Pentagon planners and military commanders have identified roughly 20 to 30 Iraqi towns and cities that they say must be "brought under control" before elections can be held there in January, and have devised detailed ways of deciding which ones should be early priorities, according to US officials.
Recent military operations to quell Iraqi opposition to the US-supported regime in Tal Afar, Samarra and south of Baghdad are the first and most visible signs of a new six-pronged strategy for Iraq approved by the Bush administration. While elements of the plan have been discussed previously, officials described it in much more detail.
As US military deaths have increased in Iraq and commanders struggle to combat a tenacious resistance and a deadly spate of bombings, even administration officials involved in creating the plan acknowledge that US forces face a difficult task and that success is far from guaranteed.
From the standpoint of President George W. Bush, the disclosure of the new plan is an attempt to address one of Senator John Kerry's criticisms -- that the administration has no plan for Iraq.
The new strategy was written this summer and laid down in a series of classified directives to the US Embassy in Baghdad and to the US military headquarters there. The instructions are an acknowledgment that the opposition had seized the initiative in Sunni strongholds north and west of Baghdad and in the southern city of Najaf, considered holy by Shiites.
For each of the cities identified as problematic, a set of measurements was created to track whether the rebels' grip was being loosened by initiatives of the new Iraqi government, using such criteria as the numbers of Iraqi security personnel on patrol, voter registration, economic development and health care.
For each city, a timeline was established for military action to establish Iraqi local control, if purely political steps by the government proves insufficient.
"We're working on them by population size, by importance to the election," said one senior official. "That's where the bad security situations are, and that's where we really need to make some major political and economic changes in the next several months if we're going to have a successful nationwide election," he said.
Both the overall strategy and the specific military component were described by senior administration, Pentagon and military officials in interviews over the last two weeks.
The overall political, military and economic strategy is contained in a classified document titled US National Strategy for Supporting Iraq. The plan, which is being coordinated by the National Security Council, sets six priorities: to neutralize insurgents, ensure legitimate elections, create jobs and provide essential services, establish foundations for a strong economy, develop good governance and the rule of law and increase international support for the US-led effort.
While the broad themes are not new, officials admit that those missions have not been carried out successfully during the first year following the end of formal warfare. Many in the administration and the military now view the past working relationship of L. Paul Bremer, the former chief of the US-led provisional authority in Baghdad, and a recently departed military commander as ineffective.
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