Wednesday, September 12, 2007

M ethodical and detailed as they were over two days of grueling testimony, Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker did not -- and could not -- answer the central question weighing on the mind of Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine).

"What is the way forward?" she asked glumly as the Senate hearings droned on yesterday evening. "What are we buying time for?"

The report that so many members of Congress had been waiting for all summer failed to move the maverick Republican an inch. In the end, she was not surprised. The troop increase, Snowe said, was predicated all along on creating enough "breathing space" to allow Iraqis to come together in political reconciliation and to stand up security forces that could hold together their own country. It did not take a general and an ambassador to make it clear that neither of those goals had been attained, nor could Petraeus and Crocker say that they had.

"They couldn't go beyond what they knew was true," Snowe said.

Nor was she impressed with Petraeus's offer to allow one Marine expeditionary unit to return home this month, one Army combat brigade to redeploy in December, and enough forces to go home by July 2008 to bring U.S. troop levels back to where they were in January.

"Obviously, we're pleased he suggested some redeployment rather than no redeployment of troops," she said. "But we're still where we were back in June and July. And we didn't hear how maintaining that level of commitment by our forces and by our military will bring about national reconciliation."

-- Jonathan Weisman