Washington – President Bush vowed for the first time Monday to turn over most of Iraq to newly trained Iraqi troops by the end of this year, setting a specific benchmark as he kicked off a fresh drive to reassure Americans alarmed by the recent burst of sectarian violence.
Bush, who until now has resisted concrete timelines as the Iraq war dragged on longer than he expected, outlined the target during the first of a series of speeches intended to lay out his strategy. While acknowledging grim developments on the ground, Bush declared “real progress” in setting up Iraqi forces capable of defending their nation.
“As more capable Iraqi police and soldiers come on line, they will assume responsibility for more territory with the goal of having the Iraqis control more territory than the coalition by the end of 2006,” he said in a speech to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “And as Iraqis take over more territory, this frees American and coalition forces to concentrate on training and on hunting down high-value targets like the terrorist (Abu Musab) Zarqawi and his associates.”
The beginning of a new campaign to rally Americans behind the war effort nearly three years after the U.S.-led invasion comes at a time of deepening public misgivings about the campaign in Iraq and Bush’s leadership of it.
In a Washington Post-ABC News poll this month, 34 percent of Americans surveyed said they think the president has a plan for victory in Iraq, 6 percentage points below the figure in December and the lowest level recorded by that poll. By contrast, 65 percent believe Bush has no Iraq plan.
How meaningful or achievable the president’s new goal is seems uncertain. In the speech, Bush said Iraqi units have “primary responsibility” over 30,000 square miles of Iraqi territory, an increase of 20,000 square miles since the beginning of the year. Iraqi forces would need to control about 85,000 square miles to fulfill Bush’s target.
What constitutes control, however, depends on the definition, since no Iraqi unit is rated capable of operating without U.S. assistance. And vast swaths of Iraq have never been contested by insurgents, meaning they could ultimately be turned over to local forces without directly affecting the conflict.
Bush said 130 Iraqi battalions are participating in the battle with radical guerrillas, with 60 units taking the lead, an increase from 120 battalions and 40 in the lead when he last delivered major speeches on Iraq at the end of 2005.
But Democrats pointed out that a Pentagon report last month showed that the number of Iraqi units rated “level 1,” fully independent of U.S. help, has fallen from one to zero.
