Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Iraq

GOP looks for a unified voice of optimism on Iraq

By WES ALLISON
Published March 15, 2006

WASHINGTON - The reason insurgents in Iraq rely so heavily on roadside bombs? They're desperate.

Guess who's poised to take over for beleaguered U.S. troops? The Iraqis.

And despite the suicide bombings, mass executions and escalating sectarian violence that even the U.S. military says is pushing Iraqi toward civil war, "The Iraqi People Have Chosen a Future of Freedom and Peace."

President Bush this week launched a series of speeches to assure a nervous nation that he has a cohesive and plausible strategy for winning the peace in Iraq, and the White House is making sure he doesn't go it alone: With Congress scheduled to head home Thursday for a 10-day recess, Senate Republican leaders are giving their members these and other talking points in the "Iraq Pocket Card - The Strategy for Victory and Combating IEDs."

The point-by-point outline of progress in Iraq was developed by the White House Communications Office and distributed via e-mail by the Senate Republican Conference, which crafts the message for GOP members. The handy, easy-to-read outline is suitable for cutting out and folding to fit in a senator's jacket pocket for use when talking to local reporters, opinion leaders and voters during recess.

Just as the president focused a recent speech on efforts to combat roadside bombs - those damningly effective weapons known as improvised explosive devices, or IEDs - the pocket card is chock full of good news about the war on IEDs:

Funding on combating IEDs has jumped from $150-million in 2004 to $3.3-billion this year. Troops are receiving new training on avoiding roadside bombs. The Defense Department recently tapped "600 leaders from industry, academics, the national laboratories, . . . all branches of the military and every relevant government agency to discuss technological solutions to the IED threat."

But many Republican senators up for re-election this fall are facing questions about the Bush administration's handling of the war, and polls show the public is sour. The senators and their staffs might be wise to prepare for some followup questions before they try these points at home.

According to icasualties.org, an independent Web site that tracks deaths and injuries in Iraq, about 40 Americans a month are now killed by IEDs, twice the rate of the past 12 months.

Violence between Shiite and Sunni Muslims only seems to rise as well. In the 24 hours ending Tuesday morning, Iraqi police found the bodies of 87 people killed in execution-style slayings, apparently in reprisal for sectarian attacks, the Associated Press reported. They included 29 men found in a single grave in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad.

Over the weekend, a single car bomb killed almost 50 in a Baghdad slum and injured 200.

But the Iraq Pocket Card says that after the bombing of the Shiite Muslim's golden Askariya Shrine two weeks ago, "Iraqis looked into the abyss and did not like what they saw," and "by their response over the last several weeks, the Iraqi people have shown they want a future of freedom and peace."

Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee and a frequent critic of the president's handling of the war, said Republicans should just "say it straight." Trying to do otherwise could backfire politically.

"We're in a lot trouble in Iraq," he said. "The American people know it, we need to face up to it and talk about how we get out if it."

[Last modified March 15, 2006, 01:32:16]