The Texas Strategy

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: January 15, 2007
The New York Times

Hundreds of news articles and opinion pieces have described President Bush’s decision to escalate the Iraq war as a “Hail Mary pass.”

But that’s the wrong metaphor.

Mr. Bush isn’t Roger Staubach, trying to pull out a win for the Dallas Cowboys. He’s Charles Keating, using other people’s money to keep Lincoln Savings going long after it should have been shut down — and squandering the life savings of thousands of investors, not to mention billions in taxpayer dollars, along the way.

The parallel is actually quite exact. During the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s, people like Mr. Keating kept failed banks going by faking financial success. Mr. Bush has kept a failed war going by faking military success.

The “surge” is just another stalling tactic, designed to buy more time.

Oh, and one of the favorite techniques used by the owners of savings and loan associations to generate phony profits — it involved making high-interest loans to crooked or flaky real estate developers — came to be known as the “Texas strategy.”

What was the point of the Texas strategy? Bank owners were certainly gambling — with other people’s money, of course — in the hope of a miraculous recovery that would bail out their negative balance sheets.

But the real point of the racket was a form of looting: as long as they could keep reporting high paper profits, S.&L. owners could keep rewarding themselves with salaries, dividends and sweetheart business deals.

Mr. Keating paid himself a million dollars just weeks before his holding company collapsed.

Which brings us to Iraq. The administration has spent the last three years pretending that its splendid little war isn’t a big disaster. There have been the bromides (we’re making “good progress”); the promises (we have a “strategy for victory”); and, as always, attacks on the media for not reporting the good news from Iraq.

Who you gonna believe, the president or your lying eyes?

Now Mr. Bush has grudgingly sort- of admitted that things aren’t going well — but he says his “new way forward” will fix everything.

So it’s still the Texas strategy: the war’s architects are trying to keep their failed venture going as long as possible.

The Hail Mary aspect — the off chance that somehow, things really will turn out all right — is the least of their motivations. The real intent is a form of looting. I’m not talking mainly about old-fashioned war profiteering, although there is no question that profiteering is taking place on an epic scale. No, I’m saying that the hawks want to keep this war going because it’s to their personal and political benefit.

True, Mr. Bush can’t win another election with phony claims of success in Iraq, the way he did in 2004. But escalation buys him another year or two to claim that we’re making progress — and it gives him another chance to prove that he’s the Decider, beyond accountability.

And as for pundits who promoted the war and are now trying to sell the surge: for a little while longer they can be Very Important People who have the president’s ear.

Meanwhile, the nation pays the price. The heaviest burden — in death, shattered bodies, broken families and ruined careers — falls on those who serve. To find the personnel for the Bush escalation, the Pentagon must lengthen deployments in Iraq and shorten training time at home.

And the back-door draft has become a life sentence: there is no limit on the cumulative amount of time citizen-soldiers can be required to serve on active duty. Mama, don’t let your children grow up to be reservists.

The rest of us will pay a financial price for the hundreds of billions squandered in Iraq and, more important, a price in reduced security.

Escalation won’t bring victory in Iraq, but it might bring defeat in Afghanistan, which the administration will continue to neglect. And it has pushed the military to the breaking point.

Mr. Bush calls his critics “irresponsible,” saying that they don’t have an alternative to his strategy. But they do: setting a timetable for withdrawal, so that we can cut our losses, and trying to save what can be saved. It isn’t a strategy for victory because that’s no longer an option. It’s a strategy for acknowledging reality.

The lesson of the savings and loan scandal was that when a bank has failed, you shouldn’t let the owner string you along with promises — you should shut the thing down. We should do the same with Mr. Bush’s failed war.

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Surge: US troops prepare for George Bush's last stand

But with allies they don't trust and enemies who confuse them,
commanders know it will be bloody

By Kim Sengupta
Published: 14 January 2007
The Independent/UK

The narrow ambush alleys of Kadhamiyah, the tenements providing sniper cover at Diyala Bridge, the dusty, sprawling killing grounds of Sadr City. These are the strongholds of the Shia militias that the Americans will have to take in the battle for Baghdad.

The US forces in the "surge" into the Iraqi capital face a war on two fronts. The murder miles of Haifa Street and Adhamiyah are the homes to the Sunni insurgency, which continues its bloody course four years after the official end of the war, and there is no sign of this stopping as the US forces take on the Shias.

There are other logistical difficulties of fighting an urban guerrilla war in a city like Baghdad. The militias have spread from their power bases into the so called "mixed areas". Outside the Hamra Hotel, where the dwindling group of Western journalists in Baghdad stays, there are checkpoints run by the Mehdi army, led by the radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr; their Shia competitors, the Badr Brigade; and the Kurdish Peshmerga. Further out are the Shia Defenders of Kadhamiyah, set up by Mr Sadr's cousin Hussein al-Sadr and the government-backed Tiger and Scorpion Brigades.

They all look similar: balaclavas or wrap-around sunglasses and headbands, black leather gloves with fingers cut off, and a very lethal arsenal of weapons. When not manning checkpoints, they hurtle through the streets in 4x4s, scattering the traffic by firing in the air. It is impossible to say which particular group they belong to.

This is what confronts the US forces gathering for George W Bush's last throw of the dice in Iraq. He sees the battle to wrest control of Baghdad from the militias as the key to salvaging victory in the Iraqi quagmire, but distinguishing friend from foe will not be easy. The President has already warned that bloodshed will increase, but will there be any gains?

The main target, the Mehdi army, has around 50,000 well-armed fighters in the capital, mostly concentrated in Sadr City, the vast slum next to Baghdad, and the Shia holy city of Najaf and surrounding areas. But Mr Sadr also has 25,000 more militiamen in the south, where British forces will be in the firing line of retaliation for what the Americans do in Baghdad.

The Shia militias are backed by Iran, while the Syrians are accused of harbouring Sunni insurgents. In his speech last week Mr Bush once again accused the two countries of "allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq ... We will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq. "

To many, this rhetoric is paving the way for a wider escalation. William Arkin writes in The Washington Post: "There is an ominous element here ... To me that means the threat of strikes on targets in those countries." A British analyst, Robert Emerson, adds: "The Americans want to take on the Shia militias. Iran backs them, and will undoubtedly step up covert aid to them. How long will the Americans let that continue before they do something?" Even if there is no "hot pursuit", the Iranian response to US action in Baghdad is likely to place British forces in danger. The UK military has withdrawn from much of the south, concentrating its 7,200 troops in Basra. US authorities were against the British pullout from much of Maysan province, including the capital, Amarah, and are now particularly concerned about plans to hand over all security in the province, including the long Iranian border, to the Iraqi government at the end of February.

Instead of ending patrols by the 600-strong detachment of the Queen's Royal Lancers, the Americans want the British to significantly boost their numbers, especially at the border, in anticipation of Iran's attempts to aid its allies. Doing so would not only mean reversing the process of gradual disengagement, under which up to 3,000 British troops were due to return this spring, but getting sucked back into what threatens to be a prolonged war of attrition. This is particularly problematic for Britain, with its Afghanistan commitment in the background. The accepted consensus is that the Taliban, with hundreds of fighters training and arming in Pakistan, will launch a spring offensive after the winter lull in fighting.

But the first effects of the "surge" will be felt in Baghdad. At present the Americans have more or less withdrawn from the streets of the city, leaving Iraqi forces to man the checkpoints. Instead they base themselves in "Fort Apaches" - heavily fortified camps - emerging to carry out operations, invariably with the use of pulverising, and sometimes indiscriminate, firepower. After being reinforced by some 20,000 troops, the Americans will once again deploy on the streets. Baghdad will be divided into either nine or 11 sectors, according to different contingency plans being drawn up, in which the US troops will work alongside Iraqi forces with "embedded" US personnel.

The soldiers will aim to create mini "green zones" - cut-down versions of the area in the capital where US and British officials, and the Iraqi government, take refuge - guarded by checkpoints, sandbags and barbed wire. Residents would be issued with ID badges, and their every entry and exit logged.

To do this the US and Iraqi government forces will have to win back these areas from the militias. In particular they will have to take on the Shia fighters, many of them government backed, who have been accused of operating death squads.

Ironically, these death squads are the direct by-product of US policy. At the beginning of 2004, with no end to the Sunni insurgency in sight, the Pentagon was reported to have decided to train Shia and Kurdish fighters to carry out "irregular missions". The policy, exposed in the US media, was called the "Salvador Option" after the US-backed counter-insurgency in Latin America more than 20 years ago, which led to 70,000 deaths and countless violations of human rights. Some of the most persistent allegations of abuse have been made against the Wolf Brigade. Their main US adviser until April last year was James Steele, who states in his autobiography that he commanded the US military group in El Salvador during the height of the guerrilla war. The complaints against Iraqi special forces continue.

While in Iraq, I interviewed Ahmed Sadoun, who was arrested in Mosul and held for seven months before being released without charge. He showed the marks on his body of beatings and burning. Mr Sadoun, 38, did not know which paramilitary group had seized him. But they were accompanied by American soldiers, and the Wolf Brigade was widely involved in suppressing disturbances in Mosul at the time.

As for the Mehdi army, the Americans fought a short and fierce battle with Mr Sadr's militia in Najaf two years ago. At the time, however, the Sunni insurgents were still the bigger threat, and it was deemed convenient to let Shia clerics organise a truce. Since then the Mehdi army has been left relatively untroubled by both the US and UK forces. When it briefly took over Amarah in a recent action and blew up a number of police stations, a British force was sent up from Basra, but did not intervene, leaving the Iraqi army to deal with the situation.

There are also tricky political considerations. The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, depends on parliamentary support from Muqtada al-Sadr's followers. Recently US and Iraqi forces went into Sadr City, named after the cleric's father, to capture, according to the military, "a top, illegal armed group commander directing widespread death-squad activity".

Instead of congratulating the troops, Mr Maliki angrily complained he was not told about the operation. "We will ask for clarification of what happened in Sadr City, we will review the issue with the multinational forces so that it will not be repeated," he added. Falan Hassan Shansai, leader of the Sadr bloc, which has 30 of the 275 seats in parliament, warned of the consequences if there was a repetition.

Many in the US military believe the Shia militias, especially the Mehdi army, is too entrenched to be removed. Sergeant Jeff Nelson, an intelligence analyst with the US army's 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, in Baghdad, said recently: "They have infiltrated every branch of public service and every political office they can get their hands on. As soon as the US leaves, they will be able to dominate the area with key citizens, key offices."

Sgt Nelson said his battalion had investigated 40 sectarian killings and collected 57 bodies in a week. None had led to an arrest: "Sometimes we have a feeling of complete hopelessness."

The new strategy is modelled on an operation carried out by Colonel HR McMaster in Tal Afar, north of Baghdad, in 2005. His troops took over the town, which had a reputation for violence, searched it section by section, established a presence and kept the insurgents out. Col McMaster became established as a counter-insurgency expert, and his name is intrinsically linked with the new policy. Both President Bush and his Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, have spoken of his action at Tal Afar as a blueprint for Iraq as a whole.

The overall commander picked by Mr Bush to lead the mission, Lt-Gen David Petraeus, is another Iraq veteran with a counter-insurgency reputation. He is one of the few senior members of the US military to support the " surge". He also supports the "hearts and minds" policies advocated by the British military, again unlike many of his US colleagues, who believe the army is for fighting, not nation-building.

They are not the only ones, however, who doubt whether some sort of Northern Ireland option can really be applied to a state in anarchy, like Iraq, especially by an army not culturally attuned to it. The time when it could have been applied, say US and British officers, has gone. The last chance may have been in 2005, when a plan presented by the British was rejected by Donald Rumsfeld.

Critics point out that Baghdad is not Tal Afar, a small place in a remote area. There is also deep scepticism about the ability of the Iraqi armed forces to fulfil their role in the equation. They were supposed to play a major part along the Americans in Operations "Forward Together" and "Forward Together II" in Baghdad last summer. However, at that time, only two of the six battalions supposed to take part in the mission actually turned up.

The correct analogy for the coming battle for Baghdad is not Tal Afar, but a US operation carried out in the Iraqi capital last year. More than 12,000 US troops, supported by helicopter gunships swooping over the rooftops, were sent in to destroy the Shia militias and break the back of the Sunni insurgency.

But by the end of the campaign the power of the gunmen had not diminished, and the scale of bloodshed had risen. It is an ominous template for a struggle on which not only President Bush's credibility, but the future of Iraq is likely to depend.

US ARMY: The plan to 'sanitise' Baghdad

Most of the extra 20,000 US reinforcements will deploy in Baghdad, which will be divided into up to 11 sectors. A plan based on the successful pacification of the northern town of Tal Afar will be carried out, with " safe zones" being created, surrounded by checkpoints, sandbags and barbed wire. Residents would be issued with ID badges, and have their entry and exit logged. The eventual aim is to "join up the dots" and create a large "sanitised" area, from which both Shia militias and Sunni insurgents will be kept out. US troops will also be "embedded" with Iraqi forces taking part in the operation.

IRAQI GOVERNMENT FORCES: Infiltrated and unreliable

The battle for Baghdad will fail unless the newly trained Iraqi army, paramilitary and police forces play their part. In a strategy called " clear and hold", the ultimate aim is for them to retain control when US forces eventually go back into their barracks.

But the Iraqi police in particular has been heavily infiltrated by Shia militias, and the Iraqi army, although not tainted to such an extent, has not proved the most reliable of allies for the US in the past. Out of six battalions scheduled to take part in an operation in Baghdad last year, only two turned up for duty.

MILITIAS: US to take on Shia leader

Until now the focus of US action in Iraq has been the Sunni insurgency. The new strategy is to take on the Shia militias which, often in official uniforms, have operated death squads and carried out sectarian attacks on Sunnis and, at times, Christians. The main target of the Americans is said to be Muqtada al-Sadr, whose heavily armed Mehdi army is blamed for much of the communal strife. Any action against his fighters in Baghdad may lead to retaliation against British troops in the Shia south. There is also anxiety about the reaction of Iran, which backs the Shia militias.

---Raymond Whitaker

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Among Troops and Families, Mixed Reaction to American Expansion in Iraq

By N. R. KLEINFIELD
Published: January 14, 2007

Cpl. Michael Hubert, 22, will see war for the first time in April. The corporal is part of the infusion of troops being poured into Iraq under President Bush’s new plan, and as he weighed his coming departure at Galloping Gertie’s, a soldier-thick watering hole outside Fort Lewis, Wash., he was brimming with confidence.

Cpl. Michael Hubert, 22, will see war for the first time in April. The corporal is part of the infusion of troops being poured into Iraq under President Bush’s new plan, and as he weighed his coming departure at Galloping Gertie’s, a soldier-thick watering hole outside Fort Lewis, Wash., he was brimming with confidence.

“We’re going to go over and change things,” Corporal Hubert said.

In eastern Pennsylvania, as Heidi DeBlock absorbed the implications of the president’s words during his televised address, she said she felt otherwise: “numb.”

“I could write a book about how I feel, but he’s O.K. with it,” Ms. DeBlock said of her husband, Sgt. Andrew DeBlock. “He says he has a job to do and takes his job pretty seriously.”

Mr. Bush’s new approach means that Sergeant DeBlock, 41, a member of the New Jersey National Guard (the Blocks recently moved to Pennsylvania from New Jersey), will have his Iraq stay extended by four months.

Sergeant DeBlock, home on a brief break, chose to ignore Mr. Bush as he spoke on television. He busied himself vacuuming the house.

The decision to increase the American military presence in Iraq is being greeted with a blend of optimism and anxiety among American soldiers and their families, those most directly affected by the change. Unlike in Congressional corridors and across the civilian landscape of the country, there seems far more support than outrage, more cheer than cheerlessness, and a hope that maybe this will do it.

At the same time, especially among relatives of National Guard members dispatched to battlefields they never expected to stand on, there is plentiful disappointment and even anger at the prospect of prolonged disruptions in lives that have not been normal for a long time.

The expansion calls for more than 20,000 additional troops, including five active-duty combat brigades, to be sent to Iraq in the next few months. Some National Guard units will have their tours lengthened. The Pentagon has also relaxed the rules for mobilizing Guard members, so that units will return to battle quicker than anticipated.

The fresh troops will include nearly 4,000 members of the Second Infantry Division, Fourth Brigade, a front-line combat unit based at Fort Lewis. They leave in April, about a month earlier than previously planned.

Fort Lewis, the nation’s third-largest military installation, has already felt the price and pain of the war. It has had 89 soldiers die in Iraq. A “Word of the Month” is posted at one of the base’s exit, succinct wisdom for departing replacements. This month’s word is “risk.”

Corporal Hubert, 22, a reconnaissance specialist, said the troop increase made sense. “It seems like they’re really starting to have a stronger focus and to embed troops, which I like to see,” he said. “It’s more aggressive and more supportive.”

Sgt. James Mayotte, an infantry leader in the Fourth Brigade who was visiting Galloping Gertie’s the other morning, was more restrained. “If it works, it’s a great idea,” Sergeant Mayotte said. “I don’t personally like having anyone over there, but if it’s good for the country....”

At Fort Benning, Ga., where several combat units are returning early to Iraq, soldiers generally seemed supportive of the change.

“I think we have to do something about what’s going on in Baghdad,” said First Lt. Jonathon Draper, 28, who has already spent a year in Iraq. “We’ll get the job done, whatever the president says.”

Staff Sgt. Shwon Brooks, 29, who has yet to go to war, said, “I kind of figured it was going to happen, but I thought it was going to be in the summer.”

Sgt. Kyle Cullen finished a deployment to Iraq a year ago and is not happy about returning. “I think sending more troops is not the way to go,” Sergeant Cullen said. “That will just be adding more to get killed.”

Sergeant Cullen enlisted for four years, and said he planned to leave the Army when he returned.

The new approach has a pronounced impact on National Guard members, who must vacate civilian jobs to serve. Protocol had been to limit Guard members’ mobilization to no more than a cumulative total of 24 months every five years, but now reservists who have been deployed within the last five years can be summoned again, though the intention is to keep a new tour to no more than a year.

At the Manor Road Armory in West Brighton, Staten Island, members of the 41st Infantry Division offered competing views.

“I think they should let them all come home; they’re over there for no reason,” said Pvt. Diana Ware, 20. “I know I don’t want to go. I joined the National Guard to go to college.” Private Ware’s goal is to become a nurse.

Specialist Douglas Block, 40, a father of four, saw things otherwise. “The more troops you have, the better it is,” Specialist Block said. “If they would have done this from the beginning, we’d be out of there by now.”

Under the new thrust, various Guard members already fighting in Iraq will remain months longer; they include a reconnaissance unit of the 117th Cavalry of the New Jersey National Guard. Its members had been slated to return by early April, after a year’s service, but now are likely to stay until sometime in July.

Salvatore DelRosario, of Staten Island, whose brother, Sgt. Ronald DelRosario, is in Iraq with the 117th Cavalry, was dispirited by the news. “It all seems for naught,” Mr. DelRosario said. “It would have been nice to have him home sooner, but he’s doing what he wants.”

Ms. DeBlock, the Pennsylvania resident whose husband’s stay will be extended by four months, said — as other Guard families did — that the extended assignments, and the lost income involved, complicated their lives.

Ms. DeBlock has had to battle her heating-fuel company, which wanted cash up front, and her husband’s cellphone provider, which will not let him out of his contract even though he is off fighting a war.

The Minnesota National Guard brigade of Specialist Isaac Pratt, 22, is having its active duty tour extended by about four months. Specialist Pratt called his parents a week ago, excited about coming home soon, only to find out a few days later that everything had changed.

“He’s disappointed,” said his father, John Pratt. “But at the same time, he senses that you can’t just leave Iraqis high and dry over there.”

For parents of children killed in Iraq, the war tears in different ways.

Debi Qualtieri, a registered nurse in Norwalk, Conn., said she always believed in the war, and still does, though her son, Sgt. Jonathan Lootens, of Lyon, N.Y., was killed in Iraq in October.

Ms. Qualtieri said she supported the escalation in troops, and had in fact been hoping for it. “I wish they had done it earlier, having spoken to my son when he was there,” she said. “He thought they needed more troops.”

Annette Brown has supported the war from the beginning, and continues to do so, but with reservations. Her son, Lance Cpl. Donald Brown, a marine, was killed at the end of October, and another son, Kenneth Brown, 24, has served three tours with the Marines in Iraq. He returned home last September.

Ms. Brown said she agreed with the troop increase “if it would settle things down over there so the guys can come home.”

But she does not want Kenneth to be part of it, and when she recently spoke to him, he told her he did not want to go back. Ms. Brown, a bank supervisor who lives in Succasunna, N.J., said, “I told him I’ll do whatever I have to so you don’t have to go back.”

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House GOP Shows Its Fractiousness In the Minority

By Jonathan Weisman

Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 14, 2007; Page A01
The Washington Post


House Republican leaders, who confidently predicted they would drive a wedge through the new Democratic majority, have found their own party splintering, with Republican lawmakers siding with Democrats in droves on the House's opening legislative blitz.

Freed from the pressures of being the majority and from the heavy hand of former leaders including retired representative Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), many back-bench Republicans are showing themselves to be more moderate than their conservative leadership and increasingly mindful of shifting voter sentiment. The closest vote last week -- Friday's push to require the federal government to negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare -- pulled 24 Republicans. The Democrats' homeland security bill attracted 68 Republicans, the minimum wage increase 82.

"You're freer to vote your conscience," said Rep. Jo Anne Emerson (R-Mo.), who received an 88 percent voting record from the American Conservative Union in 2005 but has so far sided with Democrats on new budget rules, Medicare prescription-drug negotiations, raising the minimum wage and funding stem cell research. "Or, really, I feel free to represent my constituents exactly as they want me to be."

"Times have changed. I don't want to be someone who they say is too stubborn to change too," said Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.), whose 92 percent conservative rating did not stop him from voting with Democrats on the homeland security and minimum-wage bills.

After their stinging defeat in November, Republican leaders in the House had gamely promised to draft procedural motions and parliamentary gambits that they said would split the new majority. With so many new Democrats hailing from moderate-to-conservative districts, even some Democrats saw the pledge as plausible.

In theory, Republicans have made good on their promises. Republicans argued vociferously against Democratic measures over the past two weeks, saying new deficit-control rules would guarantee tax increases, stringent homeland security measures would cripple commerce, and a minimum-wage increase would hurt the economy.

To counter the prescription-drug bill, GOP leaders drafted a parliamentary move that they said would ensure senior citizens' access to local pharmacists and the full panoply of prescription drugs. They tried to beat back the stem cell bill with a popular alternative, a ban on federal funds for human cloning. And they countered the minimum-wage bill with a motion to send it back to be redrafted to include tax breaks and health-insurance benefits for small businesses. On the minimum-wage bill, Republican leadership aides even offered a list of 25 Democrats they could pull over to their side.

The results? Eighty-two Republicans joined a unanimous Democratic front to vote to increase the minimum wage, while 54 Republicans voted against their leadership's counteroffer. Eighteen Republicans defied their leadership by opposing the parliamentary move against stem cells.

The homeland security bill -- designed to implement most of the remaining recommendations of the commission that examined the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- even garnered the vote of Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), who as chairman of the Homeland Security Committee last year, thwarted one of its central provisions, the screening of all shipping containers heading to U.S. ports.

Some Republicans, such as Reps. Todd R. Platts (Pa.) and Jim Ramstad (Minn.), sided with the Democrats on every major vote. But it was not just closet mavericks.

Last year, Rep. Deborah Pryce (Ohio) was a powerful member of the Republican leadership, responsible for uniting her fractious colleagues behind a single message. After narrowly escaping defeat in November, the swing-district Republican bolted from her party's leadership last year. Last week, she virtually bolted from the party.

With just one exception, Pryce sided with the new Democratic majority on every major bill and rule change that came to a vote in the past two weeks, even voting against her party on a procedural vote, a move considered heretical in the years of GOP control.

The Democrats "deserve the same credit that we got in 1995," when Republicans took control, said Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.). "They've picked up on the really big issues of the day, the ones they won the election on, and the ones that really resonate in Republican districts."

Democratic leaders say even they have been surprised by their margins of victory, but they were always counting on GOP votes. Republicans from swing districts who have been beat up for years over their party-line voting have been liberated by their minority status, said Rep. John B. Larson (Conn.), vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.

"They've really been the ones that have been oppressed," he said.

GOP leaders were quick to dismiss the significance of the Democratic winning streak, however. For one thing, the Democrats' opening legislative blitz is being conducted under parliamentary rules that run roughshod over the Republicans, foreclosing any chance to actually amend the bills. But Democratic leaders have promised to give the GOP more latitude once the so-called 100-hours agenda runs its course next week.

For another, the Democrats will soon exhaust their carefully constructed opening list of bills that were designed to appeal across party lines.

"Republican discipline was critically important when we were passing legislation and moving an agenda," House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said. "The Democrats will soon move from these issues that poll at 80, 90 percent to issues that really matter."

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Analysis: Congress presses Bush on Iraq

ROBERT H. REID
Associated Press
The Kansas City Star

Congressional opposition to President Bush's decision to send more troops to Iraq has opened a new front in an increasingly complex war, setting the stage for political battles whose effects may be felt long after U.S. forces have come home.

The battle could well subvert administration efforts to bolster the power of the presidency, which many Bush supporters believe was undermined in the wake of another unpopular war a generation ago.

As if Sunni nationalists, Islamic extremists, foreign fighters and Shiite militias were not enough, Bush must now battle the Democratic leadership in Congress, as well as influential figures in his own Republican party, who oppose his plan to throw 21,500 more troops into the fray.

The battlelines are reminiscent of the political struggles that occurred during two other unpopular wars - Korea and Vietnam.

Those half-forgotten struggles produced sweeping changes in the U.S. political landscape that persisted long after the guns fell silent.

Democratic leaders of Congress, fresh from victory at the polls in November, hope to force a vote on the Bush plan in the House and Senate, thereby isolating the president politically.

Although those votes will be nonbinding, Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico said on MSNBC he expects them to be followed by measures "that restrict troop funding and all kinds of financial support for the war."

During a visit Saturday to Baghdad, Sen. Hillary Clinton told ABC News that instead of sending more U.S. troops to Iraq, it is time to start redeploying American forces out of the country.

A showdown between Congress and the White House could have far-reaching implications not only for Iraq but for American foreign policy as well.

In the best case scenario, the prospect of an American military departure might spur Iraq's ethnic and sectarian factions to reach a political settlement to spare the nation further bloodshed.

But it could also encourage Sunni and Shiite extremists to grab as much power as possible before the Americans leave.

Bush's plan is reminiscent of the furor unleashed by President Nixon's 1970 decision to invade Cambodia during the final stage of the Vietnam War.

The Cambodian incursion, as it was known at the time, occurred at a time when the U.S. public was clamoring for an end to the conflict in Southeast Asia.

In seeking to justify his decision, Nixon said the goal was to destroy North Vietnamese sanctuaries in Cambodia and force Hanoi back to negotiations.

Last week, Bush said the reinforcements were necessary to bring stability to Baghdad so that the Iraqis could reach a political agreement.

Military analysts are divided over whether Bush's plan can succeed, and the administration has refrained from a detailed explanation of what it would do if it fails.

But the 1970 invasion simply drove the North Vietnamese deeper into Cambodia. Five years later, both South Vietnam and Cambodia fell under communist rule.

Nevertheless, the showdown over Cambodia cast a long shadow over American politics for a generation.

The invasion enraged Congress, triggering legislative battles that culminated in the War Powers Act of 1973 that sets limits on a president's power to wage war without congressional approval.

Although the act's constitutionality has never been fully tested in court, Congress has invoked it on several occasions, setting conditions and limitations on the use of U.S. forces in the Middle East, Africa, Haiti and the Balkans.

Vice President Dick Cheney and others have cited the 1973 law as a major element in a series of Vietnam-era legislation that have severely undermined presidential authority to this day.

However, wartime showdowns between presidents and Congress occurred long before the Vietnam conflict.

Those political struggles reflect an ambiguity in the Constitution, which grants Congress the power to declare war but includes no language defining such a declaration.

As a result, many of America's conflicts, including the Civil War, have been fought without a declaration approved by Congress.

In the Civil War, for example, President Lincoln proclaimed Southern states in rebellion and ordered a blockade of their ports, triggering four years of war.

Eight months into the conflict, Congress established a joint committee to oversee the war, holding hearings into Union failures on the battlefield at a time when the very survival of the nation was in peril.

Critics complained at the time that the committee used newspaper leaks to discredit some of Lincoln's generals, undermining Northern morale at a time when Union victory was by no means certain.

Similar complaints were raised again during World War II when a little-known senator from Missouri, Harry Truman, chaired a committee investigating military waste and fraud.

Critics accused Truman of undermining the war effort. But his committee was credited with saving billions of dollars by uncovering waste and war-profiteering.

Truman's efforts won him the Democratic vice presidential nomination in 1944 and propelled him into the White House when President Roosevelt died the following year.

But Truman himself came under criticism for failing to seek a congressional declaration of war when he dispatched troops to South Korea to block an invasion from the communist North.

Public support for the war waned after China entered the conflict, which bogged down in a stalemate. The war became so unpopular that Truman decided against seeking re-election in 1952.

Republican war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower won the White House after promising to halt the fighting, which ended with a cease-fire on July 27, 1953.

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"Analysis: Congress presses Bush on Iraq" >>

Military Eases Its Rules for Mobilizing Reserves

By DAVID S. CLOUD

Published: January 12, 2007
The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 — The Pentagon announced steps Thursday to make more reservists available for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan by changing the policies that govern how often members of the Army National Guard and Reserve can be mobilized.

The new rules mean that individual Guard members and entire units that have already been deployed in the last five years may be called up again for as long as 24 consecutive months, officials said. In practice, the Pentagon intends to try to limit future mobilizations to no more than a year, once every five years, Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters.

The policy change was brought on by the prolonged American troop commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and military officials said it would have been necessary even if President Bush had not decided to send more than 20,000 additional troops to Iraq.

The change, announced by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates at a White House news conference, will enable the Bush administration to call up tens of thousands of Guard members who were off limits under the previous rules, without having to issue another politically delicate mobilization order.

The decision to send five active-duty combat brigades to Iraq in the next few months means the Army will need to call up National Guard combat brigades that have already done one-year tours in Iraq, and to do so sooner, officials said.

A senior military official said that by "this time next year," the Pentagon "probably will be calling again on Guard units that have previously done combat tours."

General Pace told reporters that some of the Guard units “that will be mobilized in the coming period will not have had five years since their last mobilization.” Some, he said, will have been home for four years and some for only three.

Until now, the Defense Department’s policy on employing Guard and Reserve units was that soldiers’ time on active duty could not exceed a cumulative total of 24 months in any five-year period. Under the new rules, the cumulative limit is removed.

The result, officials said, is that soldiers who have already done a tour in Iraq in the last five years can now be sent back to Iraq if their entire unit is remobilized. The goal of limiting deployments to a year is meant to offset the burden on Guard members, who must leave civilian jobs to serve.

Until now, many members of the Army National Guard, which has an authorized total strength of 350,000 soldiers, have been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan as individuals, sometimes for 18 months or longer. Mr. Gates said the Pentagon would now mobilize units, not individuals. Any soldiers who have already done tours will again be eligible, regardless of previous deployments, if their units are called into service.

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Senior leaders offer mixed reviews on surge

By Sean D. Naylor - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Jan 13, 2007 6:52:35 EST
The Air Force Times

Active and retired officers with Iraq experience are divided as to whether President Bush’s “surge” stands any chance of success.

A senior U.S. officer in Baghdad said the plan is what’s needed.

“We support the surge,” the officer said. “It will be enough. ... We have no choice — the capital must be secure.”

But a field-grade officer who has spent a year in Iraq derided the new strategy as “too little, too late.”

President Bush announced Jan. 10 that he intends to deploy an additional 21,500 soldiers and Marines to Iraq over the next five months, with most of them concentrated in Baghdad.

The numbers game

“It’s wacky — 20,000 is nowhere near enough,” the field-grade officer said.

He pointed to a Jan. 10 statement from Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., that the Bush initiative is “a dangerously wrong-headed strategy that will drive America deeper into an unwinnable swamp.”

Kalev Sepp, a retired Special Forces lieutenant colonel who served two years as a counterinsurgency expert on the “strategy team” of Gen. George Casey, the outgoing senior U.S. commander in Iraq, also said it does not appear the additional forces will be enough to quell the insurgency and interethnic violence in Baghdad.

“The force as described can cover about 2 million of the population, in a city of 5 to 7 million,” Sepp said.

But retired Gen. John Keane, a former Army vice chief of staff who has made repeated trips to Iraq, said the surge could turn the tide in Baghdad — precisely because Bush’s plan included enough forces to secure about 2 million of Baghdad’s residents.

“The force levels are right to deal with the problem,” said Keane, a major influence on “Choosing Victory,” a paper by American Enterprise Institute scholar Frederick Kagan that bears a striking similarity to the Bush plan.

“You can’t look at Baghdad as a six-million population city and [say] that’s what we’re going to protect,” he said.

Keane described Baghdad as a city divided roughly into thirds: Sunni enclaves in the west, vast Shiite slums in the east and mixed neighborhoods in between. These neighborhoods, where most of the sectarian violence occurs, have a combined population of about 1.8 million and represent Baghdad’s “key terrain.”

Securing that terrain should be the coalition’s initial priority, Keane said.

The five Army brigades the Bush administration proposes to deploy to Baghdad, combined with the U.S. and Iraqi forces already there and additional Iraqi security forces promised by the Iraqi government, will be enough to secure the populations of the mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods for the first time since the insurgency flared, Keane said.

A matter of culture

But Sepp questioned whether force ratios that appear favorable on paper would translate into success in the sprawling metropolis of Baghdad. Though the raw numbers suggest that the allies would have enough forces to control the mixed neighborhoods, Sepp doubted that those troops would have the requisite cultural and linguistic skills to cope with the challenge.

“The American troops don’t speak Arabic,” Sepp said. “Most of the [Iraqi] troops that are supposed to be brought in are going to be Kurdish. While they’re reasonably well-trained, they also have a language barrier, not to mention cultural and ethnic issues with putting them inside Baghdad.”

For the new strategy to work, U.S. forces would have to demonstrate “evenhandedness” between the Sunni and Shiite communities, Keane said.

That means offering an equal level of protection to each group, while retaining “shoot-to-kill orders for al-Qaida, for the insurgency and also for the Shi’a death squads, and if they try to contest us, so be it,” he added.

After securing and investing significant reconstruction funds in the mixed neighborhoods, Keane would put “the bare minimum” of forces into western Baghdad’s Sunni enclaves, together with an economic package aimed at revitalizing those neighborhoods.

“There’s not a lot of violence there,” he said.

Addressing the militias

That would leave the Shiite neighborhoods, particularly Sadr City, the vast slum that is the power base of Shiite politician Moqtada al-Sadr and his 60,000-man militia, the Mahdi army.

Despite mounting pressure from the U.S., the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has seemed unwilling or unable to bring Sadr and his militia to heel. Instead, the Mahdi army and the Badr Corps, another Shiite militia, have extended their influence throughout the Iraqi government.

“The issue becomes Sadr City,” Keane said. “Do we go in there or not? After we’ve secured the Shi’a population in the mixed neighborhoods for ‘X’ number of weeks and months, I think Maliki, for the first time, truly has some leverage with the militia leaders.”

While U.S. politicians have criticized Maliki for not reining in Shiite militias, Keane said these criticisms failed to take account of realities on the ground.

“What does Maliki do to stop them?” he said. “What is the leverage he has?”

Keane sympathizes with the Shiite militias’ attitude, which he articulated as: “Look, I waited 2½ years for the United States and the coalition to protect the Shi’a people. That has not happened.”

That failure “is why they unleashed horrific violence,” he said. “If we protect the Shi’a population to the degree that I think we can, along with the Sunnis, it gives Maliki the opportunity to leverage those leaders and to say to them for the first time, ‘Look, I am protecting your people, you can tell that we’re serious about this — stop offensive operations, get behind your barricades.’ ”

At the same time, it will be essential for the coalition to use the coming surge to force the Sunni insurgents to the bargaining table by convincing them they cannot win militarily, Keane said.

“Since the end of ’04, they have believed they’re winning, and that only has been enhanced by the erosion of American will that took place in ’05 and the complete loss of patience with this in ’06,” he said. “They’ve been successful, obviously, in provoking the Shi’as to raise the level of violence.”

The coalition cannot “lose sight of how critical it is to take away the thought that ... armed conflict will get them their objectives, which is to return to [a position] of control and influence in Iraq,” he said.

“This operation in Baghdad and eventually in Anbar and the other provinces will take away that military option as being viable for them,” Keane said.

“You’re forcing them to reconsider their objectives, and then, for the first time, seek political accommodation.”

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