Doubts Run Deep on Reforms Crucial to Bush's Iraq Strategy

They closely examined the makeup of Iraq's 275-seat parliament, where a no-confidence vote requires only a simple majority. Maliki's Dawa party is part of the Hakim-led United Iraqi Alliance, the largest Shiite group, with 130 seats. Making a strong case for SCIRI, some argued that the Iraqis themselves were so fed up with Maliki that a different governing coalition is possible with realigned Sunni and Kurdish elements. This view found proponents in the White House and Pentagon, and it extended into parts of the normally more cautious State Department.

Maliki, whose Dawa party holds 12 seats in the parliament, was seen as unwilling to separate voluntarily from his existing power base -- dominated by the violent and unruly Baghdad-based Jaish al-Mahdi militia, also known as the Mahdi Army, of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. With a new coalition, the Alliance would not need Sadr's 30 seats.

SCIRI's own militia, the Badr Organization, is seen as more cohesive, "an actual organization with command and control" that might be integrated into the Iraqi military, said one State Department official. The administration has charged that both the Sadr and Badr militias receive assistance from Iran. But officials regularly note that Badr forces have not attacked the U.S. military and that SCIRI has voiced equal opposition to Iranian and U.S. domination.

Other officials find that view naive, noting that evidence of Iran's involvement in Iraqi violence was found in a SCIRI compound during a raid last month.

Several officials said they believe that Hakim's backers in the Bush administration have been seduced by his forceful demeanor and Abdul Mahdi's fluent English. And while many emphasized the importance of a single, visible Iraqi leader, others have said it is a mistake to personalize the policy in one Shiite actor.

After extensive discussions last month with Maliki, Hakim and Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, the most senior Sunni in the Iraqi government, policymakers decided to place their bets on Maliki. "We judge that Maliki does not wish to fail in his role," National Intelligence Council Chairman Thomas Fingar told Congress in a tepid endorsement recently. "He has some, but not all, of the obvious requirements for success."

In any case, replacing Maliki was determined to be "too hard," in the words of one analyst. A two-thirds parliamentary majority is required to install a new prime minister, and any attempt to remove Maliki by parliamentary maneuver, it was agreed, should remain a Plan B that Iraqis themselves would undertake if he failed to produce results.

So far, Maliki has said the right things about cracking down on the sectarian violence -- including by Sadr's militia -- that is tearing Baghdad apart. But there are worrisome signs. A parliamentary session late last month in which Maliki introduced the new plan was adjourned after it erupted in sectarian squabbling in which the prime minister gave as good as he got.

Many experts believe that the administration's effort to build a new political center, supported by "moderate" Sunni allies in the region that fear Shiite Iranian expansion, such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, is hopelessly outdated. "Our struggle may be between moderates and extremists," Brookings Institution scholar Martin Indyk said last month. "Their struggle is between Sunnis and Shias."

New Economic Initiatives

On the economic front, where the United States has already invested more than $38 billion, the administration has asked for $538 million to keep current programs running and has proposed an additional $1.2 billion for new initiatives that it says will receive long-term Iraqi funding.

A combination of violent attacks on previous projects, sectarian favors, inefficient and overly cautious officials, and a complex bureaucracy -- much of it installed by the United States under the post-invasion Coalition Provisional Authority -- has left the Iraqi government with a significant capital surplus in each of the past several years.

Getting approval for reconstruction expenditures in the past, observed one U.S. official, has been like "pushing wet spaghetti." The surplus, which is kept in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, now totals $12.5 billion. Maliki has publicly agreed to spend $10 billion of it on reconstruction and jobs.

The State Department has sent new "tiger teams" to six Iraqi ministries to help clear away the wreckage of the past and speed financing for approved projects, and it plans to double to 20 the number of U.S.-staffed provisional reconstruction teams in Baghdad and around the country.

In addition to Foreign Service officers, experts including small-business advisers and camel veterinarians are being recruited from the U.S. Agriculture Department and elsewhere to staff the teams, the State Department's Iraq coordinator, David Satterfield, told Congress last week.

Former Foreign Service officer Timothy M. Carney, who worked in Iraq in 2003, has been appointed to coordinate the U.S. and Iraqi bureaucracies, to get the Iraqi government's money moving and to make sure that Iraqi funding priorities coincide with the administration's.

But some officials worry that the expanded U.S. presence will repeat the mistakes of the past -- when the United States oversaw virtually every part of the Iraqi government -- and undermine the goal of turning the country over to the Iraqis themselves.

"It's the same old problem as in 2003," cautioned one official. "The same impatience that if they can't do it we'll step in and do it. There is a bit of that creeping into this dialogue."

Staff writers Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Michael Abramowitz contributed to this report.