WASHINGTON -- Most Iraqi military units arriving in Baghdad for an American-led security crackdown have only 75 percent of their assigned soldiers, a senior Army general said Wednesday.
About one in six Iraqi policemen trained by U.S. forces has been killed or wounded, has deserted or has just disappeared.
The slow development of Iraqi security forces, along with continued sectarian violence, raises doubts about when Iraq will be able to stand on its own and what the consequences of an early U.S. troop withdrawal would be.
It also figures prominently in the political debate in Washington over whether President Bush's troop buildup in Iraq, now almost fully in place, will bring the hoped-for stability in Baghdad or should be scrapped as a failure. That debate is expected to reach a high point in September when Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is due to report to Congress and the administration on how it is working.
At the White House, presidential spokesman Tony Snow played down the notion of September as a pivotal time of evaluation.
"My concern is that the expectations that seem to be raised is that suddenly in September there may be an expectation the report says, 'OK, all the problems are solved,"' Snow said. "No. But what will happen in September is that we will have an opportunity to assess what's going on."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., responded later: "I'm not surprised, with the lack of progress in Iraq, that they would want to push it further into the future. But I think that September will be a very important time in the Congress and in our conversation with the president."
In an assessment he termed cautiously optimistic, Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey told a Pentagon news conference that Iraqi security forces are gradually improving in skill and commitment. However, he said, they must be expanded again next year to fill gaps in units in Baghdad.
His remarks were largely in line with a report submitted to Congress on Wednesday in which the Pentagon said it was too early to judge how the Baghdad security plan was working. It said Iraqi forces are generally performing up to expectations, but there are troubling indications that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is not living up fully to his promise not to allow political interference in execution of the security crackdown.
"Sectarian-based decisions have been made within the Iraqi government and its military and police forces," the report said. The report is the eighth in a series required by Congress to provide assessments of political, security and economic developments in Iraq.
It said violence in Iraq, as measured by casualties among Iraqi civilians and Iraqi and American troops, edged higher in the February-May period, despite the security buildup in Baghdad. Violence declined in the capital but was notably higher in surrounding areas and in Nineva and Diyala provinces.
Dempsey just completed a 22-month tour in Iraq as head of perhaps the most challenging U.S. military mission there -- to train and equip the Iraqi army and police so they can eventually replace U.S. troops.
Based on an assessment of Iraqi security forces' performance so far in the Baghdad security push, which began in February, Dempsey said it was recently decided that Iraqi forces should be increased by an additional 20,000 this year -- on top of a 45,000 increase initiated last year -- to a total of 390,000 soldiers and police.
In addition, U.S. commanders see a need for yet another increase in 2008, Dempsey said. He offered no numbers.
Dempsey said the 2008 increase would take into consideration the continuing violence, lessons learned during the U.S. buildup for the ongoing Baghdad security operation and the fact that "at some point we should anticipate a decline in U.S. forces and should build the Iraqi army ... in anticipation of that."
He was expanding on his testimony Tuesday before a House subcommittee. And his comments came as Iraqi police were detained in the investigation of a spectacular bombing at a Shiite shrine in Samarra -- bringing to the fore again the question of how much of the new force has been infiltrated by militants.
Asked about Dempsey's disclosure of plans for another expansion of the Iraqi forces, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters traveling with him in Germany that it was "just a realistic assessment based on conditions on the ground" in Iraq. And he added that the size of the increase was uncertain.
"The need for additional forces," Gates said -- which he then referred to as a forecast rather than a fact -- "these forecasts are not, in my opinion, are not written in stone. They're estimates on what they expect the need will be."
Dempsey said the first Iraqi army battalions that came to Baghdad as part of the U.S.-led security push earlier this year arrived with 50 percent to 60 percent of their assigned soldiers. The units that replaced them did better, at 75 percent, he said.
Asked whether he expected the next Iraqi units to rotate into Baghdad to be even more thinly manned and less capable than those operating in the capital now, Dempsey replied, "I'm absolutely convinced that's exactly what we'll see."
(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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