Washington – A progress report on Iraq will conclude that the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad has not met any of its targets for political, economic and other reform, speeding up the Bush administration’s reckoning on what to do next, a U.S. official said Monday.
The report comes as the White House brushed off calls from a growing chorus of Republican lawmakers to change course in the more than 4-year-old conflict.
“The president wants to withdraw troops based on the facts on the ground, not on the matter of politics,” White House press secretary Tony Snow said earlier Monday. “There is no intensifying discussion about reducing troops.”
Snow also tried to minimize the differences between President Bush and his GOP critics on Capitol Hill by explaining that the president also wants to bring home the troops.
With the new report, the “pivot point” for addressing the matter will no longer be Sept. 15, as initially envisioned, when a full report on Bush’s so-called surge plan is due, but instead will come this week when the interim mid-July assessment is released, the official said.
“The facts are not in question,” the official told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because the draft is still under discussion. “The real question is how the White House proceeds with a post-surge strategy in light of the report.”
The report, required by law, is expected to be delivered to Capitol Hill by Thursday or Friday.
The Senate began debate Monday afternoon on the National Defense Authorization Act, the $649 billion military spending bill for the next budget year – and a vehicle for trying to force the administration to change its policy.
The bill calls for the military to balance the amount of time American troops spend overseas and on American soil, a measure that would severely limit troop deployments to Iraq.
While Sens. Richard Lugar of Indiana and Pete Domenici of New Mexico and other Republicans have publicly urged a change of course, the Senate debate is testing party alliances. Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., and Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., are set to speak this morning at a rare bipartisan meeting to discuss Iraq. And Sen. Olympia J. Snowe, R-Maine, said she was strongly supporting for the first time a bill supporting a specific timetable to remove troops from Iraq.
Other Republican-backed proposals that would force a new course in Iraq include one by Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Ben Nelson, D-Neb., that would require U.S. troops to abandon combat missions. Collins and Nelson say their binding amendment would order the U.S. mission to focus on training the Iraqi security forces, targeting al-Qaeda members and protecting Iraq’s borders.
“My goal is to redefine the mission and set the stage for a significant but gradual drawdown of our troops next year,” said Collins.
GOP support for the war has eroded steadily since Bush’s decision in January to send some 30,000 additional troops to Iraq.
At the time, Bush said the Iraqis agreed to meet certain benchmarks, such as enacting a law to divide the nation’s oil reserves.
This spring, Congress agreed to continue funding the war through September but demanded that Bush certify on July 15 and again on Sept. 15 that the Iraqis were living up to their political promises or forgo U.S. aid dollars.
The official said it is highly unlikely that Bush will withhold or suspend aid to the Iraqis based on the report.
Snow on Monday tried to lower expectations on the report, contending that all of the additional troops had just gotten in place and it would be unrealistic to expect major progress by now.
“You are not going to expect all the benchmarks to be met at the beginning of something,” Snow said. “I’m not sure everyone’s going to get an ‘A’ on the first report.”
In recent weeks, the White House has tried to shore up eroding GOP support for the war amidst recent defections by Lugar, Domenici and Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio, while Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., challenged Republicans to join with Democrats in pressing for the withdrawal of troops.
“For those Senate Republicans who are saying the right things on Iraq, they must put their words into action by voting with us to change course and responsibly end this war,” Reid said.
Several GOP stalwarts, including Sens. Ted Stevens of Alaska, Christopher Bond of Missouri, Jon Kyl of Arizona and James Inhofe of Oklahoma, said they still support Bush’s Iraq strategy.
Kyl said he would try to focus this week’s debate on preserving vital anti-terrorism programs, including the detention of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
The boost in troop levels in Iraq has increased the cost of war there and in Afghanistan to $12 billion a month, with the overall tally for Iraq alone nearing a half-trillion dollars, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, which provides research and analysis to lawmakers.
The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times contributed to this report.
