Keep Your Eye on the Benchmarks

Tina Susman writes in the Los Angeles Times: "More than two months after the United States and Iraq launched a new plan to stanch the capital's violence, life for residents has become a game of choices dictated by concrete barriers, traffic-choking checkpoints and the latest market bombing.

"U.S. and Iraqi officials cite trends they say indicate progress: fewer death squad killings, a rising number of suspected insurgents detained, more troops on the ground. But such data mean little to Iraqis whose lives have been upended by invasion, civil war and now the latest security clampdown. For them, the plan is only as good as the calm it can bring to their neighborhoods, streets, and families. That has been as varied as the violence itself, which on any given day might result in 100 deaths, or 10.

"In interviews in Sunni, Shiite, and mixed areas where U.S. and Iraqi troops are now stationed, a minority of Iraqis said the security plan had made their lives better. Most said any optimism they had felt at the start had faded in the face of continued violence and additional headaches brought about by checkpoints and road closures."

State of Play

Jonathan Weisman writes in The Washington Post: "The House last night brushed aside weeks of angry White House rhetoric and veto threats to narrowly approve a $124 billion war spending bill that requires troop withdrawal from Iraq to begin by Oct. 1, with a goal of ending U.S. combat operations there by next March.

"The Senate is expected to follow the House's 218 to 208 vote with final passage today, completing work on the rarest of bills: legislation to try to end a major war as fighting still rages. Democrats hope to send the measure to the White House on Monday, almost exactly four years after President Bush declared an end to major combat in a speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. That would be a particularly pungent political anniversary for Bush to deliver only the second veto of his presidency."

Bush's Argument

Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey write for Newsweek that Bush's central argument against the Democratic proposal "is based on a doomsday scenario for Iraq, where troop withdrawals turn the country into a sanctuary for Al Qaeda and a battleground between regional powers. 'Precipitous withdrawal from Iraq is not a plan to bring peace to the region or to make our people safer at home,' Bush said. 'It could unleash chaos in Iraq that could spread across the entire region. It would be an invitation to the enemy to attack America and our friends around the world.'

"But in private, some of Bush's most senior aides dispute that scenario. One senior administration official with extensive knowledge of the region, who didn't want to be identified discussing sensitive policy matters, tells Newsweek that the chances of a regional war in Iraq are low in the event of a U.S. withdrawal. When asked if a regional war would break out, the official said: 'Possibly, not probably. It's more likely that other powers would support their favorite militias, as they're doing already.'"

Opinion Watch

The New York Times editorial board writes: "If President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney believe the belligerently partisan and misleading things they have been saying about Congress's war spending bill, their grip on the few options left in this disastrous war is even more tenuous than we'd guessed. The sooner Mr. Bush and his allies drop the pretense that military victory is still possible in Iraq and their charges of 'defeatism' against those who know better, the closer the nation will be to rescuing what can still be rescued from the debacle."

Richard Clarke writes in a New York Daily News op-ed: "Does the President think terrorists are puppy dogs? He keeps saying that terrorists will 'follow us home' like lost dogs. This will only happen, however, he says, if we 'lose' in Iraq. . . .

"How is this odd terrorist puppy dog behavior supposed to work? The President must believe that terrorists are playing by some odd rules of chivalry. Would this be the 'only one slaughter ground at a time' rule of terrorism?

"Of course, nothing about our being 'over there' in any way prevents terrorists from coming here. Quite the opposite, the evidence is overwhelming that our presence provides motivation for people throughout the Arab world to become anti-American terrorists. . . .

"[I]n the fantasyland of illogic in which the President dwells, shaped by slogans devised by spin doctors, America can 'win' in Iraq. Then, we are to believe, the terrorists will be so demoralized that they will recant their beliefs and cease their terrorist ways.