November 22, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
A Partner for Mr. Hu

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Memo From: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

To: President Hu Jintao of China.

Dear President Hu: I am sure you thought that your first letter from me would be about trade and human rights. Those issues still animate my party. But I’m convinced that we have a better chance of making progress on them if we can first build a partnership to address the urgent issues of energy and climate change, which affect us both.

President Hu, President Bush promised the world when he spurned the Kyoto Protocols that he would offer an alternative. He never did. So I will. I want to propose a “New Shanghai Communiqué.” The 1972 Shanghai Communiqué forged an understanding between China and the U.S. to defuse the most destabilizing issue of that day: the struggle over Taiwan. The New Shanghai Communiqué would defuse the most destabilizing issue of our day: the world’s unsustainable appetite for energy.

What should a New Shanghai Communiqué include? First, China has committed to a 20 percent reduction in energy consumption for every 1 percent of G.D.P. growth by 2010 — a courageous commitment that Mr. Bush has also failed to make. I will see you and raise you. I am going to propose that the U.S. as a whole match the 4 percent annual improvement in energy efficiency already undertaken by California. That would mean at least a 25 percent improvement by 2012.

China has also just imposed a national renewable energy requirement, setting a target of generating 10 percent of its energy from renewables — wind, hydro, solar power and biofuels — by 2020. I will see you and raise you again. I want to require our power grid operators to purchase 20 percent of their energy from environmentally sound renewables by 2020.

President Hu, if we can hit these targets we would put our countries — the two largest emitters of carbon dioxide — on a much more sustainable growth path and set an example that would change the world. We would create less dependence on despotic oil states, encourage everyone to be energy efficient and climate friendly, and create more room in the energy market for big emerging economies, like China, to grow without competing head-on with America for oil and gas. Instead of fighting over a shrinking pie of fossil fuels, let’s create a huge new energy pie — from renewables and efficiency savings.

Second, I want to lead an effort to help China invest in factories devoted to clean power technologies — green cars, solar panels, wind turbines — in some of our states, like Ohio, most hurt by globalization. Green energy is going to be the growth industry of the 21st century. We have some great technologies. You have $1 trillion in reserves because of your trade surplus with us. Nothing would improve China’s standing in America more than using its reserves, as Japan did, to create good U.S. jobs and profits for Chinese companies — all while advancing the clean power industry.

Third, I propose we send over a “Green Corps” of U.S. engineers to travel across China and demonstrate something many Chinese officials do not understand: being green is profitable. Too many of your local officials think green is a luxury you can’t afford. You will never break out of your cycle of environmental degradation until those officials understand that pollution is wasted energy and wasted money. Our best companies, like G.E. and DuPont, consistently find that operating “green” costs much less than they anticipate and saves much more.

President Hu, we both know that the millions of cars now choking your streets are only the beginning. Your biggest concern is the 800 million Chinese living in the countryside, who need transportation to better their lives but who can’t afford even the cheapest car. Every year they buy more than 30 million motorcycles and farm vehicles, which have the advantage of being cheap but which use the most rudimentary, polluting motors — blackening your skies.

We need to bring our U.S. engineers, who know how to clean up small engines, together with your manufacturers, who know how to mass produce them cheaply, to forge companies that will not only clean up the air in developing countries but make money for both of us. If that happens, President Hu, China has the potential not just to have a “Green Olympics” in 2008, but to offer the developing world a whole new model of sustainable growth.

President Hu, over 40 years ago your country tried to make a Great Leap Forward alone — to change China. This time, let us make a Great Green Leap Forward together — and change the world.

Best wishes, Nancy.

Bomb Iran and Pakistan's Shia will come to aid and provide Nuclear weapons
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Force Is the Only Answer; Diplomacy Has Done Nothing to End Tehran's Nuclear Threat
By Joshua Muravchik
Posted: Monday, November 20, 2006

ARTICLES
Los Angeles Times
Publication Date: November 19, 2006

We must bomb Iran.


Resident Scholar Joshua Muravchik

It has been four years since that country's secret nuclear program was brought to light, and the path of diplomacy and sanctions has led nowhere.

First, we agreed to our allies' requests that we offer Tehran a string of concessions, which it spurned. Then, Britain, France and Germany wanted to impose a batch of extremely weak sanctions. For instance, Iranians known to be involved in nuclear activities would have been barred from foreign travel--except for humanitarian or religious reasons--and outside countries would have been required to refrain from aiding some, but not all, Iranian nuclear projects.

But even this was too much for the U.N. Security Council. Russia promptly announced that these sanctions were much too strong. "We cannot support measures ... aimed at isolating Iran," declared Foreign Minister Sergei V. Lavrov. It is now clear that neither Moscow nor Beijing will ever agree to tough sanctions. What's more, even if they were to do so, it would not stop Iran, which is a country on a mission. As President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad put it: "Thanks to the blood of the martyrs, a new Islamic revolution has arisen. . . .The era of oppression, hegemonic regimes and tyranny and injustice has reached its end. . . . The wave of the Islamic revolution will soon reach the entire world." There is simply no possibility that Iran's clerical rulers will trade this ecstatic vision for a mess of Western pottage in the form of economic bribes or penalties.

So if sanctions won't work, what's left? The overthrow of the current Iranian regime might offer a silver bullet, but with hard-liners firmly in the saddle in Tehran, any such prospect seems even more remote today than it did a decade ago, when students were demonstrating and reformers were ascendant. Meanwhile, the completion of Iran's bomb grows nearer every day.

Our options therefore are narrowed to two: We can prepare to live with a nuclear-armed Iran, or we can use force to prevent it. Former ABC newsman Ted Koppel argues for the former, saying that "if Iran is bound and determined to have nuclear weapons, let it." We should rely, he says, on the threat of retaliation to keep Iran from using its bomb. Similarly, Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria points out that we have succeeded in deterring other hostile nuclear states, such as the Soviet Union and China.

And in these pages, William Langewiesche summed up the what-me-worry attitude when he wrote that "the spread of nuclear weapons is, and always has been, inevitable," and that the important thing is "learning how to live with it after it occurs."

But that's whistling past the graveyard. The reality is that we cannot live safely with a nuclear-armed Iran. One reason is terrorism, of which Iran has long been the world's premier state sponsor, through groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. Now, according to a report last week in London's Daily Telegraph, Iran is trying to take over Al Qaeda by positioning its own man, Saif Adel, to become the successor to the ailing Osama bin Laden. How could we possibly trust Iran not to slip nuclear material to terrorists?

Koppel says that we could prevent this by issuing a blanket warning that if a nuclear device is detonated anywhere in the United States, we will assume Iran is responsible. But would any U.S. president really order a retaliatory nuclear strike based on an assumption?

Another reason is that an Iranian bomb would constitute a dire threat to Israel's 6 million-plus citizens. Sure, Israel could strike back, but Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president who was Ahmadinejad's "moderate" electoral opponent, once pointed out smugly that "the use of an atomic bomb against Israel would totally destroy Israel, while [the same] against the Islamic world would only cause damage. Such a scenario is not inconceivable." If that is the voice of pragmatism in Iran, would you trust deterrence against the messianic Ahmadinejad?

Even if Iran did not drop a bomb on Israel or hand one to terrorists, its mere possession of such a device would have devastating consequences. Coming on top of North Korea's nuclear test, it would spell finis to the entire nonproliferation system.

And then there is a consequence that seems to have been thought about much less but could be the most harmful of all: Tehran could achieve its goal of regional supremacy. Jordan's King Abdullah II, for instance, has warned of an emerging Shiite "crescent." But Abdullah's comment understates the danger. If Iran's reach were limited to Shiites, it would be constrained by their minority status in the Muslim world as well as by the divisions between Persians and Arabs.

But such ethnic-based analysis fails to take into account Iran's charisma as the archenemy of the United States and Israel and the leverage it achieves as the patron of radicals and rejectionists. Given that, the old assumptions about Shiites and Sunnis may not hold any longer. Iran's closest ally today is Syria, which is mostly Sunni. The link between Tehran and Damascus is ideological, not theological. Similarly, Iran supports the Palestinian groups Islamic Jihad and Hamas, which are overwhelmingly Sunni (and as a result, Iran has grown popular in the eyes of Palestinians).During the Lebanon war this summer, we saw how readily Muslims closed ranks across the Sunni-Shiite divide against a common foe (even as the two groups continued killing each other in Iraq). In Sunni Egypt, newborns were named "Hezbollah" after the Lebanese Shiite organization and "Nasrallah" after its leader. As Muslim scholar Vali Nasr put it: "A flurry of anti-Hezbollah [i.e., anti-Shiite] fatwas by radical Sunni clerics have not diverted the admiring gaze of Arabs everywhere toward Hezbollah.

"In short, Tehran can build influence on a mix of ethnicity and ideology, underwritten by the region's largest economy. Nuclear weapons would bring regional hegemony within its reach by intimidating neighbors and rivals and stirring the admiration of many other Muslims.This would thrust us into a new global struggle akin to the one we waged so painfully with the Soviet Union for 40-odd years. It would be the "clash of civilizations" that has been so much talked about but so little defined.

Iran might seem little match for the United States, but that is not how Ahmadinejad sees it. He and his fellow jihadists believe that the Muslim world has already defeated one infidel superpower (the Soviet Union) and will in time defeat the other.

Russia was poor and weak in 1917 when Lenin took power, as was Germany in 1933 when Hitler came in. Neither, in the end, was able to defeat the United States, but each of them unleashed unimaginable suffering before they succumbed. And despite its weakness, Iran commands an asset that neither of them had: a natural advantage in appealing to the world's billion-plus Muslims.

If Tehran establishes dominance in the region, then the battlefield might move to Southeast Asia or Africa or even parts of Europe, as the mullahs would try to extend their sway over other Muslim peoples. In the end, we would no doubt win, but how long this contest might last and what toll it might take are anyone's guess.

The only way to forestall these frightening developments is by the use of force. Not by invading Iran as we did Iraq, but by an air campaign against Tehran's nuclear facilities. We have considerable information about these facilities; by some estimates they comprise about 1,500 targets. If we hit a large fraction of them in a bombing campaign that might last from a few days to a couple of weeks, we would inflict severe damage. This would not end Iran's weapons program, but it would certainly delay it.What should be the timing of such an attack? If we did it next year, that would give time for U.N. diplomacy to further reveal its bankruptcy yet would come before Iran will have a bomb in hand (and also before our own presidential campaign). In time, if Tehran persisted, we might have to do it again.

Can President Bush take such action after being humiliated in the congressional elections and with the Iraq war having grown so unpopular? Bush has said that history's judgment on his conduct of the war against terror is more important than the polls. If Ahmadinejad gets his finger on a nuclear trigger, everything Bush has done will be rendered hollow. We will be a lot less safe than we were when Bush took office.

Finally, wouldn't such a U.S. air attack on Iran inflame global anti-Americanism? Wouldn't Iran retaliate in Iraq or by terrorism? Yes, probably. That is the price we would pay. But the alternative is worse.

After the Bolshevik takeover of Russia in 1917, a single member of Britain's Cabinet, Winston Churchill, appealed for robust military intervention to crush the new regime. His colleagues weighed the costs--the loss of soldiers, international derision, revenge by Lenin--and rejected the idea.

The costs were avoided, and instead the world was subjected to the greatest man-made calamities ever. Communism itself was to claim perhaps 100 million lives, and it also gave rise to fascism and Nazism, leading to World War II. Ahmadinejad wants to be the new Lenin. Force is the only thing that can stop him.

Joshua Muravchik is a resident scholar at AEI.

Time for a Heavier Footprint
By Frederick W. Kagan, William Kristol
Posted: Monday, November 20, 2006

ARTICLES
The Weekly Standard
Publication Date: November 27, 2006

General John Abizaid, the commander of U.S. Central Command and the man with overall statutory responsibility for conducting the war in Iraq, testified last week in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Before coming to Washington, Abizaid had spent several days in Iraq, consulting with the military commanders on the ground. Considering the importance of this testimony and the effort Abizaid made to prepare for it, it is unfortunate that he offered an inadequate proposal for change in response to the deteriorating situation in Iraq.


Resident Scholar Frederick W. Kagan

Abizaid has been in command of this war for three years. General George Casey, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Abizaid's direct subordinate, has had his command since mid-2004. Both men remember the war in Iraq at its lowest point--when the Sunni Arab insurgency raged unchecked, insurgents controlled Falluja, Shiite troops under Moktada al Sadr seized Najaf, and Shiites in Sadr City rose. They watched Iraqi troops flee battlefields and refuse to fight. They watched as U.S. Marines engaged in clearing Falluja were forced to desist because of political pressure from a weak Iraqi government. All of that happened in 2004.

Since then, they have seen improvements. Falluja was cleared in late 2004 and has been held. Tal Afar, cleared unsuccessfully twice before, was finally cleared and effective government established in 2005. Mosul soon followed. The Iraqi military that failed in 2004 was disbanded and replaced by Iraqi units that have subsequently fought well in Tal Afar, Ramadi, Baghdad, and elsewhere. No major Iraqi cities are under the control of insurgents as Falluja and Tal Afar once were. The Iraqi government has supported a number of clear-and-hold efforts around the country, including in many neighborhoods in Baghdad. All these developments are important and even heartening judged against the calamitous situation we faced in 2004.

But Abizaid and Casey are now captive of their successes. They are rightly impressed by these improvements and hope that continuing the policy that brought them will lead to further successes. They see validation for their conviction that victory lies first, last, and always with the Iraqis. They also have an almost theological devotion to the "light footprint" theory that U.S. troop presence and visibility need to be minimized, and to the "dependency" theory that too many U.S. troops provide an excuse for Iraqis not to step up.

Abizaid and Casey haven't rethought these views even as they've been mugged by the reality that lack of security does more damage than a heavy footprint, and that failure is more of a threat to responsible Iraqi behavior than dependency. But, just as important, they underestimate the changes that have occurred in Iraq since the February bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra--changes that threaten to unravel the successes achieved so far. In response to the clear fact that sectarian violence is unhinging the effort to turn responsibility for security over to the Iraqis, Abizaid simply demands an acceleration of that transition. This is a recipe for disaster.

The good news, at least, is that Abizaid and Ambassador David Satterfield, the State Department's Coordinator for Iraq, rejected outright any notion of immediate reductions in American forces in Iraq. Any such reductions, they declared, would seriously undermine the Iraqi government, spur sectarian violence, create safe-havens for al Qaeda, and lead to a humanitarian catastrophe. For similar reasons they rejected any idea of partitioning Iraq, which would lead to unacceptable violence and human suffering. Abizaid also rejected out of hand any notion of "re-deploying" U.S. forces to Guam, Kuwait, or anywhere else. A reduction in the American military presence in Iraq, he declared, would lead to rapid defeat.

He then proposed a solution to the crisis in Iraq today that seemed to many senators--most notably, John McCain--wholly inadequate. He listed a number of things that the Iraqi government must do--purging the Iraqi Army and National Police of those who would incite rather than control sectarian violence, disarming militias, accelerating the training and equipping of Iraqi forces, and so on. He identified only one thing that the United States must do: increase its efforts to train and equip the Iraqi military. To that end, the only concrete suggestion he offered was to increase the number of U.S. soldiers embedded in Iraqi military units. He specifically rejected the idea that the United States should undertake expanded efforts to establish security in Iraq, declaring that the Iraqis must do that for themselves, and he stated that it was the "professional opinion" of his commanders in Iraq that no more American soldiers were needed there.

The senators pressed Abizaid about the timeline for success. He said that it was important to get Baghdad under control within four to six months, and that the Iraqis must do it. But it is very hard to be sanguine that the situation in Iraq will hold for half a year at the present level of violence in the capital. We must also keep in mind that violence in Baghdad--and around the country--has been rising, rather than falling. Abizaid's confidence that we can afford to wait six months to address this problem is unfounded and misplaced.

His optimism about the Iraqi military's ability to accomplish the tasks he is setting for it is also misplaced. It will take time to locate and train additional U.S. soldiers to embed with Iraqi units. It will take more time for those embedded soldiers to bring the Iraqi units to a higher level of military capability. Providing equipment to the Iraqis, including the necessary spare parts and ammunition, will take time. Familiarizing them with the equipment and with how to use it effectively in combat will take more time. Developing the logistical systems necessary to sustain Iraqi units in combat will take still more time. Even if Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki agreed tomorrow to purge the Iraqi army and police of rogue elements, doing so would take time, as would finding replacements and retraining units distorted by the presence of such leaders. A significant increase in the capabilities of the Iraqi military and security forces is almost certain to take months. Only then, according to Abizaid, should the clearing and holding of Baghdad begin. That process will take additional months--we have been working on it, after all, since August 8, when the most recent effort, Phase II of Operation Together Forward, began. So Abizaid's Iraqi-centered scenario for progress is, simply put, unrealistic in the short term.

And that's only with respect to Baghdad. Apart from Falluja and Ramadi, the largest cities in the province, to be sure, al Anbar is largely out of U.S. and Iraqi government control. Pressed about the need to work on that province while improving the situation in Baghdad, Abizaid declared that Baghdad was the main effort and Anbar would have to wait. So for at least the next six months, while we and the Iraqis focus on Baghdad, the insurgency in Anbar province will continue to thrive.

The continuation of the insurgency in Anbar is more important than Abizaid is making out. It may be a secondary effort for us, but the fact of an uncontrolled Sunni Arab insurgency is the most important factor preventing Maliki from disarming Shiite militias. We are caught in a vicious circle. Because we have not effectively suppressed the Sunni Arab insurgency, the Shiite communities in Iraq demand protection. We refuse to provide it to them, so they turn to militias. Those militias, in turn, victimize the Sunni Arab population. That victimization fuels the insurgency. It is a straightforward cycle that seems to be escaping our military leaders. Demanding that Maliki break it by disarming the militias is folly--as long as the Sunni Arab insurgency continues to burn, no Iraqi political leader will be able to convince the Shiite community to abandon the forces it sees as essential for its self-defense. And as long as the Shiite militias continue to victimize Sunni Arabs, it will be incredibly difficult to bring the Sunni Arab insurgent leaders to the negotiating table, even if they could bring their followers with them. The U.S. military is the only force in Iraq capable of breaking this cycle by bringing security to the country, and Abizaid and his senior commanders in Iraq continue to reject that solution.

The question of troop levels in Iraq is fundamental. With the forces currently deployed, according to Abizaid's own testimony, the United States is unable to accomplish the following tasks all at once: Train Iraqi troops as quickly as necessary, support them in their efforts to clear and hold Baghdad, and reduce the violence in Anbar. Indeed, Lieutenant General Michael D. Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, also testified last week. He stated that, despite all of our joint efforts, the Sunni Arab insurgency has actually gained strength and capacity. Operation Together Forward II, he declared, has achieved "limited success." Sectarian violence decreased in August, when the operation began, but "as armed groups adapted to the Coalition presence, and the I[raqi] S[ecurity] F[orces] was unable to exert authority once Coalition forces moved on, attacks returned to and even surpassed preoperational levels." In other words, the operation has failed so far because there are not enough U.S. forces to support Iraqi efforts to hold the cleared neighborhoods.

How can one say that there are enough troops in Iraq now in these circumstances? The only way to make that argument is to assume that we have time to take things slowly--time to train Iraqis, time to let them make the inevitable mistakes and suffer the inevitable losses and defeats, time in which we can allow the insurgency to spin out of control and the violence to escalate. We do not have such time. The sectarian violence is rising, the insurgency is strengthening, and the control of the Iraqi government over its people and state is slipping. And America's will to continue the fight is breaking.

In fact, most serious people now concede we need more troops. The backup argument for not sending more troops is that we don't have them to send. Abizaid alluded to such concerns. It is true we should have expanded the military long ago. It is true that it is urgent that we do so now. And it is true that surging 50,000 more troops--with the equipment they need--into Iraq in the coming weeks and months will strain a strained military further. But it is also true that we can do it--if we think success in Iraq is a national priority--by extending tours, moving troops from other theaters into Iraq, and calling up expanded numbers from the Guard and Reserves.

None of this will be easy to do. Nevertheless, if more troops are needed for success in Iraq, we must bear the strain now--while making up for lost time in expanding the military. There is every indication that the men and women of the U.S. military are willing to tackle this extra burden--if they believe we have a strategy to win, and that help is (finally) on the way. Incoming defense secretary Robert Gates should have no higher priority than providing this help--in addition to directing his commanders not to let self-imposed constraints prevent us from winning the war in Iraq. Win the war and expand the military, both as soon as possible--that's Gates's task. Meanwhile, the military commanders need to think and speak in an unconstrained way to our political leaders about what has to be done now.

We cannot, in the end, control how quickly Iraqi forces become ready to fight. We cannot control whether or not Maliki makes the necessary political and military decisions. What we can control is security. When U.S. forces in adequate numbers, together with Iraqi troops, cleared Tal Afar, Mosul, Falluja, Sadr City, and Najaf in 2004 and 2005, levels of violence in those areas dropped enormously. Economic activity picked up. Political leaders, rather than militia commanders, took charge. We know what success looks like, and we know what it demands--more U.S. troops, operating together with such Iraqi forces as are available, to establish security above all else. And we know what failure looks like--waiting for the Iraqis to take the lead they are not capable of taking and allowing the violence to continue in the meantime. Abizaid and Casey have good reason to be proud of the improvement in the situation they have overseen, but better reason to be fearful that it will not last if they do not change course dramatically. We must change our strategy to reflect the new reality, and we must send the military resources needed to achieve that strategy. If we do not, it is likely that we will fail in Iraq.

Frederick W. Kagan is a resident scholar at AEI. William Kristol is the editor of The Weekly Standard.

Flaws Cited in Effort To Train Iraqi Forces
U.S. Officers Roundly Criticize Program
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 21, 2006; A01

The U.S. military's effort to train Iraqi forces has been rife with problems, from officers being sent in with poor preparation to a lack of basic necessities such as interpreters and office materials, according to internal Army documents.

The shortcomings have plagued a program that is central to the U.S. strategy in Iraq and is growing in importance. A Pentagon effort to rethink policies in Iraq is likely to suggest placing less emphasis on combat and more on training and advising, sources say.

In dozens of official interviews compiled by the Army for its oral history archives, officers who had been involved in training and advising Iraqis bluntly criticized almost every aspect of the effort. Some officers thought that team members were often selected poorly. Others fretted that the soldiers who prepared them had never served in Iraq and lacked understanding of the tasks of training and advising. Many said they felt insufficiently supported by the Army while in Iraq, with intermittent shipments of supplies and interpreters who often did not seem to understand English.

The Iraqi officers interviewed by an Army team also had complaints; the top one was that they were being advised by officers far junior to them who had never seen combat.

Some of the American officers even faulted their own lack of understanding of the task. "If I had to do it again, I know I'd do it completely different," reported Maj. Mike Sullivan, who advised an Iraqi army battalion in 2004. "I went there with the wrong attitude and I thought I understood Iraq and the history because I had seen PowerPoint slides, but I really didn't."

Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top U.S. military commander for the Middle East, told Congress last week that he plans to shift increasing numbers of troops from combat roles to training and advisory duties. Insiders familiar with the bipartisan Iraq Study Group say that next month the panel will probably recommend further boosts to the training effort. Pentagon officials are considering whether the number of Iraqi security forces needs to be far larger than the current target of about 325,000, which would require thousands more U.S. trainers.

Most recently, a closely guarded military review being done for the Joint Chiefs of Staff laid out three options for Iraq. It appears to be favoring a version of one option called "Go Long" that would temporarily boost the U.S. troop level -- currently about 140,000 -- but over time would cut combat presence in favor of training and advising. The training effort could take five to 10 years.

Despite its central role in Iraq, the training and advisory program is not well understood outside narrow military circles. Congress has hardly examined it, and training efforts lie outside the purview of the special inspector general on Iraq reconstruction. The Army has done some studies but has not released them. Even basic information, such as how many of the 5,000 U.S. military personnel involved are from the National Guard and Reserves, is unusually difficult to obtain.

But the previously unreported transcripts of interviews conducted by the Army's Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., offer a view into the program, covering a time from shortly after the 2003 invasion until earlier this year.

One of the most common complaints of the Army officers interviewed was that the military did a poor job of preparing them. "You're supposed to be able to shoot, move and communicate," said Lt. Col. Paul Ciesinski, who was an adviser in northern Iraq last year and this year. "Well, when we got to Iraq we could hardly shoot, we could hardly move and we could hardly communicate, because we hadn't been trained on how to do these things." The training was outdated and lackadaisical, he said, adding sarcastically: "They packed 30 days' training into 84 days."

Sullivan, who advised three infantry companies in the Iraqi army, called the U.S. Army's instruction for the mission "very disappointing."

Nor were the officers impressed by some of their peers. Maj. Jeffrey Allen, an active-duty soldier, noted that all other members of his team were from the National Guard, and that his team was supposed to have 10 members but was given only five. He described his team as "weak . . . in particular the brigade team chief."

A separate internal review this year by the military's Center for Army Lessons Learned, based on 152 interviews with soldiers involved in the training and advisory program, found that there was "no standardized guideline" for preparing advisers and that such instruction was needed because "a majority of advisors have little to no previous experience or training."

Lt. Col. Michael Negard, a spokesman for the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq, the headquarters for training, said he has not seen the Lessons Learned report and so does not know whether the training has been improved or standardized since that report was issued.

After arriving in Iraq, advisers said, they often were shocked to find that the interpreters assigned to them were of little use. Ciesinski reported that at his base in western Nineveh province, "They couldn't speak English and we would have to fire them."

Nor were there enough interpreters to go around, said Sullivan. "It was a real juggling act" with interpreters, he said, noting that he would run from the headquarters to a company "to borrow an interpreter, run him over to say something, and then send him back."

But he was better off than Maj. Robert Dixon, who reported that during his tour in 2004, "We had no interpreters at the time."

The Center for Army Lessons Learned study, whose contents were first reported by the Wall Street Journal, found one unit that learned after 10 frustrating months that its interpreters were "substandard" and had been translating the advisers' instructions so poorly that their Iraqi pupils had difficulty understanding the concepts being taught.

Trainers and advisers also reported major problems with the Army supply chain. "As an adviser, I got the impression that there was an 'us' and 'them' " divide between the advisers and regular U.S. forces, said Maj. Pete Fedak, an adviser near Fallujah in 2004. "In other words, there was an American camp and then, outside, there was a bermed area for the Iraqis, of which we were part."

Replacing basic office materials was one of the toughest problems advisers reported. "Guys would come under fire so they could get computer supplies, paper and things like that," Sullivan said. "It was a surreal experience."

Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, a staff officer with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Iraq in 2005 and 2006 who worked with Iraqi units, came away thinking that the Army fundamentally is not geared to the task of helping the advisory effort.

"The thing the Army institutionally is still struggling to learn is that the most important thing we do in counterinsurgency is building host-nation institutions," he told the interviewers, "yet all our organizations are designed around the least important line of operations: combat operations."

Advisers found that the capabilities of Iraqi forces "ran the gamut from atrocious to excellent," as it was put by Lt. Col. Kevin Farrell, who commanded an armored unit in east Baghdad last year and this year.

Many worried that the Iraqi units being advised contained insurgents. An Iraqi National Guard battalion "was infiltrated by the enemy," said Maj. Michael Monti, a Marine who was an adviser in the Upper Euphrates Valley in 2004 and 2005.

Some advisers reported being personally targeted by infiltrators. "We had insurgents that we detected and arrested in the battalion that were planning an operation against me and my team," Allen said.

But Iraqi officers may have had even more to fear, because their families were also vulnerable. "I went through seven battalion commanders in eight weeks," Allen noted. Dixon reported that in Samarra both his battalion commander and intelligence officer deserted just before a major operation.

Iraqis also had some complaints about their U.S. advisers, most notably that junior U.S. officers who had never seen combat were counseling senior Iraqi officers who had fought in several wars. "Numerous teams have lieutenants . . . to fill the role of advisor to an Iraqi colonel counterpart," the Lessons Learned report stated.

Farrell, the officer in east Baghdad, said some advisers were literally "phoning in" their work. Some would not leave the forward operating base "more than one or two days out of the week -- instead they would just call the Iraqis on cellphones," he said.

Dixon was grim about the experience. "Would I want to go back and do it again?" he asked. His unambiguous answer: "No."

Yingling came to a broader conclusion. He recommended an entirely different orientation in Iraq, both for trainers and for regular U.S. units. "Don't train on finding the enemy," he said. "Train on finding your friends, and they will help you find your enemy. . . . Once you find your friends, finding the enemy is easy."

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

To Defeat The Enemy, The United States Is Helping Iraqis Rebuild. Over the course of this war, the Coalition has learned that winning the battle for Iraqi cities is only a first step. The Coalition has adjusted to win the "battle after the battle" by helping Iraqis consolidate their gains and keep the terrorists from returning.

Iraqi Forces Are Securing Cities, Allowing For Targeted Reconstruction. As steady training produces more capable Iraqi Security Forces, those forces have been able to better hold onto the cities Iraqi and Coalition forces cleared together. With help from Coalition military and civilian personnel, the Iraqi government can then work with local leaders and residents to begin reconstruction - with Iraqis leading the building efforts and the Coalition playing a supporting role. This approach is working in cities like Najaf and Mosul.

Iraqi And Coalition Forces Have Cleared And Are Holding The City Of Najaf. Ninety miles south of Baghdad, Najaf is home to one of Shia Islam's holiest places - the Imam Ali Shrine. As a predominantly Shia city, Najaf suffered greatly during Saddam's regime. About a year after U.S. troops liberated the city, it fell under the sway of a radical and violent militia. Fighting damaged homes and businesses, and the local economy collapsed as visitors and pilgrims stopped coming to the shrine out of fear for their lives. In the summer of 2004, the Iraqi government and Coalition decided to retake control of the city. Iraqi and Coalition forces rooted out the militia in tough, urban fighting. Together with the Iraqi government and the Shia clerical community, we forced the militia to abandon the shrine and return it to legitimate Iraqi authority. The militia committed to disarm and leave Najaf.

As Soon As The Fighting In Najaf Ended, Targeted Reconstruction Moved Forward. The Iraqi government played an active role, and so did our military commanders, diplomats, and workers from the U.S. Agency for International Development. Together, they worked with Najaf's governor and other local officials to rebuild the local police force, repair residents' homes, refurbish schools, restore water and other essential services, and reopen a soccer stadium. Fifteen months later, new businesses and markets have opened in some of Najaf's poorest areas, religious pilgrims are visiting the city again, and construction jobs are putting local residents back to work. One of the largest projects was the rebuilding of the Najaf Teaching Hospital, which had been looted and turned into a military fortress by the militia. Thanks to efforts by Iraqi doctors and local leaders, with the help of American personnel, the hospital is now open and capable of serving hundreds of patients each day.

Najaf Has Made Tremendous Progress. Najaf is now in the hands of elected government officials. An elected provincial council is at work drafting plans to bring more tourism and commerce to the city. Political life has returned, and campaigns for the upcoming elections have begun, with different parties competing for votes. The Iraqi police are now responsible for day-to-day security. An Iraqi battalion has assumed control of the former American military base, and American forces are now about 40 minutes outside the city. There is still plenty of work to be done. Sustaining electric power remains a major challenge, and construction has begun on three new substations to help boost capacity. To address a clean water shortage, new water treatment and sewage units are being installed. Security has improved dramatically, but threats remain. Local leaders and Iraqi Security Forces are working to resolve these problems - and Americans are helping.

Iraqi And American Forces Have Cleared And Are Holding The City Of Mosul. Mosul is one of Iraq's largest cities and home to a diverse population of Sunni Arabs, Kurds, and other ethnic groups. It was here that American troops brought justice to Saddam's sons in the summer of 2003. Mosul was relatively quiet in the months after liberation, and American forces began to redeploy elsewhere in the country. Then, the enemy infiltrated the city, and by late last year, they had gained control of much of Mosul. American and Iraqi forces responded with a series of coordinated strikes on the most dangerous parts of the city and killed, captured, and cleared out many of the terrorists and Saddamists. Over time, the Iraqi police and legitimate political leaders regained control. As Iraqis have grown in strength and ability, they have taken more responsibility for the city's security, and Coalition forces have moved into a supporting role.

After The Security Situation Improved, Reconstruction Accelerated. Local Iraqi leaders, with Coalition support, upgraded key roads and bridges over the Tigris River, rebuilt schools and hospitals, and started refurbishing the Mosul Airport. Police stations and firehouses were rebuilt, and Iraqis have made major improvements in the city's water and sewage network. But real challenges still remain. Because the city is not receiving enough electricity, Iraqis have a major new project underway to expand the Mosul power substation. Terrorist intimidation is still a concern, but turnout for the October referendum was over 50 percent in the province where Mosul is located - more than triple the turnout in the January election.

With Progress, Serious Challenges Are Being Addressed. Corruption exists at both the national and local levels of the Iraqi government. Fraud will not be tolerated, so the American Embassy in Baghdad is helping to demand transparency and accountability for the money being invested in reconstruction. Another problem is the infiltration of militia groups into the Iraqi Security Forces - especially the Iraqi police. We are helping Iraqis deal with this problem by embedding Coalition transition teams in Iraqi units to mentor police and soldiers. In a free Iraq, former militia members must shift their loyalty to the national government and learn to operate under the rule of law.
The United States Is Working With Iraq's Leaders To Build A Sound Economy That Will Deliver A Better Life For Iraqis. Iraq is a nation with the potential for tremendous prosperity. The country has a young and educated workforce, abundant land and water, and among the largest oil resources in the world. Yet for decades, Saddam Hussein used Iraq's wealth to enrich himself and a privileged few and neglected the country's infrastructure and economy. The Coalition is helping the new Iraqi government reverse decades of economic destruction, reinvigorate its economy, and make responsible reforms. With Coalition help, the Iraqis are rebuilding infrastructure and establishing the institutions of a market economy. The entrepreneurial spirit is strong. A free Iraq will be built by the free people of Iraq - and the United States is proud to help.

Reconstruction Efforts Are Focused On Local Projects That Deliver Rapid And Noticeable Improvements. The Coalition's approach to helping Iraqis rebuild has changed and improved with time. When the reconstruction process was first begun in the spring of 2003, the focus was on building large-scale infrastructure - such as electrical plants and water treatment facilities. This approach was not meeting the priorities of the Iraqi people. In many places, the most urgent needs were smaller, localized projects like sewer lines and city roads. In consultation with the Iraqi government, resources started to be used to fund smaller, local projects that could deliver rapid, noticeable improvements. American military commanders were given more money for flexible use, and the Coalition worked with Iraqi leaders to provide more contracts to Iraqi firms. By adapting reconstruction efforts, the United States is now better able to help Iraqi leaders serve their people.

Together, Iraqis And Americans Are Making Progress. Reconstruction has not always gone as well as hoped - primarily because of the security challenges. Rebuilding a nation devastated by a dictator is a large undertaking - even harder when terrorists attempt to destroy gains. Yet, in the space of two and a half years, the United States has helped Iraqis conduct nearly 3,000 renovation projects at schools, train more than 30,000 teachers, distribute more than 8 million textbooks, rebuild irrigation infrastructure to help more than 400,000 rural Iraqis, and improve drinking water for more than 3 million people. The Coalition has helped Iraqis introduce a new currency, reopen their stock exchange, and extend $21 million in micro-credit and small business loans. As a result of these efforts and Iraq's newfound freedom, more than 30,000 new Iraqi businesses have registered since liberation, and according to a recent survey, more than three-quarters of Iraqi business owners anticipate growth in the economy over the next two years. This economic development and growth will be key to addressing the high unemployment rate across many parts of the country. In addition, Iraqis have negotiated significant debt relief and completed an economic report card with the International Monetary Fund - a signal that Iraqis are serious about reform.
Victory In Iraq

The United States Will Settle For Nothing Less Than Complete Victory In Iraq. Withdrawing on an artificial deadline would endanger the American people, harm our military, and make the Middle East less stable. It would also give the terrorists exactly what they want. The al-Qaida leader Zawahiri recently wrote to the terrorist Zarqawi in Iraq, and he cited the Vietnam War as a reason to believe the terrorists can prevail. The terrorists think they can make America run in Iraq; the terrorists hope America will withdraw before the job is done - so they can take over the country and turn it into a base for future attacks. America will not yield the future of Iraq to men like Zarqawi, nor will it yield the future of the Middle East to men like bin Laden.

Building Democracy In Iraq Will Establish A Peaceful Civil Society That Is An Ally In The War On Terror. Free societies are peaceful societies, and democracies do not attack each other. Free nations give their citizens a path to resolve their differences peacefully through the democratic process. Democracy can be difficult, complicated, and even chaotic. Iraqis have to overcome many challenges, including longstanding ethnic and religious tensions, and the legacy of decades of brutal repression. But they are learning that democracy is the only way to build a just and peaceful society - because it is the only system that gives every citizen a voice in determining their future.
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