By DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER
Published: June 24, 2007
WASHINGTON, June 23 — Last month, Congress set a deadline for the American commander in Iraq, declaring that by Sept. 15 he would have to assess progress there before billions more dollars are approved to finance the military effort to stabilize the country. The commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, said in recent days that his report would be only a snapshot of trends, strongly suggesting he will be asking for more time.
But even before he composes the first sentences of the report, to be written with the new American ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan C. Crocker, the administration is commissioning other assessments that could dilute its findings about the impact of the current troop increase. The intent appears to be to give President Bush, who publicly puts great emphasis on listening to his field commanders, a wide range of options.
The assessments are likely to conclude that the Iraqi government has failed to use the troop increase for the purpose the president intended, to strike the political accommodations that he said would stabilize the country. That and other views expected in the various reports could also provide some rationale for beginning a reduction of troops in Iraq under conditions far short of the “victory” Mr. Bush, for the past four years, has said was his ultimate goal. He has used that word with far less frequency recently.
American intelligence agencies, according to senior administration and intelligence officials, are already preparing to submit their own assessment of Iraq’s progress. That is expected to include a judgment about whether Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is willing or capable of striking the kind of Shiite-Sunni political balance Mr. Bush said was the ultimate objective of the American strategy, and whether the passage of political compromises, none of which have yet cleared Parliament, have any hope of reducing the violence. That report will begin circulating, officials said, around the time that General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker arrive in Washington to testify about what the troop increase has accomplished.
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It is difficult to predict how the assessments will play out in the next three months. Congressional Democrats, who wrote the Sept. 15 deadline into war-financing legislation, envisioned General Petraeus’s report as the moment they would have enough solid information to decide whether to continue financing for the so-called surge. They say that it could provide the opportunity to peel away enough nervous Republicans to create a veto-proof majority in favor of a withdrawal. An earlier report, due next month, is expected to be less significant.
But with the proliferation of assessments, there may also be a proliferation of contradictory views. That is exactly what the White House sought to create last December, when it ordered other studies to offset the findings of the Iraq Study Group, led by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Representative Lee H. Hamilton. Mr. Bush rejected much of the group’s advice — until recently, when he declared that it was his intention to get back to the group’s plan. He did not say which parts, but the plan includes a call, filled with caveats, for gradual withdrawal of all combat brigades by the end of March 2008.
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