U.S. Commander in Iraq Says He Needs More Troops

Technorati Tags: Iraq war

More signs (in bold) that the surge is succeeding, from the Los Angeles Times:

The commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq said Friday that he did not have enough troops to deal with the escalating violence in Iraq's Diyala province, an unusually frank assertion for a top officer and a sign that American military officials might be starting to offer more candid and blunt assessments of the war.

Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin R. "Randy" Mixon also said that the Iraqi government had failed to help the situation in the restive province and that it has been a hindrance at times by failing to support local army and police forces. Diyala borders Baghdad on the east, and violence in the province has grown as U.S. troop levels have been bolstered in the capital.

Mixon's call for help coincides with a rise in the number of sectarian death squad killings in Baghdad. U.S. officials had heralded an earlier decline in such deaths as a sign of the success of the security clampdown in the capital that began Feb. 13.

Iraq's Interior Ministry said 234 people — men whose bodies were found throughout the capital — died at the hands of death squads in the first 11 days of May, compared with 137 in the same period of April. The tally so far for May is more than half the total for all of April, when 440 bodies were found. That was a decline from previous months.

Calling the increase "very minimal," U.S. military spokesman Army Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV said that "there has been a slight uptick, and we're obviously very concerned about it."

Mixon, speaking Friday by teleconference from Camp Speicher, outside Tikrit, to a Pentagon news conference, said that he did not have enough soldiers to provide security in Diyala. The local government is "nonfunctional" and the central government is "ineffective," he said.
[...]
Mixon was withering in his criticism of the Iraqi government, saying it was hamstrung by bureaucracy and compromised by corruption and sectarian discord, making it unable to assist U.S. forces in Diyala.

The province is ethnically mixed and has long been home to elements of the Sunni Muslim-based insurgency. As the number of American forces has increased in Baghdad and Al Anbar province in the west, radicals in the insurgency and in Shiite Muslim death squads have moved into Diyala, which has fewer U.S. troops.
[...]
"The level of violence began to increase before the surge," Mixon said, referring to the Baghdad buildup. "It has increased, of course, during the surge … [because] we are sure that there are elements, both Sunni extremist and Shia extremist, that have moved out of Baghdad."

Note that the problems Gen. Mixon is seeing are nothing new. The reason we are hearing about them now is because the top leadership is more open to hearing about the problems:

Mixon's comments were the first of what could be a succession of blunt evaluations by officers under Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, said retired Army Maj. Gen. William L. Nash, a veteran of the Bosnian conflict who is now an analyst with the Council on Foreign Relations.

"I suspect the new Defense secretary has told general officers to speak their minds," Nash said.

"It's going to be hard for some in the administration — suddenly they're going to feel it from the inside. I think you're going to see more of it," he said.

One Pentagon official said Mixon's public request was being viewed as an attempt to pressure the new commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, into sending more troops to Diyala from Baghdad, since the overstretched Army is unable to send substantial numbers of reinforcements from the U.S.

But Mixon is not known for dealing with private disputes in such ways, said one recently retired Army general who is close to the commander. Instead, his frankness probably stems from a new "command climate" under Petraeus that is more conducive to blunt evaluations, the general said.

Many Army generals also have been stung by disclosures by officers. A recent article in the Armed Forces Journal by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, an Iraq veteran who is deputy commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, accused the Army's top generals of botching the war and misleading the American public and Congress.

"That's weighing on the consciences of the general officers of our Army," Nash said. Yingling "said they failed to live up to their sacred oath of telling the truth. As a consequence, I think everybody is saying: 'Not me. I'm not going to be guilty of that.' "

All that won't help much if the official policy is not reality-based -- and Jim Henley doesn't think it is:

Major General Benjamin R. Mixon wants more troops for Diyala province. As Peter Spiegel, Tina Susman and Garrett Therolf report in the LA Times, Mixon is “withering in his criticism of the Iraqi government, saying it was hamstrung by bureaucracy and compromised by corruption and sectarian discord, making it unable to assist U.S. forces in Diyala.” They also report that

Mixon, speaking Friday by teleconference from Camp Speicher, outside Tikrit, to a Pentagon news conference, said that he did not have enough soldiers to provide security in Diyala. The local government is “nonfunctional” and the central government is “ineffective,” he said.

“I’m going to need additional forces,” he said, “to get that situation to a more acceptable level, so the Iraqi security forces will be able in the future to handle that.”

Now, at least on paper, the “Iraqi security forces” are part of the Iraqi government. If it doesn’t function, they can’t function, at least not in the way that American commenters talk about them functioning, as taking responsibility for real security. Four years into this calamity the official American discourse around it remains as disconnected from reality as ever.