American critics of President Bush’s handling of the Iraq war heard words of concession Wednesday from the commander in chief: Mistakes had been made, and al-Qaeda was “the smallest” faction of the insurgency.
But Bush again declined to specify when, and by what criteria, the Iraqis might become capable of defending themselves.
After a sufficient and unspecified number of Iraqi troops are trained, he said, “we will be able to reduce (U.S.) troops in Iraq without losing our ability to defeat the terrorists.” He added that “this will take time and patience.”
As a result, he may have failed to calm the increasingly restive lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Last month, in a 79-19 bipartisan vote, the Republican Senate requested that Bush provide a “schedule” for meeting U.S. objectives, including “the reasons for any subsequent changes to that schedule.”
On Wednesday, Bush essentially rejected that request, which means that Republicans up for re-election in 2006 will continue to fret about a potential voter backlash against the GOP.
Six times since late October, Bush has publicly discussed Iraq – always in a military setting or a military town – but, thus far, his efforts have failed to arrest his slide in the polls.
Perhaps his speech Wednesday will prompt a comeback, but most Americans (who oppose his handling of the war by a 2-1 ratio) may simply wonder anew whether he is talking straight on the war.
Bush appears to be laying the groundwork for a potential drawdown by trumpeting the prowess of the newly trained Iraqi army and police combatants. He said that 120 Iraqi battalions – somewhere between 42,000 and 96,000 soldiers, according to the range offered by Bush – are now “in the fight.” He said that “in the past year, Iraqi forces have made real progress.”
But here’s what Bush said on Nov. 4, 2004: “We are making good progress in training the Iraqi troops.”
That day, he predicted that 125,000 soldiers would be trained by January 2005. So either the number of trained soldiers has decreased over the past year, or the administration has changed its definition of training.
Bush didn’t present himself Wednesday as infallible. He occasionally conceded that the mission in Iraq has been less than perfect; he said that the Iraqi training “always hadn’t gone smoothly” and that “we learned from our early experiences” to make adjustments. And, after arguing for several years that the enemy in Iraq was essentially al-Qaeda, this time he accurately stated that the largest faction in the insurgency is made up of Sunni Arabs motivated by revenge against the U.S. occupation.
