The Petraeus-Crocker Show Gets the Hook

By FRANK RICH

THE night before last week’s Senate hearings on our “progress” in Iraq, a goodly chunk of New York’s media and cultural establishment assembled in the vast lobby of the Museum of Modern Art. There were cocktails; there were waiters wielding platters of hors d’oeuvres; there was a light sprinkling of paparazzi. Then there was a screening. We trooped like schoolchildren to the auditorium to watch a grueling movie about the torture at Abu Ghraib.

Not just any movie, but “Standard Operating Procedure,” the new investigatory documentary by Errol Morris, one of our most original filmmakers. It asks the audience not just to revisit the crimes in graphic detail but to confront in tight close-up those who both perpetrated and photographed them. Because Mr. Morris has a complex view of human nature, he arouses a certain sympathy for his subjects, much as he did at times for Robert McNamara, the former defense secretary, in his Vietnam film, “Fog of War.”

More sympathy, actually. Only a few bad apples at the bottom of the chain of command took the fall for Abu Ghraib. No one above the level of staff sergeant went to jail, and no one remotely in proximity to a secretary of defense has been held officially accountable. John Yoo, the author of the notorious 2003 Justice Department memo rationalizing torture, has happily returned to his tenured position as a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. So when Mr. Morris brings you face to face with Lynndie England — now a worn, dead-eyed semblance of the exuberant, almost pixie-ish miscreant in the Abu Ghraib snapshots — you’re torn.

Ms. England, who is now on parole, concedes that what she and her cohort did was “unusual and weird and wrong,” but adds that “when we first got there, the example was already set.” That reflection doesn’t absolve her of moral responsibility, but, like much in this film, it forces you to look beyond the fixed images of one of the most documented horror stories of our time.

Yet I must confess that, sitting in MoMA, I kept looking beyond the frame of Mr. Morris’s movie as well. While there’s really no right place to watch “Standard Operating Procedure,” the jarring contrast between the film’s subject and the screening’s grandiosity was a particularly glaring illustration of the huge distance that separates most Americans, and not just Manhattan elites, from the battle lines of our country’s five-year war. If Tom Wolfe was not in the audience to chronicle this cognitive dissonance, he should have been.

Mr. Morris’s movie starts fanning out to theaters on April 25. We don’t have to wait until then to know its fate. Sympathetic critics will tell us it’s our civic duty to see it. The usual suspects will try to besmirch Mr. Morris’s patriotism. But none of that will much matter. “Standard Operating Procedure” will reach the director’s avid core audience, but it is likely to be avoided by most everyone else no matter what praise or controversy it whips up.

It would take another column to list all the movies and TV shows about Iraq that have gone belly up at the box office or in Nielsen ratings in the nearly four years since the war’s only breakout commercial success, “Fahrenheit 9/11.” They die regardless of their quality or stand on the war, whether they star Tommy Lee Jones (“In the Valley of Elah”) or Meryl Streep (“Lions for Lambs”) or are produced by Steven Bochco (the FX series “Over There”) or are marketed like Abercrombie & Fitch apparel to the MTV young (“Stop-Loss”).

As The New York Times recently reported, box-office dread has driven one Hollywood distributor to repeatedly postpone the release of “The Lucky Ones,” a highly regarded and sympathetic feature about the war’s veterans, the first made with full Army assistance, even though the word Iraq is never spoken and the sole battle sequence runs 40 seconds. If Iraq had been mentioned in “Knocked Up” or “Superbad,” Judd Apatow’s hilarious hit comedies about young American guys who (like most of their peers) never consider the volunteer Army as an option, they might have flopped too. Iraq is to moviegoers what garlic is to vampires.

This is not merely a showbiz phenomenon but a leading indicator of where our entire culture is right now. It’s not just torture we want to avoid. Most Americans don’t want to hear, see or feel anything about Iraq, whether they support the war or oppose it. They want to look away, period, and have been doing so for some time.

That’s why last week’s testimony by Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker was a nonevent beyond Washington. The cable networks duly presented the first day of hearings, but only, it seemed, because the show could be hyped as an “American Idol”-like competition in foreign-policy one-upmanship for the three remaining presidential candidates, all senators. When the hearings migrated to the House the next day, they vanished into the same black media hole where nearly all Iraq news now goes. If the Olympic torch hadn’t provided an excuse to cut away, no doubt any handy weather disturbance would have served instead.

The simple explanation for why we shun the war is that it has gone so badly. But another answer was provided in the hearings by Senator George Voinovich of Ohio, one of the growing number of Republican lawmakers who no longer bothers to hide his exasperation. He put his finger on the collective sense of shame (not to be confused with collective guilt) that has attended America’s Iraq project. “The truth of the matter,” Mr. Voinovich said, is that “we haven’t sacrificed one darn bit in this war, not one. Never been asked to pay for a dime, except for the people that we lost.”

This is how the war planners wanted it, of course. No new taxes, no draft, no photos of coffins, no inconveniences that might compel voters to ask tough questions. This strategy would have worked if the war had been the promised cakewalk. But now it has backfired. A home front that has not been asked to invest directly in a war, that has subcontracted it to a relatively small group of volunteers, can hardly be expected to feel it has a stake in the outcome five stalemated years on.

The original stakes (saving the world from mushroom clouds and an alleged ally of Osama bin Laden) evaporated so far back they seem to belong to another war entirely. What are the stakes we are asked to believe in now? In the largely unwatched House hearings on Wednesday, Representative Robert Wexler, a Florida Democrat, tried to get at this by asking what some 4,000 “sons and daughters” of America had died for.

The best General Petraeus could muster was a bit of bloodless Beltway-speak — “national interests” — followed by another halfhearted attempt to overstate Iraq’s centrality to the war on Al Qaeda and a future war on Iran. He couldn’t even argue that we’re on a humanitarian mission on behalf of the Iraqi people. That would require him to acknowledge that roughly five million of those people, 60 percent of them children, are now refugees receiving scant help from either our government or Nuri al-Maliki’s. That’s nearly a fifth of the Iraqi population — the equivalent of 60 million Americans — and another source of our shame.

The prevailing verdict on the Petraeus-Crocker show is that it accomplished little beyond certifying President Bush’s intention to kick the can to January 2009 so that the helicopters will vacate the Green Zone on the next president’s watch. That’s true, but by week’s end, I became more convinced than ever that in January we’ll have a new policy that includes serious withdrawals and serious conversations with Mr. Maliki’s pals in Iran, even if John McCain becomes president.

General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker define victory as “sustainable security” in Iraq. But both Colin Powell and Gen. Richard Cody, the Army’s vice chief of staff, said last week that current troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan are unsustainable and are damaging America’s readiness to meet other security threats. And that’s not all that’s unsustainable. An ailing economy can’t keep floating the war’s $3-billion-a-week cost. A Republican president intent on staying the Bush course will find his vetoes unsustainable after the Democrats increase their majorities in Congress in November. No war can be fought indefinitely if the public has irrevocably turned against it.

Mr. McCain says Americans want “victory,” whatever that means today, and yes, they would if it could be won on the terms promised by Mr. Bush five years ago — fast, and with minimal sacrifice. It’s way too late to ask for years of stepped-up sacrifice now in the cause of a highly debatable definition of “national interests.”

This war has lasted so long that Americans, even the bad apples of Abu Ghraib interviewed by Mr. Morris, have had the time to pass through all five of the Kübler-Ross stages of grief over its implosion. Though dead-enders like Mr. McCain may have only gone from denial to anger to bargaining, most others have moved on to depression and acceptance. Unable to even look at the fiasco anymore, the nation is now just waiting for someone to administer the last rites.

Bush Says War's Outcome 'Will Merit the Sacrifice'

President and Petraeus Discuss Strategy as the U.S. Death Toll in Iraq Rises to 4,000

By Karen DeYoung and Michael Abramowitz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, March 25, 2008; A01

As the American military death toll in Iraq reached 4,000, President Bush conferred yesterday with top U.S. officials in Washington and in Baghdad and vowed in a public statement that the outcome of the war "will merit the sacrifice."

Bush held a two-hour videoconference with Gen. David H. Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker. Petraeus reiterated his plan to halt U.S. troop withdrawals, begun late last fall, at the end of July. At that point, he has said, he will "evaluate" whether Iraqi forces and a reduced number of U.S. troops can maintain the lower levels of violence.

"We have every desire to continue with the withdrawal of forces" at some time after July, one military official said. "The issue will be once we remove over 25 percent of combat power plus other associated units . . . we let the dust settle . . . and look to see where we're at," he said, adding that the evaluation period would probably be at least six weeks. Petraeus has offered no guarantee that conditions will allow further withdrawals before Bush leaves office.

In congressional testimony next month, Petraeus and Crocker are expected to describe continued but slow improvement in military and political conditions, even as recent weeks have seen an increase in suicide bombings, along with Sunday's renewal of rocket attacks on Baghdad's Green Zone, where the U.S. Embassy and much of the Iraqi government are located.

Among the wounded in four separate attacks were an American military contractor and an embassy employee from Jordan, both of whom remain in serious condition, a U.S. official in Baghdad said. Military officials said the munitions were Iranian-made, fired from northeastern Baghdad by renegade Shiite militia groups.

Late Sunday night, the U.S. command in Baghdad announced that four soldiers had been killed by a makeshift bomb in southern Baghdad, bringing the total number of U.S. troops killed to 4,000 since the war began in March 2003. Dozens of Iraqis were also killed in violence around the country Sunday.

Overall attacks in Iraq have sharply declined in Iraq, but the trend has begun to plateau over the past three months -- car bombings have decreased, but suicide bombings have increased. Military officials said that Petraeus will tell Congress that the withdrawal, which has now reached about 9,000 troops, will continue with three additional brigades to be withdrawn without replacement by July 31.

Although administration officials have said that U.S. troop strength at that point should be about where it was before a "surge" in deployments began last spring -- approximately 130,000 -- the military official said the net number remaining may be larger. "They're in the process now of trying to scrub the numbers," he said of Petraeus's command in Baghdad. "Figuring out boots on the ground is difficult because . . . units come in at different sizes, people have left, people have been wounded."

There are similar difficulties, he said, in determining the "battlefield geometry" that will enable the withdrawal of entire combat brigades. Brigades are seldom deployed intact, and their battalions are often scattered. While one battalion could be withdrawn without replacement, others may have to be replaced by U.S. or Iraqi forces from elsewhere.

During his testimony on April 8 and 9, Petraeus expects to present Congress with firm numbers on how many U.S. troops will leave Iraq and how many will remain by the end of July.

Crocker, who in previous testimony has cautioned against hopes of rapid progress, is expected to describe some political and economic achievements but to say that much work remains. In a mid-March interview with The Washington Post, he described Iraqi political and economic institutions as "like everything else here, still very much under development."

Another senior U.S. diplomat offered positive indicators yesterday, saying that Iraqis are "spending increasingly more money than we are" on reconstruction and some military programs. "We're not starting any new projects and [the Iraqis] are getting incrementally better," he said. Iraq's "Arab neighbors are gradually engaging, although not enough. They're not embracing Maliki the way they ought to," he added, referring to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

After speaking with Petraeus and Crocker yesterday morning from the White House, Bush attended a briefing by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the State Department on cooperation between military and civilian officials in Iraq and elsewhere. In a statement to reporters, he spoke of the U.S. civilians who have died in Iraq and said: "I will vow so long as I am president to make sure that those lives were not lost in vain."

Bush will attend a similar briefing by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and military leaders today at the Pentagon, but administration officials said they do not expect any new decisions or departures from current policy.

One official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that after months of friction among civilian and military leaders -- including over concerns about overall stress on the military -- there is little debate over the basic Iraq strategy for the next six months. The only real question, he said, is how long the "pause" in withdrawals after July will last.

In Turkey yesterday, Vice President Cheney told ABC News that "there's no reason now to decide what the force level is going to be in December of '08." The criterion, he said, "is how do we make certain we succeed in Iraq? It may be that we can make judgments about reductions down the road. . . . But I don't think [Bush] is likely to want to try to say now what the force level ought to be at the end of the year."

Officials Lean Toward Keeping Next Iraq Assessment Secret

By Walter Pincus and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, March 7, 2008; A07

A new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq is scheduled to be completed this month, according to U.S. intelligence officials. But leaders of the intelligence community have not decided whether to make its key judgments public, a step that caused an uproar when key judgments in an NIE about Iran were released in November.

The classified estimate on Iraq is intended as an update of last summer's assessment, which predicted modest security improvements but an increasingly precarious political situation there, the U.S. officials said.

It is meant to be delivered to Congress before testimony in early April by Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, according to a letter sent last week by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell to Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.).

Since the Iraq invasion in 2003, the intelligence community has been more cautious than the military and the White House in assessing political, economic and security gains in Iraq. And the war's progress has been a prominent issue in the presidential campaign.

In his letter to Warner, McConnell said that separate estimates are also being prepared on the "terrorist threat to the homeland" -- focusing on al-Qaeda and Pakistan -- and on "the tactical and longer-term security and political outlook for Afghanistan." Both are scheduled for publication by early fall.

Warner requested all three estimates in January, describing them as key to upcoming policy discussions in Congress.

Intelligence officials said that the National Intelligence Board -- made up of the heads of the 16 intelligence agencies plus McConnell -- will decide whether to release the Iraq judgments once the estimate is completed. But they made clear that they lean toward a return to the traditional practice of keeping such documents secret.

In internal guidance he issued in October, McConnell said that his policy was that they "should not be declassified." One month later, however, the intelligence board decided to publicly release key judgments from an NIE on Iran's nuclear weapons program, saying that it had weighed "the importance of the information to open discussions about our national security against the necessity to protect classified information."

The estimate, which said Iran had halted the weaponization element of its nuclear program, appeared to undermine the Bush administration's position on Tehran's overall effort. With Bush arguing that Iran remained "a danger," McConnell publicly said the NIE judgment was poorly written because it emphasized a halt in the weapons program rather than Iran's continuing nuclear enrichment.

Key NIE judgments on Iraq had previously been made public, beginning with a highly controversial October 2002 assessment warning that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. That estimate was later proved wrong, with no such weapons discovered in Iraq after the U.S. invasion, and the matter led to charges that the intelligence community had been politicized by the Bush administration.

"Overall, professional life is less complicated if nothing becomes public, and one doesn't have to organize classified assessments always having in the back of one's mind, 'If this is ever leaked, how would it read' " in the news media, a former intelligence analyst said.

Petraeus: Iran Trying to Bolster Influence in Iraq

By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 12, 2007; 1:10 PM

Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, accused Iran today of seeking to "create a Hezbollah-like force" in Iraq to exert Tehran's influence there, but denied that he was preparing the ground for a U.S. attack on Iran.

In a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington after two days of testimony on Capitol Hill, Petraeus and Ryan C. Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, defended their assessments of incremental progress in Iraq and again warned that the way forward will be difficult.

"It will be a long, hard grind," Crocker said. "Right now, I think that grind is making progress."

Asked whether his testimony about Iran could be viewed as part of a campaign to build toward an attack, Petraeus said: "I'm not blaming Iran for all that's gone wrong in Iraq." But he said Iran has contributed to sophisticated attacks in Iraq that otherwise would not be possible, including strikes with armor-piercing "explosively formed projectiles" and 240mm rockets.

"The evidence is very, very clear," Petraeus said. He cited documents discovered during the capture in March of Qais Khazali, a Shiite Muslim militant with ties to the Quds Force of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the arrest of a deputy commander of Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese Shiite group supported by Iran. Petraeus said the evidence links Iran to an attack in Karbala in January that resulted in the deaths of five U.S. soldiers.

Under interrogation, Khazali was asked if he could have carried out that attack without Iranian support, Petraeus said in the news conference. "He literally throws up his hands and laughs and says, 'Of course not,' " the general said.

Khazali and other captives have told U.S. investigators about funding, training, weapons and ammunition they had received from Iran, he said.

A videotape of the Khazali interrogation was shown to Iraqi leaders, "several of whom then went to Iran and made their case, quite forcefully, about their concern of Iranian involvement," Petraeus said.

In response to another question, Petraeus said he and Crocker agree that "you can't win in Iraq . . . just in Iraq." Rather, success requires "greater involvement with respect to some of the neighboring countries, some of the source countries for foreign fighters," he said. "And it certainly involves Iran."

He said Iraqi leaders "have developed much greater concern about Iran's activities, about the activities of the Quds Force with respect to the militia extremists that, in many respects, appear to be trying to create a Hezbollah-like force that they could use to gain influence in Iraq."

Petraeus said that he has the authority he needs to conduct operations inside Iraq and that his concern about Iran "doesn't mean that it's something for which I should have the authority to pursue, any more than we should have that with respect to Syria or elsewhere."

In written testimony submitted to Congress, Petraeus said U.S. forces had captured "the deputy commander of Lebanese Hezbollah Department 2800, the organization created to support the training, arming, funding, and, in some cases, direction of the militia extremists by the Iranian Republican Guard Corps' Quds Force." He also cited the recent discovery of Iranian-backed forces called the "Special Groups" in Iraq.

"These elements have assassinated and kidnapped Iraqi governmental leaders, killed and wounded our soldiers with advanced explosive devices provided by Iran, and indiscriminately rocketed civilians in the International Zone and elsewhere," Petraeus testified.

"It is increasingly apparent to both Coalition and Iraqi leaders that Iran, through the use of the Quds Force, seeks to turn the Iraqi Special Groups into a Hezbollah-like force to serve its interests and fight a proxy war against the Iraqi state and coalition forces in Iraq."

In a separate development, U.S. officials said Washington would press for new, tougher U.N. sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program when diplomats from six nations meet next week. The gathering of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, plus Germany, is set for Sept. 21 in Washington. Two participants -- Russia and China -- have been reluctant to go along with tougher sanctions than those adopted in two Security Council resolutions, and contentious negotiations are expected.

During today's news conference, Petraeus said al-Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq has been driven from some former strongholds but continues to pose a major threat.

"We believe that al-Qaeda-Iraq is off balance," he said, although it "certainly remains very dangerous." He said he calls the group "the wolf closest to the sled" because it "has carried out the most horrific attacks in Iraq," notably those that have sparked the greatest "ethno-sectarian violence."

The general said al-Qaeda in Iraq now is "much more on the run than they have been at any time that I can recall since they really established themselves in Iraq," having been largely driven out of Anbar province and Baqubah. He indicated that the group still operates in Diyala province and several Baghdad neighborhoods and is trying to open "new fronts" in northern Iraq.

Asked if he expects "tens of thousands" of U.S. forces to remain in Iraq for at least the next five years, Petraeus said, "I wouldn't hazard a guess on that. It's very, very difficult to project out much farther beyond the horizon at this point in time, even just to mid-July of next year."

According to recommendations Petraeus made public Monday, that is when about 30,000 troops should be withdrawn, bringing the U.S. military presence down to about 130,000 -- the level before a "surge" of reinforcements ordered earlier this year by President Bush.

Crocker said the two days of congressional testimony showed that there are "deep divisions" and "a lot of frustration" among lawmakers--feelings he said are shared by U.S. officials serving in Iraq. But he said he came away "somewhat encouraged" that amid the frustration, lawmakers showed "willingness to listen to our explanations" and asked a number of "thoughtful and probing questions."

As long as Iraq is moving on an "upward" trajectory, Crocker said, "we need to demonstrate some strategic patience, some resolve and commitment, because this will be a long process. There are no shortcuts. There is no switch to flip."

Bush and Top Aides Visit Iraq Days Ahead of Assessment

By DAVID S. CLOUD

AL ASAD AIR BASE, Iraq, Sept. 3 — President Bush and his top national security advisers made a surprise joint visit to Iraq today for talks with Gen. David H. Petraeus and top Iraqi officials a week before the American commander is scheduled to deliver a long-awaited assessment of the situation in Iraq.

Administration officials said Mr. Bush decided to travel to Iraq along with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to meet face-to-face with General Petraeus and Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki because it was his last chance to do so before completing a review of his Iraq strategy.

“He has assembled essentially his war cabinet here, and they are all convening with the Iraqi leadership to discuss the way forward,” the Pentagon press secretary, Geoff Morrell, said. “This will be the last big gathering of the president before the president makes a decision on the way forward,” he added, noting that Mr. Bush would l leave here for a trip to Australia to meet with leaders of Asian and Pacific nations.

It was the first time Mr. Bush was in Iraq with his top advisers, and his third trip to the country.

Ms. Rice and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld made a joint visit to Baghdad last year, shortly after Mr. Maliki took office.

Mr. Bush held talks today with his commanders and then he and the American delegation met with Iraqi officials including Mr. Maliki and President Jalal Talabani. The group sat across a narrow conference table facing one another.

Mr. Talabani had been delayed getting to the meeting, but when he arrived, Mr. Bush greeted him warmly, according to Mr. Morrell.

“Mr. President. Mr. President. The president of the whole country,” Mr. Bush said to Mr. Talabani, before shaking his hand and sharing a traditional Middle Eastern greeting.

Mr. Bush’s one-day stop at this desert air base in Anbar Province underscored the administration’s intention as part of the strategy review to bolster support for the Sunni Arab region, where former insurgents are increasingly cooperating with American forces.

But the dramatic meeting also had a clear political goal — to shift the focus this week away from Congress, where a series of hearings on reports critical of the progress of the administration strategy are planned, and to buttress White House assertions that its efforts in Iraq are beginning to produce results.

Administration officials rejected the idea that the trip was a publicity stunt ahead of the reports.

“There are some people who might try to derive this trip as a photo opportunity,” the White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said. “We wholeheartedly disagree.”

“This is an opportunity for the president to meet with his commander on the ground and his ambassador on the ground while they are in fact all on the ground together,” Ms. Perino said. “It’s also a chance for him to meet with Prime Minister Maliki and other national government leaders. And he will be able to look Prime Minister Maliki in the eye and talk with him about the progress that is starting to happen in Iraq, what we hope to see and the challenges that remain.”

After meeting with top military advisers last week in Washington, Mr. Bush approved an acceleration of a new program to intensify assistance directly to Sunni areas of Iraq, officials have said. Mr. Gates’s trip seemed aimed at least in part in explaining the American concept for stepped-up assistance to officials in Iraq’s government, who have raised strong concerns about the idea of assisting their Sunni rivals, before it is announced publicly.

General Petraeus is widely expected to ask that additional troops sent to Iraq earlier this year be kept in place at least until next spring, a course Mr. Bush appears to support. But a senior Defense Department official said the gathering would be “instrumental” in formulating recommendations to Mr. Bush on possible adjustments to the plan. The move to increase aid to Sunni groups is one example of the adjustments that are coming out of the strategy review, and the move reflects frustration that Mr. Maliki’s Shiite-dominated government has not taken advantage of improvements in security to move forward on reconciliation with Sunni rivals.

But the administration has seized on the Sunni tribes’ sudden willingness to cooperate in fighting the homegrown extremist group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia as a promising political development that they hope will convince members of Congress, especially Republicans who have been calling for withdrawals from Iraq, that political progress is happening, albeit from the ground up, not from the top down, as the administration strategy initially envisioned.

While backing Sunni groups is an attempt to circumvent Mr. Maliki, Bush administration officials stress that the goal is not to undermine his government but to broaden its support.

Mr. Maliki has been deeply worried that outreach to Sunni tribes, which has included American support for setting up armed neighborhood watch groups in Anbar and other Sunni areas, amounted to backing his enemies.

But the senior Defense Department official said the American aid to the Sunni tribes comes with “a quid pro quo” — the need to recognize the legitimacy of the Mr. Maliki’s government in Baghdad.

The official added that spending in Anbar province by military commanders would be increased.

Mr. Bush and his cabinet members were also scheduled to meet today with Sunni tribe leaders from Anbar, many of whom until recently opposed the American presence. Mr. Maliki and other top Iraqi officials had scheduled a rare trip into the Sunni heartland for the talks with the American delegation but it was unclear if Mr. Maliki intended to hold talks with the Sunnis during his visit.

Mr. Bush and Gates planned to press the two sides to move forward on reconciliation and to discuss such steps as provincial elections that are aimed at drawing the former Sunni insurgents into a closer relationship with Mr. Maliki, the senior Defense Department official traveling with Mr. Gates said.

“One of the great concerns many have is that it not be a temporary marriage of convenience,” he said, referring to the growing American relationship with Sunni tribes. The goal, he added, was to ensure that “Sunnis in Anbar are drawing closer to the central government.”

Aides said that Mr. Bush and Mr. Gates also wanted to speak face-to-face with General Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the American ambassador to Iraq, as he considers recommendations for adjusting strategy in Iraq.

The high-level visit was conducted with extraordinary security precautions. American officials said the measures, which included withholding disclosure of Mr. Gates’s arrival after Mr. Bush was on the ground, were necessary because of the top officials from Iraq and from the United States who were present. Although Mr. Gates arrived on a C-17 transport plane, Mr. Bush traveled on Air Force One, which could be seen sitting on the air base’s baking tarmac.

There had been intense speculation among the White House press corps that the president would make such a trip either on his way to or back from Australia, and the White House went to great lengths to keep the secret. The president slipped out of a side entrance at the White House on Sunday evening. Instead of taking Marine One, the presidential helicopter, he was driven to Andrews Air Force base with just one car accompanying him, as opposed to the two dozen or so vehicles that ordinarily make up a presidential motorcade.

Mr. Bush typically takes a small, rotating, pool of reporters with him aboard Air Force One. The members of the pool assigned to travel aboard the president’s plane to Sydney were summoned to the White House over the weekend for face-to-face meetings with Mr. Bush’s top press aides.

They were told to show up at Andrews Sunday between 6p.m. and 6:30p.m., not this morning, as had been publicly announced. Reporters were permitted to inform their spouses and just one editor, who could tell no one else, and were asked not to pass the information by cellphone. When they boarded Air Force One inside a hangar, not on the tarmac, as is typical, the shades were drawn and Secret Service agents took their pager devices and cellphones until shortly before the plane landed in Iraq.

The president is expected to spend about six hours on the ground in Iraq before leaving for Australia.

Though Mr. Bush and General Petraeus had met as recently as last week by video hookup, the seemingly last-minute nature of the trip and the array of top officials from both governments who attended did not mean there were deep disagreements among President Bush’s top advisers about strategy in Iraq, they said.

“Nothing beats the opportunity to look Dave Petraeus in the eye and Ambassador Crocker and say, ‘What do you think? What do we need to do?’” said a senior Defense official traveling with Mr. Gates.

Mr. Bush has been touting developments in Anbar recently and wanted to meet with Sunni sheiks who have formed alliances with the United States this year. Some of the tribal leaders he is expected to meet with were likely involved in operations against American forces before switching their allegiances.

“You don’t reconcile with your friends; you reconcile with your enemies,” Mr. Morrell said, explaining the decision to met with the tribal leaders.

The meetings were held at Al Asad air base rather than in Baghdad because Mr. Bush wanted to see first hand the progress in Anbar, he said, although the president is not scheduled to leave the base, a sprawling complex far from the province’s population centers.

The air base, the second largest in Iraq, is a parched, sunny, dusty place. Troops here said temperatures today were about average for this time of year—about 115 degrees.

After his tarmac greeting, Mr. Bush, wearing a dark blue short-sleeved shirt and slacks, posed for pictures before being taken by motorcade to a building where a marine gave him a short briefing.

Mr. Bush leaned slightly forward, both hands on a makeshift table, and listened to the marine, with a pointer in hand, as he gave an overview.

The marine said there was progress being made with Iraqi security forces in Anbar, handling more urban duties, allowing the Marines to hunt for insurgents, according to a pool report. But he also said that there is a problem with the short home leaves — five months — which he said strains training, not to mention family life.

“Morale? How is morale?” Mr. Bush was overhead asking.

“Very high, sir,” the marine responded.

Iraq Reports To Be Released Soon

• The August 23 Iraq NIE
  On August 23, the Director of National Intelligence released a mixed National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) reflecting some successes, notably cleavage between Sunnis and Al Qaeda in Iraq, but an overall lack of political breakthroughs necessary for success in Iraq.
  
  Both sides of the Iraq debate have used this report as ammunition.


• The GAO Report
  Karen DeYoung and Tom Ricks of The Washington Post were given an advance copy of this "strikingly negative" report from the GAO, a legislative branch auditing and research agency, by a government official afraid the report's conclusions would be watered down when it is officially released.
  
  It is due to be released on Tuesday, September 4.
  
  The GAO Report was prepared at Congressional direction and GAO does not have the leeway other required reporters have in stating that Iraq's government has made "progress" toward specific benchmarks. It mus make a "success" or "failure" determination on each benchmark.
  
  Stung by the harsh conclusions of the report, the Bush Administration has pushed back, emphasizing the report's limitations.
  
  An interesting point of cleavage highlighted by the report is the backsliding of formerly relatively independent Iraqi military units. These have declined from 10 to 6. Some U.S. military leaders in Iraq have stated that training and building of Iraqi forces is a slow-building success. But General James Dubik, who is is in charge of U.S. training efforts, has stated that the problems of Iraqi forces are significant and should not be taken lightly.


• The Jones Report
  This report was prepared by a group headed by recently-retired SACEUR and Marine Corps Commandant James L. Jones, consisting of 14 former military and law enforcement officers.
  
  One of the group's major recommendations has been a complete reformation of the Iraqi National Police and Iraqi local police. The Iraqi police have been cited by nearly everyone as an Iraqi institution that has been thoroughly infiltrated by sectarian militias. In Shiite areas, the police are known to actively collaborate with militias against U.S. forces.
  
  Democrats will certainly seize on this reported failure, though the Department of Defense and Bush Administration have stated that they will not give up on the existing Iraqi police. The report is due to be presented to Congress next week, and Administration officials were briefed on it last week.


• The Petraeus Report
  It is hard to overstate the extent to which the Bush Administration's efforts continue fighting the war in Iraq are tied to the credibility of one man, General David Petraeus. To a significant extent, Congress has held off on a full-throated effort to end the war in Iraq until General Petraeus has an opportunity to implement his new counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq.
  
  Next week, General Petraeus is to report on the successes and failures of American strategy in Iraq under his leadership. A poor report will give impetus to Democratic efforts to end the war. A positive report will give the Bush Administration war effort a stronger hand.
  
  Petraeus is to testify to Congress along with our Ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, on September 10.
  
  At present, the only thing that has been agreed by everyone in Congress and the White House is that they will consider the Petraeus Report very important. Due to its importance, the report is likely to be significantly influenced by the White House and will be viewed skeptically by Democrats in Congress.


• The Report To Petraeus
  A military official and intelligence officer reported to General Petraeus in an internal assessment that concludes the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government is truly unenthusiastic about a government of national unity. Apparently Petraeus receives a reports like this frequently. It reflects the intellectual struggle within the military to define and address the problem we face in Iraq.


• Conclusion
  None of these reports is likely to change many minds. But these reports will be the ammunition that Congress, the White House, press and the public will have to get used to using over the momentous Iraq debates likely to come during the next couple of months.

White House Wants Iraqi Leaders to Reach 'Political Accommodation'

By Michael Abramowitz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 22, 2007; A06

Having won a two-month reprieve from Congress to demonstrate progress in Iraq, the White House does not intend to give up on trying to forge a grand political bargain among Iraq's sectarian leaders, even though such a deal has proved elusive since the 2003 invasion, administration officials said.

The officials said they hope to develop the framework through which competing factions can sort out their differences and enact a national oil law, pass legislation aimed at bringing ex-Baathists into the government and demonstrate progress on other measures aimed at achieving national reconciliation.

But the officials privately acknowledge that the Iraqi government probably will not fulfill all of those tasks, which are among the political goals Congress is demanding before a Sept. 15 deadline. Asking the Iraqi parliament to move such legislation by September, one senior administration official said, is a bit like asking the U.S. Congress to handle abortion, gun control and other hot-button issues in a matter of months.

Instead, the senior official said, the White House wants to set Iraqi leaders on a path to "political accommodation on some of the major issues" and create "a very sound foundation to build upon." The official, who, along with several others in the administration, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss White House strategy more candidly. Many outside Iraq experts are deeply skeptical that the administration's initiative will bear fruit, given the divides in Iraqi society and suspicions between Shiites and Sunnis. After all, they point out, such a political bargain has essentially been the goal of U.S. efforts for more than four years, with little to show for it.

U.S. officials "have not recognized that the [Iraqi] government is not the determinative force in the country, but the government is made up of fractured interests, each of whom are pursuing their own objectives," said Mark L. Schneider, senior vice president of the International Crisis Group, which has closely followed the politics in Iraq. "They haven't figured out a way to corner them, to bring them into a single negotiating framework."

The White House approach appears dictated in no small part by the necessity of satisfying key Republicans in Congress that the president's political strategy in Iraq has some chance of working.

With congressional Democrats unable to muster enough votes to force a withdrawal of U.S. troops, administration officials appear confident that they will have a free hand in Iraq for at least the next two months. They say they will use that time not just to focus on a larger political settlement inside Iraq but also to continue offensive military operations and to expand regional diplomacy -- while holding out the prospect of modest troop withdrawals sometime after September.

A key focus, they said, is the political situation in Iraq. To obtain more funding for the war last May, President Bush agreed to a series of benchmarks for the Iraqi government, such as parliament passing the oil law, holding provincial elections and protecting the rights of minorities. Even by his own administration's assessment, progress toward meeting these benchmarks has been mixed.

Thus, administration officials have taken in recent days to describing the benchmarks as imperfect indicators, saying a better gauge right now is political reconciliation in local areas. They are also playing up broader Iraqi and U.S. efforts at "top-down" reconciliation, such as strengthening the Presidency Council in Iraq, composed of Iraq's Shiite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, Kurdish president Jalal Talabani and the two vice presidents, one a Shiite and the other a Sunni.

U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker told Congress on Thursday that the council is meeting weekly to deal with crises, and officials are hoping this will become a forum to develop consensus on broader political issues. Bush has taken to including the two vice presidents -- Adel Abdul Mahdi and Tariq al-Hashimi -- as well as Talabani in some of his regular video conferences with Maliki.

Crocker and other administration officials said that this new political approach would be accompanied by a new regional diplomatic initiative, which will include trips to the region by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and possibly a second regional conference that could also include key players such as Syria and Iran.

But Democrats seemed unimpressed. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Crocker that he sees "no prospect of building that trust or capacity" from the government in the next several years and that the president's policy is based on a "flawed premise."

"Iraq cannot be governed from the center, absent a dictator or indefinite occupation," Biden said. "I believe we should promote a political settlement that allows the warring factions breathing room in their own regions."

Iraq security steps lagging, report says

Its military can't build a supply network and militias pose obstacles, a joint panel finds.
By Ned Parker
Times Staff Writer

July 20, 2007

BAGHDAD — A committee directed by Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and President Bush to accelerate the transfer of security responsibility to Iraq's army and police has warned that Iraq is lagging in a number of categories.

The quarterly report, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, says the Finance Ministry is blocking the Iraqi military from spending $660 million to build a logistical network; that militias are an obstacle to handing over to Iraqis responsibility for security in three mainly Shiite Muslim provinces; and that competition among rival security organizations has prevented the country from settling on a national security structure.

"I agree it is mixed results," said Iraqi national security advisor Mowaffak Rubaie. "We are behind schedule, but we made good progress."

A foreign advisor to the Iraqi government agreed that progress was being made.

Iraqi forces are now responsible for security in seven out of 18 provinces.

The findings by Iraqi, U.S. Embassy and U.S. military officials were the latest report card on Iraq's progress.

The report follows an assessment by the Bush administration last week of Iraq's steps toward healing sectarian and ethnic rifts.

That survey of 18 "benchmarks" found Iraq lagging on passing major legislation and described the country's security forces as battling sectarian and militia influences.

The reports come as Congress has been heatedly debating the future U.S. role in Iraq.

The second quarterly report since Bush and Maliki launched the review at a summit in November rates the training and equipping of the security ministries; their ability to achieve self-reliance; the development of Iraq's intelligence apparatus and national security structure; the readiness of provinces to be controlled by Iraqi security forces; and the ability of the army to assume control.

The report also evaluates security coordination and Iraq's counter-terrorism units.

The categories are color-coded red for off schedule/requires attention; amber for proceeding adequately and green for on schedule.

No category is deemed completely on schedule. Only the training and equipping of the Defense Ministry is judged close to running on time, with a combined green and amber rating.

The Iraqi army's ability to assume operational control and Iraq's counter-terrorism forces both received amber ratings.

The report says Shiite militias are a major obstacle to handing over security in the mid-Euphrates provinces of Karbala, Babil and Wasit.

Corruption and militia infiltration of security personnel ranks pose another hurdle, it says.

The report also points up divisions over who should control Iraq's intelligence apparatus.

One piece of legislation written with American backing would give control to Rubaie; another would give it to Sherwan Waili, the minister of state for national security.

Waili's critics accuse him of following a hard-line Shiite nationalist agenda.

"It's a political issue of the highest order. That's not going to be resolved tomorrow. It's waiting on a political solution in the parliament," a foreign advisor to the Iraqi government said.

Iraq's chain of command is also unclear, and the report calls for Waili's responsibilities to be better defined.

Waili has a nationwide network of agents involved in arrests and intelligence-gathering, but he is doing so without any charter.

"It's a very sensitive and important topic. I don't think it's a gargantuan death squad or cleansing squad, but they are definitely some people who are operating in that gray area between intelligence and policing and doing things without full … legal sanctions," the advisor said.

The report also urges that the powers of officials who deal with military affairs in Maliki's office be clarified. They have issued orders to troops and some are pushing to take charge of military and police operations.

The advisor warned that that would rob the Defense and Interior ministries of their functions.

The survey also points up the Finance Ministry's refusal to authorize the Defense Ministry to spend $660 million to build its own supply network for food, water, maintenance and waste removal, which it says has slowed down the handoff effort by six to nine months.

Meanwhile, five Americans and three British troops were killed in action, their military commands reported Thursday.

The U.S. command said that four soldiers and their interpreter died Wednesday in a roadside bombing in east Baghdad, and that a fifth soldier was killed Thursday by gunfire southwest of the city.

The deaths raised the number of U.S. military fatalities in the Iraq theater since March 2003 to 3,628, according to the website icasualties.org which tracks deaths and injuries in the conflict.

The three British troops were killed Thursday in a mortar attack on their base in the southern city of Basra, the British Defense Ministry said. That brought the number of British troops killed in Iraq to 162.

In Baghdad, the main bloc of Sunni Arab lawmakers returned to parliament Thursday, ending a five-week boycott and vowing to work with their Shiite counterparts to save the country from chaos.

Iraq's legislature has been deadlocked for weeks despite U.S. pressure to meet the 18 benchmarks, which include passage of laws on sharing oil revenue and the rehabilitation of employees purged from government because they were members of the late dictator Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.

It was unclear whether the Sunnis' return would lead to a quick push to pass the measures before a recess in August, or whether the parliament would delay its break to give U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, legislative accomplishments to cite when delivering their September assessment of military operations to Congress.

The Iraqi Accordance Front's 44 lawmakers returned after striking a deal under which parliament Speaker Mahmoud Mashadani, a Sunni, could retain his post.

The speaker was suspended last month after one of his bodyguards hit a Shiite member of parliament.

--

ned.parker@latimes.com

Times staff writers Saif Rasheed and Zeena Kareem contributed to this report.

U.S. ambassador warns against early Iraq exit

By John F. Burns and Alissa J. Rubin

BAGHDAD: The American ambassador to Iraq has urged policy makers in Washington to give "some very, very serious thought" to the consequences that could follow an early reduction of U.S. troops in Iraq, warning of a surge in sectarian killings in which civilians "by the thousands" could die.

The ambassador, Ryan Crocker, laid out his grim forecast two months ahead of a pivotal assessment of progress in the war that he and the American military commander in Iraq are scheduled to make to the White House and Congress.

Congress is scheduled to renew debate on the question of withdrawal this week, as four more Republican senators have declared they can no longer support President George W. Bush's strategy, and administration officials debate whether Bush should announce his intention to begin a gradual withdrawal of American troops to forestall more defections.

"You can't build a whole policy on a fear of a negative, but, boy, you've really got to account for it," Crocker said in an interview on Saturday at his office in Saddam Hussein's old Republican palace, now the seat of American power in Iraq.

Setting out what he said was not a policy prescription but a review of issues that needed to be weighed, the ambassador compared Iraq's current violence to the early scenes of a movie, suggesting that those urging an early troop withdrawal might have underestimated the potential for much greater killing.

"In the States, it's like we're in the last half of the third reel of a three-reel movie, and all we have to do is decide we're done here and the credits come up and the lights come on and we leave the theater and go on to something else," he said. "Whereas out here, you're just getting into the first reel of five reels" he added, "and as ugly as the first reel has been, the other four-and-a-half are going to be way, way worse."

He continued: "And you've got to give some very, very serious thought to ways it could be worse," including "sectarian violence on a level we just haven't seen before" that could escalate if American troops are not available to restrain the killing.

"You have to look at what the consequences would be, and you look at those who say we could have bases elsewhere in the country - well yes, we could, but we would have the prospect of American forces looking on while civilians by the thousands were slaughtered. Not a pretty prospect."

The 70-minute interview took place in Crocker's paper-piled office on the palace's upper floor, separated by a short walk through rooms busy with support staff from the office of General David Petraeus, the top American military commander in Iraq.

The two men will travel to Washington for what the ambassador described as a "side-by-side" progress report on the war that is due by Sept. 15, an event Bush and congressional opponents of the war have both marked as a potential watershed in American policy on the war.

Crocker, who has spent most of his 36-year diplomatic career in the Arab world, including a posting to Lebanon during which he survived the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1982, emphasized in the interview what he called "the almost infinite complexity" of the situation in Iraq, and the hard choices facing the United States.

But the crux of his remarks was a view that Petraeus has pressed in behind-doors briefings for senators in Washington: that while the United States faces a high price for staying in Iraq, with mounting American casualties and a bill that is already over $500 billion, the price for leaving could be high, too.

Crocker spoke of the pressures the September deadline has imposed on two American officials to come up with what he described as "the best assessment we can," and "the most honest." He compared their situation to the one faced by Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker and General Creighton Abrams Jr., the two top Americans in Vietnam when the decisions that led to the American withdrawal from that war were made nearly 40 years ago.

"That's the only kind of situation that I can think of in which something like this might have arisen," the ambassador said, referring to the burden of expectation he and Petraeus now face.

In setting out what he called "the kind of things you have to think about" if American troops are withdrawn, the ambassador set out several possibilities.

He said these included a resurgence by insurgents linked to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which he said had been "pretty hard-pressed of late" by the "surge" of an additional 30,000 troops ordered by Bush earlier this year; the risk that Iraq's 350,000-strong security forces would "completely collapse" under sectarian pressures, disintegrating into militias; and the specter of interference amid the chaos by Iran, neighboring Sunni Arab states and Turkey.

"I'm not saying any of this is going to happen or is likely to happen, but it's the kind of things you've got to think about," he said. "The movie will go on with us, or without us. So what are the actors likely to do in our absence under the conditions as we can best see them?"

He said his experience in Lebanon in the early 1980s was that "generally when you try to think about future scenarios, your main mistake is often a failure of imagination," and that he could not have predicted the violence that came in 1982, including the attacks that killed hundreds of Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Chatila camps in Beirut, and the devastating truck bombings of the embassy and the American marine barracks.

"All those things exceeded my imagination, and I'm sure that what will happen here will exceed my imagination" he said. "But these things have to be thought about, and they are serious."

Iraq Appropriations Politics

This Fall, Democrats in Congress will finally get their say on Iraq.

President Bush recently got what he wanted -- a timetable removed from an Iraq emergency supplemental appropriations bill. Democrats fought for timetables and sure benchmarks. They ultimately caved, leaving many rank-and-file Democrats terribly angry.

The results of November's Congressional elections, if anything, were meant to cause a change in Iraq policy on Capitol Hill. That the House and Senate would give President Bush all of the funding he needs to conduct the war exactly how he wants without any binding requirements was a big blow

But the fight for the emergency appropriations bill is nothing in comparison to what's going to happen when the real, regular Iraq appropriations bill comes up this September

In September, General Petraeus has promised a report on the results of this summer's surge. And Petraeus and the Bush Administration have said that they'll determine what to do with U.S. involvement in Iraq based on the results of this report.

But recent news reflects clearly that the surge isn't saving Baghdad, and the American forces in Iraq can't really change the general dynamic of civil war there.

So it's no surprise that General Odierno is saying that it's going to take more time to issue the report. And no surprise that today Ambassador Crocker would say that it will take a lot longer than September to see results in Iraq.

Of course, you could wait forever for positive results in Iraq without seeing any, but that's beside the point. We're talking about September's appropriations bill for next year's war operations.

No amount of spin or attempting to recast the debate can get the President out of asking Congress for money. And he's going to have to ask around September in order to actually have the appropriations process work.

Without magnificent success to show for the surge, the President is going to have to announce a significant change of course in Iraq. A few different initiatives have been floated -- a 50% cut in troops in Iraq during 2008, and an endorsement of the Baker-Hamilton Report. President

As much as the President didn't agree with the results of the Iraq Study Group Report, it doesn't require the President to do much besides attempt to engage Iraq's neighbors in dialogue. A dialogue that can be ongoing, fruitlessly, while the President stays the course, with a little window-dressing, in Iraq. And don't forget, the Iraq Study Group explicitly did not include any timelines in their Report.

Let's say what it really is: President Bush's "endorsement" of the Iraq Study Group's recommendations would be a transparent play for time. So I believe this will be the core of what President Bush will propose along with his request for war funding this Fall.

Democrats in Congress cannot be satisfied with an Administration that simply states that it will adhere by the terms of the Baker-Hamilton Report. Letting the Administration off without more would damage their own credibility and truly alienate the Democratic base.

The Democrats will include a harsh timetable, one with teeth, in September. They will limit the President's license to carry out the war. And they will take steps that will lead to a drawdown in U.S. forces in Iraq. The need for money to continue the war, and Democrats' unwillingness to give it without strings, means that the President will have to accept changes. The only question is whether these changes will be entirely on his initiative or not. And based on the President's lack of creativity in Iraq policy, the answer will be "not."

The other alternative being floated -- a 50% cut in U.S. forces during 2008 -- reflects not what the President wants but what he will likely have to accept. Floating this idea is only the President looking forward to 2008 and trying not to look like he was politically defeated. It is not a positive initiative to win the war.

In light of the situation that will likely exist in September, the question for Democrats should be, "what conditions should we place on the President's conduct of the war in Iraq," and "what is the right way to withdraw the large majority of American forces from Iraq during 2008 and possibly 2009?"

These are difficult questions that must be taken very seriously. Up to this point, posturing and posing on Capitol Hill has been no problem because in the end everyone knew that Congress wasn't going to upset the war-funding applecart. This time, however, Congress is likely to get most of what it asks for.