[NYTr] Iraq report unlikely to move Bush

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The Washington Post via MSNBC - Aug 24, 2007
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20431359/

Iraq report unlikely to move Bush

Despite mixed signs of progress, White House senses political cover

By Michael Abramowitz
The Washington Post

CRAWFORD, Tex. - Despite political pressure for a change of course in
Iraq, the White House hopes to keep in place its existing military
strategy and troop levels there after the mid-September report from
Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker,
administration officials said.

Even as the administration faced a new call this week from Sen. John W.
Warner (R-Va.), a leading ally, to begin at least a symbolic withdrawal
of troops by Christmas, White House officials said privately that they
are not contemplating making major shifts before early next year. They
said that next month's report is likely to highlight what they see as
significant improvements in security over the past year and that they
expect the president to assert that now is not the time to dramatically
change approaches.

One senior White House official expressed the prevailing mood, saying
he does not expect a "wholesale change in plans" next month.

But White House officials said they do expect Petraeus and Bush to
begin outlining what a "post-surge" strategy might look like. They said
the key date is April 2008, when the military will have to begin
bringing units home unless it is willing to extend troop rotations from
15 to 18 months.

‘A long-term robust troop presence’

Another senior official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity
to discuss White House thinking more freely, said he expects the U.S.
presence to return to pre-buildup levels of 15 combat brigades and
about 130,000 troops a year from now, down from about 160,000. "We all
know where we want to get to," this official said. "We all know that
there will be a long-term robust troop presence that will outlast this
president."

All officials cautioned that the situation is fluid. Many fully expect
the insurgents to attempt a spectacular attack in the next several
weeks, and several said they have not heard even privately from
Petraeus about the contents of his report. They said they expect the
top U.S. commander in Iraq to give the White House some preliminary
idea of his thinking sometime in the next week.

The question for the White House is whether the prospect of keeping a
large force in Iraq will survive the politics of Capitol Hill, where
Democrats are pushing for steep reductions. Bush is also likely to come
under pressure from some military advisers to accelerate the reductions
because of concerns that the military might get overstretched.

Tone shifting in Bush’s favor?

But in conversations over the past several days, a number of senior
White House officials and close allies outside the administration
indicated their belief that the political debate in Washington has
moved in the administration's favor this month, pointing in particular
to a number of Democrats who have spoken positively of some security
improvements in Iraq.

The one major exception was the statement this week from Warner, the
respected GOP voice on national security issues, who surprised the
White House on Thursday with a public call for troop withdrawals
beginning in December. White House officials sought to play down
Warner's comments yesterday, noting that the senator was not calling
for a specific timetable for reductions, which the president has
fiercely resisted.

Rep. John A. Boehner (Ohio), the House Republican leader, said in an
interview that the reports he has been receiving from his colleagues
over the past several weeks suggest that they are feeling less nervous
about the situation in Iraq and that the president "is better
positioned than he has been over the last six months."

"The security side was in very bad shape for a very long time, and
that's changing. And that's stabilizing the situation on the Hill,"
added Peter H. Wehner, who recently left a senior staff job at the
White House. Regarding next month, he added, referring to Petraeus: "I
don't think you will be seeing any major change at all. You have the
right man and the right strategy, and it wouldn't be the right time to
change."

Mixed report expected

Democratic congressional aides also said that they are not expecting
major changes from Bush next month, but they said the president is far
from safe politically. They said it will not be clear whether moderate
Republicans will stick with the president -- the key to Bush's
political survival on Iraq -- until members of Congress return early
next month from their summer recess.

Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid
(D-Nev.), said by e-mail: "Further pursuit of the administration's
flawed escalation strategy is not in our nation's best interests. Every
day that we continue to stick to the president's flawed strategy is a
day that America is not as secure as it could be."

The official White House position is that no decisions will be made by
the president until after he hears from Petraeus and Crocker, as well
as from other top advisers and lawmakers. But there seems little doubt
that the White House will argue that the current military strategy has
enjoyed some success. Pointing to this week's National Intelligence
Estimate on Iraq, one White House official said that "it's a different
situation than we faced a year ago," when security seemed to be
collapsing throughout Baghdad.

Redefining benchmarks

But the estimate also expressed little hope for a political
accommodation among Iraq's feuding leaders, and officials acknowledge
that the Iraqi government is likely to miss many of the benchmarks for
political progress set by Congress. That's why White House officials
plan to contend that that some of the goals behind the benchmarks are
being met in spirit, if not in fact: They noted that Iraq's oil revenue
is effectively being shared throughout Iraq's 18 provinces, even in
Sunni areas, even though the parliament has not passed an law on that
distribution -- a key benchmark.

"The shelf life of a benchmark is pretty questionable," said one
official. "They're probably not the benchmarks that even observers
outside the administration would pick today."

Several outside analysts close to the administration said they expect
Bush to respond to the reports from Petraeus and Crocker by offering
some hints of how the U.S. strategy might evolve over the next year --
even if he does not move to change course in the short term -- in an
effort to keep the bottom from falling out of the administration's
remaining support in Congress.

"The reports themselves are reasonably predictable. I don't think there
are likely to be significant new revelations about conditions in Iraq,"
said Philip D. Zelikow, a former State Department aide who was involved
in Iraq policy. "The question for the administration coming up is:
'What is the credible strategy for a sustainable U.S. posture in Iraq
extending through 2008 and beyond?' "

[Staff writers Peter Baker and Jonathan Weisman contributed to this
report.]

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