"Bush Exaggerating Risks Of Iraq Pullout"

Bush Hyped Pullout Dangers, Expert Says

United Press International
Published: May 3, 2007 at 3:22 PM
WashTimes

WASHINGTON, May 3 (UPI) -- President Bush has exaggerated the negative consequences of a U.S. pullout from Iraq, a leading American expert said this week.

"The Bush administration has once again failed to provide meaningful leadership, and has fallen back on exaggeration and spin," Anthony H. Cordesman, who holds the Arleigh A. Burke chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, said in a statement Wednesday.

"It has grossly overstated the very real risks in setting timelines for U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and in creating over-rigid benchmarks for Iraqi government action, and created worst case scenarios that turn limited 'worst case' possibilities into probabilities, if not certainties."

"A rushed U.S. withdrawal from Iraq might lead to an all out civil war or bloodbath, but probably would simply leave a shattered nation in lingering pain and division. The resulting power struggles would be violent and unpleasant, and probably lead to massive further displacements along sectarian and ethnic lines, but the cost would be a humanitarian disaster, not genocide, and it is unclear that letting Iraqis fight out their differences would ultimately be worse than having the U.S. interfere in them," Cordesman said.

"The administration's argument that Iraq would become a sanctuary for al-Qaida attacks on the U.S. ignores both the strong and growing Sunni resistance to an al-Qaida takeover in Sunni areas, and the realities of Shiite and Kurdish power," he wrote.

Cordesman's comments are likely to be cited by Democratic opponents of Bush's Iraq war policies. The president this week vetoed a measure passed by both houses of Congress that would have imposed withdrawal timetables on U.S. forces in Iraq.