Washington – On his first day as defense secretary, Robert Gates warned Monday that failure in Iraq would be a “calamity” that would haunt the United States for years. Underscoring eroding security there, a Pentagon report said the number of insurgent and sectarian attacks had risen to the highest level in years.
Sworn into office as the Bush administration moves toward revamping its strategy in Iraq, Gates sketched out an agenda of reversing the downward spiral in Iraq, attending to resurgent violence in Afghanistan and pushing for the military modernization that was a priority of his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld.
Gates said he intends to travel soon to Iraq to hear commanders’ assessments of the situation on the ground and to gain their advice – “unvarnished and straight from the shoulder” – on how to adjust U.S. war strategy. He said he would give President Bush honest advice and listen to military commanders – a contrast to critics’ complaints that Rumsfeld was an ideologue who paid scant heed to top officers.
“All of us want to find a way to bring America’s sons and daughters home again,” Gates told a few hundred people in a Pentagon auditorium, including Bush, Cabinet secretaries, members of Congress, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Gates’ wife and mother.
Rumsfeld, who handed off authority earlier Monday, didn’t attend the ceremony.
“As the president has made clear,” Gates said, “we simply cannot afford to fail in the Middle East. Failure in Iraq at this juncture would be a calamity that would haunt our nation, impair our credibility and endanger Americans for decades to come.”
Gates has not tipped his hand on the kinds of changes in Iraq strategy he thinks may be needed. He said that since his Senate confirmation in early December he has held in-depth discussions with Bush on Iraq policy.
At the Pentagon ceremony, Bush said he is confident that Gates, 63, will bring a fresh perspective to the Iraq problem.
“He knows the stakes in the war on terror,” Bush said. “He recognizes this is a long struggle against an enemy unlike any our nation has fought before. He understands that defeating the terrorists and the radicals and the extremists in Iraq and the Middle East is essential to leading toward peace.”
Amid growing speculation that Bush will choose to send tens of thousands more U.S. troops to Baghdad in an attempt to quell the sectarian violence, a leading Democrat in Congress cautioned against that move.
“Everything I’ve heard and everything I know to be true lead me to believe that this increase at best won’t change a thing, and at worst could exacerbate the situation even further,” said Rep. Ike Skelton, the Missouri Democrat who will become chairman of the House Armed Services Committee in January.
U.S. commanders moved several thousand more U.S. troops into Baghdad last summer in a bid to tamp down the violence. The move worked briefly, but the violence rebounded quickly, according to the Pentagon report sent to Congress on Monday.
The report said attacks on U.S. and Iraqi troops and Iraqi civilians jumped sharply in recent months to the highest level since Iraq regained its sovereignty in June 2004. From mid-August to mid-November, the weekly average number of attacks increased 22 percent from the previous three months. The worst violence was in Baghdad and in the western province of Anbar, long the focus of activity by Sunni insurgents, the report said.
A bar chart in the Pentagon’s report to Congress gave no exact numbers but indicated the weekly average had approached 1,000 in the latest period, compared with about 800 per week from the May-to-August period. Statistics provided separately by the Pentagon said weekly attacks had averaged 959 in the latest period.
The report also said the Iraqi government’s failure to end sectarian violence has eroded ordinary Iraqis’ confidence in their future. That conclusion reflects some of the Bush administration’s doubt about the ability of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to make the hard decisions U.S. officials insist are needed to quell the violence.
It made no mention of a timetable for ending U.S. military involvement. The development of an Iraqi army and police is making progress, the report said, but much remains to be done.
Robert M. Gates
Age: 63; born Sept. 25, 1943
Experience: CIA intelligence analyst, 1966-74; National Security Council staff, 1974-79; director of executive staff for CIA director, 1981-82; deputy director for intelligence, 1982-86; deputy director of CIA, 1986-89; acting director, 1986-87; CIA director, 1991-93; interim dean of the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, 1999-2001; president of Texas A&M University, 2002 to Dec. 18, 2006
