US Envoy to Iraq says withdrawal will lead to awful consequences

John Burns and Alissa Rubin:

As the Senate prepares to begin a new debate this week on proposals for a withdrawal from Iraq, the United States ambassador and the Iraqi foreign minister are warning that the departure of American troops could lead to sharply increased violence, the deaths of thousands and a regional conflict that could draw in Iraq’s neighbors.

Two months before a pivotal assessment of progress in the war that he and the overall American military commander in Iraq are to make to the White House and Congress in September, Ryan C. Crocker, the ambassador, laid out a grim forecast of what could happen if the policy debate in Washington led to a significant pullback or even withdrawal of American forces, perhaps to bases outside the major cities.

“You can’t build a whole policy on a fear of a negative, but, boy, you’ve really got to account for it,” Mr. Crocker said Saturday in an interview at his office in Saddam Hussein’s old Republican Palace, now the seat of American power here. Setting out what he said was not a policy prescription but a review of issues that needed to be weighed, the ambassador compared Iraq’s current violence to the early scenes of a gruesome movie.

“In the States, it’s like we’re in the last half of the third reel of a three-reel movie, and all we have to do is decide we’re done here, and the credits come up, and the lights come on, and we leave the theater and go on to something else,” he said. “Whereas out here, you’re just getting into the first reel of five reels,” he added, “and as ugly as the first reel has been, the other four and a half are going to be way, way worse.”

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Fearing that the last pillars of Republican support for the war are eroding, the White House invited Senators John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, who has been critical of the administration’s war policy, and Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, a staunch supporter of the American troop presence, to the White House to ask them to delay votes on withdrawal until the administration delivers an interim progress report on the war due in September. Republicans on Capitol Hill said they believed that President Bush was considering addressing the nation about Iraq this week.

Although Senator Warner said he was inclined to heed the president’s request to delay a vote, the Democratic leader, Senator Harry Reid, of Nevada, said Monday afternoon that he would not wait. Indeed, hours later, the Senate began debate on the National Defense Authorization Act, the main military spending bill for the next budget year — and a vehicle for trying to force the administration to change its policy.

The bill calls for the military to balance the amount of time American troops spend overseas and on American soil, a measure that would severely limit troop deployments to Iraq.

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The bill is a dishonest attempt to mandate failure in Iraq. Democrats should be honest about their cut and run policies if they think the public is on their side, so why hide behind this kind of fraudulent legislation. They should be ashamed, but when it comes to the war their desperation for defeat is shameless.

The NY Times has its best reporter telling them what the consequences of cut and run will be only days after the times suggested it was time to cut and run. At least some of their reporters have integrity even if the Editorial Board lacks that quality. Actually Burns and Michael Gordon have been doing some of the best reporting from Iraq in recent weeks. Outside of Michael Yon there have been few who have even come close to doing as well.

The Washington Post has been AWOL on the surge offensive for the most part. It is probably too busy keeping up with the rout on the Potomac by the loser caucus in the Senate.