Iraq threatens to consume Bush's second term [View All]

[leftchick]

http://www.presstelegram.com/Stories/0,1413,204~21474~2611956,00.html

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WASHINGTON — The deadly attack on a U.S. military base in northern Iraq on Tuesday scrambled the Bush administration's hopes to show progress toward stability there, while making clear that the war is creating a nasty array of problems for President Bush as he gears up for an ambitious second term.
Despite weathering criticism of his Iraq policy during the presidential campaign, Bush is heading into his next four years in the White House facing a public that appears increasingly worried about the course of events there and wondering where the exit is. And as he prepares to take the oath of office a second time and to focus more of his energy on a far-reaching domestic agenda, he is at risk of finding his presidency so consumed by Iraq for at least the next year that he could have trouble going ahead with initiatives like overhauling Social Security.

At the same time, Bush faces fundamental questions about his strategy for bringing stability to Iraq. How can the United States with the help of Iraqi security forces whose performance has been uneven at best assure the safety of Iraqis who go to the polls on Jan. 30 when it cannot keep its own troops safe on their own base? And are Bush and his defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, more vulnerable to criticism that they have failed to provide U.S. forces with everything they need to take on a shadowy, fast-evolving enemy that, as Tuesday's attack showed, continues to display a notable degree of resilience?

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For a year, the administration has suggested that Iraq would move closer to stability as it reached one milestone after another: the capture of Saddam Hussein; the handover of sovereignty and the appointment of an interim government; the deployment of Iraqi security forces; the military campaign to expel the insurgents from strongholds like Fallujah, and the first round of elections next month for a constitutional assembly.

Yet most of those milestones have passed with little discernible improvement in the security situation. Now some analysts are concerned that the elections could make the political situation in Iraq even more unstable by producing an outcome in which the Sunni minority feels so marginalized by Shiites that it fuels not just more violence against Americans and Iraqis working with them but more intense sectarian strife or even civil war.