Amid crumbling security, Pentagon likely to extend surge Andrew Bielak

Published: Saturday April 21, 2007 Print This Email This Hoping to cede greater control over Iraq to its own security forces, American military and civilian leaders have begun to notify Iraqi officials that US involvement is not open-ended and could see a drawback in numbers if the situation does not improve. Despite offering dire warnings, however, the Pentagon has given all indications that the current surge in troops levels could easily be extended to acommodate worsening violence throughout Iraq. Examining a central dilemma facing the country's political leadership, Associated Press military writer John Burns notes, "If political progress is not possible in the relatively short term, then the justification for sending thousands more U.S. troops to Baghdad  and accepting the rising U.S. combat death toll that has resulted  will disappear." With violence claiming hundreds of lives this week in Baghdad alone and a solid majority of Americans opposing the war, the question has increasingly become whether there is logic in committing more soldiers to a cause that, to many, is already lost. So far, slightly more than half of the 21,500 troops being utilized in the escalation are in Iraq, with the remaining soldiers set to arrive by June. In previous months, government officials had indicated that troop levels could be reduced to previous levels by September. As Burns notes, thess predictions were made under the assumption that the operation would prove to be a clear cut success or failure within its first few months. For many critics of the war, the unrelenting pace of violence claiming lives in Baghdad and throughout the rest of the country proves that it already has. Two months into the surge, as violence in Iraq remains high and ethnic tensions continue to boil, American leaders have started to express impatience with the Iraq government's inability to contain the chaos. Speaking during a visit to Iraq this week, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said "the clock is ticking," and today stated that the results of the surge so far have been "mixed." But despite expressing dissatisfaction, officials have not indicated any plans to draw down the surge in the near future. "The U.S. should definitely keep up the pressure on the Iraqis, but we should have no illusions," Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq watcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies said on Friday. Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, a strong supporter of the surge and one of the chief architects of the surge strategy, sees a hint of ambivalence behind the Pentagon's plans: "They seem to be taking the steps that would make it possible to sustain it for longer, which is good. But they seem to be reluctant to commit to a willingness to do that, which I think is unfortunate." READ THE FULL STORY HERE



