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Summary: U.S./Top News Writing on his blog Informed Comment, Juan Cole suggests that the same arguments that Gen. Abizaid used to parry calls for more troops in Iraq could be deployed to argue for phased withdrawal.
President George Bush has told senior advisers the US must make "a last big push" to win the war in Iraq and that instead of beginning a troop withdrawal next year, he may increase US forces by up to 20,000 soldiers, the Guardian reports.
Experts around the Middle East say civil war is already underway in Iraq and the real worry is the conflict will destroy the Iraqi state and draw in surrounding countries, the Washington Post reports.
In a detailed article, Kim Murphy writes in the Los Angeles Times on the opinions of Iranian officials concerning the timing of US withdrawal from Iraq. While Iranian officials want the US to leave, it is suggested, they do not want the US to do so precipitously. One analyst suggests that Iran would be most happy if a solution was engineered by the U.S. and Iran in tandem, leading to a withdrawal of U.S. troops on the basis of "a shared success."
Al-Qaeda's influence and numbers are rapidly growing in Afghanistan, the directors of the CIA and defense intelligence told Congress yesterday.
The commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East said he had requested an increase in the number of U.S. military advisors in Iraq and had sent another 2,000-Marine unit into the country's restive western region, moves that will increase the number of American troops in Iraq, the Los Angeles Times reports.
A debate is emerging inside the Bush administration, Laura Rozen writes in the Los Angeles Times: Should the U.S. abandon its efforts to act as a neutral referee in the ongoing civil war and throw its lot in with the Shiites?
Spain, France and Italy unveiled a five-point Middle East peace initiative Thursday, calling Israeli-Palestinian violence intolerable and saying that Europe must take a lead role in ending the conflict, AP reports.
Iran The White House is under pressure to talk to Iran and Syria to help stabilize Iraq, but mounting violence in Iraq and the Bush administration's political woes give the negotiating edge to Tehran and Damascus, the Washington Post reports. The Post reminds us that "Neither country has much sway over Iraq's Sunnis or the al-Qaeda branch in Iraq," something of an understatement in the case of Iran. Hopefully US officials will get the memo. It's more likely that Iran could help by pressing compromise on its Shiite political allies - who are also allied with the US - than by trying to influence Sunni insurgents, who generally hate Iran as much or more than they hate the US.
The US and key European countries remain locked in fundamental disagreement with Russia about the scope of U.N. sanctions on Iran for refusing to end its uranium enrichment program, AP reports.
Iran dismissed a U.N. report that inspectors found new traces of enriched uranium and plutonium at a nuclear waste facility, saying it had already explained that discovery, AP reports. A senior U.N. official cautioned against reading too much into the new findings, saying Iran had explained both and they could plausibly be classified as byproducts of peaceful nuclear activities. The official said that while the uranium traces were enriched to a higher level than needed to generate power, they were below weapons-grade.
Iraq The recent mass kidnapping from a Ministry of Higher Education building in Baghdad highlighted the plight of academics and an educational system besieged by sectarian tensions, lawlessness and government ineffectiveness, the Washington Post reports.
Afghanistan The U.S. military is preparing for a longer commitment in Afghanistan, a general with U.S. Central Command said Tuesday, the Chicago Tribune reports.
North Korea The Bush administration came under fierce attack yesterday from Democrats for its North Korea policy, with Tom Lantos, incoming chairman of the House International Relations Committee saying that change is "long overdue" and that the US should allow its chief nuclear arms negotiator to visit North Korea's capital, the Washington Post reports. Lantos has been criticized by anti-war groups as a hawk, but it is worth noting that he has been a vigorous advocate of the commonsense notion that the United States should talk to its adversaries.
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-- Robert Naiman Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org