September 10, 2007
Liveblogging The House Iraq Report Hearing
3:13. Hurray, 5-minute recess.
3:08. Petraeus sees little chance that al-Qaida in Iraq fighters will take over the country. Does this mean the White House will drop its language on terrorists in Iraq following U.S. troops home? Another example of how dicey the work of securing and unifying Iraq is: Crocker thanks anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr for his recent pledge to lay down arms, while acknowledging that not all factions of his militia are doing so. Certainly, the U.S. could use al-Sadr's cooperation, even as soldiers try to route his militia's fighters.
3:02. Here's that MoveOn ad again....
Ros-Lehtinen: Mr. Chairman, everyone here should disavow that despicable ad.Unidentified member: Mr. Chairman, no one here is associated with that ad, so we shouldn't have to disavow it.
Ros-Lehtinen: [making a face] Take it easy, jeez.
2:49. Crocker earlier complained about interference from Iran in the ethnosectarian violence in Iraq. Asked by Lantos why the U.S. hasn't brought Tehran in more, Crocker responds, "The Iranians were interested in simply the appearance of discussions.... rather than serious business."
The White House has conditioned diplomatic talks on Tehran staunching the flow of arms into Iraq. In the meantime, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appears to have delighted in photo ops meant to concern or even tick off Washington. Critics wonder why the White House doesn't reach out to Tehran more, but it's not clear how much Shiite-dominated Iran is actually interested in a stabilized, pro-Western Iraq.
Crocker said the U.S. was taking a we'll-believe-it-when-we-see-it approach. "As a first step, the Iranians taking some measures on the ground to qualitatively improve Iraqi security, which they say is in their own interests.... If they are willing to do that, then we're willing to discuss other areas of cooperation."
2:44. We're on to the Q&A portion of the program. Lantos asks why other commanders in the region want a speedier drawdown of forces. Petraeus says he doesn't know what Lantos is talking about. The Joint Chiefs of Staff and CentCom commander Admiral William Fallon have all signed off on his recommendations, Petraeus says.
2:40. Crocker: You're frustrated, I'm frustrated, we're all frustrated. He insists the Iraqis are serious about making political progress -- a counter to the way the Iraqi Parliament was mocked and ridiculed for taking that month-long break this summer. Crocker concedes that few of the legislative benchmarks established by Congress have been hit, but insists that it "does not mean there has been no progress toward reconciliation."
2:33. Crocker just answered our earlier question. The U.S. government will continue to pursue a functional, centralized government in Iraq "while recognizing that progress on this front may come in many forms and is up to the Iraqis themselves." In other words, if we never see a parliamentary democracy in a unified Iraq, that's not necessarily a failure. If they can't get along, if they spread out into different states, so be it. Not what Bush initially envisioned, to be sure, but it may have to do.
2:20. Of the two, Crocker has a tougher road to hoe here. Provincial governments are seeing some degree of success, but the "key challenge for Iraqis now is to link the progress" there "to the central government in Baghdad." Iraq's dysfunctional central government is proving to be the Chinese box of this entire debate. Two reasons to hope, Crocker says: that Iraqis have "overwhelmingly rejected" rule by al-Qaida, and the tentative political accord reached in August.
2:06. Crocker seems to be addressing his opening statement to Americans who get worked up about why Iraqis appear to have abdicated control and responsibility for their country to the U.S. "Evaluating any Iraqi today only makes sense in a historical context," he says. Describing Iraqi society as "traumatized" by decades of dictatorship, he calls for patience on the political front.
2:00. Skelton is threatening to prosecute the screaming Code Pink ladies. We feel pretty confident in positing that these protesters will never, ever change their minds about this war. Does that level of obstinacy have any place in a debate? [2:28. One of the Gaters says this is an unfair statement. Agreed; we meant to question the usefulness of obstinacy, which is in the eye of the beholder. Scratch that statement.]
2:00. What did we say about the funny hats???
1:53. OK, feeling the need to use exclamation marks. Petraeus has just laid out an exit strategy complete with calendar markers, sort of, which few people were expecting to be proffered in detail. A Marine expeditionary unit scheduled to withdraw this month will not be replaced, then a brigade combat team will rotate out in mid-December, followed by others in the first seven months of 2008 until the U.S. presence is back down to pre-surge levels of 15 combat teams in the summer. He foresees being able to further reduce troops then, but says laying out a plan for that at this moment would be "premature."
1:38. Petraeus is defending himself against that MoveOn ad. "We conduct considerable data collection [in the] coalition and Iraqi operations centers," he says, after declaring he and other commanders do not base their assessments on "gut feel." He insists that DOD's data "is conducted with rigor and consistency."
Casualties are down, but some experts believe that is due to ethnosectarian segregation, which yesterday's New York Times front page story characterized as the disappearance of mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods. We know that Shiites are being purged out of Sunni-dominated neighborhoods and vice-versa, and some experts contend that the decrease in bodies found around neighborhoods is due to those purges being all but complete. (See the charts on p. 34 of the Independent Commssion on the Security Forces in Iraq [PDF] report.) So here's a question: Has the coalition given up on peaceful, mixed ethnic neighborhoods in Iraq? Is it settling for a de facto divvying up of Iraq?
1:32. Petraeus: We can reduce troops to pre-surge levels by next summer without jeopardizing the gains we are about to achieve. That's the big news everyone's been waiting for.
1:29. And we're back. Petraeus is delivering his opening statement, which he wrote himself and did not submit to the Pentagon or White House for vetting, he says.
1:25. Still in recess. Those of you watching on cable might have missed this testy exchange. Republican Dan Burton, who sits on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, waved down Skelton to ask him to get the protesters out of there. Skelton shot back that he didn't "need a lecture."
Later, Burton walked up to Skelton to whisper that he wasn't lecturing. Skelton discreetly shot back, "The hell you weren't!" Ah, microphones.
1:23. Skelton admits defeat to technical problems. Five-minute recess.
1:21. Ugh, more protesters. Can't the Capitol Police tell by their funny hats? "That really pisses me off," Hunter says. We can hear him and Skelton strategizing about how to get the protesters out of there before they can cause a disturbance. Hopefully this isn't the only display of bipartisanship we see today.
1:17. Uh-oh, mic troubles. Typical.
1:10. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., is also unhappy with the MoveOn ad, calling it "outrageous and deplorable." She states that it is too early to assess the overall success of the surge, which may be correct -- the final brigade arrived in June, and the surge brigades are going to rotate out beginning in the spring. "We have a long way to go on this difficult road," she says. "Our own history reminds us of how difficult this road is and also of how worthy is the goal."
1:04. Republican Duncan Hunter is clearly not happy with the fait accompli tone of this hearing so far. "We have spent the last week preparing the battlefield," he says, referring to the war over the war. And he's the first to call out the full-page MoveOn ad in the New York Times today that derisively refers to Petraeus as "General Betray Us." When he's done, Skelton (?) states once again that Petraeus is the right man for the job and should not be blamed for the failings of the war.
12:56. Lantos to Nouri al-Maliki: "The free ride is over." Impatience is hardly a good reason to end a war. The lack of cooperation from Iraq's leaders is.
As long as U.S. troops remain on the ground in large numbers, Lantos says, "There is no reason, none at all, for the Iraqis themselves to step up. It is their country and it is their turn."
Most Americans, and even Iraqis, agree. As for Petraeus' indication that he can live with a tiny drawdown of about 4,000 troops early next year: "Removing a brigade is nothing but a political whisper."
12:50. Tom Lantos is up, and with a nearly foolproof argument against the "surge" strategy at that.
The California rep knows that Petraeus will argue that the surge is working and that military operations in Iraq should continue, and Lantos counters, "The current escalation in our military presence in Iraq may have resulted in technical successes, but strategically the escalation has failed." His reason: There is no political progress, and political progress was the point. Petraeus has acknowledged as much, and yet he is expected to argue that current operations should continue. We're about to see how he goes about doing this.
12:42. Republicans are making a big to-do that anti-war Democrats are tempering their calls for a withdrawal, but it might be more accurate to characterize this shift as a reluctant and cautious nod to reality. "The surge is just the latest in a series of tactical operations," Skelton says. "This is Iraq, and nothing has been easy there."
This next bit is pretty telling: "Petraeus is almost certainly the right man for the job in Iraq. But he's the right person three years too late." It's not that U.S. troops shouldn't be there or should never have gone there, necessarily. It's that the war was badly managed from the beginning, and the damage is irreversible. Are anti-war Democrats "defeatists" for coming to this conclusion about the war? Not when they have President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld to shoulder the blame.
12:35. "We have the pleasure to welcome two of America's finest," Skelton says. "Let me remind members that we are receiving the best judgment of these fine leaders." A necessary message for some of his fellow Democratic members, who seem to have already decided they know what Petraeus and Crocker are going to report today.
12:33. OK, protesters already. Chairman Ike Skelton speedily orders them escorted out. "No disturbances will be tolerated." Got that, Code Pink?
12:29. Welcome to The Gate's liveblog coverage of Gen. David Petraeus' and Ambassador Ryan Crocker's testimony before the House Armed Services Committee. Petraeus, as most of you well know, is the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, and Crocker is the U.S. ambassador there. FOX News is threatening to cut into its coverage with the Phil Specter murder trial verdict (really?) so we're watching C-SPAN 3's webcast.
So far, lots of handshaking and hugs as Petraeus and Crocker make their way through the hearing room. It's easy to forget in the heated frenzy of the war debate how highly respected these men are. That said, the overall negativity of independent assessments of the war released last week is fueling skepticism about the new "surge" strategy. For both these men, this hearing will be no cakewalk.
Posted at 3:17 PM
