Generals: Iraqi security capability has shrunk

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The number of Iraqi security
battalions able to fight without help from American forces has
shrunk, senior U.S. generals said on Thursday, arguing that
this was not a backward step.

At a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen.
George Casey, top U.S. commander in Iraq, also said bringing
home a substantial number of troops from Iraq next year will
depend on political events there in the next 2-1/2 months. The
United States currently has 149,000 troops in Iraq.

The Pentagon has said training Iraqi security forces — who
number about 192,000 — so they are able to defend their own
country is a prerequisite to an eventual withdrawal of U.S.
forces.

But just one of the 120 U.S.-trained Iraqi army and police
battalions was able to operate without U.S. forces, Casey and
Gen. John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East,
told senators.

The Pentagon said in July the number was three.

Calling this discouraging, Maine Republican Sen. Susan
Collins said, “That contributes to a loss of public confidence
in how the war is going and whether this strategy is the
appropriate one and it’s being executed properly, (and) whether
or not we’re making progress.”

Casey said it would be wrong to view this as “taking a step
backwards,” but added, “We fully recognize that Iraqi armed
forces will not have an independent capability for some time
because they don’t have the institutional base to support
them.”

Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain pointedly told Air
Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, the war had not gone as well as the Pentagon said it
would go.

“I don’t think this committee or the American public has
ever heard me say that things are going very well in Iraq,”
said Myers, speaking a day before he retires from his post.
“This is a hard struggle.”

U.S. public support for the 2 1/2-year war has dropped in
opinion polls, along with support for President George W. Bush.
Some U.S. lawmakers are questioning how long troops will stay,
and Thursday’s hearing took place less than a week after an
anti-war protest in Washington last weekend drew at least
100,000 people.

TROOP CUTS

Casey predicted in March and July “fairly substantial”
reductions in U.S. troops next spring and summer, which
Pentagon officials said meant perhaps 20,000 to 30,000. In
remarks to reporters on Wednesday, Casey cast doubt on this,
saying Iraq was in a period of heightened uncertainty that made
it “too soon to tell” if troops can be brought home.

Casey told senators on Thursday that the possibility for
such cuts in troops in 2006 still exists.

Since the March 2003 invasion there have been 1,924 U.S.
military deaths, with another 14,755 wounded in action, the
Pentagon said. The U.S. troop deaths have been dwarfed by Iraqi
casualties.

Casey said the next 75 days would be critical in deciding
on troop cuts. Iraqis vote on a draft constitution in an
October 15 referendum and, if they endorse it, elect a new
government on December 15.

Testifying later before the House of Representatives Armed
Services Committee, Casey declined to give a timetable for
handing security responsibilities from U.S. and other foreign
forces to Iraqis.

Casey said the average 20th century counterinsurgency
lasted nine years. “And there is no reason that we should
believe that the insurgency in Iraq will take any less time to
deal with,” Casey said, although he did not say U.S. forces
would be there the entire time.

The Bush administration, which presents the war in Iraq as
part of its war on terrorism, has said that withdrawing troops
now would embolden enemies of the United States. Myers said on
Thursday that if the United States pulls out now from Iraq,
another attack like the one on September 11, 2001, was “right
around the corner.”