Reyes: send more troops
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16062351/site/newsweek/
Iraq: Top Dem Wants More Troops
As the debate over Iraq intensifies, leading Democrat Silvestre Reyes
is calling for the deployment of more U.S. troops.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Dec. 5. 2006 - In a surprise twist in the debate over Iraq, Rep.
Silvestre Reyes, the soon-to-be chairman of the House Intelligence
Committee, said he wants to see an increase of 20,000 to 30,000 U.S.
troops as part of a stepped up effort to “dismantle the militias.”
The soft-spoken Texas Democrat was an early opponent of the Iraq war
and voted against the October 2002 resolution authorizing President
Bush to invade that country. That dovish record got prominently cited
last week when Speaker designate Nancy Pelosi chose Reyes as the new
head of the intelligence panel.
But in an interview with NEWSWEEK on Tuesday, Reyes pointedly
distanced himself from many of his Democratic colleagues who have
called for fixed timetables for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Coming
on the eve of tomorrow’s recommendations from the bipartisan Baker-
Hamilton commission, Reyes’s comments were immediately cited by some
Iraq war analysts as fresh evidence that the intense debate over U.S.
policy may be more fluid than many have expected.
“We’re not going to have stability in Iraq until we eliminate those
militias, those private armies,” Reyes said. “We have to consider the
need for additional troops to be in Iraq, to take out the militias
and stabilize Iraq … We certainly can’t leave Iraq and run the risk
that it becomes [like] Afghanistan” was before the 2001 invasion by
the United States.
Reyes also stressed that there needed to be greater “political
accountability” demanded of the Iraqi government. But on the core
issue of the U.S. commitment, Reyes—a Vietnam War veteran who
partially lost his hearing in that conflict—even compared his
position to that of another Vietnam vet, Sen. John McCain, a staunch
supporter of the Iraq war. Like Reyes, McCain also has called for an
increase in U.S. troop strength. When asked how many additional
troops he envisioned sending to Iraq, Reyes replied: “I would say
20,000 to 30,000—for the specific purpose of making sure those
militias are dismantled, working in concert with the Iraqi military.”
When a reporter suggested that was not a position that was likely to
be popular with many House Democrats, Reyes replied: “Well again, I
differ in that I don’t want Iraq to become the next Afghanistan. We
could not allow Iraq to become a safe haven for Al Qaeda, for Hamas,
for Hizbullah, or anybody else. We cannot allow Iran or Syria to have
a free hand in there to further destabilize the Middle East.”
Reyes added that he was “very clear” about his position to Pelosi
when she chose him over two rivals—Rep. Jane Harman of California and
Rep. Alcee Hastings—to head the critical intelligence post. One
widely cited reason that Harman, a moderate Democrat who supported
the war, didn’t get the nod from Pelosi is that the Speaker-designate
wanted somebody who would be more aggressive in standing up to the
Bush White House—which Reyes promises to be on other issues like
domestic wiretapping and CIA secret prisons.
But when asked what he told Pelosi about his thinking on Iraq, Reyes
replied: “What I said was, we can’t afford to leave there. And
anybody who says, we are going pull out our troops immediately, is
being dishonest … We’re all interested in getting out of Iraq.
That’s a common goal. How we do it, I think, is the tough part. There
are those that say, they don’t care what Iraq looks like once we
leave there. Let’s just leave there. And I argue against that. I
don’t think that’s responsible. And I think it plays right into the
hands of Syria and Iran.”
Reyes also said he is eager to see the recommendations Wednesday from
the bipartisan panel headed by former secretary of State Jim Baker
and former Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee
Lee Hamilton. By some accounts, the panel is set to recommend an
adjustment of course that will include the beginning of troop
withdrawals pegged to progress on the ground along with other
political and diplomatic initiatives. But Reyes said such ideas are
not likely to substantially change his own views on the subject. “I’m
very interested in reading what their recommendations are. But this
is my position.”
Reyes’s comments were immediately blasted by one Iraq war critic who
expressed concerns that they would give new respectability to an idea
that has lost considerable support in official Washington as the
violence in Iraq has escalated. “I think he [Reyes] needs a course
in Insurgency 101,” said Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst who has
been active in an anti-war group called the Steering Group for
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. “Have they learned
nothing from Vietnam? If he pushes this and gets some support for it,
and with McCain in the Senate, it could become more respectable … I
think Reyes has got a lot to learn.”
Yet one prominent Iraq war supporter, Cliff May, the president of the
Foundation for the Defense of Democracy who served on an advisory
panel that worked with the Baker-Hamilton group, said he was stunned
and pleasantly surprised by Reyes’s views. “Wow, that’s remarkable,”
May replied when NEWSWEEK told him of Reyes’s comments. “Whenever
anybody like myself suggests that we need more troops, we get told
that it’s not politically feasible. But if you have a leading
Democrat saying it, that strikes me as very significant …. I think
it’s dawning on a lot of people that the price of a U.S. defeat would
be dire.”
One source familiar with aspects of the Baker-Hamilton panel’s
deliberations said that the idea of an increase of U.S. troop
strength of 20,000 to 30,000 had been pushed by some U.S. military
commanders for some time. However, Democratic members of the
commission were unwilling to go along with any proposal that would
indicate an expansion of the U.S. mission in that country, according
to the source, who asked not to be identified talking about sensitive
matters.
Yet another member of the Baker-Hamilton advisory panel praised Reyes
for proposing the idea of increasing troops, saying it showed that he
“doesn’t just fall back on political reflex.” But, added Larry
Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who formerly
served as a U.S. political advisor in Iraq, Reyes’s ideas were
unlikely to bear fruit unless accompanied with a far more extensive
strategy that included a “political and diplomatic” initiative to
reorder and rebuild support for the Iraqi government. “You can’t
sustain an increase of 20,000 to 30,000 troops for very long—maybe
four to six months,” Diamond said. “Can you really secure progress on
the ground in terms of knocking out death squads and militia activity
in four to six months? It won’t make sense unless it’s combined with
very intensive political and constitutional activity. Otherwise
putting in more troops is like putting more fingers in the dyke … I
don’t think there is any magic bullet.”