Bush Fights Back on Iraq Debate

By STEVEN LEE MYERS and DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, Aug. 31 — President Bush, appearing confident about sustaining support for his Iraq strategy, met at the Pentagon on Friday with the uniformed leaders of the nation’s armed services and then pointedly accused the war’s opponents of politicizing the debate over what to do next.

“The stakes in Iraq are too high and the consequences too grave for our security here at home to allow politics to harm the mission of our men and women in uniform,” Mr. Bush said in a statement after his meeting with the chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines in a briefing room known as the Tank.

The meeting, which lasted an hour and a half, was among the president’s last Iraq strategy sessions before he leaves for Australia to meet with leaders of Asian and Pacific nations. It came on the eve of a string of reports and hearings that, starting next week, could determine the course of the remaining 16 months of Mr. Bush’s presidency.

Beginning on Tuesday, when Congress returns from its August recess, lawmakers are prepared to debate what to do in Iraq in daily hearings that will culminate on Sept. 10 and Sept. 11 with appearances by the ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, and the military commander there, Gen. David H. Petraeus.

Congress has mandated a progress report from the White House before Sept. 15, and Mr. Bush chided lawmakers for calling for a change in policy before hearing the views of the two men who are, as administration officials repeatedly point out, “on the ground in Iraq.”

“Congress asked for this assessment,” Mr. Bush said in the statement, “and members of Congress should withhold judgment until they have heard it.”

That has not stopped Mr. Bush from making an impassioned defense of the increase in American troops that he ordered in January, making the judgment that the new strategy was working and deserved a chance to continue doing so. In recent speeches, Mr. Bush has highlighted what he and others have called an improvement in security in Iraq and signs of political compromise that have so far been absent among Iraq’s political leaders.

Other reports — including a National Intelligence Estimate released last week, an early draft of a Government Accountability Office study, and a grim assessment of the Iraqi national police by a commission established by Congress — have tempered some of Mr. Bush’s claims, setting the stage for a furious debate with lawmakers in September.

“What we’re hearing is a pretty consistent message of failure on the political front in Iraq,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, a Democrat, who visited Iraq in August.

In a telephone interview from Iowa on Friday, where he was campaigning for Senator Barack Obama, Mr. Durbin said the White House had distorted remarks made upon his return in which he noted an improvement in security following the increase in American troops to more than 160,000.

On Friday, Mr. Durbin expressed hope that more Republicans would join in forcing the president to begin withdrawing American forces from Iraq.

The cacophony of reports has done little to unify lawmakers, giving each side of the debate evidence to support their arguments. “All these reports will almost cancel each other out,” said Lawrence J. Korb, a former Reagan administration defense official, who published a recommendation for a withdrawal for the Center for American Progress.

An administration official said Mr. Bush would present his Congressionally mandated report only after Mr. Crocker and General Petraeus appeared on Capitol Hill. All indications, however, suggest that the president has settled on maintaining a sizable commitment of American forces in Iraq well into next year, with only a gradual reduction of troops from the current levels.

At the Pentagon, officials said Mr. Bush’s meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff — Gen. George W. Casey Jr. of the Army, Adm. Michael G. Mullen of the Navy, Gen. T. Michael Moseley of the Air Force, and Gen. James T. Conway of the Marine Corps — was part of a process to air a variety of views, including those favoring a faster or deeper reduction than the commanders in the field think is appropriate.

Vice President Dick Cheney joined the meeting on Friday, as did Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Gen. James E. Cartwright, the vice chairman. General Pace and Mr. Gates returned to the White House with Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney for further talks, officials said, declining to discuss the substance of the meetings.

All the chiefs have expressed concerns about the strains that repeated and extended deployments have placed on the military, though they have not publicly made clear whether they would recommend a significant reduction as a result.

A senior Pentagon official said after the meeting, “Secretary Gates wanted the joint chiefs to have an opportunity to present the president with their assessments of the surge and the impact it is having on our forces, and that’s what happened today.”

General Casey and General Pace are said by several Defense Department officials to be considering recommending steep reductions in troops by the end of 2008, perhaps to half of the 20 combat brigades now in Iraq.

“Our force is stretched and out of balance,” General Casey said Thursday at a ceremony. “The tempo of our deployments are not sustainable, our equipment usage is five times the normal rate and continuously operating in harsh environments.”

Pentagon officials have said publicly that the goal of Mr. Bush’s meetings on Iraq strategy was not necessarily to produce a consensus among Mr. Bush’s military advisers, an unusual depiction of a process in which disagreements are normally shielded from public view.

Rather, the officials said, the goal was to ensure that Mr. Bush was hearing a diversity of views. It may become difficult, however, for the White House to avoid acknowledging that there are growing differences between officers in Washington and in Iraq.

The administration has made an aggressive effort to hold on to Republicans who returned to their constituencies this month at a time of rising antiwar sentiment. The White House scheduled conference calls for lawmakers with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Aug. 14 and with Under Secretary of Defense Eric Edelman this past Tuesday.

Democrats balked at participating in the briefing with Mr. Edelman, who in July caused a furor when he rebuffed a request from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to see Pentagon contingency plans for withdrawing from Iraq by accusing her of assisting enemy propaganda.

Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, said the Democrats had asked for Mr. Gates to brief them instead, but were refused.

“Why in the world would any United States senator want to get a briefing from Eric Edelman?” Mr. Manley said in an indication of the partisan tensions the question of Iraq has fueled.

General Petraeus told an Australian newspaper in an interview published Friday that he envisioned a gradual reduction in the roughly 30,000 additional American troops sent to Iraq this year.

He gave no timetable for that reduction, but most Army officials believe those troops will have to begin leaving by the spring unless the White House extends tours longer than 15 months.

The general’s remarks suggested that he would not provide the news that many Democrats in Congress would like to hear. “Obviously we have some months with the surge forces,” General Petraeus told The Sydney Morning Herald.