Associated Press: US Forces Are Gaining In Iraq

Robert Burns, who has covered wars for the Associated Press since 1991 and is on his 18th trip to Iraq says, rather forcefully, that US forces are gaining ground in Iraq. He does not gloss over the political situation there and is obviously troubled by it. But he is very firm in his assessment that the US is gaining ground over there.

BAGHDAD (AP) - AP Video The new U.S. military strategy in Iraq, unveiled six months ago to little acclaim, is working.

In two weeks of observing the U.S. military on the ground and interviewing commanders, strategists and intelligence officers, it's apparent that the war has entered a new phase in its fifth year.

It is a phase with fresh promise yet the same old worry: Iraq may be too fractured to make whole.

No matter how well or how long the U.S. military carries out its counterinsurgency mission, it cannot guarantee victory.

Only the Iraqis can. And to do so they probably need many more months of heavy U.S. military involvement. Even then, it is far from certain that they are capable of putting this shattered country together again.

It's been an uphill struggle from the start to build Iraqi security forces that are able to fight and—more importantly at this juncture—able to divorce themselves from deep-rooted sectarian loyalties. It is the latter requirement—evenhandedness and reliability—that is furthest from being fulfilled.

There is no magic formula for success.

And magic is what it may take to turn military gains into the strategy's ultimate goal: a political process that moves Iraq's rival Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds from the brink of civil war to the threshold of peace—and to get there on a timetable that takes account of growing war fatigue in the United States.

Again, Burns is not at all sure what the outcome will be, but he is also, very definitely, not saying that America is in a hopeless position there. Signs of real progress are evident. He also is getting into print a very important idea: that there will be a bloodbath if the US just ups and leaves.

There is clearly a consensus among senior U.S. commanders in Iraq that the answer to the first question is yes. They feel that so much has been sacrificed already that it makes no sense to quit now. Lt. Gen. James Dubik, in charge of training and equipping Iraqi forces, said the counterinsurgency strategy, not fully implemented until June, has finally wrested the initiative from the insurgents.

"It was fought over and died for, and there's no reason to give it back right now," Dubik told AP.

On compelling Iraq's political leaders to move toward reconciliation, few American officers appear to believe that an early pullout would do the trick. They think it would propel the country further into chaos.

Crocker is explicit on that point.

"A massive human catastrophe (could follow), with the bloodshed among the Iraqi civilians on a scale we have not seen and may find hard to imagine," he told AP.

As I read this, I suspected that Burns would like the US to leave Iraq (I may be wrong in that, if so, I apologize for jumping to a conclusion) but it also reads as if he is too honest to disregard clear evidence of real progress. Read the whole thing yourself, though. It's an important piece, I think.

Again, Burns is not at all sure what the outcome will be, but he is also, very definitely, not saying that America is in a hopeless position there. Signs of real progress are evident. He also is getting into print a very important idea: that there will be a bloodbath if the US just ups and leaves.

There is clearly a consensus among senior U.S. commanders in Iraq that the answer to the first question is yes. They feel that so much has been sacrificed already that it makes no sense to quit now. Lt. Gen. James Dubik, in charge of training and equipping Iraqi forces, said the counterinsurgency strategy, not fully implemented until June, has finally wrested the initiative from the insurgents.

"It was fought over and died for, and there's no reason to give it back right now," Dubik told AP.

On compelling Iraq's political leaders to move toward reconciliation, few American officers appear to believe that an early pullout would do the trick. They think it would propel the country further into chaos.

Crocker is explicit on that point.

"A massive human catastrophe (could follow), with the bloodshed among the Iraqi civilians on a scale we have not seen and may find hard to imagine," he told AP.

As I read this, I suspected that Burns would like the US to leave Iraq (I may be wrong in that, if so, I apologize for jumping to a conclusion) but it also reads as if he is too honest to disregard clear evidence of real progress. Read the whole thing yourself, though. It's an important piece, I think.