Odierno: More Time May Be Needed for Iraq Assessment

American Forces Press Service ^ | Jim Garamone

[SandRat]

WASHINGTON, May 31, 2007 – While military leaders will present an assessment of the progress of the new strategy in Iraq by a September deadline, a U.S. military commander in Iraq said it may be too soon to get a good feel for progress in the country. Army Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the commander of Multinational Corps Iraq, said in a Pentagon news conference that the nature of counterinsurgency warfare is such that more time may be needed to adequately assess the situation on the ground. The 2007 Emergency Supplemental signed by President Bush May 25 calls for the assessment in September.

While some of the forces that arrived in Baghdad as part of the surge have been in the country since February, other brigades will not arrive until the middle of next month.

“The full impact of the surge, in my mind, will not be able to be assessed until about August timeframe, and that's when they'll be in place 60 days,” Odierno said via teleconference from Baghdad. “So that'll be the first time I'll be able to make a real initial assessment of the true effect of the surge.”

He said he may decide he hasn’t had enough time to gauge the effect and that will reflect in the report.

“The assessment might be I've seen enough and it's effective, or I've seen enough and it's not going to be effective,” he said. “Right now if you asked me, I would tell you I'd probably need a little bit more time to do a true assessment.”

Everything in Iraq is subject to quick changes, Odierno said. He said the situation is like a teeter-totter.

“You work your way up the teeter-totter, and when you go past the tipping point, it happens very quickly, and we've seen that out in Anbar,” he said. “We're still going up that teeter-totter, and I'm not sure how long it's going to take us to get to that tipping point or if I believe or assess that we can't get to that tipping point. And that's why I got to just look at it.”

[SandRat]

FR WAR NEWS!

WAR News at Home and Abroad You'll Hear Nowhere Else!

All the News the MSM refuses to use!

Or if they do report it, without the anti-War Agenda Spin!

[xzins]

Of course more time may be needed. They just now got the troops in place, and the money’s been held up in congress for nearly 2 months now.

I’d think they should be given at least that additional amount of time.

They also deserve understanding of the situation:

1. They are entering BATTLE in a region full of the enemy. One thing to be expected is more casualties.

2. The enemy knows the media game real well, and in fact, they are probably coached. Therefore, expect massive explosions and deaths of civilians in areas OUTSIDE the Baghdad areas of concentration. Expect the media NOT to report that these are different areas than the surge is working in, and expect the media to pretend that ANY bombing is the same as any other.