Military's dilemma -- stay or leave (Part 1 of 3)

[IndianaGreen]

Military's dilemma -- stay or leave

Iraq too complex to lend itself to easy solutions, experts say

First of Three Parts

The United States has the ability to sharply increase the troop strength in Iraq, Biddle said. But within months, those troops would start to burn out their humvees, tank treads and other materiel that outgoing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been criticized for ignoring in favor of high-tech new weapons.

"If you thought there was something you could accomplish in a six-month period of 50 or 60 percent higher troop counts, then it might make sense," Biddle said. "If you could get a political deal by saturating Iraq with American troops, then it might make sense to do it even if you do fall to much lower levels afterward. But I haven't heard anybody put forth an argument about what these troops are going to do while they're there that will bring that about."

The opposite extreme, rapid withdrawal, appeals to several groups, Biddle said: those who feel U.S. troops now are more of a cause of violence than a solution; those who have concluded that the progress likely still to be made in Iraq is not worth the cost of more American lives; and those who feel that removing U.S. troops would force the Iraqi government to come to grips with its responsibilities.

"So that the Iraqi politicians understand: One last chance," said former chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay, now a research fellow at the Potomac Institute who favors a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops on a clear timetable over the next year: first out of the urban areas, then to the borders and ultimately out of Iraq.

"With the theory that if they know we're leaving and we're not going to be there to protect them, they will take the hard steps and make the hard compromises necessary to create a political entity that makes it worth Iraqi soldiers and policemen to die for to protect," he said. "I think if they were to do that, the al Qaeda in Iraq thing would be relatively easily settled -- not without violence, but settled by Iraqis taking care of these opponents of their country."

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/12/03/MNGBVMNLT51.DTL