The commander of U.S. military forces in Iraq, offering a preview of a sharply mixed report that he will deliver to Congress next week on the troop “surge,” told his forces Friday that despite making “uneven” progress they have “seized the initiative from our enemies in a number of areas.”
Army Gen. David Petraeus, who will testify before House and Senate committees on Monday and Tuesday, acknowledged in a letter to members of the multinational forces in Iraq that sectarian violence remains deadly but also said it is “considerably reduced” and has reached its lowest level in more than a year.
Yet the general’s report, part of a Bush administration campaign to maintain support for continued war funding, faces a wall of doubt in Congress. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the No. 2 leader in the Senate, said Friday that he will not vote for more supplemental war funding bills unless a strategy for withdrawal is attached, signaling a new level of conflict between the White House and Congress over the war.
Petraeus, in his letter to the troops, candidly admitted the initial failure of a central goal of the additional 28,000 troops that President Bush sent to Iraq earlier this year, that enhanced security would provide Iraqi leaders the “space” for political reconciliation among warring factions.
“It has not worked out as we had hoped,” Petraeus said.
And, while Petraeus reported that Iraqi forces are suffering greater casualties than U.S. forces, the death toll continues to rise: The military on Friday announced the deaths of seven more American troops, including four in Anbar province, which the administration has cited for improved security. The latest deaths raised to at least 3,760 the number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq since the war started in March 2003.
“My sense is that we have achieved tactical momentum and wrested the initiative from our enemies in a number of areas in Iraq,” Petraeus wrote in the letter to soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and civilians. “The result has been progress in the security area, although it has, as you know, been uneven. …We are, in short, a long way from the goal line, but we do have the ball and we are driving down the field.”
The Washington Post, citing unnamed Bush administration officials, reported Friday that Petraeus would ask to return to Washington in six months to give another assessment after giving Iraqi leaders more time to make progress toward political reconciliation.
An underlying optimism about the potential for the mission will be central to the reports that Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, give to Congress next week. Their testimony on Capitol Hill is part of a broader administration campaign for support that will include a written White House progress report on the “surge” that Congress demanded as a condition for continued war funding.
Yet Democratic congressional leaders, struggling to find a way to start scaling back U.S. forces, also are eyeing other assessments that paint a more troubling picture of the situation in Iraq. And, as the White House prepares to seek another round of war funding, Durbin said he has cast his last vote for a supplemental war spending bill unless it carries a plan for troop withdrawal.
“By carefully manipulating the statistics, the Bush-Petraeus report will try to persuade us that violence in Iraq is decreasing and thus the surge is working,” Durbin said in a speech here. “Even if the figures were right, the conclusion is wrong.”
Referring to civilian employees reporting on the situation in Iraq, Durbin said, “When you send a discouraging report about things that are happening in Baghdad, they were reminded by their superiors: That’s unacceptable. We need a positive report.”Durbin later told reporters: “I’m looking for some language in there that gives me some hope that this war is going to end before I will vote for more [funding].”
Democratic congressional leaders are questioning both military and political progress made in Iraq since Bush ordered the buildup of forces, which has increased the U.S. deployment to about 160,000 troops. Both military and independent reviews point to a persistent lack of progress in political reconciliation within the country.
At COP War Eagle, a dusty combat outpost in northeastern Baghdad, few soldiers had seen the open letter from Petraeus. First Lt. Jose Rivera, who read a copy provided by a reporter, said he agreed with Petraeus’ guarded optimism.
“There is undeniably a marked improvement in the security situation [because of the surge], but that is to be expected when you place so many troops in an area,” Rivera said. “They’re temporary gains if the Iraqi government doesn’t live up to expectations.”
Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington and an assistant defense secretary in the Reagan administration, called the letter a concession of failure.
“I think it’s a recognition that the surge has failed to meet its objective,” Korb said. “The whole purpose of this was not to improve security. The purpose was, if we gave the Iraqis the breathing space they needed, they would do the reconciliation.”
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The goal of handing control over Iraq’s security to Iraqi military and police forces remains just as elusive.
“Iraqi forces remain a work in progress,” Petraeus said in his letter, while insisting that Iraqi soldiers and police “are very much in the fight, and they continue to sustain losses that are two to three times our losses.”
Retired Marine Gen. James Jones has painted a bleaker picture of police forces in Iraq. While the Iraqi military has grown to 152,000, Jones told a Senate committee this week that the quality of local and national police forces of 230,000 remains “unsatisfactory.”
The national police in particular are “overly sectarian … heavy-handed in their mission … not trusted by people of other ethnic origins, and there are allegations of corruption,” said Jones, chairman of an independent commission that examined Iraq’s military and police forces.
Nevertheless, Petraeus said that the number of attacks across Iraq has declined in eight of the past 11 weeks, “reaching during the last week in August a level not seen since June 2006.
“By taking the fight to the enemy, you have killed or captured dozens of leaders and thousands of members of Al Qaeda-Iraq and extremist militia elements,” Petraeus wrote, effectively praising a strategy for which he is personally known as an expert on counterinsurgency tactics. “By living among the population with our Iraqi partners, you have been holding the areas you have cleared.”
While political reconciliation remains elusive on the national level, Petraeus pointed to local progress where Iraqi leaders have stepped forward to oppose insurgents. This has occurred largely in the western province of Anbar, where Bush made a surprise stop earlier this week on his way to a Pacific Rim summit in Australia.
“The progress has not, to be sure, been uniform across Baghdad or across Iraq,” Petraeus wrote. “However, the overall trajectory has been encouraging, especially compared to the situation at the height of the sectarian violence in late 2006 and 2007.”
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