Can the Iraq 'Surge' Be Salvaged?---Officials Talk of Next Steps

[rodeodance]

Looking bleak for our troops and for Iraq!


Can the Iraq 'Surge' Be Salvaged?
As Violence Seems to Outpace Progress, Officials Talk of Next Steps
By GREG JAFFE and YOCHI J. DREAZEN

WASHINGTON -- When the Bush administration decided to send tens of thousands of additional troops to Iraq, the strategy rested on an unspoken trade-off: U.S. troops would risk greater casualties to tamp down violence and buy the Baghdad government time to make the political compromises needed to reconcile the country's warring factions.

But a resurgence of sectarian violence and attacks on U.S. troops, coupled with little to no progress on crucial Iraqi political goals, is already spurring discussion about whether the current strategy can succeed.

In the near term, senior American military officials in Baghdad are wrestling with how to increase the effectiveness of the "surge" strategy between now and September, when Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, is supposed to give Washington a progress report. U.S. officials here and in Baghdad are also waging a parallel debate over how long the "surge" should last -- and whether the U.S. needs to begin planning for an alternative approach that would scale back both U.S. troop levels and American ambitions in Iraq.

With about 120 U.S. fatalities, May has been the deadliest month for U.S. troops since the fight for Fallujah in April 2004. The problems facing the surge have been compounded by the recent re-emergence of Moqtada al-Sadr, a Shiite Muslim cleric whose heavily armed militia has waged an on-again, off-again guerilla war against U.S. and British forces for almost four years. His Mahdi Army has also been linked to the wide-scale abductions and killings of young Sunni Muslim men.............

[rodeodance]

1. from wsj-a bit more:

In Washington, meanwhile, administration officials have begun to debate how much longer the surge should last and what comes after it. Senior military officials in Iraq have said they would like to see the higher troop levels sustained through early 2008.

But senior Bush administration officials worry that extending the buildup into next year could further turn the American public against the war. Pentagon officials and the White House are developing rough proposals to begin withdrawing tens of thousands of soldiers sometime next year as a way of defusing some of the public fury over the war and making it less of an issue in next year's presidential and congressional elections. White House officials caution that the efforts are preliminary and that President Bush has yet to sign off on them. One aide acknowledged that the White House has developed similar withdrawal plans in the past, only to abandon them when violence in Iraq continued to climb.

White House spokesman Tony Snow yesterday said Mr. Bush envisions an indefinite American military presence in Iraq that would resemble the one in South Korea, with the U.S. in a support role able to "react quickly to major challenges or crises." That presumes, though, that an Iraqi government would request or at least tolerate such a deployment, as the South Koreans have.

Write to Greg Jaffe at [e-mail] and Yochi J. Dreazen at [e-mail]

[Rydz777]

2. It's mind boggling. From the beginning, everyone - except

Bush - knew that the "surge" would bring more casualties and have no effect on the civil war, except perhaps to inflame it further. Now they are beginning to wonder what to do next. Fortunately, there is a common sense solution. Out NOW.