WASHINGTON (AP) – Iraq’s first free election in more than half a century may stiffen the resolve of ordinary Iraqis to fight in cooperation with American forces, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday.

“I expect that level of violence and the insurgency to continue,” Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news conference. But at the same time, the voting may have marked a “tipping point” at which Iraqis who had been intimidated by the insurgents decide to step forward and join the army or other security force or provide useful information to U.S. forces, he said.

“I think it means that intelligence is going to improve, I think that it means that there will be more people who will be willing to provide information … about people who were trying to intimidate them and control their cities, and over time” support for the government will grow, he said.

Rumsfeld also said U.S. forces are making good progress in training Iraqi security forces, but he cautioned that it was a gradual process.

“Nobody should expect that Iraqi security forces are going to come out of some pipeline,” he said.

President Bush, meanwhile, brushed aside calls for a withdrawal strategy from Iraq.

“They ask me, “Is there a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq?’ Here’s the answer to that: You don’t set timetables,” President Bush said in Great Falls, Mont., during an event to push his idea for Social Security reform.

“You don’t want the enemy to say, ‘We’ll just wait them out,”‘ he said. “The timetable is as soon as possible, and it’s going to be based on the willingness and the capacity of the Iraqi troops to fight the enemy.”

Rumsfeld was fairly upbeat about the war, while his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, struck a more cautious tone on Capitol Hill, warning, “Iraq still faces a difficult road ahead to defeat the terrorist threat and achieve stability, much less freedom and democracy.”

Speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Wolfowitz reiterated President Bush’s stance that the administration would set no timetable for American forces to withdraw.

But he said that now that the election is over, about 15,000 U.S. troops can be withdrawn, reducing the American military force in Iraq to 135,000. “I think we’ll be able to come down to the level that was projected before this election,” Wolfowitz said. Marines and soldiers whose tours were extended for the election are due to come home in March.

He said the U.S. military was making every effort to train Iraqi security forces, but he added that “much work clearly needs to be done” because the training “has encountered countless challenges and suffered numerous setbacks.”

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the lawmakers that only about a third of Iraq’s 136,000 trained security forces have enough training to engage in combat with insurgents across the country.

“About 40,000 can go anywhere in the country and take on any threat,” he said. “That does not mean the rest of them are not useful, because in many parts of the country all you need are police on duty.”

They spoke before a Congress that is increasingly under pressure – from a public that polls show is skeptical about the war – to answer the question of when the 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq will be withdrawn. Bush and military leaders believe a trained Iraqi security force is the key.

Despite the training going more slowly than anticipated, Wolfowitz and Myers said progress was being made. They noted that 2,500 Iraqis each day are signing up to join the security forces.

Still, some Democrats on the panel made clear they want U.S. troops to return immediately.

“When are the Iraqis going to fight for their own country? When are they going to start shedding their own blood … as American servicemen with this amount of training are ready to shed theirs,” said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., both pressed for an estimate on how many insurgents U.S. and Iraqi forces are battling. Myers said estimating was difficult because there were an unknown number of “fence-sitters.” He said there were about 1,000 foreign fighters but “how many criminals in Iraq are pretty difficult to tell.”

“I don’t know how you defeat an insurgency unless you have some handle on the number of people that you are facing,” McCain said. “I think the American people should know the nature of the enemy that we are facing.”

Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., also expressed frustration with NATO’s involvement in Iraq, saying it has had sufficient time to set up an officer training program for Iraqis.

“The numbers are not where we would like them in terms of NATO contribution,” Wolfowitz agreed. He said the program isn’t fully staffed and isn’t scheduled to start operating until Feb. 20 – months after NATO announced it.

AP-ES-02-03-05 2336EST



Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.

Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.