McCain, Kissinger Offer Differing Iraq Assessments

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WASHINGTON — Senator McCain said yesterday that American troops are “fighting and dying for a failed policy” in Iraq and must get enough reinforcements to ensure a military victory.

Meanwhile, a former secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, said a “clear” military victory in Iraq isn’t “possible.”

Mr. McCain said that while deploying more troops to Iraq would put a “terrible strain” on the American military, “there’s only one thing worse, and that is defeat.”

“And we’ve been losing,” the Arizona Republican said on ABC’s “This Week” program.

Mr. McCain, a 70-year-old Vietnam veteran who is exploring a bid for the presidency in 2008, said an American failure in Iraq would have “catastrophic” consequences, emboldening terrorists and spreading instability in the region. Mr. McCain didn’t say how many more troops should be sent in. Previously he has called for an additional 20,000 personnel.

America has about 141,000 military personnel in Iraq, and the top U.S.commander in the Middle East, General John Abizaid, told Mr. McCain at a Senate Armed Service Committee hearing last week that there is no immediate need for more troops even as violence — and American military deaths — has been rising.

American policy in Iraq may be at a crossroads with Democrats winning a majority in Congress on November 7 in part because of public dissatisfaction with President Bush’s management of the war and a bipartisan commission getting ready recommendations on a future course in the conflict. Mr. Bush has rejected setting any deadlines for the American presence in Iraq.

Mr. Kissinger, who negotiated the end to the Vietnam War, told the British Broadcasting Corp. that a decisive military victory in Iraq is unlikely and that the American course must be redefined.

“If you mean by clear military victory an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don’t believe that is possible,” Mr. Kissinger said in an interview broadcast yesterday.

“But I don’t believe that the alternative is between military victory as it had been defined previously, or total withdrawal,” said Mr. Kissinger, who served in the administrations of Presidents Nixon and Ford.

Mr. McCain said he disagreed.

“You can’t have a political solution unless you have a military solution,” Mr. McCain said. “There’s never been one in history.”

Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican of South Carolina, also disagreed with Mr. Kissinger and backed Mr. McCain on the need for more troops.

“We’ve been playing whack-a-mole, as John McCain says it, where you clear one area but you can’t hold it because you go to the next area to suppress a surge in violence,” Mr. Graham said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program. “We need a larger troop presence in Iraq to bring about security.”

While Mr. McCain has been urging deployment of more troops to stabilize Iraq, leaders of the new Democratic majority in Congress are calling for America to begin withdrawing at least some personnel over the next four to six months to pressure the Iraqi government into taking more responsibility for Iraq’s security.

Senator Levin, the Michigan Democrat who will become chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said Mr. McCain’s approach would “get us in deeper into Iraq.”

“That sends exactly the wrong message to the Iraqis, that somehow or other, there’s a military solution,” Mr. Levin said on CNN’s “Late Edition,” adding later: “So no, not more troops; fewer troops.”

Rep. Steny Hoyer, the Maryland Democrat who was elected last week to the no. 2 House post in the next session of the Congress, said the situation in Iraq may be past the of point of resolution through more force.

The government of Prime Minister al-Maliki has failed to do what’s needed to end sectarian violence, Mr. Hoyer said in a separate interview on ABC. “If you have a failed government, our continuing to prop up that failed government will not ultimately succeed,” he said.

In addition, “there are no troops to increase with,” he said.


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