A closely guarded review of the US war in Iraq being conducted by a Pentagon commission has outlined three basic options: send in more US troops, shrink the US occupation force but stay longer, or pull out, the November 20 Washington Post reported.
"Insiders have dubbed the options 'Go Big', 'Go Long' and 'Go Home'", the Post reported, adding that both the first and third options had been rejected by the study group set up by Joint Chiefs of Staff chairperson General Peter Pace.
The "Go Home" option — a swift withdrawal of US troops — was rejected as being incompatible with Washington's objective of maintaining a pro-US government in Iraq. This is despite large majorities of US voters and Iraqis wanting US troops withdrawn within a year.
A survey of Iraqis in early September by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) found that 74% of Shiites and 91% of Sunnis want all US troops out of their country within a year.
Nearly every opinion poll in the US has shown that roughly six in 10 voters want a withdrawal within a year. On November 7, 150 communities in Wisconsin, Illinois and Massachusetts voted on non-binding referenda calling for a "rapid withdrawal" of US troops from Iraq. The proposal was approved by 59-74% of voters. In Chicago, 74% of voters supported the withdrawal proposal.
The "Go Big" option — a massive increase in US forces to wage a "classical counterinsurgency war" such as the US waged in Vietnam from 1965 to 1973 — was ruled out by the Pentagon study group because, the Post reported, "there are not enough troops in the US military or effective [puppet] Iraqi forces" to carry it out.
The Post reported that "under the troop-to-population ratios used in historical counterinsurgency campaigns, some of which had aspects of civil wars, the United States and its allies in Iraq would need at least 500,000 and perhaps more than 1 million troops, military experts say. No one thinks those numbers will be available anytime soon, even if the training of Iraqis is greatly expanded and accelerated."
Instead, the Pentagon study group "has devised a hybrid plan that combines part of the first option with the second one — 'Go Long' — and calls for cutting the US combat presence in favor of a long-term expansion of the training and advisory efforts.
"Under this mixture of options, which is gaining favor inside the military, the US presence in Iraq, currently about 140,000 troops, would be boosted by 20,000 to 30,000 for a short period, the officials said ...
"Under the hybrid plan, the short increase in US troop levels would be followed by a long-term plan to radically cut the presence, perhaps to 60,000 troops ... Planners envision taking five to 10 more years to create a stable and competent Iraqi army."
This hybrid option, the Post noted, "may be remarkably close to the recommendation that the Iraq Study Group, led by former secretary of state James A. Baker III" will soon deliver to Congress and President George Bush. The ISG was set up by Congress in March with Bush's backing, and is taking advice from the Pentagon in formulating its recommendations.
The proposal to boost US forces in Iraq by at least 20,000 for a short period, however, has already been dismissed by military analysts as unlikely to achieve anything other than a rise in the daily US casualty rate.
"In the past year, we've had between 125,000 and 147,000 troops there, and the daily [insurgent] attacks have almost tripled", Michael Vickers, director of strategic studies at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, told the Post.
The paper also noted that, "Military officials and experts said yesterday that they think such a plan could work only temporarily because the Army and Marine Corps are stretched thin by ongoing conflicts. They said a large number of troops sent into Iraq would be hard to sustain over time without dipping significantly into the National Guard and reserves."
"If you put 20,000 soldiers in Baghdad, they can provide a modicum of security where they have a physical presence", a military officer familiar with discussions in the Pentagon on the matter told the Post. "We could flex and bend, and we could do a spike. But we can't do a steady state with that many more troops. Additional troops could do a particular job for a finite period of time, but that doesn't solve the long-term problem of holding those areas."
The November 19 Los Angeles Times reported that "few good policy choices have emerged and the outlook on the war has grown increasingly pessimistic" among US political and military leaders.
This was reflected in US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's November 14 comment that "there is no magic bullet" solution to the mounting problems Washington faces in Iraq — or, more bluntly, by the conclusion of an adviser to the Baker commission, quoted in the November 9 New York Newsday: "There just aren't any options".