New Facts About Iraq
Stay the course? Withdraw? The spiral of violence poses more vexing questions for a White House increasingly under siege
The fiery debate over Iraq is turning absolutely sulfurous. With the November 7 congressional elections just around the corner, two new developments are stoking a surge of second-guessing about President Bush's conduct of the war and raising new concerns about how Washington can extricate itself from what most Americans now see as a deadly, baffling mess. One was last week's partial release of a secret National Intelligence Estimate that pokes big holes in Bush's rationale for the conflict by concluding that it is fueling, not curtailing, support for the global jihadist movement. The second is a new book by investigative reporter Bob Woodward asserting that the administration is putting a deliberately misleading spin on how the war is going.
All this, coupled with daily news reports of chilling new spasms of violence there, is deepening America's sour mood about the war and escalating tensions in Washington. After calling for conciliation and unity on the five-year anniversary of 9/11 less than a month ago, President Bush angrily branded Democrats the "cut and run" party last week and sparked another round of bitter recriminations. But a senior White House adviser said the situation, prompted by New York Times and Washington Post stories about the NIE, was so potentially damaging politically that "we needed to get our arms around this quickly."
Making matters worse for a president trying to sound upbeat, a new poll conducted for the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes found that a large majority of Iraqis believe the U.S. military presence there is provoking more violence than it is preventing. Most want U.S. troops out within a year, and 6 out of 10 support attacks on U.S.-led forces. Meanwhile, U.S. News has learned that the U.S. Army may ask Congress to expand its 504,000-strong force by 30,000-in large part because of the manpower strains from keeping 140,000 troops in Iraq.
"Things are not right." Even though Bush is getting a political boost from the economy (story, Page 36), the latest developments may prove to be a crystallizing moment in America's assessment of the war. Which is "the last thing the Republicans can afford," as they try to hold on to their fragile majorities in the House and Senate, says Boston University historian Julian Zelizer. What makes the furor over the Iraq intelligence assessment so important, Zelizer adds, is that it's based on an evaluation by 16 intelligence agencies, not the Democrats or other Bush critics. "It's nonpartisan analysis," Zelizer says, and it shows that "things are not right" in Iraq and that the rosy scenarios offered by Bush and his allies seem to be untethered by the facts.
As if all that weren't enough, more troubling disclosures and criticisms are contained in Woodward's book, State of Denial. Unlike the positive tone of his previous writings about Bush and his advisers, this time Woodward is highly negative and appears to be revising his own earlier assessments. He told CBS's 60 Minutes last weekend that the administration has not told the truth about the level of violence in Iraq, especially against U.S. troops, and says intelligence sources have predicted an even more violent insurgency there. Woodward writes that, last May, the intelligence division of the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff predicted an increase in violence not only this year but also in 2007. This report, Woodward writes, also painted a bleak picture of oil production, electricity generation, and the potential for political stability. But Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice continued to say publicly that the war was going well and remained vital in combating terrorism. In an interview with Mike Wallace, Woodward said attacks against coalition troops occur, on average, every 15 minutes, which he says the administration has kept secret. "It's getting to the point now where there are eight, nine hundred attacks a week. ... The insurgents know what they are doing. They know the level of violence and how effective they are," Woodward wrote. "Who doesn't know? The American public."
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