Bush Foresees a Deeper U.S. Role in Iraq
The
president warns that troop levels will not be cut next year and
acknowledges that training of local forces has had mixed results.
By Maura Reynolds and Sonni Efron
Times Staff Writers
December 21, 2004
WASHINGTON — President Bush warned the American people Monday that the
U.S. engagement in Iraq will intensify in the coming year, with the
Jan. 30 election marking the "beginning of a process" toward democracy
that will require higher troop levels and continue through 2005.
Painting a far more sober picture of the situation in Iraq than he did
during his reelection campaign, Bush acknowledged that efforts to train
Iraqi security forces have had only "mixed" results and that a violent
insurgency has eroded morale among Iraqis and Americans.
In
what is likely to be his last full-dress news conference before his
inauguration next month, Bush appeared to be laying the groundwork for
the first year of his second term. He argued that the Social Security
system was in "crisis" and needed dramatic reform. He pledged to start
simplifying the tax system. And he made it clear that troop levels in
Iraq — which the Pentagon plans to raise from 138,000 to 150,000 to
increase security during the election — are unlikely to be reduced next
year.
The president shielded Defense Secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld, who has come under renewed attack even by Bush's Republican
allies for failing to adequately prepare for the aftermath of the war
and adequately equip troops in the field and for displaying callousness
to the families of the fallen by using a machine to sign condolence
letters.
"I know Secretary Rumsfeld's heart. I know how much he
cares for the troops," Bush said. "You know, sometimes perhaps his
demeanor is rough and gruff, but beneath that … is a good human being
who cares deeply about the military and deeply about the grief that war
causes."
In the 53-minute session with reporters, Bush sought
to portray the U.S. involvement in Iraq as challenging but important
and refused to predict when stability would be achieved.
"My
point is the elections in January are just the beginning of a process,
and it's important for the American people to understand that," Bush
said during his opening comments in a small auditorium next door to the
White House.
"No one can predict every turn in the months
ahead, and I certainly don't expect the process to be trouble-free, yet
I am confident of the result," he continued. "I'm confident the
terrorists will fail, the elections will go forward and Iraq will be a
democracy that reflects the values and traditions of its people."
During his presidential campaign, Bush rarely discussed events in Iraq
beyond the Jan. 30 election, depicting the ballot as the peak of the
U.S. effort there. He would say that the training of Iraqi forces was
on schedule and the U.S. troop presence could start to be drawn down
once adequate Iraqi police and army forces were trained.
"We're
going to train troops — and we are. We'll have 125,000 trained by the
end of December," Bush said in a debate with Democratic challenger Sen.
John F. Kerry in October. "Our plan is working. We're going to make
elections and Iraq is going to be free, and America will be better off
for it."
By contrast, Bush on Monday laid out a political
timetable for next year. It includes the Jan. 30 elections to a
transitional national assembly, ratification of a new constitution in
October and election of a permanent government in December.
Some former administration and congressional officials said the
president was trying to change Americans' expectations of what lies
ahead in Iraq.
"He's clearly moving people's time horizon and
understanding of the process," said James Dobbins, Bush's former envoy
to Afghanistan who now directs the International Security and Defense
Policy Center at the Rand Corp. "It's prudent to clear up the
misunderstanding that previous statements may have created that this
election in January is a watershed event after which everything will
change for the better."
Dobbins said Bush wants to "begin
preparing people for the more likely event, which is the insurgency
does not diminish, the violence does not subside and the casualty rate
does not go down."
Michael O'Hanlon, a former Congressional
Budget Office national security expert and a foreign policy analyst at
the Brookings Institution, said the president "was honest in a way he
couldn't be all year."
"He admitted that it's not going that well," O'Hanlon said. "The spin
machine didn't let them say that during the race."
In the aftermath of the U.S. invasion, American commanders said that no
more than 30,000 U.S. troops would be needed on the ground by the end
of 2003 and that Iraqi forces would provide security for the elections.
But Bush acknowledged Monday that there have been problems training
Iraqi forces.
"I would call the results mixed in terms of
standing up Iraqi units who are willing to fight," Bush said. "There
have been some cases where when the heat got on, they left the
battlefield. That's unacceptable…. On the other hand, there were some
really fine units in Fallouja, for example, in Najaf, that did their
duty."
According to State Department statistics, about 115,000
Iraqis have been trained for the security forces, fewer than half of
the 274,000 considered necessary to stabilize the country and permit
U.S. forces to withdraw.
The picture may be even more bleak
than those numbers suggest because the U.S. government has not provided
statistics on casualties and desertions among Iraqi forces, according
to O'Hanlon and Anthony H. Cordesman, a former Pentagon and State
Department official now at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies.
"We know that there have been very significant
desertions. It's very difficult to quantify," Cordesman said. "It's
quite clear that there will not be really significant numbers of
properly trained, equipped and experienced forces until mid-2005, and
it's likely the numbers will not be available until 2006."
The
president also acknowledged that an upsurge in violence, especially
suicide bomb attacks, was "having an effect." On Sunday, at least 65
people were killed in car bombings in Najaf and Karbala and in an
ambush of Iraqi election workers in Baghdad.
"They're trying to
shake the will of the Iraqi people and, frankly, trying to shake the
will of the American people. And you know, car bombs that destroy young
children or car bombs that indiscriminately bomb in religious sites are
effective propaganda tools," Bush said. "But we must meet the
objective, which is to help the Iraqis defend themselves and at the
same time have a political process to go forward."
Larry
Diamond, a Hoover Institution expert on democratic processes who was a
consultant to U.S. authorities in Iraq, said the administration should
consider postponing the Jan. 30 election to ensure greater
participation in Sunni Muslim areas, where the violence has been
concentrated. Sunnis, long favored under Saddam Hussein's regime, are a
minority and fear losing power to majority Shiites.
"Many, many
people are worried that the Jan. 30 election is going to light the fuse
to civil war," Diamond said. "If you elect a parliament and freeze a
political arrangement in which the Sunnis are essentially locked out
and then write a constitution on the basis of that body, what incentive
do they have for political action other than unrelenting violence?"
Asked whether Syria was meddling in Iraq, Bush said that the
possibility was a serious concern. "Nothing's off the table" in terms
of a response, he added.
"We have sent messages to the Syrians
in the past and we will continue to do so," Bush said. "When I said the
other day that I expect these countries to honor the political process
in Iraq without meddling, I meant it, and hopefully those governments
heard what I said."
Bush's remarks were seen as a veiled threat
to impose stiffer sanctions on Damascus if cooperation lags on closing
the Iraqi-Syrian border to fighters, weapons and money.
In
2003, Congress passed a law requiring the imposition of economic and
political sanctions on Syria unless President Bashar Assad certifies
that his country has sealed its borders and stopped sponsoring
terrorism. Bush imposed the mildest possible sanctions in hopes of
persuading Damascus to cooperate but can turn to far more punitive
measures.
The Syrian ambassador to the United States, Imad
Moustapha, said Syria is doing everything possible to police its border
with Iraq but will increase its efforts if the U.S. is dissatisfied.
"While we do not believe there is a huge infiltration problem, even if
it is a very small one, we agreed with the [Iraqi] government to work
together to address this issue," Moustapha said in a telephone
interview.
On relations with Russia, Bush declined to criticize
President Vladimir V. Putin for recent anti-democratic moves, such as
eliminating the general election of regional governors and increasing
state control over the media. He stressed that although the United
States and Russia do not see eye to eye on many political matters, the
countries have an important mutual security agenda, especially on
nuclear issues.
In particular, Bush called for giving Russian
inspectors greater access to American nuclear facilities — a shift in
policy that experts described as a "breakthrough" for nuclear security
cooperation.
"I think one of the things we need to do is to
give the Russians equal access to our sites, our nuclear storage sites,
to see what works and what doesn't work, to build confidence between
our two governments," Bush said.
The remark appeared to be
the first acknowledgment by the administration that the United States,
in a confidence-building effort, had permitted Russian officials to
visit nuclear sites in Texas, New Mexico and South Carolina in recent
months to model the kind of openness they would like to see on the
Russian side.
Bill Hoehn, director of the Washington office of
the nonpartisan Russian-American Nuclear Security Advisory Council,
said that in order to inspect Russian facilities, U.S. officials must
be more willing to let Russians inspect American installations.
"This idea has been resisted for a long time by a number of
administrations," Hoehn said. "If they are talking seriously about
this, it represents something of a breakthrough on the U.S. side."
