. Hotels are being built next door for the waves of visitors the government expects once it is back in business.

On the roof of the main building, Capt. Jason Arthaud, commander of Company B, First Battalion, Sixth Marines, said the building had taken no sniper fire since November. “Just hours of peace and quiet,” he deadpanned. “And boredom.”

Violence has fallen swiftly throughout Ramadi and its sprawling rural environs, residents and American and Iraqi officials said. Last summer, the American military recorded as many as 25 violent acts a day in the Ramadi region, ranging from shootings and kidnappings to roadside bombs and suicide attacks. In the past several weeks, the average has dropped to four acts of violence a day, American military officials said.

On a recent morning, American and Iraqi troops, accompanied by several police officers, went on a foot patrol through a market in the Malaab neighborhood of Ramadi. Only a couple of months ago, American and Iraqi forces would enter the area only in armored vehicles. People stopped and stared. The sight of police and military forces in the area, particularly on foot, was still novel.

The new calm is eerie and unsettling, particularly for anyone who knew the city even several months ago.

“The complete change from night to day gives me pause,” said Capt. Brice Cooper, 26, executive officer of Company B, First Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, First Infantry Division, which has been stationed in the city and its outskirts since last summer. “A month and a half ago we were getting shot up. Now we’re doing civil affairs work.”

A Moderate Front

The turnabout began last September, when a federation of tribes in the Ramadi area came together as the Anbar Salvation Council to oppose the fundamentalist militants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

Among the council’s founders were members of the Abu Ali Jassem tribe, based in a rural area of northern Ramadi. The tribe’s leader, Sheik Tahir Sabbar Badawie, said in a recent interview that members of his tribe had fought in the insurgency that kept the Americans pinned down on their bases in Anbar for most of the last four years.

“If your country was occupied by Iraq, would you fight?” he asked. “Enough said.”

But while the anti-American sheiks in Anbar and Al Qaeda both opposed the Americans, their goals were different. The sheiks were part of a relatively moderate front that sought to drive the Americans out of Iraq; some were also fighting to restore Sunni Arab power. But Al Qaeda wanted to go even further and impose a fundamentalist Islamic state in Anbar, a plan that many of the sheiks did not share.

Al Qaeda’s fighters began to use killing, intimidation and financial coercion to divide the tribes and win support for their agenda. They killed about 210 people in the Abu Ali Jassem tribe alone and kidnapped others, demanding ransoms as high as $65,000 per person, Sheik Badawie said.

For all the sheiks’ hostility toward the Americans, they realized that they had a bigger enemy, or at least one that needed to be fought first, as a matter of survival.

The council sought financial and military support from the Iraqi and American governments. In return the sheiks volunteered hundreds of tribesmen for duty as police officers and agreed to allow the construction of joint American-Iraqi police and military outposts throughout their tribal territories.

A similar dynamic is playing out elsewhere in Anbar, a desert region the size of New York State that stretches west of Baghdad to the Syrian and Jordanian borders. Tribal cooperation with the American and Iraqi commands has led to expanded police forces in the cities of Husayba, Hit, Rutba, Baghdadi and Falluja, officials say.

With the help of the Anbar sheiks, the military equation immediately became simpler for the Americans in Ramadi. The number of enemies they faced suddenly diminished, American and Iraqi officials said. They were able to move more freely through large areas. With the addition of the tribal recruits, the Americans had enough troops to build and operate garrisons in areas they cleared, many of which had never seen any government security presence before.

And the Americans were now fighting alongside people with a deep knowledge of the local population and terrain, and with a sense of duty, vengeance and righteousness.

“We know this area, we know the best way to talk to the people and get information from them,” said Capt. Hussein Abd Nusaif, a police commander in a neighborhood in western Ramadi, who carries a Kalashnikov with an Al Capone-style “snail drum” magazine. “We are not afraid of Al Qaeda. We will fight them anywhere and anytime.”

Beginning last summer and continuing through March, the American-led joint forces pressed into the city, block by block, and swept the farmlands on its outskirts. In many places the troops met fierce resistance. Scores of American and Iraqi security troops were killed or wounded.

The Ramadi region is essentially a police state now, with some 6,000 American troops, 4,000 Iraqi soldiers and 4,500 Iraqi police officers, including an auxiliary police force of about 2,000, all local tribesmen, known as the Provincial Security Force. The security forces are garrisoned in more than 65 police stations, military bases and joint American-Iraqi combat outposts, up from no more than 10 a year ago. The population of the city is officially about 400,000, though the current number appears to be much lower.

To help control the flow of traffic and forestall attacks, the American military has installed an elaborate system of barricades and checkpoints. In some of the enclaves created by this system, which American commanders frequently call “gated communities,” no vehicles except bicycles and pushcarts are allowed for fear of car bombs.

American commanders see the progress in Anbar as a bellwether for the rest of country. “One of the things I worry about in Baghdad is we won’t have the time to do the same kind of thing,” Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, commander of day-to-day war operations in Iraq, said in an interview here.

Yet the fact that Anbar is almost entirely Sunni and not riven by the same sectarian feuds as other violent places, like Baghdad and Diyala Province, has helped to establish order. Elsewhere, security forces are largely Shiite and are perceived by many Sunnis as part of the problem. In Anbar, however, the new police force reflects the homogeneous face of the province and appears to enjoy the support of the people.

A Growing Police Force

Military commanders say they cannot completely account for the whereabouts of the insurgency. They say they believe that many guerrillas have been killed, while others have gone underground, laid down their arms or migrated to other parts of Anbar, particularly the corridor between Ramadi and Falluja, the town of Karma north of Falluja and the sprawling rural zones around Falluja, including Zaidon and Amariyat al-Falluja on the banks of the Euphrates River. American forces come under attack in these areas every day.

Still other guerrillas, the commanders acknowledge, have joined the police force, sneaking through a vetting procedure that is set up to catch only known suspects. Many insurgents “are fighting for a different side now,” said Brig. Gen. Mark Gurganus, commander of ground forces in Anbar. “I think that’s where the majority have gone.”

But American commanders say they are not particularly worried about infiltrators among the new recruits. Many of the former insurgents now in the police, they say, were probably low-level operatives who were mainly in it for the money and did relatively menial tasks, like planting roadside bombs.

The speed of the buildup has led to other problems. Hiring has outpaced the building of police academies, meaning that many new officers have been deployed with little or no training. Without enough uniforms, many new officers patrol in civilian clothes, some with their heads wrapped in scarves or covered in balaclavas to conceal their identities. They look no different than the insurgents shown in mujahedeen videos.

Commanders seem to regard these issues as a necessary cost of quickly building a police force in a political environment that is, in the words of Colonel Koenig, “sort of like looking through smoke.” The police force, they say, has been the most critical component of the new security plan in Anbar.

Yet, oversight of the police forces by American forces and the central Iraqi government is weak, leaving open the possibility that some local leaders are using newly armed tribal members as their personal death squads to settle old scores.

Several American officers who work with the Iraqi police said a lot of police work was conducted out of their view, particularly at night. “It’s like the Mafia,” one American soldier in Juwayba said.

General Odierno said, “We have to watch them very closely to make sure we’re not forming militias.”

But there is a new sense of commitment by the police, American and Iraqi officials say, in part because they are patrolling their own neighborhoods. Many were motivated to join after they or their communities were attacked by Al Qaeda, and their successes have made them an even greater target of insurgent car bombs and suicide attacks.

Abd Muhammad Khalaf, 28, a policeman in the Jazeera district on Ramadi’s northern edge, is typical. He joined the police after Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia killed two of his brothers, he said. “I will die when God wills it,” he said. “But before I die, I will support my friends and kill some terrorists.”

The Tasks Ahead

Some tribal leaders now working with the Americans say they harbor deep resentment toward the Shiite-led administration of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, accusing it of pursuing a sectarian agenda. Yet they also say they are invested in the democratic process now.

After boycotting the national elections in 2005, many are now planning to participate in the next round of provincial elections, which have yet to be scheduled, as a way to build on the political and military gains they have made in recent months.

“Since I was a little boy, I have seen nothing but warfare — against the Kurds, Iranians, Kuwait, the Americans,” Sheik Badawie said. “We are tired of war. We are going to fight through the ballot box.”

Already, tribal leaders are participating in local councils that have been formed recently throughout the Ramadi area under the guidance of the American military.

Iraqi and American officials say the sheiks’ embrace of representative government reflects the new realities of power in Anbar. “Out here it’s been, ‘Who can defend his people?’ ” said Brig. Gen. John R. Allen, deputy commanding general of coalition forces in Anbar. “After the war it’s, ‘Who was able to reconstruct?’ ”

Indeed, American and Iraqi officials say that to hold on to the security gains and the public’s support, they must provide services to residents in areas they have tamed.

But successful development, they argue, will depend on closing the divide between the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad, which has long ignored the province, and the local leadership in Anbar, which has long tried to remain independent from the capital. If that fails, they say, the Iraqi and American governments may have helped to organize and arm a potent enemy.

James Moore| BIO | I'M A FAN OF THIS BLOGGER
The Surge in Absurdity
Posted August 22, 2007 | 07:20 PM (EST)


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-moore/th...html?view=print


There is nothing easier than making predictions about the behavior of the Bush administration. Look for the eventuality in every scenario that completely lacks logic and it will be the course pursued by this president. Only the zealot can process what he says but the damage done by his blunt force instruments is impossible to ignore. So let us all now prepare for the report of Gen. David Petraeus.


Is there anyone in America who doesn't already know what Petraeus and the president are going to tell the public? Here's a guess from someone who lives a good chunk of continent away from the Beltway: Progress is finally being made; it's not as much as we want but it would be wrong for America to abandon the Iraqi people now just as things are starting to improve.

The president and Hillary and General Petraeus can all talk about the al Anbar Province but that doesn't change what is happening in the rest of Iraq. It does, however, gloss over a few important points about Anbar. Bush does not expect the American public to question why the Sunnis in Anbar are cooperating with US forces. But there are some obvious conclusions to be reached about the state of the war in Anbar.

The White House and the Pentagon have made much of the alliances between Sunni leaders and American forces. They have combined in an effort to push back al Qaeda insurgents in al Anbar. That may be only part of their motivation, however. It's just as likely that the Sunnis, who dominate Anbar Province, are seeking to keep the majority Shiites at a distance. Isn't it possible that American soldiers are being used to facilitate the initial steps of Iraq's Balkanization while they fight to keep the city of Ramadi and the wider province of al Anbar free from al Qaeda's control?

Saddam Hussein, of course, was a Sunni, and when he was deposed by the US invasion and occupation, his sect was essentially disenfranchised. The decades of oppression the dictator had visited upon the Shiites to the south and the Kurds to the north have made political reconciliation between the sects virtually impossible, regardless of how many purple fingers are waved in the air. Obviously, the Sunnis know that at least some of the majority Shiite population wants revenge and atonement for the torture and loss under Saddam. Many Shiites believe the Sunni are accountable, if only by religious association with the crazed dictator. The insurgents being fought by the US and Sunni alliance in Anbar undoubtedly include Shiite fighters among the insurgency. There seems to be ample evidence that the Sunnis are interested in securing Anbar Province, the city of Ramadi, and Central Iraq as their own territory. This can hardly be described as a military victory for the US.

Whether the US leaves Iraq tomorrow or ten years from tomorrow, the only variable in the outcome will be the number of dead Americans and Iraqis. It seems inevitable that the country will be governed in three distinct regions with political power emanating, as it almost always has, from the mosque and the politically connected clerics. The Sunni will control the central reaches of Iraq while the Shiites will rule the south with considerable involvement from Iran. To the north, the Kurds will try to maintain a semblance of order while avoiding Turkish influence. Yes, it's possible they will war against each other but isn't that already happening?

What's happening in Al Anbar does not present a very cogent argument that we are making progress. But it is a sign the Sunni have staked out a claim on their piece of the countryside and we are helping them to secure it. This hardly seems worth another American life. But the president who avoided Vietnam is now citing that war as an example of why we should not leave Iraq and his rhetoric is as much a proof of his evasiveness as are his missing Texas National Guard records. Mr. Bush talks about the Vietnamese "boat people" as evidence America ought not to have left South Vietnam. Has he not noticed the millions of Iraqis fleeing to Lebanon, Jordan, Iran, and Syria? Ultimately, the argument can be made that America's refusal to withdraw from Vietnam is what helped secure the population's determination to adopt a communist style government. Our lingering presence in Iraq is almost certain to turn the Iraqis away from democracy and insure an Islamist regime. Occupiers never win because the occupied will always outfight them and out-die them and outlast them.

Democracy only succeeds when it spreads itself. If the Iraqis truly wanted what we are trying to force feed them, they would have tried to get it themselves, the same way our founders did. Instead, they are fighting amongst religious sects, goaded on by al Qaeda insurgents who hope to take advantage of the chaos, and our president has sent our children into the middle of this madness. This is not our fight. And every Republican or Democrat who thinks the Iraqi conflict is important to America needs to offer up at least one son or daughter to carry a gun into the desert. If they can't make that commitment, then they are hypocrites and cowards.

Otherwise, bring them all home. And do it now.

House to Hold Hearings on Two New Reports on Iraq

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 28, 2007; A08

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2701917_pf.html

The House will hold hearings next week on two key reports assessing political and military conditions in Iraq, jump-starting the debate over President Bush's strategy even before long-awaited testimony by Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, due the following week.

A completed 70-page report by the Government Accountability Office, to be delivered to Congress next Tuesday, paints a bleak picture of prospects for Iraqi political reconciliation, according to administration officials who have seen it. The second report, by an independent commission of military experts, is being drafted. But a scorecard on the Iraqi security forces released yesterday by an adviser to the group concluded that the Iraqis are years away from taking over significant responsibility from U.S. combat forces.

The two reports -- and hearings on them in the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees -- will set a largely negative backdrop for Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Crocker, who are expected to testify together in a joint hearing before the two House committees and in a separate session in the Senate. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has objected to a Pentagon proposal that they appear on Sept. 11, a Pelosi spokesman said, and the exact date remains under negotiation.

Administration officials said yesterday that the Petraeus-Crocker testimony will closely follow the National Intelligence Estimate judgments released last week, which predicted continued political deterioration in Iraq but cited "measurable but uneven improvements" in the security situation.

The NIE, requested by the White House Iraq coordinator, Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, in preparation for the testimony, met with resistance from U.S. military officials in Baghdad, according to a senior U.S. military intelligence officer there. Presented with a draft of the conclusions, Petraeus succeeded in having the security judgments softened to reflect improvements in recent months, the official said.

Bush continued his efforts to frame the debate yesterday, congratulating Iraqi politicians on an agreement they announced Sunday in Baghdad. The accord reached by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish representatives "reflects their commitment to work together for the benefit of all Iraqis," Bush said in a visit to Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico.

The agreement called for the release of thousands of detainees being held without charge, reform of a law barring members of Saddam Hussein's party from government jobs, regulation of the oil industry and provincial elections. Those elements are among a set of congressionally mandated benchmarks, and all require approval of Iraq's parliament. No details of the accord were released, and Sunni politicians expressed skepticism yesterday that Maliki's Shiite-dominated government would push for enactment of the measures.

Bush is scheduled to deliver today the second of two speeches designed to describe Iraq as caught between two forces that threaten U.S. security -- Sunni extremism, personified by al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Taliban, and the Shiite extremism of Iran and its Mideast proxies Hamas and Hezbollah. The president plans to tell an American Legion convention in Reno, Nev., that an increase in U.S. combat forces in Iraq begun early last spring has been operational only for 75 days, a senior administration official said, yet gains are apparent. "It's understandable that political progress has been slower than security," the official said.

In a speech last week to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Bush compared the Iraq conflict to the Vietnam War, arguing that a U.S. troop withdrawal would lead to widespread death and suffering as he said it did in Southeast Asia three decades ago.

After the Petraeus-Crocker testimony, Bush will deliver his own written report to Congress assessing progress toward 18 congressionally mandated political and security benchmarks in Iraq. An interim report in July painted a mixed picture, and the White House is depending heavily this time on Petraeus to head off calls from congressional Democrats, and a number of influential Republicans, to begin withdrawing U.S. troops and turning security over to the Iraqi military.

In its benchmark legislation last spring, Congress arranged for its own security report, appointing a commission headed by retired Marine Gen. James Jones to assess the Iraqi forces. Strategic and military expert Anthony Cordesman, a commission adviser, previewed that assessment in a report yesterday saying it will be years before the Iraqi army and police forces will be capable of taking over.

Progress was slowed this year as U.S. forces increased their own operations and turned attention away from Iraqi training and force modernization, Cordesman wrote. Although the Iraqi army has shown improvement, he said, corruption and sectarianism continue in police forces. White House and military projections of a timetable for transition from U.S. troops to Iraqi security forces have been often revised in recent years and have proved unrealistic, he said.

Staff writers Thomas E. Ricks and Robin Wright in Washington and Michael Abramowitz, who is traveling with the president, contributed to this report.

Aug 28, 2007

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/08/28/...in3212933.shtml
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(Political Animal) THE PETRAEUS REPORT....The Washington Post reports that Gen. David Petraeus managed to get the recent intelligence assessment of Iraq toned down:
The NIE, requested by the White House Iraq coordinator, Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, in preparation for the testimony, met with resistance from U.S. military officials in Baghdad, according to a senior U.S. military intelligence officer there. Presented with a draft of the conclusions, Petraeus succeeded in having the security judgments softened to reflect improvements in recent months, the official said.

This reminds me of something. I don't remember if I've ever blogged about this before, but until recently my guess was that Petraeus's September report to Congress would be pretty sober. My thinking was that he's a smart guy, and realizes that trying to paint too pretty a picture would ruin his credibility. So instead he'd present a basically realistic assessment, but stud it with just enough signs of progress to convince everyone that he deserved more time to make the surge work.

Now I'm not so sure. Petraeus has been very shrewd about providing dog-and-pony shows to as many analysts, pundits, reporters, and members of Congress as he could cram into the military jets criss-crossing the Atlantic to Baghdad on a seemingly daily basis this summer. And those dog-and-pony shows don't seem to have been subtle: rather, they've been hard-sell propositions complete with "classified" PowerPoint presentations (always a winner for people with more ego than common sense); visits to a handpicked selection of the most successful reconstruction teams in the country; a plainly deceptive implication that the surge played a role in the Anbar Awakening; feel-good stories about how local power generation is a good thing; the recent insistence that civilian casualties are down, which increasingly looks like a book-cooking scam that wouldn't stand the light of day if Petraeus allowed independent agencies access to his data; and, of course, the ongoing campaign to scare everyone by kinda sorta claiming that Iran and al-Qaeda are ramping up their activities and then getting suddenly slippery whenever anyone asks if they have any real evidence for this.

Petraeus is still a smart guy. He won't go too far overboard. But he's obviously been treating the September report like a military operation, trying to generate as much good press and congressional change of heart as he possibly can in the weeks leading up to 9/11. I now expect him to provide just the opposite of what I thought before: a consistently upbeat report studded with just enough accomodations to reality to keep him from seeming completely ridiculous.

And the question is: Will everyone swoon? Or will they demand more than just anecdotal evidence and unsupported statistics? I hope for the latter, but I fear for the former.

I wonder if any of these tidbits will be included in the Petraeus report (written by the White House).

While I did congratulate the Bush Administration on the frankness of its assessment of the Iraqi government in fulfilling its benchmarks (though they had clearly not done so and Bush could have lost even more credibility than he had had he concocted something...I do not think this will be as frank an assessment. I think part of that has to do with the meeting behind closed doors.

A Surge Report Card
By Kevin Drum

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/08/27/...in3207778.shtml


Aug 27, 2007
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(Political Animal) A SURGE REPORT CARD....So why have I been doing so much surge blogging lately? It's simple: guilt. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that a friend had told me I should pay more attention to the daily news from Iraq, but that I had declined on the grounds that Iraq's problems are deep and fundamental, not things that are truly affected by either daily setbacks or short-term successes. Worrying over every new car bomb or every new schoolhouse seemed pointless.

I still believe that, but the whole issue kept gnawing at me. I'm a professional blogger! The magazine pays me to care about stuff like this! Besides, maybe my friend was right. Maybe there really was some good news from the ground that I was overlooking.

I continue to believe that political reconciliation is what really matters in Iraq, and that it's all too easy to let day-to-day news distract you from that. For that reason, I don't plan to become a regular surge blogger. But for what it's worth, here's what I have to say about the situation on the ground:


The revolt of the Sunni sheiks against al-Qaeda in Anbar and other Sunni strongholds is genuinely good news. And while the revolt had nothing to do with the surge (it began last September, well before the surge started), our quick support for the sheiks demonstrated welcome military flexibility. Link. On the downside, this is a strategy with obvious risks, since there's a good chance that the sheiks will turn against us as soon as they've finished off AQI.
The civilian death toll in Iraq appears to be down from its peak earlier in the year, but still considerably higher than last summer. Link. My best guess is that we're just seeing the usual seasonal pattern here, in which violence peaks in the fall and then drops off over the summer. In any case, casualty figures are vague and unreliable since the Pentagon refuses to release its figures and the Iraqi Health Ministry is no longer cooperating with the UN. Link.


It appears that insurgents may have simply left Baghdad temporarily during the surge and increased their activity elsewhere. Again, figures are spotty, but violence appears to be on the rise in northern Iraq. Link.


There are widespread reports that the Army under Gen. Petraeus has done a good job of improving its counterinsurgency tactics. However, the evidence so far is mostly anecdotal and based on carefully controlled visits. This makes it very difficult to determine whether this success is genuinely widespread.


Reports of progress are considerably undermined by the apparently growing consensus that the U.S. will need to keep a significant military presence in Iraq for the better part of the next decade. This is hard to square with genuine confidence that the surge is reducing violence significantly. Link.


Everyone agrees that the Iraqi police is still a disaster: corrupt, violent, and almost entirely infiltrated by Shiite militias. Link.


The Iraqi army is doing a little better, according to the Pentagon, but the evidence on that score is thin and anecdotal. Link. Other anecdotal evidence suggests that the Iraqi army is nearly as thoroughly infiltrated by Shiite militias as the police. Link1. Link2.


The British are leaving southern Iraq, which has already begun devolving into intra-Shiite civil war. Link.


The Kirkuk election is still scheduled for later this year. Increased violence there seems almost certain regardless of whether the election is postponed or held on schedule. Link.


With the exception of the telephone network, the infrastructure news is almost uniformly bad. Oil exports are down, fuel availability is lower, electricity generation is spottier, and attacks on pipelines are up. Link.


The Brookings Iraq Index estimates that the size of the insurgency has grown from 20,000 last year to 70,000 this year. I don't know how seriously to take these estimates, but that's a helluva big jump. Link.

So that appears to be the state of affairs on the ground. Anbar is good news despite the long-term risk of arming Sunni tribal leaders. Petraeus seems to be doing a good job on the counterinsurgency front (though it's frankly hard to say how much of this is good PR based on a limited number of success stories and how much is genuine widespread progress). And it's possible that violence is down in Baghdad, though I'd rate the odds of that at no more than 50-50.

On the downside, most of the evidence suggests that violence is following seasonal patterns and is going up, not down. The insurgency seems to be getting worse in the north. Civil war is breaking out in the south. Anecdotal reports of progress are undercut by suggestions that we'll need to stay in Iraq for another decade. The Iraqi police force is a disaster and the army doesn't appears to be much better, despite the usual Pentagon claims of improvement. Kirkuk is a timebomb. Iraqi infrastructure is in a ruinous decline. And the insurgency is apparently bigger than it was a year ago.

The conventional wisdom this summer, after a steady round of dog-and-pony shows from the military, says that although political progress in Iraq is nil (or even in reverse), at least we're finally making some tactical progress on the security front. And maybe we are. But I'm trying to be as honest as I can be here, and it looks to me like the balance of the evidence suggests that this is more hype than reality. As near as I can tell, we're not making much progress on either front.

Editorial: Petraeus and Crocker should report -- publicly
Congress already has enough information to pursue withdrawal, but the law's the law

http://www.sacbee.com/110/v-print/story/331638.html
-
Published 12:00 am PDT Sunday, August 19, 2007
The stakes over President Bush's troop surge are high.

Members of Congress in May reluctantly gave Bush the money he wanted to escalate the U.S. troop presence in Iraq. Another vote for yet more funding comes in September.

Bush has repeatedly told Congress that he would not revisit his surge strategy until September when, he also repeatedly has said, Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, would provide Congress with a progress report.

Virtually all Republicans and some Democrats voted for additional funding in May, saying they were willing to stick with Bush until September. They said they wanted an honest assessment from Petraeus then, and would re-evaluate their position on a phased withdrawal of U.S. combat forces.

Now the stakes have gotten even higher as news reports indicate that the much-awaited Petraeus report will not be written by Petraeus. The September report will be written by the White House, just as the overoptimistic preliminary report in July was.

Worse, though Congress in the May bill required Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, to "testify in open and closed sessions" before the president submits the September report to Congress, now the White House has told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee that it wants Petraeus and Crocker to brief lawmakers in closed session before the release of the report.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates would provide public testimony.

That's not acceptable. The law clearly requires Petraeus and Crocker to testify in public. There is a good reason for that requirement. The American people deserve to hear the nation's top military and civilian leaders in Iraq answer questions about the situation there.

Congress cannot allow the White House to simply ignore the law or hide behind yet another bogus claim of executive privilege. The American people should be able to hear a candid, honest assessment by Petraeus and Crocker, as promised by Congress and the president.

Beyond that point of principle, however, the truth is that Congress already has enough troubling information to make the right decision and prepare for disengagement. Many in both the House and Senate have already reached that conclusion. As Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said on the Senate floor in July, "The costs and risks of continuing down the current path outweigh the potential benefits that might be achieved. Persisting indefinitely with the 'surge' strategy will delay policy adjustments that have a better chance of protecting our vital interests in the long term."

Others are edging closer to that position. Rep. John Doolittle, R-Roseville, a staunch supporter of the surge, told The Bee editorial board July 5 that Congress' patience is running out. About the September Petraeus report, he said: "If the report comes out and says we need another five years, they (U.S. forces) don't have another five years. They don't have five years to get the Iraqi government up and running. They need to do that in a matter of months."

With or without the Petraeus report, a phased withdrawal looks a whole lot better than the unpromising prospect of continued escalation.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

August 23, 2007
Report Raises Strong Doubt About Iraqi Government
By MARK MAZZETTI

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/23/washingt...agewanted=print

WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 — A stark assessment released today by the nation’s intelligence agencies depicts a paralyzed Iraqi government unable to take advantage of the security gains achieved by the thousands of extra American troops dispatched to the country this year.

The assessment, known as the National Intelligence Estimate, casts strong doubts on the viability of the Bush administration strategy in Iraq. It gives a dim prognosis on the likelihood that Iraqi politicians can heal deep sectarian rifts before next spring, when American military commanders have said that a crunch on available troops will require reducing the United States’ presence in Iraq.

But the report also implicitly criticizes proposals offered by Democrats, including several presidential candidates, who have called for a withdrawal of American combat troops from Iraq by next year and for a major shift in the American approach, from manpower-intensive counterinsurgency operations to lower-profile efforts aimed at supporting Iraqi troops and carrying out quick-strike counterterrorism raids.

Such a shift, the report said, would “erode security gains achieved thus far” and could return Iraq to a downward spiral of sectarian violence.

After a summer of rancorous debate over the future of America’s mission in Iraq, the intelligence report is the most prominent and authoritative assessment to date of what the administration has called a surge strategy.

The report, which represents the consensus view of America’s 16 intelligence agencies, suggested that policymakers face a dilemma. While the current strategy in Iraq has produced “measurable but uneven improvements” in security, it said, the approach has done little to bridge sectarian divides in Iraq. The report also said that pulling American troops out of Iraq would most likely make things far worse.

The intelligence estimate comes just weeks ahead of a long-awaited progress report by senior American officials in Baghdad about security and political conditions in the country. Within hours of its release today, the assessment had already begun to reshape the terms of a political dialogue that could again come to a boil next month.

White House officials said the assessment was evidence that the American troop increase had begun to dampen violence in Iraq, that progress was possible, and that a precipitous troop withdrawal would sow chaos in the country. Democrats said the report showed that the White House had failed in its effort to use the troop increase in Iraq to promote political progress, and that it was time for the United States to change course.

Still, one leading Republican, Senator John Warner of Virginia, called today for Mr. Bush to take the first steps toward a limited drawdown of troops, of perhaps 5,000 soldiers by the end of year, as a way to send the Iraqi government a message that “we mean business” in saying the American commitment in Iraq is not open-ended.

The intelligence report said that the influx of American troops in Iraq has achieved some successes in lowering sectarian violence there, but concluded that Iraqi leaders “remain unable to govern effectively” and that the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki “will become more precarious over the next six to 12 months” as rival factions led by Mr. Maliki’s fellow Shiites vie for power.

The assessment concluded that there was little reason to expect that Iraqi politicians would achieve significant gains before the spring, when American commanders said they would have to begin to cut troop levels in Iraq, now at more than 160,000, to ease the burden on military personnel.

The report was optimistic about a number of what it called “bottom-up” security initiatives that had helped reduce violence in some parts of the country. Most prominent of these are efforts by Sunni tribal sheiks to ban together against Islamic militants from the Iraqi insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

But such local initiatives were also described as a Catch-22. On one hand, they provide the “best prospect” for improving Iraqi security over the next year. But the assessment concluded that strong local initiatives could undermine Iraq’s central government