Gates Rejects Webb Bill, Urges Patience on Iraq
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates backed away slightly from his statement Friday that U.S. troop levels in Iraq could go as low as 100,000 by the end of next year, and he signaled that the Bush administration would go into a wait-and-see mode on Iraq for another six months.
"The key here, it seems to me, is what kind of conditions we will have in Iraq in March, when General Petraeus makes his reevaluation," Gates said.
Gates added that he would recommend that the president veto legislation proposed by Sen. James Webb (D-Va.) to require that troops spend as much time at home as their previous deployment -- a bill that would hamstring the Pentagon's ability to maintain current troop levels in Iraq.
"It would be extremely difficult for us to manage that. It really is a back-door way to try and force the president to accelerate the drawdowns," he said.
The Pentagon chief appeared on two Sunday shows - ABC's "This Week" and CBS's "Face the Nation" -- days after Gen. David H. Petraeus, U.S. commander in Iraq, recommended, and President Bush ordered, the withdrawal of roughly 30,000 of the 160,000 troops currently in Iraq by next summer. Petraeus asked Congress to defer any decision on further reductions until he reports again on Capitol Hill in March.
A day after Bush announced the limited withdrawal, Gates told reporters that he hopes Petraeus will then "be able to say that he thinks that the pace of drawdowns can continue at the same rate in the second half of the year as in the first half of the year" -- which would take troop levels down to 100,000 by the end of 2008.
"What didn't get covered," Gates said yesterday, "was the fact that I indicated very strongly that that depended very much on what happened on the ground, and that if we were to continue drawdowns, it would be because the situation in Iraq had continued to improve dramatically."
Although the Iraqi government has failed to meet benchmarks for national reconciliation that Congress set, Gates said, Iraqi officials are making political progress at the local level.
"[T]hings are actually happening in terms of oil revenues being shared, provincial empowerment, Baathists from Saddam's army being brought back into the army and so on," he said. "So there -- some of these things that we refer to as reconciliation are taking place on the ground."
Gates said progress in Iraq this year has come in a different form than expected. For example, he said the administration did not expect the turnaround in Anbar province, where Iraqi religious leaders have stood against al-Qaeda operatives. Elsewhere, he said, opposition to extremists is rising.
Still, he acknowledged that the Iraqi military has failed to achieve a basic level of readiness.
He said the Iraqis lack "logistics capabilities" - "the ability to have their own intelligence, their own air cover and so on." He added, "And we will have to continue to provide those kinds of things."
Gates was asked why the United States had not decided to attack camps along Iran's border with Iraq that are reportedly training insurgents.
"[T]here's a question of just how much intelligence we have, in terms of specific locations and so on," Gates said. "But beyond that, I think that the general view is we can manage this problem through better operations inside Iraq and on the border with Iran."
Gates responded to a statement by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in which she said that an enduring presence in Iraq - as defined by the Bush administration - means 100,000 troops there for 10 years, at a cost of $700 billion.
"[T]hat's a mischaracterization," Gates said. "[T]he idea is that we would have a much more limited role in Iraq for some protracted period of time, as a stabilizing force, a force that would be a fraction of the size of the force that we have there now and one that would carry out limited missions: border security, going after the terrorists, training and equipping the Iraqi forces."
Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said on CBS that he doesn't know if enough Republicans will join with Democrats to pass legislation forcing a drawdown and redefining the purpose of remaining troops to fight terrorism. Levin said Webb's bill "has a good chance of passing."
Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) rejected the idea that Congress could somehow change the mission of U.S. forces in Iraq so that fewer troops are needed.
"Petraeus makes the point that you can't do a counterinsurgency mission without conventional forces, without intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, all of the things that we have there today. That's what it takes to defeat Al Qaida in Iraq," Kyl said on CBS.
Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) cast doubt on whether the progress in Iraq cited by Gates and others in the administration - such as a reduction in violence in Anbar - is the kind of fundamental movement that needs to happen.
"The situation in Anbar is Sunni on Sunni. Sunni jihadists vs. Sunni sheiks. We're making progress there," he said on ABC. "But the real fault line in Iraq is the dispute between the Shia and the Sunni communities. That's a very violent, very significant dispute. That does not seem to be reconciling. ... And I think that is probably the fundamental issue. So I think that this local progress can't be ignored but doesn't go to the fundamental problem in Iraq, and that is a virtual civil war between the Sunni and Shia."
Sens. John McCain (Ariz.), who is running for the Republican presidential nomination, and John F. Kerry (Mass.), the Democrats' 2004 nominee, had a spirited debate on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"All of us are saddened and frustrated by the course of the war," McCain said, but added: "Now we are succeeding with this strategy. ... Abandon it and go back to the previous failed strategy ... or set a date for pullout ... [and] there's no doubt in my mind the consequences: ... genocide, chaos in the region, far worse than the situation we have in the region today."
Kerry rejected that thinking, saying that the "Bush/McCain strategy of escalating our troops in the middle of a civil war has no relationship directly to what you need to do to solve the civil war. ... You can put additional troops and secure a small area here or there, and everybody knows there are not enough troops to be able to secure all of the areas you need to be able to secure ... A policy of putting more troops in and staying ... is not a policy for winning or changing the equation."
McCain said he could accept troop withdrawals, but that it all "depends on the situation on the ground. ... The fact is we have changed the strategy, albeit way too late. In Anbar province, parts of Baghdad, the Kurdish area, there are areas of secure environment. ... There is significant political progress on the ground. ... Setting a date for withdrawal would cause us to have severe national security problems in the future."
Kerry took issue with that terminology: "John keeps using the word withdrawal. ... We're not talking about abandoning Iraq. We're talking about adjusting the mission. You are continuing to provide the basic backstop and support necessary to finish the training so they stand up on their own and you're continuing to chase al-Qaeda."
-- Zachary A. Goldfarb
By Post Editor |
September 16, 2007; 2:06 PM ET
Previous: Early Second-Guessing of Petraeus-Crocker Report |
Next: Clinton Sticks to Her Script in Whirlwind Tour of Shows
Posted by: Dungarees | September 16, 2007 3:37 PM
Was that "Patience" or "Patients?"
We seem to have more of the latter than the former.
Posted by: Jack | September 17, 2007 4:45 AM
Above comments have my back. Thanks, Dungarees and Jack.
Posted by: jhbyer | September 17, 2007 9:52 AM
And just where do 70% of the American People figure into this? We do not want a presence in the ME, we want our troops home, our boarders secured and our ports properly inspected. It's not that hard....
Posted by: mfalk@webtv.net | September 29, 2007 3:24 PM
We have seen Veterans cheated under this corrupt Administration. Two VA Secretaries have resigned in discrace, Bush pal Princippi and Nicholson. The Troops mean nothing to the scum waffles in this White House. Defense contracts and Blackwater mean everything to them. Why fight there for freedom when we don't even have it here?
Posted by: Ben Matheny | October 7, 2007 4:23 PM
Gates: Isn't 6 years of patience more than enough? Put a sock in it and take a one way trip to Iraq. Pick up a gun and start killing. Just be sure you wear a diaper.
Posted by: lynn parker | October 8, 2007 8:42 AM
The comments to this entry are closed.
Secretary Gates may be correct saying that Speaker of the House Pelosi made a "mischaracterization" by saying that an enduring presence in Iraq - as defined by the Bush administration - means 100,000 troops there for 10 years, at a cost of $700 billion, and that the "[T]he idea is that we would have a much more limited role in Iraq for some protracted period of time, as a stabilizing force, a force that would be a fraction of the size of the force that we have there now and one that would carry out limited missions: border security, going after the terrorists, training and equipping the Iraqi forces." But, there's nohing that seems to indicate that our reduced force, a fraction of the size we have there now, can be significantly lower than 100,000 and continue to do a job in the region that cannot get easier as time goes on. Even if forces were reduced to half that, to 50,000, that's still an excessively large number of U.S. forces. As is, we have 160,000 troops in country, at least 100,000 contractors, and an unknown number in the region supporting those troops who are fighting a war that was already won; we're now fighting the peace dividend (the right for the Iraqi people themselves, those of differing views, to come to their agreement, which may or may not be what we believe it should be). One unwritten cost is that of operating and supporting the overly large US Embassy, which, in the best of circumstances, should not be as large as it is to perform routine diplomatic and/or assistance missions; the facility itself is massive, and sets the staff (and, apparently, others) as an independent island in Baghdad. Cost of the war, currently is in the range of $8-10 Billion a month; does anyone think that if the number of troops were halved (to 80,000 and assuming that no additional contractors were added to offset the departed troops) that costs would reduce by half? Reducing costs to $5 billion a month is $60 billion a year, $600 billion over the next 10 years (a period that can easily be justified for staying in Iraq to perform what Secretary Gates suggests our role should be; that doesn't make Speaker Pelosi's figures off by much. And for this we will get... What? Iraq as our partner in the war on terrorism? We can actually envision Iraq sending troops as part of our next coaliton in the next war we fight? Sorry, but I may not always agree with Speaker Pelosi but I don't think she's that far off in her thinking.