Congress To Hear Of Gains In Iraq

The most "positive spin I can put on it," the official said, is that "the Iraqi Army didn't cut and run." The Mahdi Army, also known as Jaish al-Mahdi, or JAM, "did not prevail. Did the Iraqi Army rout JAM? No."

Rep. Duncan Hunter (Calif.), a leading backer of President Bush's strategy and the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, one of four panels for which Petraeus and Crocker will testify over two days, said "I want to see the specifics" of Iraqi military performance."

Petraeus is expected to cite Iranian assistance to Mahdi Army forces as another reason to carefully consider any further troop withdrawals. But U.S. intelligence officials have noted that Iran has also provided training and weapons to all Shiite militias, including those allied with Maliki. "One reality of Basra is that you have Iranian-influenced organizations fighting each other," said one intelligence official. "On multiple levels, Iran has its hooks" in all of them, the official added.

While Crocker is expected to point to Iraq's passage of militia amnesty and a reversal of de-Baathification laws, along with legislation to authorize provincial elections in October, the Maliki government remains gridlocked on electoral procedures that must be agreed upon as well as on new oil legislation. At least one-quarter of cabinet seats remain vacant or are only nominally filled.

At the same time, the government has not responded to U.S. demands that it speed up the process of incorporating members of the largely Sunni "Sons of Iraq" into the official security forces or establishing a comprehensive employment program for them. Nearly 90,000 members of the all-volunteer force, which the administration has touted as evidence that Sunnis have turned against the insurgency, remain on the U.S. payroll.

Crocker has frequently used the metaphor of a ticking timepiece to warn against unreasonable U.S. expectations for Iraqi political movement. Washington's clock, he says, moves far faster than Baghdad's. But lawmakers raised concerns that the administration has made too few demands on Iraq. With the possibility of a Democratic administration that may quickly withdraw troops, and as Bush negotiates a new strategic framework for the U.S. military in Iraq, they argued, the president's leverage with Maliki has never been higher.

"The debate over how much progress we have made in the last year may be less illuminating than determining whether the administration is finally defining a clear political-military strategy," said Sen. Richard G. Lugar (Ind.), the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee.

Stability gains garnered by an increase in U.S. troops last year "are very nice to have," said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), "but essentially they're meaningless. We're going to try to get Petraeus to look at the broader sense of 'What does this all mean?' You've got this temporary gain in security, so where do you go? What is it that's going to make [the Iraqis] face up to the time when we leave?"

Warner said he wants to ask Petraeus for a better answer to the question the senator posed in September: Is the administration's strategy in Iraq "making America safer"? Petraeus, Warner recalled, replied "I don't know."

This time, Warner said, he wants "a full and complete answer which will justify the sacrifice and courage that our troops have shown since his last appearance."

Staff writers Jonathan Weisman and Walter Pincus contributed to this report.