Pentagon: Iraqi insurgence has not weakened

The US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and a Pentagon official said yesterday that the Iraqi insurgency is holding steady in its power over the security situation in the country. The Pentagon official said “ I would not chase the spikes and dips in the security situation. If you draw a straight line through the middle of that, it's fairly constant. That's not good or bad, it's fact.”

Here are some of the questions and answers the two US officials dealt with:

Question: What are you hearing from the generals in Iraq? There have been varied reports about the status of Iraqi security forces, whether they're really getting the job done. Some Iraqi commanders are even doubting their own ability to stand up without U.S. forces backing them up.

General Pace, can you give us .. a realistic update of what you're looking at now?

General Pace: I'll use one example. Let's just use Iraqi army battalions. In May of 2004, there was one -- count them --, one Iraqi army battalion that was deployable anywhere inside that country. Today, there are over 100 battalions, not all of which are fully capable of independent operations right now, but we have from the U.S. commanders in the field, who are working side by side with them, a breakdown of readiness capability -- like we provide for our own troops -- that tell us how many of each type of battalion are available for country-wide deployment; how many are best still to stay in the local vicinity; how many still need more training.

All that is very positive. The numbers of battalions that are operating first side by side with us has increased dramatically. Then, those that are operating independent, as Iraqi units under their own country's orders, has increased dramatically. The numbers of Iraqi army brigades has increased. So everything about the train and equip program over this last year, under General Casey and General Petraeus, has gone extremely well. They're at just shy of 200,000 total security forces right now. Just shy of that. All not fully trained and equipped --

Rumsfeld: (Inaudible) -- 169,000 this week.

General Pace: I'll check my number. Thank you, sir. But bottom line is, one battalion a year ago, over 100 battalions working not only as battalions, but as brigades, meaning three or more battalions at a time. And the division headquarters that have stood up. Three areas that we had as U.S. / Coalition bases have, in the last month, been turned over to Iraqi forces. They have that -- now their bases of operation. So this progress is very good.

Question: Two years-plus since the U.S. invasion, the insurgency seems to be vibrant. Certainly the number of attacks seem to be going up and down, but we're in a period now where they seem to be up.

General Pace, maybe you can give us kind of a big-picture assessment of the military operation. How successful has it been? The state of the insurgency, if you will.

And Mr. Secretary, on the political side, to follow up Jonathan's question, how confident are you that there could be a successful political reconciliation in Iraq between these tribal and ethnic factions you talk of? Try to give us a broad-picture assessment of where we are.

Rumsfeld: Okay.

General Pace: Well, we're operating against a thinking enemy, clearly. The numbers of attacks country-wide in Iraq each day is about 50 or 60, depending upon the day. That's not a good number. It's also not a terrible number. It just is a fact. Inside those attacks, the enemy has changed their tactics, techniques and procedures in response to what we've been doing.

There's been a tremendous amount of progress, as I've already mentioned in this discussion. But from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, what our armed forces and their armed forces and their police can do is provide a level of security inside of which discussions amongst various tribes, amongst various political leaders, amongst those who have different views of the way ahead for the country, but peacefully, to discuss it, so that they can get together and do what they're doing, which is write a constitution, have a referendum, vote for their next government, and get on about having a life that they're capable of having.

So the security situation is very important for that. But I would not chase the spikes and dips in the security situation. If you draw a straight line through the middle of that, it's fairly constant. That's not good or bad, it's fact. But inside that fairly constant line there's plenty of opportunity for the Iraqi people to stand up and vote their own futures.

Rumsfeld: On the political portion of it, that's obviously not the business of this department, but I can comment on it.

The general feeling is as follows, that the election was held January 30th. It took a number of weeks to put a government together. Not a number of years, but a group of people with no experience in democracy at all, it took a number of weeks, a few months to put together a government. A lot of tugging and hauling, a lot of negotiating about what it would mean in the assembly, a lot of negotiating about what it might mean with respect to the constitution- drafting, a lot of negotiating about what it might mean as to who's in what ministry and for what reasons, and the presidential council, I believe they call it. And they came to a conclusion.

When the conclusion was made and announced, one could look at worst case and say it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that the Shi'a would say, Okay, Sunnis, you didn't play in the election, you gave it to us for 20, 30 years, and we didn't like it, and now it's our turn, and we're going to give it to you. Quite the contrary. The Shi'a, the top leadership down, have been saying, Look, we want to have one country; let's reach out to the Sunnis, let's include them, let's find a way, even though they made a mistake and didn't participate in the election, let's see that they're involved in this, let's get them involved in the drafting of the constitution -- exactly the right instinct. The Sunnis, instead of saying, Okay, we didn't get in the election, maybe it was a mistake, maybe it wasn't, but now we're not well represented and we're not going to play and go separately and try to break the country into three pieces. The Sunnis didn't do that. I mean, everyone you talk to said we made a mistake. The Sunnis made a mistake. They should have gotten involved in the election. They didn't get involved in the election. They now know they should have gotten involved in the election. And thank the good Lord, the Shi'a are reaching out to them and the Kurds are reaching out to them and trying to include them.

Now, what does it mean next? Well, they're going to have a lot of to-ing and fro-ing on the constitution. Fortunately, they've made a lot of those decisions in the Transitional Administrative Law, the so-called TAL. And it's there as a guidepost. It's not a mandate, and it's not a speed limit or a direction, but it is generally agreed to. And so it'll serve, I would think, as at least a touchstone for the very complicated task of trying to find a piece of paper that people who have had historic hostilities to each other; that have been held together not through love or respect, but through vicious dictatorship repressing them -- that's how they've held together as a country. And now they're going to look for a piece of paper that will do that for them instead. Instead of a vicious dictatorship, instead of repression, instead of a police state, instead of mass graves filled with people, bodies, tens of thousands of bodies, there's going to be a piece of paper that those people are going to have to put their faith in. That is an enormous thing. And they're going to be debating that and tugging on it and to-ing and fro-ing, and they're going to, in my view, come up with one.

Question: What would the effect on the process be if --

Rumsfeld: Just a minute. Just a minute. And then they're going to have -- take that to the Iraqi people and have them vote on it. And another 26 million people will have a chance or a population -- and whoever's eligible to vote, men and women alike -- some large number is going to have a chance to go vote on that.

And then it'll be there, and then they'll vote on whatever that constitution says, for a president or a prime minister or whatever, representatives. They'll have a chance to vote on that in December. This is amazing! This is historic! This is a gigantic step forward! This ought not to be dismissed or trivialized! This is a big deal.

Will it happen? I think it'll happen. Can I guarantee anything in life? No, I can't. No one can. It's their country.