Bush unveils strategy for victory

WASHINGTON -- Unveiling what he called a strategy for victory in Iraq, President Bush yesterday outlined plans for training local forces and establishing durable civic institutions and he urged Americans not to lose patience with a mission he insisted is making steady progress.

Bush again refused to commit to a timetable for withdrawing forces and sought to persuade a skeptical public that he has a viable plan to achieve stability and begin drawing down the 160,000 US forces as early as next year. He provided new details on US objectives and how to achieve them as part of a White House offensive to stop the precipitous slide in public confidence in the war effort.

Leading Democrats criticized the speech, at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., as a rehash of previous statements that amounts to an open-ended commitment of US troops. Some military specialists said the president appeared to more freely acknowledge US mistakes and the need to change the approach, while others said he appeared to be clinging to flawed tactics.

Two and a half years after the US invasion, Bush emphasized that he is applying lessons the United States has learned -- especially in what he acknowledged was a false start in the training of Iraqis. As Iraqi forces grow capable, he said, US troops will reduce their number of bases, patrols, and convoys.

''The training of the Iraqi security forces is an enormous task, and it always hasn't gone smoothly," Bush said, standing before a banner that read ''Plan for Victory." ''We all remember the reports of some Iraqi security forces running from the fight more than a year ago. Yet in the past year, Iraqi forces have made real progress," including taking control over more territory from coalition forces, improving the quality of military recruits, and revamping their training.

''Our tactics are flexible and dynamic," he added. ''We have changed them as conditions required [and] as we make progress toward victory, Iraqis will take more responsibility for their security, and fewer US forces will be needed to complete the mission."

The speech, which struck a more conciliatory tone toward the president's opponents, was accompanied by the release by the White House of the ''National Strategy for Victory in Iraq." The 35-page document outlined specific political, economic, and security objectives. It also provided a detailed explanation of progress to date and a primer on the Saddam Hussein loyalists, Sunni ''rejectionists," and Islamic terrorists who are waging a bloody campaign against US and Iraqi forces.

The report acknowledges that ''victory will take time" and that ''many challenges remain" in defeating the insurgency and helping place Iraq on the path toward independence.

Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, who has called for the withdrawal of 20,000 troops after elections in Iraq on Dec. 15, told reporters that the president failed to address what he called a fundamental reality -- that ''the presence of our troops itself . . . presents food for the insurgency. And you need to reduce that presence over a period of time in order to be able to succeed, not fail."

US Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, said: ''The 'Plan for Victory' backdrop is no more accurate than the 'Mission Accomplished' backdrop he used two and a half years ago on the USS Abraham Lincoln" after the toppling of Hussein.

Others took issue with some of Bush's assertions about the recent progress made by Iraqi forces, accusing the president of painting a rosy picture of Iraqi soldiers and police who are largely split along sectarian lines and still rife with infiltrators. Units made up of Shia and Kurdish fighters, for example, have been recruited to take on Sunni Muslim insurgents, even though such an approach exacerbates ethnic strife.

This is ''feeding the very ethnic and sectarian tensions that could well lead to civil war," Wayne White, former deputy director of intelligence and research for the Near East at the State Department, wrote in a posting on the website of the Washington-based Middle East Institute. ''Washington and the government in Baghdad should consider new units of the Iraqi army battle-ready only if the units are balanced appropriately."

Yet the president refrained from attacking his critics in Congress and among the public, saying their concerns are ''sincere" and in the best tradition of American political debate, even if they are ''sincerely wrong."

But he maintained that US forces will remain in Iraq until Iraqi forces can replace Americans without degrading overall security, adding he will ''settle for nothing less than total victory."

''America will not abandon Iraq," Bush said. ''We will not turn that country over to the terrorists and put the American people at risk. Iraq will be a free nation and a strong ally in the Middle East, and this will add to the security of the American people."

The White House's newly published plan sought to lay out on how the administration plans to succeed in Iraq. It outlines ''three tracks": political, economic and security.

The political objectives are to isolate enemies of the Iraqi government, engage those outside the political process, and build pluralistic national institutions. The economic track involves efforts to restore Iraq's infrastructure, shore up its economy, and build the country's capacity to rejoin the international economic community.

The security strategy, according to the document, emphasizes the need to clear areas of the country under enemy control, hold areas free from insurgent influence by ensuring they remain under the control of the Iraqi government, and then build up Iraqi security forces and the ability of local institutions to deliver service to the public.

Bush outlined a model for the US military much like its role in Afghanistan.

''We will continue to shift from providing security and conducting operations against the enemy nationwide to conducting more specialized operations targeted at the most dangerous terrorists," he said. ''We will increasingly move out of Iraqi cities, reduce the number of bases from which we operate, and conduct fewer patrols and convoys."

As the Iraqi forces gain experience -- such as recent combat operations in western Iraq in which they took the lead -- ''we will be able to decrease our troop levels in Iraq without losing our capability to defeat the terrorists."

He added: ''Most Americans want two things in Iraq: They want to see our troops win, and they want to see our troops come home as soon as possible. And those are my goals as well."

Even some critics of the administration's Iraq policy said they were buoyed by what they saw as the president's new willingness to admit mistakes and reshape the American strategy.

''I was moderately encouraged," said Nathaniel Fick, a former Marine Corps captain in Iraq and Afghanistan who is now studying at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. ''He publicly said that mistakes have been made, we are going to adapt and learn. I am not aware of him having said that before. This was the first articulation of a tactical and operational plan for what's next."

Still, even some members of the president's party said they needed more information about how the United States can help bridge the divide between Iraqis themselves.

There needs to be ''some discussion of whether Iraqis want to be Iraqis, whether there is in fact sufficient cohesion among all the groups" to prevent a civil war, said Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. He said Congress needs to be consulted more ''if, in fact, we are going to have sustained support through what could be a fairly long period."

Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com.