The top U.S. commander for Iraq conceded Thursday that the Baghdad government has failed to meet policy benchmarks designed to bring political reconciliation and a drop in violence against American troops.
“Clearly, they have not been able to stay on their – what they originally hoped to do here,” Navy Adm. William Fallon, chief of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
His response came after committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., said that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had not achieved goals he set in talks with President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last year. The benchmarks included laws for elections in Iraq’s 18 provinces and for dividing up Iraq’s oil wealth.
These laws are seen by Washington as essential for ending violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.
“They are not moving, in my opinion, fast enough to support what we’re trying to do in that country,” said Fallon, whose command includes the Middle East, the Horn of Africa and Afghanistan.
Levin, who wants a firm timetable for removing U.S. troops, leveled a blistering attack on the al-Maliki government.
“Our soldiers risk their lives while Iraqi politicians refuse to take political risks,” he said.
The senator expressed dismay that Iraqi legislators had planned to take a two-month summer recess. Fallon testified that U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, “pushed back” and got parliament leaders to scratch those plans.
“They’re not going to take a two-month vacation,” Fallon said. “We’re going to get them to work, which is clearly necessary.”
Fallon did compliment al-Maliki’s Shiite-dominated government for suppressing violence from his sect’s various militias in the face of persistent Sunni bombings.
“The Shia have not responded in a major retaliatory way to these big attacks,” the admiral said. “We literally hold our breath.”
The hearing came as the Bush administration’s new troop reinforcement plan to secure Baghdad nears the three-month mark. A fourth of a planned five U.S. Army brigades has arrived in the capital where Iraqis and Americans are setting up neighborhood combat posts to try to quell Sunni-Shiite fighting.
“I see real success with our troops, particularly since this surge,” Fallon said.
Petraeus has labeled al Qaeda the No. 1 enemy in Iraq, as it carries out nearly daily suicide bombings that kill hundreds of civilians. Petraeus said last week that the top goal of Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda group is to defeat the United States in Iraq.
