Repubs need to get real on Iraq, but McCain and Lieberman are indulging in fantasy

US Senate heavyweights call for more troops in Iraq

by Jay Deshmukh
1 hour, 39 minutes ago

BAGHDAD (AFP) - A high-level US congressional delegation visiting Iraq called for between 15,000 and 30,000 more US troops to be sent to bring stability to the war-torn country.

"The situation is very, very serious. It requires injection of additional troops to control the situation and allow the political process to proceed," said Arizona's powerful Senator John McCain.

Asked how many additional troops would be needed, McCain said: "I'm not an expert, but five to 10 additional brigades are being discussed."

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"I do not know where they will come from. I am told time after time that United States can handle other contingencies like North Korea and Iran so it seems to me that we can come up with troops to have here."

Four of the other five members of the delegation, which included independent Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman, who was the Democratic vice-presidential candidate in 2000, also supported the call for more troops.

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The GOP's Iraq Two-Step

The front-runners for the Republican presidential nomination can't seem to get real about the war.
By Harold Meyerson
Web Exclusive: 12.14.06

Where do the Republicans' likely 2008 presidential candidates come down on Iraq?

You might think that a decent regard for the opinions of their fellow citizens, as registered in last month's elections, would rouse them from their Bushian dreams of victory in what has become a savage intra-Islamic war where the very notion of an American triumph makes no sense whatever.

You might think that, with the president's approval rating now sunk to near-Nixonian depths, Republican leaders, for their own good as well as their country's, might want to withdraw our men and women from Iraq before the next election.

But that would require the Republicans -- leaders and rank-and-file both -- to become a reality-based party. If their leading candidates are any indication, however, they're not yet willing to make that leap.

Front-runner John McCain, for instance, calls for a major increase in the size of the U.S. force and, with his fellow neoconservatives, rejects the Baker-Hamilton report because it rules out victory as a plausible option. "There's only one thing worse than an overstressed Army and Marine Corps," McCain said, "and that's a defeated Army and Marine Corps."

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McCain's position, at least, is sincerely held, as befits a candidate whose calling card is his integrity. Still, integrity in the pursuit of fantasy is no virtue. Lee Hamilton's estimate that we'd need to deploy an additional 50,000 to 100,000 troops "on a sustained basis" to reestablish order in Iraq sounds about right -- putting aside the question of what the Sunnis and Shiites would do when the troops finally left. But we don't have the troops. Some Army and Marine units in Iraq are on their third deployment. Who else, exactly, would McCain deploy? Customs agents? The Woodcraft Rangers? The editors of the Weekly Standard?

There's also the little matter of waning public support for the war.

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US general urges political, economic steps in Iraq

By Ibon Villelabeitia
Thu Dec 14, 10:45 AM ET

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The new U.S. operational commander in Iraq urged the Iraqi government on Thursday to take more political and economic steps to ease sectarian violence, including holding regional elections in 2007 and creating jobs.

"This is not just a military solution," Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno told reporters at a ceremony in Baghdad where he officially assumed day-to-day control of U.S. troops in Iraq.

"It's a combination of diplomatic, economic and military programs that have to move forward within Baghdad to get the security fixed."

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Chiarelli has been a leading proponent of the view that military might alone will not end violence and that progress is needed in creating jobs and reconciling warring communities to ease violence more than three years after the invasion.

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As sectarian violence between majority Shi'ites and once- dominant Sunnis threatens to plunge the country into all-out civil war and U.S. casualties soar, American commanders and officials have been pushing for a larger U.S. effort in achieving political reconciliation and economic reconstruction.

"We have been talking about it for three years, but we have to work to get people back to work," said Odierno, whose son, a captain in the U.S. Army, lost an arm in combat in Baghdad.

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