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U.S. Lowers Sights On What Can Be Achieved in Iraq
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Topic Started: Aug 15 2005, 11:21 AM (287 Views)
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gvok
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Aug 15 2005, 11:21 AM
Post #1
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source
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U.S. Lowers Sights On What Can Be Achieved in Iraq Administration Is Shedding 'Unreality' That Dominated Invasion, Official Says
By Robin Wright and Ellen Knickmeyer Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, August 14, 2005; Page A01
The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.
The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.
Administration officials still emphasize how much they have achieved despite the chaos that followed the invasion and the escalating insurgency. "Iraqis are taking control of their country, building a free nation that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself. And we're helping Iraqis succeed," President Bush said yesterday in his radio address.
Iraqi officials yesterday struggled to agree on a draft constitution by a deadline of tomorrow so the document can be submitted to a vote in October. The political transition would be completed in December by elections for a permanent government.
But the realities of daily life are a constant reminder of how the initial U.S. ambitions have not been fulfilled in ways that Americans and Iraqis once anticipated. Many of Baghdad's 6 million people go without electricity for days in 120-degree heat. Parents fearful of kidnapping are keeping children indoors.
Barbers post signs saying they do not shave men, after months of barbers being killed by religious extremists. Ethnic or religious-based militias police the northern and southern portions of Iraq. Analysts estimate that in the whole of Iraq, unemployment is 50 percent to 65 percent.
U.S. officials say no turning point forced a reassessment. "It happened rather gradually," said the senior official, triggered by everything from the insurgency to shifting budgets to U.S. personnel changes in Baghdad.
The ferocious debate over a new constitution has particularly driven home the gap between the original U.S. goals and the realities after almost 28 months. The U.S. decision to invade Iraq was justified in part by the goal of establishing a secular and modern Iraq that honors human rights and unites disparate ethnic and religious communities.
But whatever the outcome on specific disputes, the document on which Iraq's future is to be built will require laws to be compliant with Islam. Kurds and Shiites are expecting de facto long-term political privileges. And women's rights will not be as firmly entrenched as Washington has tried to insist, U.S. officials and Iraq analysts say.
"We set out to establish a democracy, but we're slowly realizing we will have some form of Islamic republic," said another U.S. official familiar with policymaking from the beginning, who like some others interviewed would speak candidly only on the condition of anonymity. "That process is being repeated all over."
U.S. officials now acknowledge that they misread the strength of the sentiment among Kurds and Shiites to create a special status. The Shiites' request this month for autonomy to be guaranteed in the constitution stunned the Bush administration, even after more than two years of intense intervention in Iraq's political process, they said.
"We didn't calculate the depths of feeling in both the Kurdish and Shiite communities for a winner-take-all attitude," said Judith S. Yaphe, a former CIA Iraq analyst at the National Defense University.
In the race to meet a sequence of fall deadlines, the process of forging national unity behind the constitution is largely being scrapped, current and former officials involved in the transition said. "Under pressure to get a constitution done, they've lowered their own ambitions in terms of getting a document that is going to be very far-reaching and democratic. We also don't have the time to go through the process we envisioned when we wrote the interim constitution -- to build a democratic culture and consensus through debate over a permanent constitution," he said.
The goal now is to ensure a constitution that can be easily amended later so Iraq can grow into a democracy, U.S. officials say.
On security, the administration originally expected the U.S.-led coalition to be welcomed with rice and rosewater, traditional Arab greetings, with only a limited reaction from loyalists of ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. The surprising scope of the insurgency and influx of foreign fighters has forced Washington to repeatedly lower expectations -- about the time-frame for quelling the insurgency and creating an effective and cohesive Iraqi force capable of stepping in, U.S. officials said.
Killings of members of the Iraqi security force have tripled since January. Iraq's ministry of health estimates that bombings and other attacks have killed 4,000 civilians in Baghdad since Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari's interim government took office April 28.
Last week was the fourth-worst week of the whole war for U.S. military deaths in combat, and August already is the worst month for deaths of members of the National Guard and Reserve.
Attacks on U.S. convoys by insurgents using roadside bombs have doubled over the past year, Army Brig. Gen. Yves Fontaine said Friday. Convoys ferrying food, fuel, water, arms and equipment from Kuwait, Jordan and Turkey are attacked about 30 times a week, Fontaine said.
"There has been a realistic reassessment of what it is possible to achieve in the short term and fashion a partial exit strategy," Yaphe said. "This change is dictated not just by events on the ground but by unrealistic expectations at the start."
Washington now does not expect to fully defeat the insurgency before departing, but instead to diminish it, officials and analysts said. There is also growing talk of turning over security responsibilities to the Iraqi forces even if they are not fully up to original U.S. expectations, in part because they have local legitimacy that U.S. troops often do not.
"We've said we won't leave a day before it's necessary. But necessary is the key word -- necessary for them or for us? When we finally depart, it will probably be for us," a U.S. official said.
Pressed by the cost of fighting an escalating insurgency, U.S. expectations for rebuilding Iraq -- and its $20 billion investment -- have fallen the farthest, current and former officials say.
Pentagon officials originally envisioned Iraq's oil revenue paying many post-invasion expenses. But Iraq, ranked among world leaders behind Saudi Arabia in proven oil reserves, is incapable of producing enough refined fuel amid a car-buying boom that has put an estimated 1 million more vehicles on the road after the invasion. Lines for subsidized cheap gas stretch for miles every day in Baghdad.
The United States had high hopes of quick, big-budget fixes for the electrical power system that would show Iraqis tangible benefits from the ouster of Hussein. But inadequate training for Iraqi staff, regional rivalries restricting the power flow to Baghdad, inadequate fuel for electrical generators and attacks on the infrastructure have contributed to the worst summer of electrical shortages in the capital.
Water is also a "tough, tough" situation in a desert country, said a U.S. official in Baghdad familiar with reconstruction issues. Pumping stations depend on electricity, and engineers now say the system has hundreds of thousands of leaks.
"The most thoroughly dashed expectation was the ability to build a robust self-sustaining economy. We're nowhere near that. State industries, electricity are all below what they were before we got there," said Wayne White, former head of the State Department's Iraq intelligence team who is now at the Middle East Institute. "The administration says Saddam ran down the country. But most damage was from looting [after the invasion], which took down state industries, large private manufacturing, the national electric" system.
Ironically, White said, the initial ambitions may have complicated the U.S. mission: "In order to get out earlier, expectations are going to have to be lower, even much lower. The higher your expectation, the longer you have to stay. Getting out is going to be a more important consideration than the original goals were. They were unrealistic."
Knickmeyer reported from Baghdad.
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gvok
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Aug 15 2005, 11:22 AM
Post #2
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An interesting self evaluation by the administration.
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Admiralbill_gomec
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Aug 15 2005, 12:01 PM
Post #3
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Robin Wright and Ellen Knickmeyer work for the administration? News to me.
They quote "administration officials" and "U.S. officials" and some "senior" Iraqi. The only name is a former CIA analyst. Wait, I forgot "Pentagon officials" too.
This brings my next post to mind. Hang on a second.
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gvok
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Aug 15 2005, 12:02 PM
Post #4
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I figured you'd respond in that manner.
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Admiralbill_gomec
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Aug 15 2005, 12:03 PM
Post #5
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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/15/business...agewanted=print
Titled: Editors Ponder How to Present a Broad Picture of Iraq
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Rosemary Goudreau, the editorial page editor of The Tampa Tribune, has received the same e-mail message a dozen times over the last year.
"Did you know that 47 countries have re-established their embassies in Iraq?" the anonymous polemic asks, in part. "Did you know that 3,100 schools have been renovated?"
"Of course we didn't know!" the message concludes. "Our media doesn't tell us!"
Ms. Goudreau's newspaper, like most dailies in America, relies largely on The Associated Press for its coverage of the Iraq war. So she finally forwarded the e-mail message to Mike Silverman, managing editor of The A.P., asking if there was a way to check these assertions and to put them into context. Like many other journalists, Mr. Silverman had also received a copy of the message.
Ms. Goudreau's query prompted an unusual discussion last month in New York at a regular meeting of editors whose newspapers are members of The Associated Press. Some editors expressed concern that a kind of bunker mentality was preventing reporters in Iraq from getting out and explaining the bigger picture beyond the daily death tolls.
"The bottom-line question was, people wanted to know if we're making progress in Iraq," Ms. Goudreau said, and the A.P. articles were not helping to answer that question.
"It was uncomfortable questioning The A.P., knowing that Iraq is such a dangerous place," she said. "But there's a perception that we're not telling the whole story."
Mr. Silverman said in an interview that he was aware of that perception. "Other editors said they get calls from readers who are hearing stories from returning troops of the good things they have accomplished while there, and readers find that at odds with the generally gloomy portrayal in the papers of what's going on in Iraq," he said.
Mr. Silverman said the editors were asking for help in making sense of the situation. "I was glad to have that discussion with the editors because they have to deal with the perception that the media is emphasizing the negative," he said.
"We're there to report the good and the bad and we try to give due weight to everything going on," he said. "It is unfortunate that the explosions and shootings and fatalities and injuries on some days seem to dominate the news."
Suki Dardarian, deputy managing editor of The Seattle Times and vice president of the board of the Associated Press Managing Editors, said that the discussion was "a pretty healthy one."
"One of the things the editors felt was that as much context as you can bring, the better," Ms. Dardarian said. "They wanted them to get beyond the breaking news to 'What does this mean?' "
She also said that as Mr. Silverman and Kathleen Carroll, The A.P.'s executive editor, responded to the concerns, the editors realized that some questions were impossible to answer. For example, she said, the editors understood that it was much easier to add up the number of dead than to determine how many hospitals received power on a particular day or how many schools were built.
Mr. Silverman said the wire service was covering Iraq "as accurately as we can" while "also trying to keep our people out of harm's way."
"The main obstacle we face," he said, "is the severe limitation on our movement and our ability to get out and report. It's very confining for our staff to go into Baghdad and have to spend most of their time on the fifth floor of the Palestine Hotel," which is home to most of the press corps. The hotel was struck by a tank shell in 2003, killing two journalists.
Iraq remains the most dangerous place in the world to work as a journalist, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. At least 13 media workers have been killed in Iraq so far this year, bringing the total to 50 since the war began in 2003.
"Postwar Iraq is fraught with risks for reporters: Banditry, gunfire and bombings are common," the committee's Web site says. "Insurgents have added a new threat by systematically targeting foreigners, including journalists, and Iraqis who work for them."
Mr. Silverman said The A.P. had already decided before the meeting that it would have Robert H. Reid, an A.P. correspondent at large who has reported frequently from Iraq, write an overview every 10 days.
Mr. Silverman also said the wire service would make more effort to flag articles that look beyond the breaking news. As it turned out, he said, most of the information in the anonymous e-mail message had been reported by The A.P., but the details had been buried in articles or the articles had been overlooked.
Before the meeting, The A.P. collected three articles by reporters for other news organizations who were embedded with American troops and sent them out over the wire to provide "more voice." Mr. Silverman said he wanted to do more of that but the opportunities were limited because there are only three dozen embedded journalists now, compared with 700 when the war began more than two years ago.
Ms. Goudreau, for one, found the discussion useful. By the end, she said, editors were acknowledging that even in their own hometowns, "we're more likely to focus on people who are killed than on the positive news out of a school."
So, the AP sits in their hotel room and reports gloom and doom. Niiiiiiice.
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Admiralbill_gomec
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Aug 15 2005, 12:03 PM
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- gvok
- Aug 15 2005, 11:02 AM
I figured you'd respond in that manner.
Why? Have a problem with facts, do ya?
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gvok
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Aug 15 2005, 12:04 PM
Post #7
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Please. Even you must admit things are not going so well in Iraq and it isn't the fault of the AP.
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Admiralbill_gomec
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Aug 15 2005, 12:07 PM
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- gvok
- Aug 15 2005, 11:04 AM
Please. Even you must admit things are not going so well in Iraq and it isn't the fault of the AP.
Read the article instead of just my comment on it. Things are going A LOT better than what you see every day. EVEN YOU must admit that.
As just an example, did you know:
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"Did you know that 47 countries have re-established their embassies in Iraq?" the anonymous polemic asks, in part. "Did you know that 3,100 schools have been renovated?"
Did you know that 90% of Iraqi children are now in school?
Hmmm?
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gvok
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Aug 15 2005, 12:21 PM
Post #9
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The insurgency is stronger and more deadly than it has ever been.
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Admiralbill_gomec
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Aug 15 2005, 12:28 PM
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- gvok
- Aug 15 2005, 11:21 AM
The insurgency is stronger and more deadly than it has ever been.
Source? How is the insurgency stronger? I won't dispute "deadlier" but is that against American soldiers or IRAQI citizens? By whom? Other Iraqis or imported terrorists?
Once again, ALL YOU SEE IS BAD NEWS. Sources like AP are one of the reasons. Funny that you would think that all the damage happens all over the countries when it is confined to small regions in four provinces.
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gvok
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Aug 15 2005, 12:33 PM
Post #11
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Funny that you would think that all the damage happens all over the countries when it is confined to small regions in four provinces.
What "countries" are you referring to? If by "countries" you are simply refering to Iraq, I don't think I ever made the assertion you feel that I made.
The insurgency is just as strong and stronger than it has ever been as is evident by the number of attacks and the insurgency's ability to execute attacks.
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Admiralbill_gomec
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Aug 15 2005, 12:58 PM
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- gvok
- Aug 15 2005, 11:33 AM
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Funny that you would think that all the damage happens all over the countries when it is confined to small regions in four provinces.
What "countries" are you referring to? If by "countries" you are simply refering to Iraq, I don't think I ever made the assertion you feel that I made. The insurgency is just as strong and stronger than it has ever been as is evident by the number of attacks and the insurgency's ability to execute attacks.
So you think... see AP commentary above.
I'll direct this toward you, instead of the media. "ALL YOU SEE IS BAD NEWS." You are either unable to see or unwilling to look for better news. That AP article could have applied to you personally, sitting at home with your single source of information, only posting items that trash America...
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gvok
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Aug 15 2005, 01:00 PM
Post #13
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The insurgency is stronger and deadlier than it has ever been. That fact is true independent of what you feel I should pay attention to. Stop making everything personal and discuss the issues.
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who
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Aug 15 2005, 01:05 PM
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Have light saber. Will travel.
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I think there has been progress in Iraq, the media does focus on negative news, and terrorism continues there. I think the progress is not as rapid as we would like. It seems the terrorism is somewhat less.
My bigger concern is that of the constitution. There are major issues that are not resolved including the unity of the country and human rights.
We will see what develops. We should all hope that the best develops for Iraq and the world.
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Admiralbill_gomec
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Aug 15 2005, 01:06 PM
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- gvok
- Aug 15 2005, 12:00 PM
The insurgency is stronger and deadlier than it has ever been. That fact is true independent of what you feel I should pay attention to. Stop making everything personal and discuss the issues.
No, they aren't. They may attract more INK from the LSM, but they are not stronger. Of course, hold your hands over your ears, close your eyes, and keep saying LALALALALA at the top of your lungs. Maybe some day, if you are lucky, your desire will come true, but not while we are in Iraq.
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