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t r u t h o u t: Reality Check for Bush Administration in Iraq

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Reality Check for Bush Administration in Iraq
By Tom Regan
The Christian Science Monitor

Monday 15 August 2005

White House wants to lower expectations about model democracy, US military victory in Iraq.

The Bush administration is "significantly" lowering expectations about what it can achieve in Iraq, finally admitting that its prewar plans were "unrealistic," the Washington Post reported on Sunday.

The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry, or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, US officials say.

Meanwhile on Friday, in an analysis for the Post, Peter Baker wrote that "Administration officials have given up all hope of militarily defeating the insurgents with US forces, instead aiming only to train and equip enough Iraqi security forces to take over the fight themselves."

While the Post article notes that the White House still feels it has accomplished a great deal in Iraq, Senator Joseph Biden (D) of Delaware, Sunday accused the Bush administration of trying to lower expectations as part of an exit strategy. "They have squandered about every opportunity to get it right," Sen. Biden told NBC's "Meet the Press".

Senator John McCain (R) of Arizona also told NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday that any talk of a significant US troop withdrawal from Iraq is premature.

"The day that I can land at the airport in Baghdad and ride in an unarmed car down the highway to the Green Zone is the day that I'll start considering withdrawals from Iraq," said McCain, referring to the heavily fortified area where US and Iraqi government headquarters are located.

"We not only don't need to withdraw, we need more troops there," he said on Fox News Sunday.

But in an interview late Sunday on CNN, Senator Richard Lugar (R) of Indiana, the head of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, said that even while there are not enough US troops in Iraq to keep insurgents out, it was extremely unlikely more soldiers would be sent there. "We have to train the Iraqis faster and harder," said Sen. Lugar.

John Farmer, the national political correspondent of the Newark Star-Ledger, writes in an opinion piece on Monday that the White House's decision to lower expectations in Iraq and float talk of troops withdrawal has more to do with the 2006 midterm elections in the US than the reality of the situation on the ground in Iraq.

A clear GOP defeat next year would constitute a repudiation of Bush's Iraq policy. Congressional Republicans, especially in the House, have the jitters. They've seen the polls and fear they'll get caught in any backlash against the war. Cindy Sheehan, the Gold Star mother camping outside the ranch to protest the war while Bush hides within, is their worst nightmare.

The word in Washington is that the same House Republicans who only yesterday were the war's chief cheerleaders are now said to be pressuring Bush to throw them a rope - something that can pass for an exit strategy or, failing that, a commitment to bring at least some of the boys home before the 2006 elections.

Kevin Hassett, director of economic policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, writes in an opinion piece for Bloomberg News that public pessimism about Iraq is having another effect - depressing optimism about the positive news about the US economy.

The explanation I favor is that the negative news about Iraq and the failure to stop the attacks in London have overwhelmed the good economic news. It's easy to assert that, but the fact is the data resoundingly support this view, poll data concerning attitudes toward President Bush's foreign policy and his handling of the economy. There is clearly a striking positive (and statistically quite significant) relationship between the two. Even the blips move together.

While correlation is not causality, the strong common down trend during a period of economic expansion convincingly supports the view that the turmoil in Iraq is affecting answers to economic questions. It's hard to imagine the effect going the other way.

Knight Ridder reports on the changing public attitudes towards the war in Iraq and how that is being handled by the Bush administration.

Meanwhile, CNN reports that Henry Kissinger, an "architect of the US war in Vietnam more than 30 years ago," says that he has an "uneasy feeling" that some of the same factors that undermined support for that war are beginning to surface in relation to the war in Iraq. Kissinger said the US should remove any troops that are not necessary for stabilizing Iraq, but that "we cannot begin with an exit without having first defined what the objective is."

"If a radical government emerges in Baghdad or if any part of Iraq becomes what Afghanistan used to be, a training ground for terrorists, then this will be a catastrophe for the Islamic world and for Europe, much as they may - reluctant as they may be to admit it - and eventually for us."

Finally, The Los Angeles Times reports on another issue that confronting the Bush administration - the establishment of permanent US bases in Iraq, requiring as many as 50,000 US troops for not just years, but perhaps decades. And experts say it's likely that while the establishment of US bases in Iraq will stoke the fires of the insurgency, it's "probably too much to hope that it will burn out without them."

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posted by Annamarie at 4:55 PM