Bush to hear military’s concerns on Iraq
Foriegn Desk Report

WASHINGTON—President Bush is expected to hear deep concerns Friday from top Pentagon generals about continuing the military buildup in Iraq, as yet another grim independent report emerges finding lack of progress in the conflict.
Iraq was to be the main topic at a meeting scheduled so Bush could hear assessments from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Two independent assessments already have been previewed this week — the latest finding that Iraq’s national police are so corrupt and tainted by sectarianism that the corps should be scrapped and replaced with a smaller force.
An independent commission established by Congress to study Iraq’s security forces will recommend starting over and reshaping the troubled 25,000-member police organization with a more elite force, a defense official said Friday. He said the report was more positive about progress being made by the Iraqi army.
The report from a commission headed by the former commander of U.S. troops in Europe, retired Gen. James Jones, is to be presented to Congress next week but was briefed to Gates and other officials this week, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the report has not been publicly released.
The Iraqi National Police, a paramilitary organization run by the Interior Ministry, has long been feared and distrusted by the Iraqi people and is considered the weak link in the Iraqi security system. Many of its early senior officers were veterans of the Badr Brigade, the Iranian-backed Shiite militia formed in Iran from among Shiite refugees who had fled Saddam Hussein’s rule.
The U.S. has been working to weed out corrupt members, taking whole police units out of service and retraining them, as well as removing a number of commanders. The report on Iraqi forces follows circulation of a draft report by the auditing arm of Congress that found the Iraqi government has failed to meet political and security goals. A third report — by the nation’s intelligence agencies last week — found there has been some progress, but that violence remains high, the Iraqi government will become more precarious over the next six to 12 months and its security forces have not improved enough to operate without outside help.
Training and equipping an Iraqi Army, police force and border corps is key to handing over responsibility for Iraq’s security and bringing U.S. troops home. Commanders have said they hoped to have a 390,000 security forces trained by the end of this year, but that they are not yet capable enough in some areas for the U.S. to reduce its troop levels.
Bush’s Friday meeting with generals is likely to include an assessment on the long-term impact on U.S. forces of maintaining a heavy troop presence in Iraq in 2008 and beyond. There are more than 160,000 Americans in Iraq, up from around 130,000 before the escalation Bush ordered in January.
The Army and the Marine Corps have shouldered most of the burden in Iraq, creating strains that service leaders fear could hurt their recruiting as well as their preparedness for other military emergencies. The Joint Chiefs, however, were not expected to urge Bush to withdraw from Iraq entirely as many Democrats want. Maj. Gen. Richard Sherlock, director of operational planning for the Joint Chiefs, told reporters that Friday’s meeting in a secure conference room known as “the tank” would be the Joint Chiefs’ opportunity to “provide the president with their unvarnished recommendations and their assessments of current operations” — in particular the situation in Iraq.