Security Threat Seen as Rising

The security threat in Iraq has grown “undoubtedly more severe” since the beginning of the year and insurgents have become more sophisticated and dangerous in just the last few months, a former top U.S. security advisor in Iraq told a Senate committee Thursday.

David C. Gompert, who was senior security advisor to former U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer III, said the threat from loyalists of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein and from foreign fighters had become more deadly. He said that “the current threat ... cannot be defeated militarily without much stronger support from the Iraqi people than we [in the coalition] experienced.”

In his first public comments since the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority disbanded June 28, Gompert told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he was “guardedly upbeat” about Iraq’s future, in part because of the new interim government. Yet his views were gloomier than those offered recently by U.S. officials, who have sought to emphasize the positive in Iraq.

Gompert said the remnants of Hussein’s security organizations were “hardened killers” who had become “more cellular and more networked, more embedded, more dispersed, fluid, urban. And this is a very difficult threat to defeat militarily without very strong public support.”

Gompert, who said his remarks represented his own views, said the foreign fighters had also become a greater threat because they had more than a year to organize and develop their own weapons, “in particular, the suicide bomb, kidnapping, assassination techniques.”

Gompert said he had hope for Iraq, but “not because this threat is going to disappear or be defeated soon.... We have to expect that the threat is going to persist ... at least through the election, and no doubt beyond.” Elections in Iraq are planned for January.

U.S. casualties in Iraq have continued to be high. Troop deaths have remained at about two per day since the interim government took over. That rate is lower than the number of American deaths that occurred when the insurgency spiked in the spring, but about the same as the last year.

As of Wednesday, 47 American troops had died in July, bringing the total to 900, according to Associated Press. On Thursday, the Army announced two more deaths from hostile action, and today, it said two soldiers were killed by a roadside bombing in Samarra.

At the Senate committee hearing Thursday, several senators urged the administration to step up its efforts to spend U.S. aid in Iraq in a way that would employ more Iraqis, and thus reduce the insurgent threat. They were impatient over a new review the State Department was conducting of how to handle billions of dollars that have been appropriated but not spent.

Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) said it was “exasperating that we’re still reviewing at this stage.” He urged the State Department to “get on with it.”

Of the $18.4 billion that was appropriated in November, only $458 million -- less than 3% -- has been spent, because of security problems, red tape and the complexities of large contracts.

The committee was told that Iraq was about to take a major step next week with the convening of a 1,000-delegate conference to choose a 100-member national assembly to further empower Iraqis.

Ronald Schlicher, Iraq coordinator for the State Department, said the conference would be held in Baghdad to pick the so-called Interim National Council, which, with a two-thirds vote, would be able to veto decisions of the interim government.