Zilmer: U.S. 'Stifling' Iraq Insurgency

An Iraqi army soldier stands guard at the site of a car bomb explosion, in Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday Sept.12, 2006. A parked car bomb detonated Tuesday in Baghdad's upscale Mansour neighborhood, killing at least six people and wounding 18 others, police said. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban) (Hadi Mizban - AP)

"Until those things change, until those long-term effects are realized, then trying to solve the insurgency out here is going to be problematic," he said.

White House press secretary Tony Snow said President Bush would be talking to Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, later this week.

"If the president gets a recommendation from the combatant commanders to send more troops to al-Anbar province, they will get them," Snow said.

As of Monday there were 147,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, the highest number since December 2005. Most of the recent increase was for Baghdad, where U.S. and Iraqi forces are trying to avert a civil war.

Pentagon officials hastily arranged the interview with Zilmer in response to a series of news reports about a classified report by the chief of intelligence for the Marines in western Anbar province, Col. Pete Devlin. Zilmer said he agreed with the assessment by Devlin, who works for Zilmer, and he did not dispute news reports that characterized it as depicting Anbar as locked in a military stalemate with inadequate political progress.

The classified report was first reported by the Washington Post.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that the Devlin report concluded that Anbar's political and security situation will continue to deteriorate unless it gets a major infusion of aid and substantially more U.S. troops.

Zilmer would not discuss specifics of the Devlin report, but said he did not want more U.S. troops as long as his mission did not include defeating the insurgency.

The Devlin assessment was made in mid-August.

Before the telephone interview, Zilmer issued a written and a video statement.

"Recent media reports fail to accurately capture the entirety and complexity of the current situation," Zilmer said in his written statement.

He added that the assessment "which has been referred to in these reports, was intended to focus on the causes of the insurgency. It was not intended to address the positive effects Coalition and Iraqi forces have achieved on the security environment over the past years."

Zilmer acknowledged, however, that "there is an active insurgency in Anbar. The enemy we face has no concern for the welfare of the Iraqi people, nor any peaceful vision for their future. We believe the Iraqi people want something more and are willing to fight and die for it."