Iraq report won’t alter White House plans

CRAWFORD, Texas – Despite political pressure for a change of course in Iraq, the White House hopes to keep in place its existing military strategy and troop levels there after the mid-September report from Army Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, administration officials said.

Even as the administration faced a new call this week from Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., a leading ally, to begin at least a symbolic withdrawal of troops by Christmas, White House officials said privately that they are not contemplating making shifts before early next year. They said that next month’s report is likely to highlight what they see as significant improvements in security over the past year, and they expect the president to assert that now is not the time to dramatically change approaches.

One senior White House official expressed the prevailing mood, saying he does not expect a “wholesale change in plans” next month.

But White House officials said they do expect Petraeus and Bush to begin outlining what a “post-surge” strategy might look like. They said the key date is April 2008, when the military will have to begin bringing units home unless it is willing to extend troop rotations from 15 to 18 months.

Another senior official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss White House thinking more freely, said he expects the U.S. presence to return to pre-buildup levels of 15 combat brigades and about 130,000 troops a year from now, down from about 160,000. “We all know where we want to get to,” this official said. “We all know that there will be a long-term robust troop presence that will outlast this president.”

All officials cautioned that the situation is fluid. Many fully expect the insurgents to attempt a spectacular attack in the next several weeks, and several said they have not heard even privately from Petraeus about the contents of his report. They said they expect the top U.S. commander in Iraq to give the White House some preliminary idea of his thinking sometime in the next week.

The question for the White House is whether the prospect of keeping a large force in Iraq will survive the politics of Capitol Hill, where Democrats are pushing for steep reductions. Bush is also likely to come under pressure from some military advisers to accelerate the reductions because of concerns that the military might get overstretched.

But in conversations over the past several days, a number of senior White House officials and close allies outside the administration indicated their belief that the political debate in Washington has moved in the administration’s favor this month, pointing in particular to a number of Democrats who have spoken positively of some security improvements in Iraq.

The one major exception was the statement this week from Warner, the respected GOP voice on national security issues, who surprised the White House on Thursday with a public call for troop withdrawals beginning in December.

Warner’s suggestion has roiled the White House, with administration officials saying they’ve asked the influential Republican to clarify that he has not broken politically with President Bush.

But Warner said Friday that he stands by his remarks and that he did not object to how his views have been characterized.

“I’m not going to issue any clarification,” Warner said in an interview with the Associated Press. “I don’t think any clarification is needed.”

Rep. John Boehner, the House Republican leader, said in an interview that the reports he has been receiving from his colleagues over the past several weeks suggest that they are feeling less nervous about the situation in Iraq.

“The security side was in very bad shape for a very long time, and that’s changing. And that’s stabilizing the situation” on Capitol Hill, added Peter Wehner, who recently left a senior staff job at the White House.