The U.S. military presence in Iraq may not drop off after Iraqi elections in January, and the drawdown of American troops won’t be able to happen until Iraqi forces can take over the heavy lifting needed to make the country secure, U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen said Thursday.
Larsen, D-Wash., spoke with reporters in a conference call Thursday after touching down at Andrews Air Force Base, Md.
He left for Iraq on Sunday as part of a five-member congressional fact-finding mission organized by the U.S. Army. The congressmen stayed in Jordan but visited Iraq on Tuesday to talk with U.S. commanders, local soldiers and Iraqi officials, including Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
It was Larsen’s second trip to the war-torn country; the first was in September 2003.
The biggest change since then, he said, is that military operations now are directly tied to places where immediate infrastructure improvements could be made.
Larsen recalled being shown maps of Sadr City, a sprawling slum in Baghdad, that showed places where trash was piling up in streets, sewage pipes were broken and power was off. Those were the same places where the insurgency was strongest.
But instead of trying to fix everything at once, reconstruction in Iraq is being done neighborhood by neighborhood.
Unfortunately, Larsen said, the infrastructure improvements that have been made haven’t reached critical mass – the point where Iraqis feel they have turned the corner on rebuilding and the insurgency subsequently loses steam.
Larsen also visited a training camp for Iraqi security forces in Jordan. The eight-week course provides only minimal training for future Iraqi policemen.
“It is my assessment that Iraqi national guard and police are still a long way from taking the lead on security, much less doing it wholly on their own,” Larsen said. That remains the greatest challenge before and after the January elections, he said.
“It makes it very difficult to put a firm timeline on when the U.S. military can begin moving to the back seat and putting Iraqis in the front seat on security,” he said.
One of the highlights of his trip was meeting with six soldiers from Washington state. The soldiers, members of the Army National Guard’s 81st Brigade Combat Team, are due to come home in February or March.
Larsen ate dinner with the troops at Camp Victory in Baghdad and gave the soldiers more than 150 letters from children in first grade to high school from schools in Arlington, Everett and Ferndale.
Although the group never talked about the Army Reserve supply unit that was recently in the news for refusing to carry out a mission because their trucks lacked armor, the 81st Brigade soldiers did talk about supplies in general.
Although some Army units have faced a lack of body armor, armored Humvees and armor for truck convoys, the troops Larsen met said the supply situation had improved.
Still, Larsen faulted the Bush administration for the supply problems.
“Having to play catch-up on that is a reflection of the miscalculations the administration made after major combat was over,” he said. “It was an assumption that everything would be safe and we’d be greeted with open arms.”
Larsen deflected the notion that his charges were partisan, despite the continuing focus on Iraq during the presidential campaign. As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, Larsen said he’s required to provide oversight on national security issues.
“I will praise where praise is warranted. I will ask questions where asking tough questions is warranted. The public expects no less from any elected official,” he said.
He added that his Republican counterparts on the trip had tough words as well for State Department. They wanted to know why the administration was so slow to spend reconstruction money for Iraq that Congress had approved.
Reporter Brian Kelly: 425-339-3422 or kelly@heraldnet.com.
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