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Pathway to peace in Iraq
remains unclear

THE ISSUE President Bush has tried to rally the American people to support his policy in Iraq.

FACED with Americans' growing skepticism about the war in Iraq, President Bush made an impassioned plea for seeing the U.S. military effort through to its completion. Questions remain about when that will happen, and even how victory will be recognized as such -- except, as the president said, "As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down."

Rep. Neil Abercrombie and three other congressmen recently called for Bush to begin bringing home troops by Oct. 1, 2006. "Setting an artificial timetable would send the wrong message to the Iraqis, who need to know that America will not leave before the job is done," Bush responded. He made his plea for support in a nationally televised speech Tuesday before airborne and special-operations soldiers at Fort Bragg, N.C., on the first anniversary of the formal transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis after the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

Most congressional critics of the war agree that setting such a timetable for withdrawal would be tantamount to defeat, leading to civil war and even greater instability in the Middle East. Sen. Joseph Biden, ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, has called for "clear benchmarks and goals in key areas: security, governance and politics, reconstruction and burden-sharing."

Benchmarks of a sort already exist. Aug. 15 is the deadline for Iraq's National Assembly to draft a new constitution, which is to go before the Iraq people in a referendum by Oct. 15. Election of a permanent government is to be held by Dec. 15, and the new government is to take office by the end of this year. But the president gave no indication of what those political benchmarks mean in terms of the Iraqis standing up and Americans standing down.

Bush spoke of Iraq having "more than 160,000 security forces trained and equipped for a variety of missions." Later, he clarified that those forces "are at different levels of readiness," with some "capable of taking on the terrorists and insurgents by themselves." Biden, who recently returned from his fifth trip to Iraq, said that category consists of 2,500 soldiers.

Bush does little to enhance his credibility by insisting, as he did again in this speech, that Iraq is "the latest battlefield" in "a global war in terror" that "reached our shores on Sept. 11, 2001." No connection at all has been made between the 9/11 attacks and Hussein. Terrorists entered Iraq from neighboring countries in response to the U.S. invasion in early 2003.

The president joined military leaders in distancing himself from Vice President Dick Cheney's recent remark that the insurgency may be "in the last throes." But neither did he endorse Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's statement on Sunday that insurgencies like the one in Iraq could last as long as 12 years.

"We will stay in Iraq as long as we are needed and not a day longer," the president said, repeating phrase- ology he and others in his administration have used frequently. But it is an argument for a war that more and more Americans are likely to grow weary of with each passing day.

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