Top general warns against Iraq troop timeline

updated 7:20 p.m. ET Nov. 15, 2006

WASHINGTON - The top U.S. commander in the Middle East warned Congress Wednesday against setting a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, putting him at odds with resurgent Democrats pressing President Bush to start pulling out of the violence-torn country.

Gen. John Abizaid spoke as the Senate Armed Services Committee began re-examining U.S. policy in the wake of last week’s elections, which gave Democrats control of Congress starting next year and was widely seen as a repudiation of the administration’s war policies.

Democrats have been coalescing around a call for beginning a U.S. withdrawal in coming months. In arguing against a timetable for troop withdrawals, Abizaid told the committee that he and other commanders need flexibility in managing U.S. forces and determining how and when to pass on responsibility to Iraqi forces.

“Specific timetables limit that flexibility,” Abizaid said.

Asked directly what effect he foresaw on sectarian violence if Congress legislated a phased U.S. withdrawal starting in four to six months, Abizaid replied, “I believe it would increase.”

“It seems to me that the prudent course ahead is to keep the troop levels about where they are,” Abizaid said, while placing larger teams of U.S. military advisers inside Iraqi army and police units. He said that increased emphasis on advising Iraqi units might be accomplished without significantly increasing the total U.S. force in the country.

With voters expressing overwhelming opposition to the war, Bush the day after the election expressed a willingness to consider fresh approaches to Iraq policy and announced the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who had become a symbol of the unpopular war.

GOP dissatisfaction with the war
Even some Republicans on the Senate panel voiced a measure of frustration at the long and costly war in Iraq.

Sen. John Warner, R-Va., the committee chairman, noted that the conflict has lasted as long as World War II, with the Iraqi government still unable to stand on its own and assert authority over security forces.

“How do you explain that in simple terms to the American people?” he asked in his opening statement.

Abizaid said he believes U.S. troop levels, now at about 141,000, should stay steady but may have to rise temporarily to train and advise Iraqi military units. No reductions are advisable until the Iraqi security forces become more capable of dealing with the insurgency, securing Baghdad and dealing with the Shiite militia problem, he said.

“Our troop posture needs to stay where it is,” for the time being, he said.

In one of the day’s most contentious clashes, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., challenged Abizaid on his analysis of the situation and complained that he was advocating no major changes in U.S. policy. McCain, a possible 2008 presidential candidate, has called for adding thousands more U.S. combat troops in Iraq to help fight the insurgency and halt sectarian violence in Baghdad.

“I’m of course disappointed that basically you’re advocating the status quo here today, which I think the American people in the last election said that is not an acceptable condition,” McCain said.

Abizaid calls for support inside Iraqi army
In response, Abizaid said he was not arguing for the status quo. He said the key change that is needed now is to place more U.S. troops inside the Iraqi army and police units to train and advise these forces in planning and executing missions.

Another possible 2008 presidential candidate, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., said she saw no evidence that conditions inside Iraq were improving.

“Hope is not a strategy,” she said.

Citing administration claims of progress, she said, “The brutal fact is, it is not happening.”

Clinton asked about the wisdom of partitioning Iraq along sectarian lines, with autonomous regions for the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites.

“Partition in Iraq could only be achieved at an expense of human suffering and bloodshed and forced dislocation that would be both profound and wholly unacceptable, I believe, to the American people,” said David Satterfield, the senior State Department adviser on Iraq. “It is wholly unacceptable to this administration.”

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