New U.S. plan sees surge lasting into summer '08

WASHINGTON - A revised U.S. military plan for Iraq envisions that sometime in 2009 security will be enforced by local authorities, but it leaves open questions of how many American troops will still be needed and how quickly they can begin to leave in large numbers.

The plan appears to reflect an assertion by U.S. commanders that this year's troop buildup will be needed until next summer, one defense official said.

He spoke only on condition of anonymity about a timetable that is politically sensitive - many in Congress are pushing for reducing U.S. involvement in a matter of months.

The Pentagon said no final decisions on changes had been made.

Although the revised plan foresees establishing security at the local level in Baghdad and elsewhere by next summer, it probably would take another year to get Iraqi forces ready to enforce any newfound stability, U.S. officials said.

A number of U.S. generals who are commanding troops in separate regions in Iraq have said in recent days that they expect enough improvement in their areas to begin cutting U.S. troops before that - one said August, another said January. But the United States may want to shift those thousands of troops to areas of Iraq that are in worse condition.

The new Joint Campaign Plan was developed by Gen. David Petraeus and his political counterpart in Baghdad, Ambassador Ryan Crocker. They are to testify before Congress in September on how the current strategy is working and whether it needs revision.

President Bush in January announced the strategy in broad terms, and he ordered five extra Army brigades to Baghdad to help implement it. The more detailed campaign plan was developed in the months following.

Col. Steve Boylan, chief spokesman for Petraeus, said the plan was still in final editing and had not been put fully into effect. Although it sets an initial goal of achieving localized security by summer 2008, he said, it makes no assumptions about specific levels of U.S. troops between now and then - including how long the five extra brigades will stay.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said those decisions would be based on how well things unfolded in Iraq.

"It's not possible today to predict what the conditions may be in three months, six months or even a year down the road, but that doesn't, and should not, preclude military planning taking place," Whitman told Pentagon reporters.

The summer 2008 goal, Boylan said in an interview, should be seen as "a placeholder, a mark on the wall," not an immovable commitment.

The plan envisions using locally based security initiatives, such as those that in western Anbar province have proved successful in reducing insurgent violence this year, as a starting point. Such efforts are under way elsewhere in Iraq, including some parts of Baghdad.

President Bush yesterday made his most detailed and lengthy argument that al-Qaeda in Iraq was intimately

tied to Osama bin Laden's terror network, as he sought to rebut his critics' assertion that the Iraqi group was not a threat to American security.

To those who argue that al-Qaeda in Iraq is purely an Iraqi phenomenon, not part of the network that attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, Bush said: "That would be news to Osama bin Laden."

The president's remarks to about 300 troops at Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina were built in part on what White House officials said were newly declassified intelligence data.

Denying the evidence he cited, Bush said, is akin to seeing a masked gunman enter a bank and saying, "He's really there just to cash a check."

He called al-Qaeda in Iraq "Public Enemy No. 1" and said it was determined to "take its jihad beyond Iraq's borders."

Bush cited the group's founding by a Jordanian, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who had "long-standing relations with senior al-Qaeda leaders" and who in 2004 promised to follow bin Laden's jihad orders.

U.S. forces killed Zarqawi in 2006; he was replaced by an Egyptian, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, who Bush said had long-standing ties to senior al-Qaeda leadership.

- Los Angeles Times

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