WaPo: Reports of Progress In Iraq Challenged

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/09/AR2007030902017.html

Reports of Progress In Iraq Challenged
Critics Cite Administration's Past Rhetoric

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 10, 2007; Page A14

President Bush on Tuesday cited "encouraging signs" of military and political progress in Iraq as his new strategy gets underway. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice noted that "things are going reasonably well." And on Thursday, Rice's special coordinator for Iraq, David M. Satterfield, described a "dramatic decrease" in sectarian attacks in Baghdad since Bush's plan was announced in January.

But a number of analysts and critics said this week that some of those signs indicate less progress than the administration has suggested. Sectarian attacks in Baghdad are down at the moment, but the deaths of Iraqi civilians and U.S. troops have increased outside the capital. Though Iraqi leaders have agreed on a new framework law for oil resources, the details of how the oil revenue will be divided among competing Iraqi groups remain unresolved.

"If I were the president, I'd probably seize on every encouraging sign," said Anthony H. Cordesman, an Iraq expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "As an analyst, that isn't what we do."

Bush prefaced his report, given in a speech to the American Legion, by saying that it is too early to judge success. Others have added similar caveats. "I think people have been badly burned by letting hopes outride analysis" in the past, said one senior administration official, "and there is going to be a genuinely careful look at everything before saying it." Though there are positive indicators, he said, "right now there is no trend."

The administration is under public and congressional pressure to justify the troops and the money it says the new Iraq strategy requires, and Bush is anxious to show that events are vindicating his strategy. The deployment of 21,500 additional troops has already begun, even as Congress debates proposals to withdraw U.S. forces and begins considering the president's request for $100 billion in supplemental funds for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars this spring. The administration also plans to seek $145 billion more in October -- over and above its defense budget request of nearly half a trillion dollars for fiscal 2008.

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