AP News, July 12th, 2007
Half full, half empty. No matter how you spin it, the Iraq report won't help President Bush make his stay-the-course case to a skeptical public and Congress.
The president's approval rating is 33 percent in a new AP-Ipsos poll. The Democratic-run Congress, elected to curtail U.S. military involvement in Iraq, is even lower: 24 percent.
The nation's mood has soured on the mission.
Bush acknowledged as much Thursday. "There's war fatigue in America. It's affecting our psychology," he told a White House news conference. "I understand that. It's an ugly war."
The president is trying to use the new report to buy time, at least until September, when Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, issues a far more comprehensive one.
But patience is running thin. A growing number of senior Republicans _ including Sens. Richard Lugar of Indiana, John Warner of Virginia, George Voinovich of Ohio and Pete Domenici of New Mexico _ already have defected.
And military analysts are growing increasingly gloomy, even those who were earlier supportive of the decision to topple Saddam Hussein's government.
"There is no near-term answer," said Daniel Goure, vice president of the Lexington Institute, a military policy research group.
"Does that mean that you can't win this thing? This is winnable _ in about 10 years. But you could lose it; Iraq could descend into chaos and become a problem for everybody in about an hour and a half," Goure said.
Even as Bush was calling for waiting at least until September, Congress was debating Democratic-sponsored attempts to set an earlier day of reckoning.
"Mr. President, it would be wise to work with us to change the mission now, not wait until September," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.
So far, a majority of Senate Republicans have stood by Bush and blocked efforts to reshape Iraq policy, if narrowly. It's not clear how much longer they can hold sway.
The real showdown will come on course-modifying legislation being drafted jointly by Lugar and Warner _ the senior Republicans, respectively, on the Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees.
Thursday's interim assessment, required by Congress, cited progress on some fronts but not on others. Of the 18 benchmarks established in an Iraq spending bill earlier this year, the Iraqi government was credited with satisfactory progress on eight, unsatisfactory progress on another eight and mixed results on the remaining two.
The president used the report to try to rebut claims in Congress that little or no progress had been made since his decision earlier this year to send an additional 30,000 troops to Iraq.
He saw a glass that was half full rather than half empty.
He emphasized examples of progress by the Iraqi government as "a cause for optimism." These included a reduction in the level of sectarian violence and an improved Iraqi military.
Still, the report said the overall situation "remains complex and extremely challenging." It gave Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government bad grades on political reconciliation and on stalled legislation to divide oil revenues.
With such a mixed picture, Bush's rhetoric seems unlikely to change many minds, either in Congress or among the general public.
"It has to be done by Iraqis changing and the situation on the ground changing. It's out of our control," said James Thurber, a political scientist at American University.
Some military analysts even saw Thursday's report as too rosy in claiming partial progress.
"The Iraqi government has not really met the Bush administration's benchmarks in any major area," suggested Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Seen from a more nuanced perspective, actual progress has been more limited" than claimed in the report, he said.
The interim report was issued in the fifth year of a war that has taken the lives of more than 3,600 U.S. troops and is costing U.S. taxpayers some $10 billion a month.
From Bush and his GOP allies to Democratic war critics to academics, nearly all agree the Iraqi government is not doing enough.
"Overall, the report was not bad. I think, however, that we need to keep up the pressure on Iraqi politicians," said Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "Their efforts to reach compromise are not lagging indicators of progress but necessary ingredients and, in fact, the most crucial of all."
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EDITOR'S NOTE _ Tom Raum has covered national and international affairs for The Associated Press since 1973.
