-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: June 18, 2007 8:49:46 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Bush Lied to Us AGAIN -- The "Surge" Was Only the First
Step in ESCALATION
Notice that Mitt Romney --Republican frontrunner, with Bush's seal
of approval-- is already promising that, if elected president, he'd
send another 100,000 troops to fight in Iraq ... In effect,
DOUBLING our military presence and RE-fighting the war all over
again, starting at square one. (The 100,000 men already there
could relax and get some R&R -- behind enemy lines in IRAN ...)
No one dares ask GOP candidates for president how they'd feel about
re-instituting the draft.
Petraeus: Iraq 'Challenges' to Continue
"Similar operations" have required "9 or 10 years"
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 18, 2007; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/17/
AR2007061700830.html
Conditions in Iraq will not improve sufficiently by September to
justify a drawdown of U.S. military forces, the top commander in
Iraq said yesterday.
Asked whether he thought the job assigned to an additional 30,000
troops deployed as the centerpiece of President Bush's new war
strategy would be completed by then, Gen. David H. Petraeus
replied: "I do not, no. I think that we have a lot of heavy lifting
to do."
Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, his diplomatic counterpart
in Baghdad, said a key report they will deliver to Washington in
September will include what Crocker called "an assessment of what
the consequences might be if we pursue other directions." Noting
the "unhelpful roles" being played by Iran and Syria in Iraq,
Crocker said: "We've got to consider what could happen."
Comments by Petraeus on "Fox News Sunday" and Crocker on NBC's
"Meet the Press" were an indication of the administration's
evolving strategy for confronting rising congressional demands to
begin planning troop withdrawals. In addition to warning about the
possible regional consequences of withdrawal, both men emphasized a
"mixed" picture on the ground, citing successes while acknowledging
the difficulty of the task ahead.
Asserting steady, albeit slow, military and political progress,
Petraeus said that the "many, many challenges" would not be
resolved "in a year or even two years." Similar counterinsurgency
operations, he said, "have gone on for at least 9 or 10 years." He
said he and Crocker would make "some recommendations on the way
ahead" to Congress, and that it was realistic to assume "some form
of long-term security arrangement" with Iraq.
Democrats failed last month to impose a withdrawal timetable in war-
funding legislation. But the enacted measure mandated assessments
of military, political and economic progress from Petraeus and
Crocker -- rather than from Washington-based administration and
military officials -- by Sept. 15.
A growing number of prominent Republicans who last month rejected
any mention of withdrawal now say they view the September report as
a crossroads.
"I think everybody anticipates that there's going to be a new
strategy in the fall," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.)
said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "I don't think we'll have the same
level of troops, in all likelihood, that we have now," totaling
more than 150,000. "The time to properly evaluate that, it strikes
me, is in September."
On the Iraqi political front, McConnell said, the government of
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been "a big disappointment. They
have not done the things that they know they need to do to hold
their country together -- things like the new oil law, things like
local elections, things like finishing the de-Baathification process."
In announcing his new strategy in January, Bush said the troop
increase would diminish sectarian violence in Baghdad and break
Sunni insurgent control in Anbar province, a stronghold of the
group al-Qaeda in Iraq. The ensuing calm, the administration said,
would give the Shiite-dominated Maliki government time and space to
reconcile with the minority Sunni and Kurdish communities, and
build a unified administration that Iraqis -- including many now
involved in violence -- would support.
But since the deployment of five additional U.S. combat brigades
began in early spring, the overall level of violence has not abated
and in some respects has increased, according to a Pentagon report
issued last week. Little progress has been reported in achieving
the political benchmarks spelled out in the funding legislation as
well as a revision of the Iraqi constitution to provide a better
balance of regional and sectarian factions in the government.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said in Baghdad on Saturday that
he had told the Iraqi government "that our troops are buying them
time to pursue reconciliation, that frankly we are disappointed by
the progress so far." The same message, he said, had been conveyed
by Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte and Adm. William J.
Fallon, head of the U.S. military's Central Command, during Iraq
visits last week.
In an interview posted on its Web site Saturday, Newsweek magazine
quoted Maliki as criticizing administration statements that
appeared to be "dictating to the Iraqi government." He said he had
told U.S. officials that words such as "pressure" and
"timetables . . . do not help."
Contradicting reports of difficulties in reaching agreement among
Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, Maliki reportedly said that draft laws
on oil, de-Baathification and provincial elections "are all ready
and will be submitted to the parliament next week."
Petraeus and Crocker took issue with the portrayal of last week's
Pentagon report as overwhelmingly negative, and cited successes in
Anbar and in some Baghdad neighborhoods. They acknowledged that as
U.S. and Iraqi troops had concentrated on those areas, insurgent
activity had sharply increased elsewhere, mainly in the southern
belt of Baghdad's suburbs and in Diyala province, northeast of the
capital.
But Petraeus said that the arrival last week of the last of the
newly deployed brigades had allowed a shift in U.S. strategy,
"enabling us now to launch operations into sanctuaries, areas in
which we have had very little coalition force presence other than
raids in recent years."
Asked about the recent comment by Senate Majority Leader Harry M.
Reid (Nev.) that Petraeus's optimistic assessment of security in
Baghdad indicated that the general "isn't in touch with what's
going on," Petraeus said that he has tried "not to pull punches"
and to "present both the good and the bad." His report in
September, he said, "will be a forthright assessment of what we've
achieved and what we haven't achieved."
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