Bush left with few options, even fewer chances for success in Iraq

WASHINGTON -- One way to look at the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq released this week is to review what it describes as the best-case scenario.

In that scenario, Iraq's security will improve modestly over the next six to 12 months, but violence will remain high. The U.S.-backed government will grow more fragile and remain unable to govern. Shiite and Sunni Muslims will continue to feud. All sides will position themselves for an eventual American departure.

In Iraq, best-case scenarios rarely, if ever, have come to pass.

More than four years after the invasion of Iraq, and after countless strategies, plans and revisions have failed to pacify the nation, President Bush next month faces what may be the final major decisions he can make on the war.

But even before top U.S. commander Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker report to Congress, an event now scheduled for Sept. 11, Bush appears hemmed in by decisions he and others made months or years ago.

His generals are calling for troop cuts in Iraq because the strain has limited the Army's ability to respond to other crises. There is widespread agreement that the additional 28,000 U.S. troops dispatched by Bush will have to begin coming home when their 15-month tours start to end in April.

Bush's one-time hope in Baghdad, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who was installed in April 2006 after intervention by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, has failed to unify the government, improve basic services or pass major legislation.

Bush's move to increase troop levels has brought "measurable but uneven" security improvements, in the words of the intelligence estimate -- but utterly failed to achieve its goal of spurring political reconciliation. The level of civilian casualties and attacks remains high, the estimate found.

Bush can move backward, by initiating a troop withdrawal. He can move sideways, by seeing if there's some way to replace al-Maliki and his democratically elected government. Or he can move forward, by staying the course.

Each direction carries danger.

There are about 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and, even if Bush does nothing, that number will fall to previous levels of 130,000 in about a year, because of limits on the length of time soldiers can be deployed to Iraq. The secretary of the Army said this week that there will be no extensions; those lead to stress and an increase in suicides, he said.

Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is expected to urge Bush to reduce U.S. troops to 100,000 by next year, according to the Los Angeles Times. Pace, via a spokesman, called the report "purely speculative," although he did not deny that such a cut was being considered.

Bush "has backed himself into a huge corner ... because all the way back in 2002 when they dreamed up this war, they chose not to expand the size of the U.S. forces," said Andrew Bacevich, a West Point graduate and professor of international relations at Boston University. The president now has "a lousy range of options," he said.

Sen. John Warner, R-Va., on Thursday urged Bush to announce in mid-September a withdrawal of troops, possibly 5,000, to give the Iraqi government a wake-up call.

Enticing as it is, a troop withdrawal carries real risks.

Declassified portions of the intelligence estimate -- a consensus view of all U.S. spy agencies -- say narrowing the military's role to supporting Iraqi forces and conducting counterterrorist operations "would erode security gains achieved thus far."

In other words, violence, still at unacceptable levels, would worsen, and the gains U.S. troops and Sunni tribesmen have had fighting al-Qaida in Iraq might evaporate.

There has been growing speculation -- fueled in part by Bush this week -- that the United States might be preparing to engineer al-Maliki's ouster. Rumors of a coup swept Baghdad this week, and several U.S. senators have jumped on the dump-al-Maliki bandwagon.

Yet, how the United States would replace al-Maliki is anything but clear. He was elected by the Iraqi parliament, which was elected by the Iraqi people, and there's no major push among Iraq's major political parties to remove him.

Even if he were replaced, it's hardly certain it would make much difference.

Al-Maliki has carried out the will of Iraq's dominant-but-long-suffering Shiites. Any other leader would have to do likewise.

The White House has given every indication that Bush will argue for the third option -- staying the course and keeping a large combat force in Iraq for the rest of his presidency.

That, too, seems unlikely to bring success. Nevertheless, Democrats and some Republicans may be worried that the turmoil that's likely to follow a U.S. withdrawal more likely would be blamed on a decision to retreat rather than on the president's decision to invade Iraq in the first place.

McClatchy Newspapers correspondents Renee Schoof and John Walcott and The Washington Post contributed to this report.