[Peace-discuss] WSJ adumbrates admin. faction fight

[C. G. ESTABROOK]

["'The surge has sucked all of the flexibility out of the system,' Army 
Chief of Staff George Casey said in an interview this week. 'And we need 
to find a way of getting back into balance.'"  Casey was the former 
commander in Iraq who was replaced after an intense campaign for the job 
by the Petraeus' faction (including the unprecedented public release of 
Princeton-degreed Petraeus' plagiarized "counter-insurgency manual"). 
This division within the uniformed military is bound up with the 
no-holds-barred struggle for the last year of the Bush administration 
between the war-party/neocons and the permanent-government/foreign 
policy establishment.  (Both, it should be said, are pro-war, in 
different modalities: the former want to attack Iran, the latter, 
diplomatically to prevent Iran from slipping into the Russian-Chinese 
energy grid.) For the moment, the latter seem to be dominant and have 
the ear of the WH; in response came the desperate measure of the release 
of the doctored Hormuz video (refuted by Navy staff officers) -- and 
probably other initiatives of which we know little. --CGE]


	Petraeus Is Undecided
	About Deeper Troop Cuts
	By GINA CHON and YOCHI J. DREAZEN
	January 17, 2008; Page A10

WASIT PROVINCE, Iraq -- The top American commander in Iraq said that 
30,000 American troops would leave the country by July but that he had 
yet to make up his mind about whether to recommend any additional 
reductions.

In an interview, Gen. David Petraeus said he was working to finalize an 
assessment of security conditions in Iraq and the wisdom of further 
military withdrawals in advance of a high-profile appearance before 
Congress in March.

When the 30,000 troops that were brought into Iraq as part of the Bush 
administration's surge withdraw, the total U.S. troop presence in Iraq 
will be down to 130,000, where it has held largely steady since the 
start of the war in 2003. Whether the troop levels go any lower remains 
an open question -- and one that threatens to reignite the debate over 
the Iraq war.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said he hopes to see the U.S. 
military presence fall below 130,000 by the end of 2008, a position 
shared by many senior Pentagon commanders who worry the high troop 
levels in Iraq are causing growing manpower strains on the army.

"The surge has sucked all of the flexibility out of the system," Army 
Chief of Staff George Casey said in an interview this week. "And we need 
to find a way of getting back into balance."

But President Bush made clear this week that additional troop 
withdrawals were far from a sure thing. After a meeting in Kuwait with 
Gen. Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Mr. Bush 
said he was open to slowing or stopping the withdrawal of troops to 
avoid jeopardizing recent security gains in Iraq. "My attitude is, if he 
didn't want to continue the drawdown, that's fine with me in order to 
make sure we succeed," Mr. Bush said, referring to Gen. Petraeus.

The president's remarks highlighted the unusually central role Gen. 
Petraeus plays in formulating U.S. policy in Iraq, which will be on full 
display when the general testifies before Congress in March.

In the interview, Gen. Petraeus said he and his commanders were 
analyzing three different scenarios to determine the pace and timing of 
any subsequent troop reductions. In one scenario, Iraq's security 
situation continues to improve as the surge forces leave, while in the 
other scenarios conditions hold steady or deteriorate. Gen. Petraeus 
declined to say how the various scenarios would affect future troop 
withdrawals, but Mr. Bush's comments suggest that reductions would stop 
if conditions worsened.

See continuing coverage of developments in Iraq, including an 
interactive map of day-to-day events in Iraq and a tally of military deaths.

"We're just into the early stages of the initial substantial drawdown," 
Gen. Petraeus said. "We need to work our way through this." As he toured 
the bustling Zurbitiya port of entry on the Iraqi-Iranian border, Gen. 
Petraeus said the U.S. military was struggling to determine whether Iran 
was honoring a recent pledge to stem the flow of Iranian weaponry and 
explosives to Shiite extremist groups in Iraq.

Some State Department officials argue that the Iranian government is 
actively trying to reduce the amount of armaments entering Iraq, but 
many senior U.S. commanders have long been more skeptical. In early 
January, the number of attacks against U.S. troops featuring powerful 
armor-piercing bombs that American officials have long linked to Iran 
increased, Gen. Petraeus said. But he said there has been a downturn in 
recent days, making it difficult to conclusively settle the question of 
Iran's role -- and intentions -- in Iraq. "Only time will tell," he said.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120053843407696573.html