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US dragged down by news from
Iraq
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Readers of the Pentagon's
Early Bird news file, a daily compilation of about
50 stories circulated throughout the US
national-security bureaucracy, could be forgiven
on Monday for reaching for the Rolaids, a popular
over-the-counter medication for queasy stomachs.
As with last Friday's edition, Monday's
lead stories all dealt with Iraq. Indeed, news
about Iraq, which faded to the inside pages after
Iraq's January 30 elections and stayed there well
into the spring, has made a surprisingly strong
comeback in the Early Bird of late, just like the
Iraqi insurgency itself.
Monday's first
story, from USA Today and headlined "Poll: USA is
losing patience on Iraq", concerned the most
recent Gallup survey, which found that nearly 60%
of the public now favors a partial or complete
withdrawal of US troops from Iraq in what the
newspaper called "the most downbeat view of the
war since it began in 2003".
Item number
two, "Officers, military can't end insurgency",
published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, began: "A
growing number of senior American military
officers in Iraq have concluded there is no
long-term military solution to an insurgency that
has killed thousands of Iraqis and more than 1,300
US troops in the last two years."
Despite
Vice President Dick Cheney's confident assertion
two weeks ago that the insurgency was in its "last
throes", the story featured one particularly
telling observation from a US officer who works
with the task force overseeing the training of
Iraqi troops, regarding how easy it was for the
insurgency to replenish its forces. "We can't kill
them," he said. "When I kill one, I create three."
The third story, from The New York Times,
seemed designed to play on the tension created in
the first story. "As Iraqi army trains, word in
the field is it may take years" ran the headline.
It was followed by text that noted that top
generals who four months ago predicted that
Washington could begin withdrawing its 140,000
troops by the end of this year now say "it could
be two years, perhaps longer".
That
message was positively upbeat compared to the lead
story in Friday's Early Bird headlined "Building
Iraq's army: Mission improbable", co-written by
the only fluent Arab-speaker in the mainstream US
press, Anthony Shadid.
That nearly
3,000-word Washington Post article, which one
Pentagon official called "devastating", concerned
the enormous political and cultural gaps that
divided US troops from the Sunni Arab soldiers
with whom they are paired in northern Iraq, where
the insurgency is strongest. While one reporter
was embedded with the US troops, Shadid stayed
with the counterpart Iraqi unit for more than
three days.
Aside from documenting the
pervasive sense of distrust and contempt that the
two groups of soldiers had for each other, as well
as the vastly superior equipment, protection,
housing and technology available to the US troops,
the story also recounted incidents of outright
insubordination by the Iraqi unit.
"The
journey revealed fundamental, perhaps
irreconcilable differences over everything from
the reluctance of Muslim soldiers to search
mosques and homes to basic questions of
lifestyle," according to the story, which quoted
one US reserve officer mocking official White
House and Pentagon predictions that Iraqi security
forces would be ready soon to fight the insurgency
on their own.
"From the ground, I can say
with certainty they won't be ready before I
leave," Lieutenant Kenrick Cato told the Post.
"And I know I'll be back in Iraq, probably in
three or four years. And I don't think they'll be
ready then."
Other lead stories from last
week offered little comfort to Early Bird readers.
The second story, "Militia backed by Iraqi leaders
accused in attacks", from the Philadelphia
Inquirer, started: "A militant Shi'ite Muslim
group with close ties to Iran has gained enormous
power since Iraq's January election and now is
accused of conducting a terror campaign against
Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority that includes
kidnappings and murders."
The third story,
"Insurgency seen forcing change in Iraq strategy",
from the Boston Globe, offered no relief: "Two
years after the toppling of Saddam Hussein, the
Iraq conflict has evolved into a classic guerrilla
war," it noted. It also said that, despite US
estimates that it had killed or captured 1,000 to
3,000 insurgents a month, the number of daily
attacks has doubled to 70 - as has the number of
suicide attacks - in just the past four months,
and that the current death toll for US soldiers is
running at about two a day.
The Globe also
wrote about a recent internal poll that found that
nearly 45% of the Iraqi population supported the
insurgent attacks, while only 15% of those polled
said they strongly supported the US-led coalition.
So much for the notion so eagerly embraced by
senior administration officials that an elected
government would automatically translate into
opposition to the insurgency.
Indeed, it
now appears that whatever political gains were
made as a result of the election have now been
largely squandered as a result of the growing
alienation of the Sunni population, which is why
another New York Times story about efforts to
bring Sunnis into the constitution-writing
process, "Sunni-Shi'ite quarrel edges closer to
political stalemate", offered no relief to the
growing pessimism. It too was given prominence in
Monday's Early Bird.
As reflected in USA
Today's poll story, all of these reports have
affected public opinion which, aside from a brief
spurt of optimism after the January elections, has
become steadily more negative since February.
Indeed, last week a Washington Post-ABC
News poll showed that for the first time since the
war began, more than half of the public believed
that the US invasion of Iraq had not made the US
more safe, and nearly 40% described the situation
there now as analogous to the Vietnam War.
"The steady drip of negative news from
Iraq is significantly undermining support for the
US military operation there," noted Andy Kohout,
director of the Pew Research Center for the People
& the Press, which released its own latest
findings.
Similar to the Gallup poll, the
Pew poll found an all-time high of 46% of the
public favoring a withdrawal from Iraq, although,
unlike the Gallup poll, it didn't distinguish
between a partial and a complete pullout.
The fear that Iraq could turn out to be
similar to Vietnam has also gained traction,
according to Kohout, whose latest poll showed that
35% of the public, including a disproportionate
number of citizens who say they followed Iraq news
particularly closely, believed that the situation
would turn out like Vietnam, while 47% still
believed the US could stabilize the situation.
Stephen Kull of the University of
Maryland's Program on International Policy
Attitudes said he believes the latest polling data
do not indicate a "tipping point" where the George
W Bush administration may be forced to withdraw,
in part because no credible leader has stepped
forward with an alternative plan that could assure
the public that withdrawal would not make the
situation worse.
"But it does create a
clear political problem for the president as it
affects his own favorability rating, and then
Congress doesn't feel it has to be as responsive
to him," said Kull.
Indications that this
is indeed beginning to happen are becoming more
plentiful. Two weeks ago, the House of
Representatives voted 300-128 to defeat a
resolution that would have required the president
to present a plan for withdrawal from Iraq, but a
122-79 majority of Democrats voted for it, along
with five Republicans, including three who had
supported the original decision to go to war.
In fact, Congress appears to be lagging
behind the public on the issue. Some 72% of
Democrats, 65% of independents and 41% of
Republicans said they favored a partial or
complete withdrawal, according to the Gallup poll.
(Inter Press
Service) |
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