Bush Foresees a Deeper U.S. Role in Iraq

President Bush warned the American people Monday that the U.S. engagement in Iraq will intensify in the coming year, with the Jan. 30 election marking the “beginning of a process” toward democracy that will require higher troop levels and continue through 2005.

Painting a far more sober picture of the situation in Iraq than he did during his reelection campaign, Bush acknowledged that efforts to train Iraqi security forces have had only “mixed” results and that a violent insurgency has eroded morale among Iraqis and Americans.

In what is likely to be his last full-dress news conference before his inauguration next month, Bush appeared to be laying the groundwork for the first year of his second term. He argued that the Social Security system was in “crisis” and needed dramatic reform. He pledged to start simplifying the tax system. And he made it clear that troop levels in Iraq -- which the Pentagon plans to raise from 138,000 to 150,000 to increase security during the election -- are unlikely to be reduced next year.

The president shielded Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who has come under renewed attack even by Bush’s Republican allies for failing to adequately prepare for the aftermath of the war and adequately equip troops in the field and for displaying callousness to the families of the fallen by using a machine to sign condolence letters.

“I know Secretary Rumsfeld’s heart. I know how much he cares for the troops,” Bush said. “You know, sometimes perhaps his demeanor is rough and gruff, but beneath that ... is a good human being who cares deeply about the military and deeply about the grief that war causes.”

In the 53-minute session with reporters, Bush sought to portray the U.S. involvement in Iraq as challenging but important and refused to predict when stability would be achieved.

“My point is the elections in January are just the beginning of a process, and it’s important for the American people to understand that,” Bush said during his opening comments in a small auditorium next door to the White House.

“No one can predict every turn in the months ahead, and I certainly don’t expect the process to be trouble-free, yet I am confident of the result,” he continued. “I’m confident the terrorists will fail, the elections will go forward and Iraq will be a democracy that reflects the values and traditions of its people.”

During his presidential campaign, Bush rarely discussed events in Iraq beyond the Jan. 30 election, depicting the ballot as the peak of the U.S. effort there. He would say that the training of Iraqi forces was on schedule and the U.S. troop presence could start to be drawn down once adequate Iraqi police and army forces were trained.

“We’re going to train troops -- and we are. We’ll have 125,000 trained by the end of December,” Bush said in a debate with Democratic challenger Sen. John F. Kerry in October. “Our plan is working. We’re going to make elections and Iraq is going to be free, and America will be better off for it.”

By contrast, Bush on Monday laid out a political timetable for next year. It includes the Jan. 30 elections to a transitional national assembly, ratification of a new constitution in October and election of a permanent government in December.

Some former administration and congressional officials said the president was trying to change Americans’ expectations of what lies ahead in Iraq.

“He’s clearly moving people’s time horizon and understanding of the process,” said James Dobbins, Bush’s former envoy to Afghanistan who now directs the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the Rand Corp. “It’s prudent to clear up the misunderstanding that previous statements may have created that this election in January is a watershed event after which everything will change for the better.”

Dobbins said Bush wants to “begin preparing people for the more likely event, which is the insurgency does not diminish, the violence does not subside and the casualty rate does not go down.”

Michael O’Hanlon, a former Congressional Budget Office national security expert and a foreign policy analyst at the Brookings Institution, said the president “was honest in a way he couldn’t be all year.”

“He admitted that it’s not going that well,” O’Hanlon said. “The spin machine didn’t let them say that during the race.”

In the aftermath of the U.S. invasion, American commanders said that no more than 30,000 U.S. troops would be needed on the ground by the end of 2003 and that Iraqi forces would provide security for the elections. But Bush acknowledged Monday that there have been problems training Iraqi forces.

“I would call the results mixed in terms of standing up Iraqi units who are willing to fight,” Bush said. “There have been some cases where when the heat got on, they left the battlefield. That’s unacceptable.... On the other hand, there were some really fine units in Fallouja, for example, in Najaf, that did their duty.”

According to State Department statistics, about 115,000 Iraqis have been trained for the security forces, fewer than half of the 274,000 considered necessary to stabilize the country and permit U.S. forces to withdraw.

The picture may be even more bleak than those numbers suggest because the U.S. government has not provided statistics on casualties and desertions among Iraqi forces, according to O’Hanlon and Anthony H. Cordesman, a former Pentagon and State Department official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“We know that there have been very significant desertions. It’s very difficult to quantify,” Cordesman said. “It’s quite clear that there will not be really significant numbers of properly trained, equipped and experienced forces until mid-2005, and it’s likely the numbers will not be available until 2006.”

The president also acknowledged that an upsurge in violence, especially suicide bomb attacks, was “having an effect.” On Sunday, at least 65 people were killed in car bombings in Najaf and Karbala and in an ambush of Iraqi election workers in Baghdad.

“They’re trying to shake the will of the Iraqi people and, frankly, trying to shake the will of the American people. And you know, car bombs that destroy young children or car bombs that indiscriminately bomb in religious sites are effective propaganda tools,” Bush said. “But we must meet the objective, which is to help the Iraqis defend themselves and at the same time have a political process to go forward.”

Larry Diamond, a Hoover Institution expert on democratic processes who was a consultant to U.S. authorities in Iraq, said the administration should consider postponing the Jan. 30 election to ensure greater participation in Sunni Muslim areas, where the violence has been concentrated. Sunnis, long favored under Saddam Hussein’s regime, are a minority and fear losing power to majority Shiites.

“Many, many people are worried that the Jan. 30 election is going to light the fuse to civil war,” Diamond said. “If you elect a parliament and freeze a political arrangement in which the Sunnis are essentially locked out and then write a constitution on the basis of that body, what incentive do they have for political action other than unrelenting violence?”

Asked whether Syria was meddling in Iraq, Bush said that the possibility was a serious concern. “Nothing’s off the table” in terms of a response, he added.

“We have sent messages to the Syrians in the past and we will continue to do so,” Bush said. “When I said the other day that I expect these countries to honor the political process in Iraq without meddling, I meant it, and hopefully those governments heard what I said.”

Bush’s remarks were seen as a veiled threat to impose stiffer sanctions on Damascus if cooperation lags on closing the Iraqi-Syrian border to fighters, weapons and money.

In 2003, Congress passed a law requiring the imposition of economic and political sanctions on Syria unless President Bashar Assad certifies that his country has sealed its borders and stopped sponsoring terrorism. Bush imposed the mildest possible sanctions in hopes of persuading Damascus to cooperate but can turn to far more punitive measures.

The Syrian ambassador to the United States, Imad Moustapha, said Syria is doing everything possible to police its border with Iraq but will increase its efforts if the U.S. is dissatisfied.

“While we do not believe there is a huge infiltration problem, even if it is a very small one, we agreed with the [Iraqi] government to work together to address this issue,” Moustapha said in a telephone interview.

On relations with Russia, Bush declined to criticize President Vladimir V. Putin for recent anti-democratic moves, such as eliminating the general election of regional governors and increasing state control over the media. He stressed that although the United States and Russia do not see eye to eye on many political matters, the countries have an important mutual security agenda, especially on nuclear issues.

In particular, Bush called for giving Russian inspectors greater access to American nuclear facilities -- a shift in policy that experts described as a “breakthrough” for nuclear security cooperation.

“I think one of the things we need to do is to give the Russians equal access to our sites, our nuclear storage sites, to see what works and what doesn’t work, to build confidence between our two governments,” Bush said.

The remark appeared to be the first acknowledgment by the administration that the United States, in a confidence-building effort, had permitted Russian officials to visit nuclear sites in Texas, New Mexico and South Carolina in recent months to model the kind of openness they would like to see on the Russian side.

Bill Hoehn, director of the Washington office of the nonpartisan Russian-American Nuclear Security Advisory Council, said that in order to inspect Russian facilities, U.S. officials must be more willing to let Russians inspect American installations.

“This idea has been resisted for a long time by a number of administrations,” Hoehn said. “If they are talking seriously about this, it represents something of a breakthrough on the U.S. side.”