Critics Say 'Surge' Is More of The Same

Leon E. Panetta, a member of the Iraq Study Group, which recently delivered a wide-ranging set of recommendations about the way forward in Iraq, said in an interview that the test for him of the seriousness of the president's proposal will be whether Bush, in fact, conditions continued U.S. involvement on tangible progress from the Iraqi government.

"There has got to be some prospect that we are not just going to continue an open-ended commitment," said Panetta, who served in the Clinton White House as chief of staff.

As of yesterday, the president had not settled on a precise plan for adding to the 132,000 U.S. troops already in Iraq, officials said. Senior military and administration officials privately admit their deep concerns that the troop increase will backfire -- and leave the United States with no options left in six to eight months.

They note that since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the U.S. military has repeatedly carried out temporary troop increases of more than 20,000, but violence has continued to rise. The main difference under the new plan is that additional troops would be concentrated in the Baghdad vicinity, where there are currently seven U.S. brigades, and the increase could last longer, from six to 12 months, Pentagon officials said.

Meanwhile, the Joint Chiefs of Staff are worried about overstretching the Army and Marines.

The active-duty Army and Marine Corps lack a significant pool of ready and available forces to send to Iraq. The Army has one fully ready brigade of 3,500 to 4,000 troops on alert to deploy at any time. That on-alert brigade, most recently from the 82nd Airborne Division, has left for Kuwait in what could be the first phase of a troop increase, requiring that another unit take its place.

As a result, increasing ground troops would depend largely on extending units' time in Iraq and accelerating those preparing to go -- meaning longer war-zone tours and shorter periods back home for thousands of soldiers and Marines.

Under the plan, for instance, Army brigades would leave for Iraq sooner than planned, meaning soldiers would have less than 12 months at home to train and rebuild between tours -- a "red line" that outgoing Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker said he did not want to cross, according to a senior military official.

During its two-month interagency review, the Bush administration has struggled the most to come up with proposals to jump-start the stalled political process in Iraq, according to U.S. officials and Western diplomats. The fate of the revised strategy will be determined as much by new movement on Iraq's combustible political front as by success on the battlefield, administration officials said.

But the emerging package looks slim and, absent last-minute additions, appears to be more of the same, according to sources who have been briefed.

The centerpiece of the political plan is the creation of a national reconciliation government that would bring together the two main Shiite parties with the two largest Kurdish parties and the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials. The goal is to marginalize Moqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the largest and most powerful Shiite militia and head of a group that has 30 seats in parliament and five cabinet posts.

To ensure participation of Sunni moderates, the Bush administration is pressing the Maliki government to take three other major steps: Amend the constitution to address Sunni concerns, pass a law on the distribution of Iraq's oil revenue and change the ruling that forbids the participation of former Baath Party officials.

The three major economic options on the table would revive dormant state-owned industries, launch a micro-finance program to give small loans to generate new businesses and expand a U.S. Agency for International Development stabilization program.

A fourth option would add major funds to a short-term work program to hire Iraqis to clean up trash or do repairs after U.S. and Iraqi troops secure neighborhoods. This Pentagon-run program is a way to lure unemployed men who had joined militias back into the mainstream economy, at least briefly, with the U.S. intention that Iraq would eventually spend its own money to create permanent jobs.

The idea to revive state-owned industries has come full circle. Iraq's economy under Saddam Hussein was state-controlled. When the first U.S. team arrived, its members looked to reenergize the industries as a key element in jump-starting the economy. But the subsequent Coalition Provisional Authority, run by L. Paul Bremer, opted to scrap the effort and emphasize a free-market economy, even though Iraq was ill equipped to make a dramatic conversion. The failure of a free market and the lack of both local and foreign investment has led the Defense Department to launch a massive reassessment.

Apparently absent from the final Iraq plan is any effort to engage Syria and Iran in trying to stabilize the country, a key recommendation from the Iraq Study Group, though the president will probably talk about new efforts to try to jump-start the Arab-Israeli peace process. Rice is expected to visit the Middle East to launch the effort later this month.