Bush Goals Lack Any Way to Measure Gains

By Elisabeth Bumiller

President George W. Bush presented a more sophisticated and coherent explanation on Wednesday of the administration’s policy in Iraq than ever before. What he left unclear in his strategy for “victory in Iraq” is how Americans will be able to measure any progress toward his ambitious goals.

The 38-page document that accompanied Bush’s speech in Annapolis, Maryland, titled “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq,” defined victory in the short term as “steady progress” in fighting terrorists, the meeting of political milestones, the building of democratic institutions and the training of Iraqi security forces.

In the long term, it said victory would be no less than a peaceful and secure Iraq “well-integrated into the international community” and a “full partner” in fighting terrorism.

But in redefining victory as, effectively, creating conditions that would allow the United States to leave, Bush did not offer the one yardstick for victory most meaningful to Americans: the number of American troops in the country, and when they can come home. In a speech designed to shore up support for an increasingly unpopular war, Bush notably made no guarantees that he would be able to reduce American forces significantly in 2006.

And, in a broadside against Democrats who have demanded a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, Bush said that “these decisions about troop levels will be driven by the conditions on the ground in Iraq and the good judgment of our commanders, not by artificial timetables set by politicians in Washington.”

Even though the war has helped drive Bush’s approval rating to record lows, some administration officials say that he is adamantly committed to holding tough in Iraq and disregarding the 2006 political calendar at home.

By the reasoning of some in the White House, only 35 to 40 seats in the House of Representatives will be competitive anyway. So far, Bush’s political advisers do not expect the war to be the determining factor in those elections.

But what administration officials acknowledge that they fear is the drag of the war on Bush’s leadership and the long-term effects of public opinion on the war itself.

“The substance of it is, he has to change it, or we lose,” said Senator Joseph Biden, Democrat of Delaware. “We will have traded a dictatorship for chaos,” Biden said. “We will have a regional war from a civil war and a new haven for terrorists.”

Bush’s speech was striking for its admission of past administration mistakes, while the “strategy for victory” document was an unusually candid assessment of a what the administration still faces in Iraq.