Panetta to Newsweek: 'All the troops in the world won’t make any difference'

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16543049/site/newsweek/

'All the troops in the world won’t make any difference'
Leon Panetta, a member of the Iraq Study Group, says advocates of the Bush "surge" once counseled against it.

Updated: 1:57 p.m. CT Jan 9, 2007

Jan. 9, 2007 - Most top U.S. military officials—even members of George W. Bush’s administration such as National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley—did not recommend a “surge” or escalation of U.S. troops into Iraq when they were interviewed by the Iraq Study Group last fall, says group member Leon Panetta, a former White House chief of staff under Bill Clinton. Instead of a surge—which the president plans to announce in a speech to the nation tomorrow—these officials recommended at the time that more U.S. advisors be embedded in Iraqi units, Panetta says. That later led the bipartisan commission co-chaired by James Baker and Lee Hamilton to come to the same conclusion, he says. Panetta also says that the officials interviewed knew that one of the Study Group’s central recommendations—that U.S. advisory teams in Iraq be quadrupled—was largely incompatible with a ramp-up of troops. The reason? In order to increase the number of U.S. advisory teams to that degree, American combat brigades must be withdrawn so the officers in those units can be turned into advisors. That is apparently not going to happen now, at least not quickly. Panetta spoke with Michael Hirsh, NEWSWEEK’s Washington Web editor. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: Based on what you heard as a member of the Iraq Study Group, what do you think will be the impact of an increase of U.S. troops and resources into Iraq?

LEON PANETTA: I think it’s sending the wrong message to the Iraqis. I think one of the things we did as a group was kind of look at the realities of what was happening there: the spiraling violence; the fact that the government was not implementing the reforms they said they would do; the unreliability of the Iraqi Army and police. When we tried to increase troop strength in Baghdad with Operation Forward Together , the Iraqis only sent two of six promised battalions to help. Ultimately we did the clearing and nobody did the holding. It was clear to all of us that a very tough and unambiguous message had to be sent to the Iraqis that we would not give an open-ended commitment … What concerns me is the president’s message isn’t going to make that clear, and that if the Iraqis fail to unite, there will be no consequences.

The president is reportedly going to ask that the Iraqis meet “benchmarks” for reform and unification in order to get more U.S. aid. Can that work?
We spent almost $34 billion in reconstruction money and there’s very little to show for it. I think that while we agree benchmarks have to be set, there has to be a price if they fail to meet those benchmarks. And they’ve been making these promises over and over again … Few of these reforms, if any, have been adopted. I think they’re beginning to take us for granted.

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