Petraeus testimony provides fodder for candidates

WASHINGTON – When Gen. David Petraeus testified on Capitol Hill last year, the Iraqi insurgency was setting gruesome records for civilian casualties, putting the country on the brink of the civil war. At home, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton was soaring, considered the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, and Arizona Sen. John McCain had fired his staff and downsized his campaign in what most observers thought was a sure end to his Republican presidential bid.

What a difference a year makes.

This morning, in the ornate Room 106 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, McCain, who has clinched the GOP nomination, and Clinton, now running second behind rival Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, questioned Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker about how the military buildup of U.S. forces in last year’s surge had changed the landscape and what lies ahead for U.S. policy in Iraq.

Clinton, who last year famously said that the predictions of success for the surge would take “a willing suspension of disbelief,” focused on the failures of the Iraqi government to forge a reconciliation between Shia and Sunni citizens.

“The purpose of the surge was to create the space for the Iraqis … to make significant political progress,” she told Petraeus. “Halfway through the year, we still do not see sufficient progress.”

Noting that the Bush administration “often talks about the costs of leaving Iraq … while ignoring the greater costs of staying,” Clinton said that she understood the “difficult dilemma” facing policy makers in figuring out how to extract U.S. forces from the region. If this were easy, we could all perhaps agree on the facts,” she said.

But she added that in her view it was time to leave. “I think it’s time to begin an orderly process of withdrawing our troops, start rebuilding our military, and focusing on the challenges posed by Afghanistan, the global terrorist groups and other problems that confront Americans,” she said.

Obama, who gets his chance to question Petraeus and Crocker this afternoon when they testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, previewed his arguments in a morning interview on NBC’s “Today Show.”

“The American people, I think, have recognized that we have a legitimate national security interest in Iraq,” he said. “They have been extraordinarily patient. Nobody has been more patient than the military families who are there. But at some point, we have to say to ourselves that the Iraqi government has to stand up and make the difference. And they have not done that.”

For his part, McCain reiterated the position he laid out yesterday in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. “We’re no longer staring into the abyss of defeat, and we can now look ahead to the genuine process of success,” McCain said in an opening statement today. “We should not choose to lose.”

During testimony, Petraeus said that security in Iraq is better today than it was last September, and “significantly better than it was 15 months ago” when Iraq was on the brink of civil war and the Bush administration decided to send additional U.S. forces. He praised the Iraqis for conducting their own surge of troops, but acknowledged that “the progress made since last spring is fragile and reversible.”

Crocker, noting that “the euphoria evaporated a long time ago” from the military victory that toppled Saddam Hussein’s statue, said the Iraqi flag now flies in all parts of the country for the first time in years and that sectarian rivalries are now often settled in debate rather than violence. “Almost everything about the war in Iraq is hard,” Crocker said. “But hard does not mean hopeless.” With Al Qaeda on the run, he said, “How we leave and what we leave behind will be more important than how we came.”

But a recent spike in violence in Iraq, including the deaths of 11 American troops in the last two days, gave Democrats an opening to question the administration’s policies. With black-clad antiwar protesters in the background, the hearings also provided all three presidential candidates an opportunity to stake out their electoral positions on the war.

“That’s what this presidential race is about,” Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., told the Associated Press. “It’s clear that we [Democrats] do not have the votes in the United States Congress at this moment in time. And that’s part of what the Senate races will be about. People are going to challenge the folks who have a different point of view about this policy. The American people are going to speak on this in November.”

Even McCain, a staunch supporter of the Iraq war, sought to demonstrate his independence from Bush administration policy. He questioned Petraeus about why many Iraqi soldiers deserted from the recent fighting in Basra, which the senator called “a disappointment,” and why violence had recently spiked inside the green zone in Baghdad.

During his first round of questions, McCain asked Petraeus about efforts by Al Qaeda to hold Mosul, and signaled that in his next round he would focus on the Iranian threat in Iraq, particularly the role played in Basra.

McCain left the hearing room after asking his questions, and was not present when Clinton countered his charge that she and Obama were “irresponsible” for advocating a withdrawal they could not carry out, because of national security concerns, once elected.

“I fundamentally disagree,” she said. “It might well be irresponsible to continue a policy that has not produced the results that have been promised time and time again.”

johanna.neuman@latimes.com