On 5th Iraq visit, Rep. Norm Dicks sees mixed results

WASHINGTON — Rep. Norm Dicks returned this week from a visit to Iraq convinced the U.S. troop escalation has reduced violence, that the Iraqi government is not trying to reconcile and that the only entity more divided than Iraq is the U.S. Congress.

"There is a sense of normalcy you didn't see before. In that sense, the surge is being successful," Dicks, D-Bremerton, said. "But there is no success on political reconciliation. From that standpoint, it's not working."

This was Dicks' fifth trip to the area since the beginning of the war. He spent a week in the Iraq war theater over the Thanksgiving holiday.

Upon his return, Dicks made a point of differentiating himself from his colleague Rep. Brian Baird, D-Vancouver, a former opponent of the war who after a short trip to Baghdad in August announced that security was so improved in Iraq that U.S. troops should stay.

Dicks doesn't agree.

"We have to keep drawing down our forces, and push the White House to speed that up," in part to keep the pressure on the Iraqi government to bring together its warring factions, he said.

The war has taken too many lives, costs billions and "cuts our military's ability to respond to other threats around the world," he said.

In Baghdad's Green Zone, Dicks and his group, led by Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., the chairman of the Defense Appropriations Committee, were briefed by U.S. military leaders about their concerns that the Iraqi government is squandering the breathing room given it by the escalation of American troops. When his group sat down with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Dicks said, "we were very disappointed about the lack of reconciliation, and the lack of urgency." Maliki just nodded, Dicks said.

He reminded Maliki and his ministers that they need to pass legislation on sharing oil revenues and power among Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis.

"But I felt kinda embarrassed telling the Iraqis they had to get their act together and pass legislation when we can't do it back here," he said.

Congress is in a partisan stalemate on several fronts, and he noted: "We Democrats don't have the votes to end the war sooner than the White House wants."

If the escalation had completely failed to quell violence, he said, "We would see Republicans deserting the White House in droves." That's unlikely now, he added.

While in Iraq, Dicks and the other Democrats bumped into a group of pro-war Republicans led by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who is running for president.

McCain had argued for a much bigger troop presence from the start. Now, Dicks said, the escalation's impact on insurgent attacks shows that the Pentagon's initial failure to use overwhelming force "was a deadly mistake that they and the president compounded."

"You have to give McCain credit," Dicks said, adding with a laugh, "I hate to do that."

Alicia Mundy: 202-662-7457 or amundy@seattletimes.com