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TOM
FOREMAN: Whether you were ever for the war in Iraq or
not, everyone ought to be thankful for what is
happening there right now, a dramatic drop in
violence, with attacks against U.S. troops and Iraqi
civilians at their lowest levels since February of
last year. By any standard this is good news, but can
it continue?
CNN's Michael Ware is in Baghdad. Barbara Starr is at
the Pentagon and with me in Washington "New York
Times" chief military correspondent Michael Gordon.
He's also the co- author of "Cobra Two," a
well-regarded history of the invasion and occupation
of Iraq. Let me start with you Michael Gordon. Right
now we have what almost everyone says is real
progress of a sort. What do we need critically now to
keep it going?
MICHAEL GORDON, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Right, there's
been a clear trend towards diminution of violence in
Baghdad and other parts of Iraq, although Iraq is
still a very violent place. The key question now is
what needs to be done to sustain it, lock it in and
drive the levels down further and I think a number of
things need to be done, there's not any one factor.
A big part of it is, one reason the violence has gone
down is a lot of the people who used to be insurgents
and were fighting the Americans are now working with
the Americans, these Sunni volunteers at Anbar,
Iskandariyah and Diyala and there's an effort afoot
to basically institutionalize these arrangements and
get these people on the books as police, have them
work with and for the Iraqi government and that's a
work in progress.
There's some real problems there and getting these
Sunni volunteers who are working with American troops
institutionalized as police, getting the
Shiite-dominated government to kind of buy in on that
is something that hasn't yet been fully accomplished
and needs to be done in the months ahead.
FOREMAN: Michael Ware, is there any sense that that
government is finally, finally moving toward really
addressing this? You've said so many times no.
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it depends on
who you talk to. You speak to some people, for
example in the U.S. embassy who are very close to
this internecine political setup that we have here
and they like to think that, yes, they are seeing a
few positive signs from some of the factions within
this government. Nonetheless, overall, even if that
is true, there's no real drift towards
reconciliation.
Indeed, we've been speaking to some of the key power
brokers in the major factions within this government,
the Shia bloc particularly, and none of them are
rushing towards reconciliation. None of them are
supportive of the American-Sunni militia program and
indeed I've been out with the Sunni militias. Now
when you go out to visit these militias, if you're
with the American military, you'll get a certain sort
of answer but we've been going out there alone at
their request and meeting them on the streets, by
themselves, and they give a very frank answer. They
are deeply opposed to the Iraqi government, which is
what the government feared and now America has 72,000
essentially former Sunni insurgents working for it.
45,000 of them are on the U.S. government payroll and
most of them are opposed to this Iraqi central
government, Tom.
FOREMAN: Let's take a look at these numbers and why
they're impressive. It's a little bit confusing but
here is what you need to look at. This is the period
of time before the mosque was bombed that started
this giant spate of violence. Look at how low
violence had generally dropped. The mosque bombing
occurred about in here and things went up and up and
up, but here's where we are now, back to about the
same point as then. Barbara, when people in the
Pentagon look at these numbers, they have to be very
happy and very concerned about precisely what Mick
was talking about.
BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, very happy, I
don't think so, not just yet, an awful lot of caution
about it, because of all the things that Michael is
mentioning. Top commanders, you haven't heard anybody
go out there really and, you know, sound a cheering
horn or, you know, carry balloons about all of this.
They are very cautious. They are very concerned and I
would follow on what Michael said even further. I
think the silence about the Maliki government is
absolutely deafening. A few months ago we were
hearing the president, Secretary Gates, everyone talk
about really pressuring the Maliki government to get
moving. You don't hear any of that anymore. All the
chips are with this local effort and if that does not
work over the long-term, it's difficult to see what
will happen.
FOREMAN: Michael Gordon, you've used a phrase to
describe what's happening now, accommodation without
reconciliation. What does that mean?
GORDON: Well, it's not really my phrase. It's the new
mantra you get from the Bush administration and
indeed from the American military in Iraq, and the
military in particular is very pragmatic. They
understand that there's not going to be a
full-fledged reconciliation between these disparate
groups in Iraq -- the Sunni, the Shia and the Kurds
-- in the foreseeable future.
So in a sense, they're lowering their sights.
Democracy in a unity government can be a generational
objective in Iraq. What they're hoping to accomplish
is some, maybe some of the steps that the legislative
steps that would ease the tension. If you could do a
few of those -- let's say, get de-Baathification or
maybe provincial elections -- get a few of those done
over the next year, take the edge off the animosity.
You'd have a state where these groups wouldn't
necessarily be happy with each other. You wouldn't
have reconciliation, but they would stop resorting to
car bombs and death squads to settle their
differences. That's accommodation without
reconciliation.
FOREMAN: Michael Ware, can that stay, making
progress, can we continue to make progress on that,
if we don't have this central government force come
to the table and say, we're going to take up our
responsibility?
WARE: Well, indeed, I've been talking to key U.S.
strategists, both military and diplomatic here in
Iraq, precisely about that. The people who run this
country, the power interests, don't have it on their
agendas to seek reconciliation. It's not in their
interests. Now, America knows that. So what they're
looking at is what's happening on the streets, where
you're seeing neighbor accommodate with neighbor,
reconciliation happening literally street by street,
or block by block, and they want to see that grow,
and that foster.
So rather than what we've seen in other conflicts,
where you have national political leaders bring their
people to the table, what they're hoping here is that
the people power will force this government to
eventually change and the political players in this
country to eventually move closer together.
FOREMAN: Barbara, does this change? If that's the
view of what is happening right now, that you can't
really count on the central government making it
happen, but maybe the people can make it happen, does
that change the military strategy? Briefly.
STARR: Well it does not at the moment, but here's the
dilemma in the months ahead that commanders know is
only going to grow. If you are talking, as Michael
says, reconciliation street by street across Baghdad,
across Iraq, is that the mission for U.S. combat
troops? Is some soldier or Marine going to be the
last man to die in Iraq for reconciliation street by
street, Tom?
FOREMAN: Michael Gordon, very quickly, the last word
all together on this. All of that said, with
everything we're looking at now, what is the end of
this war? What is the goal now?
GORDON: If you ask the military, it would be
something they call sustainable stability. It would
be a process where you get stability in like Anbar,
or what used to be the triangle of death here,
Iskandariyah, perhaps in Baquba.
FOREMAN: Not necessarily democracy, not necessarily
everyone getting along, just not killing each other.
GORDON: Well, a situation where the level of violence
is down, the terrorism is down, the government plods
along at some pace and American forces stay there, I
would say for years to come, protecting the
population in backing up the Iraqi forces, who they
are hoping to push in the lead over the next year.
FOREMAN: Thanks so much for coming in. Michael
Gordon, Michael Ware as well and Barbara Starr, we
appreciate all of your insights. Let's hope progress
continues.