War czar nominee offers grim view of Iraq future

WASHINGTON – President Bush’s war czar nominee said Thursday that conditions in Iraq have not improved significantly despite the influx of U.S. troops in recent months and predicted that, absent major political reform, violence will continue to rage over the next year.

Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, tapped by Bush to serve as a new high-powered White House coordinator of the war, told senators at a confirmation hearing that Iraqi factions “have shown so far very little progress” toward the reconciliation necessary to stem the bloodshed. If that does not change, he said, “we’re not likely to see much difference in the security situation” a year from now.

Lute’s dour assessment mirrored the views of U.S. intelligence officials, who told the Senate Armed Services Committee in a closed session last month that trends in Iraq remain negative and that the prospect for political movement by the nation’s feuding Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds appears marginal. The secret intelligence conclusions were disclosed during Thursday’s hearing by Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., and confirmed by a Republican official.

The conclusions largely tracked the findings of the last National Intelligence Estimate, released in January, before Bush announced his decision to send nearly 30,000 more troops to Iraq, suggesting that the intelligence community does not think the force buildup has changed the outlook nearly five months later. Bayh quoted a CIA expert on radical Islam as saying that “our presence in Iraq is creating more members of al-Qaida than we are killing in Iraq,” though it was unclear if that came during the May 24 briefing.

The four-year U.S. military death toll in Iraq passed 3,500 after a soldier was reported killed in a roadside bombing in Baghdad.

The U.S. soldier was killed and two others were wounded Wednesday when a roadside bomb exploded during combat operations in a southwestern section of Baghdad, the military said Thursday.

The appraisals by Lute and intelligence officials underscore broader doubts in Washington about whether the Iraqi government will be able to meet political goals set by Bush and Congress in the recently enacted legislation on war spending. The legislation threatens cuts in U.S. reconstruction aid if Iraqis do not meet those benchmarks, such as passing a new oil distribution law and readmitting lower-level members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party into the government. The legislation requires progress reports from the administration in July and September.

As the president’s point man on Iraq, Lute would be charged with helping to ensure that the Iraqis can achieve those goals. But he expressed doubt about whether the Iraqis have the ability to change and whether the United States has the leverage to force them to. “I am concerned about the capacity of this government,” he said, “but I haven’t passed final judgment on them.”