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TOM
FOREMAN: This week it was announced that the Third
Brigade of the First Cavalry Division is pulling out
of Diyala Province and they will not be replaced.
This is only the beginning of a drawdown of 35,000
U.S. troops by next summer. So that's it. The
so-called surge is ending. And in many ways, the
military has succeeded in what it set out to do,
providing breathing space for Iraqi politicians to
solve their own problems free of daily violence. So,
are Baghdad's politicians stepping up to the
challenge? Michael Ware is in CNN's Baghdad bureau,
former Iraqi representative to the U.S. Rend al-Rahim
is with me here in Washington as is senior Pentagon
correspondent Jamie McIntyre.
Let me
start with you, Michael. Is there a sense there that
the politicians are more focused on solving these
problems now that violence has dropped so much?
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: No. I'm certainly
not reading that at all. There is not even a
scintilla of evidence of that. Certainly there is the
public platitudes. There is the verbal offerings that
the politicians are giving the American military and
the American diplomatic mission here, but to be
honest, I don't see it going beyond that. I mean, the
catch phrase now of American success or failure is
Iraqi reconciliation. We've seen the Americans now
stand up Sunni militias, while they've been crying
for years for the Shia to stand down their Shia
militias.
Now this has done many things. A, it's helped crimp
al Qaeda. But, B, secondly, it's also been a stick
with which the Americans have been able to beat or
pressure the Iraqi government into doing a number of
things: curbing police infractions, curbing the Shia
militia, but it's also meant to force them to the
reconciliation table.
Now I have been with the Sunni militias and I'm
talking to the power brokers within the Shia
government. And once you get past the pretense of the
public game, I see very little evidence right now of
any real intent for reconciliation. My opinion is
they are just waiting for America to get out of the
way so they can go for each other.
FOREMAN: That's a very bleak assessment. Rend
al-Rahim, do you agree with it?
REND AL-RAHIM, U.S. INSTITUTE FOR PEACE: I agree with
the political analysis, that there isn't enough
dialogue going on, there isn't enough reconcilation.
The Iraqi government says there is. Says there is.
That they are moving forward with legislation and so
on. The Sunnis on the other hand say there isn't
enough, and they say there isn't enough dialogue.
I do not agree with Michael Ware, though, when he
says that everybody is waiting for the U.S. to move
out so they can get at each other militarily and have
a big fight. I think we do need more dialog, we do
need international and domestic efforts at
reconciliation, but the conditions in Iraq right now,
they are ripe, but the Iraqi politicians don't know
how to take advantage of them.
FOREMAN: Let's talk about the benchmarks we talked so
much about before. Holding provincial elections,
de-Baathification laws -- dealing with the people who
used to be part of Saddam's regime -- amendments to
the Constitution, disband sectarian militias and oil
revenue sharing. Of those five we mentioned there,
any real progress on any of them at this point?
AL-RAHIM: Yes. A little bit. Because we have had a
review of the Constitution, and the revisions have
been given to parliament to look at. The other thing
is the de-Baathification. There is a law called
Amnesty and Reconciliation or something like that,
that has been approved in the Cabinet and should go
to Parliament very soon.
However, you are right, of everything is stalled or
at least everything is going at a snail's pace, and
that is because the issues are highly political, they
are very charged issues. They are not just simple
legislation with a yes or no vote. So it is going to
take a lot more time, but it needs more discussion
amongst the Iraqis, they need to come together.
FOREMAN: Jamie, what does the Pentagon make of all of
this? Because the Pentagon has really -- all evidence
is, in the past few months, exercised a very smart
strategy that really is working?
JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, what they
are arguing is the strategy is working, not the way
they originally envisioned the way it was going to
work. Yes, the progress on those big benchmarks that
you are talking about is not anywhere near what the
Pentagon had hoped.
But there is a lot of unexpected progress, they say,
in other levels, a lot of reconciliation on a local
level even while the national government seems to be
sort of grasping, trying to find some way ahead, and
it's very much like the so-called Anbar awakening,
which was an unanticipated positive development of
the surge. Wasn't necessarily directly part of the
strategy. They say they are seeing that kind of
progress here so, you know, it's sort of a glass half
full, glass half empty. As they are going ahead into
the next six months, they are drawing the troops
down, they are hoping build on some of those
unexpected successes.
FOREMAN: Michael Ware, listen to what Brigadier
General John Campbell said about the Sunnis there
where they had a lot of success getting people to
ease along here. "The Sunnis have shown great
patience," he said, "and you don't want the Sunnis
that are working with you to go back to the dark
side."
Michael, how long do you think the progress, the
military progress there can continue before there is
either a demand for political progress or the lack of
it causes everything to collapse again?
WARE: Well, honestly, I don't think the Sunnis are
truly expecting great strides in the political
domain. I mean, for the Sunnis, the greatest
achievement and that which will sustain them in my
belief is the fact that they now see America
supporting them. Now, we're talking about the
Baathists, the former military and intelligence
apparatus of Saddam's regime. These are the people
who first came to America offering a deal in 2003.
Now, four years later, they finally have it.
They are allowed to be armed. They have American
support, indeed America is paying 67,000 Sunni
militiamen to be on the streets of the capital and of
Anbar Province. Now this this has nothing to do with
the surge. The surge was meant to put U.S. troops, to
flood them into the capital to dampen violence to buy
oxygen for political reconciliation.
Well, that's not what's resulted, what has dampened
the violence are these Sunni militias protecting
Sunni enclaves. We have a segregated and divided city
here and that means that these communities can better
defend themselves. The real question is what's the
price and what happens when America leaves?
FOREMAN: Rend, what do you think?
AL-RAHIM: It's very important to bring the Sunni
tribes into the political fold and we can't have
another election to get them into Parliament yet. I
don't think that's likely. However, my understanding
is that the Iraqi government has new lists of
potential ministers to go into the Cabinet. And they
include members of the Anbar tribes as potential
ministers. Those names on the list were provided by
the Anbar tribes.
FOREMAN: Do you have a sense that there is a sense of
urgency among the Iraqi central leadership where they
say this is the moment we have something approaching
peace or a lot better than it was. We've got to act?
AL-RAHIM: Yes. I don't think there is enough of a
sense of urgency. They know that they need to do
this, they are moving towards it, but they are not
moving toward it in the way we should be seeing.
FOREMAN: Jamie, last word to you on that. How much is
the military just watching that political situation,
saying please move now?
MCINTYRE: Well, they are very concerned that the
Iraqi politicians are not going to step up. And all
this progress will be lost. I would say one thing
about what Michael said, he's absolutely right that a
lot of things have happened are not a direct result
of the surge. One thing we have seen is a clearing
out of a lot of these bomb-making facilities that
were in southern Baghdad and that may be partly
responsible for the downtick in IEDs and other
attacks.
FOREMAN: And with that, thank you Jamie McIntyre, and
Rend al-Rahim. And Michael Ware as well.