The neocons are deranged!

Can Iraq be Fixed?
Politicians dance around this question, but here's the reality: It will take U.S. troops years of work, and success is hardly a sure bet

By Kevin Whitelaw and Anna Mulrine

Posted Sunday, July 30, 2006

July was supposed to have been, at long last, a good month for the U.S. effort in Iraq. A new unity government was fully formed and at work. The feared terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi was dead. And U.S. and Iraqi officials had launched a new security plan to stanch the bloodshed in Baghdad. It hasn't quite worked out that way. Rather, Baghdad in July has been wilder and more dangerous than ever, engulfed by a wave of targeted assassinations, reprisal attacks, and mass kidnappings. When Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visited Washington last week, the air was not celebratory but instead one of crisis. The primary outcome: a decision to increase the number of U.S. troops in Baghdad.

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In addition to requesting more trainers, U.S. defense officials have for months been privately lobbying for better equipment for the Iraqi Army. "Clearly, we can't withdraw from Iraq unless Iraqi security forces have a clear-cut advantage over the forces they're dealing with," says McCaffrey, who has called for more light armored vehicles, mortars, artillery, and air support capabilities for Iraq's military. But some military officials express grave concern about what would happen to U.S.-provided equipment should Iraqi security further degenerate. "It's the question of the century: How much of our technology to give them, considering the possibility that the country could degenerate into civil war," says one Army Forces Central Command official. "How much ends up six years down the road in Iran? What if we give them all new technology, and they use it against each other? What capabilities should we give them?"

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The American military trainers worry, too, about the Iraqis' dependence on them. Lt. Gen Martin Dempsey, in charge of training Iraqi security forces, uses the analogy of the teeter-totter. "On the one side is the ability of our Iraqi counterparts to absorb what they need to, and on the other side is the danger that they will become dependent on us," he tells U.S. News. "My job is to look at every aspect of this mission of training and determine when is the right time to transition control over to the Iraqi side. If I do it too soon, it tips, and if I do it too late, they become so comfortable and dependent--it's literally too difficult to encourage their capacity for them."

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It is not clear how long Iraqis will wait. "They haven't polarized to the degree that everybody feels that the only way out is through fighting," says Dana Eyre, a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace who served as a U.S. adviser in Iraq. "It's like Thelma and Louise heading toward the cliff. We can see the edge, but we haven't gone over it yet."

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060730/7iraq.htm

Workload. If the near-term perils are clear, the definition of success is harder to pin down. On one level, it hinges on leaving behind a capable Iraqi government. This entails not only reliable security forces but also a government that can supply those troops and deliver basic services to the Iraqi people. Today, these tasks require deep U.S. involvement--and it will take much longer for Iraqis to pick up the workload than the Bush administration or most political leaders in Washington are willing to admit publicly. "To build something that can outlast us, we're talking about being there at least another five years," says Sen. Joseph Biden, who returned from his seventh trip to Iraq in July. "If we were doing it well and we had a little luck, we could be there in a circumstance where we are not dying but we are spending."