Iraq sacrifices worthwhile, claims Rice Friday December 22, 2006 Guardian Unlimited Condoleezza Rice today said Iraq was worth the cost in US lives and dollars, rejecting accusations that the conflict is a foreign policy disaster. With George Bush's popularity plummeting amid growing sectarian violence and US casualties rising towards 3,000, the secretary of state defended the decision to invade the country in 2003 and said the US could still win. In an interview with the Associated Press, Ms Rice was asked whether the additional $100bn (£50.8bn) the Pentagon wants for Iraq and Afghanistan could amount to throwing good money after bad in Iraq. "I don't think it's a matter of money," she said. "Along the way, there have been plenty of markers that show that this is a country that is worth the investment ... once it emerges as a country that is a stabilising factor, you will have a very different kind of Middle East." Congress has already approved more than $500bn for the two conflicts, including more than $350bn for Iraq alone - far higher than estimates made prior to the US-led invasion. Ms Rice's comments came as Mr Bush prepared to unveil his "new" strategy for Iraq in the new year. The plans could include a temporary boost to the 140,000-strong US force in the country by around 20,000. The new US defence secretary, Robert Gates, has been in Iraq this week, talking to Iraqi leaders and soldiers on the frontline as part of a reassessment of US strategy. Enlisted soldiers have been telling him more troops would help, but leading commanders such as General John Abizaid, who is in charge of the Middle East, are sceptical about the merits of an increase. Speaking to reporters after meetings with the prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, and other Iraqi officials, Mr Gates said the talks were "mainly on the overall approach, including the possibility of some additional assistance". He said no troops numbers had been discussed, and Iraqi officials have not been pressing for an increase. According to the Washington Post, Mr Maliki's advisers say he has proposed a two-pronged strategy in which US troops would target Sunni Arab insurgents in outer Baghdad neighbourhoods for four to eight weeks, while Iraqi forces would take over control of the inner area of the capital. It was also reported that Mr Maliki would launch a political offensive, including threats of force, in an attempt to persuade the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to contain his Mahdi Army militia during the operation. Meanwhile, Shias from parliament's largest bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance, yesterday met in the holy city of Najaf to seek approval from the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's leading Shia cleric, for a coalition crossing sectarian lines. He is said to be alarmed at the sectarian bloodshed. The alliance could exclude Mr Sadr's 30 loyalists in the 275-member parliament and his six ministers in the 38-member cabinet. However, it is unclear whether a new coalition would be able to govern effectively without the backing of the cleric's followers. Mr Sadr's supporters had suspended their support for Mr Maliki in protest at his recent meeting with Mr Bush, but appear to have decided to go back to parliament in order to avoid political isolation. Comment: Yet again Condi shows her true psychopathic nature. Notice how she nonchalantly comments that the murder of 700,000 Iraqi civilians has been "worth the investment in American lives and dollars". The life of an American and a dollar being worth approximately the same to Condi.

Flashback: Condoleezza Pregnant: Giving Birth to Monster Laura Knight-Jadczyk 24 July 2006 Israel's leading historian on the topic, Benny Morris, although having done more than anyone else to clarify exactly what happened, nonetheless concludes that, morally, it was a good thing - just as, in his view, the "annihilation" of Native Americans was a good thing - that, legally, Palestinians have no right to return to their homes, and that, politically, Israel's big error in 1948 was that it hadn't "carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country - the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan" of Palestinians. [Norman Finkelstein] Rice sees bombs as "birth pangs" Condoleezza Rice has described the plight of Lebanon as a part of the "birth pangs of a new Middle East" and said that Israel should ignore calls for a ceasefire. "This is a different Middle East. It's a new Middle East. It's hard, We're going through a very violent time," the US secretary of state said. "A ceasefire would be a false promise if it simply returns us to the status quo. "Such a step would allow terrorists to launch attacks at the time and terms of their choosing and to threaten innocent people, Arab and Israeli, throughout the region." I have to say that, as the mother of five children, these remarks stopped me cold in my tracks. Aside from the obvious question "what can Condoleezza Rice - a woman who has never given birth - know about "birth pangs"? - there is another more compelling question: what kind of human being can be so callous as to say such a thing when tens of thousands of mothers in the Middle East have suffered the unimaginable grief of seeing their beautiful babies crushed under the jackboots of rapacious Imperialism and religious fanaticism? In Norman Finkelstein's book Beyond Chutzpah, he writes: In the course of preparing the chapters of this book devoted to Israel's human rights record in the Occupied Territories, I went through literally thousands of pages of human rights reports, published by multiple, fiercely independent, and highly professional organizations - Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B'Tselem (Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories), Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, Physicians for Human Rights - Israel - each fielding its own autonomous staff of monitors and investigators. Except on one minor matter, I didn't come across a single point of law or fact on which these human rights organizations differed. In the case of Israel's human rights record, one can speak today not just of a broad consensus - as on historical questions - but of an UNQUALIFIED consensus. All these organizations agreed, for example, that Palestinian detainees have been sytematically ill treated and tortured, the total number now probably reaching the tens of thousands. Yet if, as I've suggested, broad agreement has been reached on the FACTUAL record, an obvious anomaly arises: what accounts for the impassioned controversy that still swirls around the Israel-Palestine conflict? To my mind, explaining this apparent paradox requires, first of all, that a fundamental distinction be made between those controversies that are real and those that are contrived. To illustrate real differences of opinion, let us consider again the Palestinian refugee question. It is possible for interested parties to agree on the facts yet come to diametrically opposed moral, legal, and political conclusions. Thus, as already mentioned, the scholarly consensus is that Palestinians were ethnically cleansed in 1948. Israel's leading historian on the topic, Benny Morris, although having done more than anyone else to clarify exactly what happened, nonetheless concludes that, morally, it was a good thing - just as, in his view, the "annihilation" of Native Americans was a good thing - that, legally, Palestinians have no right to return to their homes, and that, politically, Israel's big error in 1948 was that it hadn't "carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country - the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan" of Palestinians. However repellant morally, these clearly can't be called FALSE conclusions. Returning to the universe inhabited by normal human beings, it's possible for people to concur on the facts as well as on their moral and legal implications, yet still reach divergent POLITICAL conclusions. Noam Chomsky agrees that, factually, Palestinians were expelled; that, morally, this was a major crime; and that, legally, Palestinians have a right of return. Yet, politically, he concludes that implementation of this right is infeasible and pressing it inexpedient, indeed, that dangling this (in his view) illusory hope before Palestinian refugees is deeply immoral. There are those, contrariwise, who maintain that a moral and legal right is meaningless unless it can be exercised and that implementing the right of return is a practical possibility. For our purposes, the point is not who's right and who's wrong but that, even among honest and decent people, there can be a real and legitimate differences of political judgment. This having been said, however, it bears emphasis that - at any rate, among those sharing ordinary moral values - the range of political disagreement is quite narrow, while the range of agreement quite broad." Let's run that by one more time: The scholarly consensus is that Palestinians were ethnically cleansed in 1948 and Israel's leading historian, Benny Morris, thinks that this was a good thing. And now, Condoleezza Rice thinks that further ethnic cleansing of the Middle East by the psycho-bullies of Israel is just "birth pangs" of a "New Middle East." Most Westerners have been brainwashed to think that the "Arab-Israeli Conflict" is some kind of old, historical hatred, a "cosmic clash of religions, cultures, civilizations. This is what Finkelstein refers to as a "contrived controversy." It is all bunk and mystification and it serves to blow smoke on the so-called "Two State Solution" that is the favored political gambit of most normal, decent, humane and moral people. Noam Chomsky favors this view to some extent, but I sometimes wonder how a person can have any moral fiber at all if they, on the one hand, agree that a deed is totally morally reprehensible, and on the other hand, suggest that righting the wrong is not feasible. Nevertheless, there has been a consensus that the Two State Solution is the best one for over 25 years. In 1989, a UN Generally Assembly resolution passed nearly unanimously; it stipulated "[t]he withdrawal of Israel from the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967." The only dissenting votes were the U.S., Israel, and Dominica. In 2004, basically the same resolution was passed again with the only dissenting votes being cast by the U.S., Israel, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Palau, and Uganda. So, why does Israel and the U.S. (and UK too), continue to blow the mystifying smoke on the problem, to continue to try to present it as a "clash of civilizations" or a "cosmic war between good and evil" and all that crap? The answer is simple: if you look at it with all that nonsense stripped away you see the simple truth: it is a political problem that was created by politicians with Imperialist agendas. The fact is, from the very beginning, the establishment of a National Home for the Jews involved blanket negation of the inalienable rights of the residents of that land to keep their homes. The injustice inflicted on Palestinians by Zionism was manifest and, except on racist grounds, unanswerable: their right to self-determination, and perhaps even to their homeland, was being denied. Several sorts of justification were supplied for the Zionist enterprise as against the rights of the indigenous population, none of which, however, withstood even cursory scrutiny. Belief in the cluster of justifications put forth by the Zionist movement presumed acceptance of very specific Zionist ideological tenets regarding Jewish "historical rights" to Palestine and Jewish "homelessness." For example, the "historical rights" claim was based on Jews having originated in Palestine and resided there two thousand years ago. Such a claim was neither historical nor based on any accepted notion of right. It was not historical inasmuch as it voided the two millennia of non-Jewish settlement in Palestine and the two millennia of Jewish settlement outside it. It was not a right except in mystical, Romantic nationalist ideologies, the implementation of which would wreak - and have wreaked - havoc. Reminding fellow Zionists that Jewry's "historical right" to Palestine was a "metaphysical rather than a political category" and that, springing as it did from "the very inner depths of Judaism," this "category ... is binding on us rather than on the Arabs," even the Zionist writer Ernst Simon was emphatic that it did not confer on Jews any right to Palestine without the consent of the Arabs. One cannot help but draw the comparison between the justifications for the creation of the National Home for the Jews with the Nazis justifications for Lebensraum. The term Lebensraum... was coined by Friedrich Ratzel in 1897, and used as a slogan in Germany referring to the unification of the country and the acquisition of colonies, as per the English and French models. It was adapted from Darwinian and other scientific ideas of the day about how ecological niches are filled. Similar concepts are still used today in geography and biology.[1] Ratzel believed the development of a people is primarily influenced by their geographical situation and that a people that successfully adapted to one location would proceed naturally to another. This expansion to fill available space, he claimed, was a natural and necessary feature of any healthy species. These beliefs were furthered by scholars of the day, including Karl Haushofer and Friedrich von Bernhardi. In von Bernhardi's 1912 book Germany and the Next War, he expanded upon Ratzel's hypotheses and, for the first time, explicitly identified Eastern Europe as a source of new space. The attempts to implement the Lebensraum happened in Zamosc County and Wartheland (see Generalplan Ost). The biggest obstacle to implement the Lebensraum further was the fact that by the end of 1942 the Sixth Army was defeated at Stalingrad. After the second big defeat in the tank battle at Kursk during July 1943 and the Allied landings in Sicily, all further Lebensraum plans came to a halt. The Lebensraum ideology was a major factor in Hitler's launching of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941. The Nazis hoped to turn large areas of Soviet territory into German settlement areas as part of Generalplan Ost. Developing these ideas, Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg, proposed that the Nazi administrative organization in lands to be conquered from the Soviets be based upon the following Reichskommissariats: Ostland (Baltic States, Belarus and eastern Poland), Ukraine (Ukraine and adjacent territories), Kaukasus (Caucasus area), Moskau (the Moscow metropolitan area and adjacent European Russia) The Reichskommissariat territories would extend up to the European frontier at the Urals. These administrative entities were to have been early stages in the displacement and dispossession of Russian and other Slav peoples and their replacement with German settlers, following the Nazi "Lebensraum im Osten" plans. [Wikipedia] That sure does sound familiar, doesn't it? And it was soundly and violently condemned by the entire world which fought a World War to end such expansionist aspirations on the part of Germany. So, why do we tolerate it on the part of Israel? Why are we all sitting around and watching Israel doing the same things that the Nazis were doing, listening to psychopaths like Condoleezza Rice refer to it as "Birth Pangs" of a "New Middle East"? Have we taken leave of our senses? Is the universe of normal, decent and moral people so filled with smoke that we can no longer see what is right and what is wrong? Well, as a matter of fact, that seems to be the case. Another sort of justification conjured away the injustice inflicted on the indigenous population with the pretense that Palestine was (nearly) vacant before the Jews came. Ironically, this argument has proven to be the most compelling proof of the injustice committed: it is a back-handed admission that, had Palestine been inhabited, which it plainly was, the Zionist enterprise was morally indefensible. Those admitting to the reality of a Palestinian presence yet functioning outside the ideological ambit of Zionism couldn't adduce any justification for Zionism except a racist one: that is, in the great scheme of things, the fate of Jews was simply more important than that of Arabs. If not publicly, at any rate privately, this is how the British rationalized the Balfour Declaration. For Balfour himself, "we deliberately and rightly decline to accept the principle of self-determination" for the "present inhabitants" of Palestine, because "the question of the Jews outside Palestine [is] one of world importance" and Zionism was "rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of a far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land." [Finkelstein] At the time, British Cabinet Minster, Herbert Samuel, recognized that denying the Arabs majority rule was "in flat contradiction to one of the main purposes for which the Allies were fighting," but he then turned around and bought into the smokescreen belief propagated by religion, to wit "the anterior Jewish presence in Palestine "had resulted in events of spiritual and cultural value to mankind in striking contrast with the barren record of the last thousand years." Winston Churchill testified before the Peel Commission saying that the indigenous population of Arabs had no more right to Palestine than a "dog in a manger has the final right to the manger, even though he may have lain there for a very long time." He further opined that "No wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race, or at any rate, a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." Shades of Adolf Hitler! Finkelstein makes a small apology for the Brits saying: "The point is not so much that the British were racists but rather that they had no recourse except to racist justifications for denying the indigenous population its basic rights. Pressed to justify what was done, they became racists not from predilection but from circumstance: on no other grounds could so flagrant a denial be explained." The so-called "historic necessity" of Jews being given a National State is also bunk. There was a massive exertion of the Zionists to get Jews to go to Palestine; Jews were often conscripted in a heavy-handed way to go to Palestine. Zionists vigorously opposed the settlement of any Jews anywhere else. In documented cases, many Jews were given the choice between going to concentration camps under Nazi rule or going to Palestine. "From the outset Zionism worked towards the creation of a purely Jewish state and was glad to rid the country of its Arab inhabitants.' [Isaac Deutscher] To say that the Israeli government is acting irrationally when it refuses to "remove or assuage the grievance" of Palestinians is missing the point. Considering that the Palestinians' chief grievance is the denial of their homeland, if the Zionists were to act "rationally" according to that standard, and remove this grievance, i.e. to give them back their homeland, then there would be no Israel. It is equally wrong to think that Palestinians - and the wider Arab community - have been acting irrationally when they blame the Zionists for all the misery in the Middle East. They are acting quite normally. Which brings us back to Condoleezza Rice: Few things have ever revealed the psychopathic nature of the Bush Neocon Cabal more clearly than this soulless and truly inhuman series of remarks. Rice has revealed herself to be - like Benny Morris - a morally repellant creature. And, as Finkelstein has pointed out, the universe inhabited by normal human beings - honest and decent people - is one where the majority concur on the facts and their moral and legal implications, though they may have different ideas of how to implement a political solution. One could say that all normal people demand an immediate cease-fire. Period. You can work out the details later, but stop now before one more precious baby is lost and one more mother regrets the real birth pangs that brought her child into a world where he or she was destined to become only cannon fodder for such as the likes of Condoleezza Rice. But let's look again at what Rice said: a "New Middle East." What could she have meant by that? Just what kind of Middle East can you have when Israel is systematically ethnically cleansing the region of - well... anybody but Israelis. And there's your answer. That is, after all, the vision of Israel. And so we see just what kind of "New Middle East" Condoleezza Rice is talking about: she is pregnant and giving birth to a Monster.

US Marines Charged With Massacre Of Civilians In Iraq Times Online 22/12/2006 Eight US Marines were charged yesterday over the killing of 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians, including women and children, in the town of Haditha last year. Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, a squad leader and the alleged ringleader, was charged with 13 counts of murder. He is accused of ordering Marines under his charge to "shoot first and ask questions later" on entering a house. Sergeant Wuterich, 26 was also charged with making a false official statement and soliciting another sergeant to make false official statements. He faces a maximum penalty of life in prison for his alleged role. The charges did not allege premeditated murder, according to Mark Zaid, an attorney for Sergeant Wuterich. Mr Zaid said that his client would not be executed if found guilty. "The death penalty is not on the table," he said. But they underlined the seriousness with which the Pentagon is pursuing one of the darkest episodes for the American military in Iraq. It has drawn comparisons with the notorious civilian massacre at My Lai in Vietnam in 1968. The Haditha killings, which occurred on November 19, 2005, triggered the biggest criminal investigation of US troops in Iraq in terms of Iraqis killed. Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister, has called the deaths a "terrible crime". The highest ranking defendant, Lieutenant-Colonel Jeffrey Chessani, 42, was accused of failing to obey an order or regulation, encompassing dereliction of duty. The other officers charged were First Lieutenant Andrew Grayson, 25, Captain Lucas McConnell, 31, and Captain Randy Stone, 34, a military attorney. At the time of the killings, the US military initially said that 15 Iraqi civilians had died after being hit by a roadside bomb, and that Marines then killed eight insurgents in an ensuing firefight. There was no full US investigation into what happened until three months after when video footage taken by a local human rights activist was passed to Time magazine. A parallel military investigation has examined whether officers in the Marines' chain of command tried to cover up the events. Results of that inquiry have not been made public.

Five US troops killed in Iraq AFP 22/12/2006 Five American troops have died from combat wounds in western Iraq and Baghdad, the military said today, pushing the US death toll since the war began close to 3,000. Five American troops have died from combat wounds in western Iraq and Baghdad, the military said today, pushing the US death toll since the war began close to 3,000. In December, 76 American troops have been killed; at the current rate, the number of US combat deaths this month could meet or exceed the previous monthly record for 2006. At least 2,964 American troops have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. Comment: A few more and the Bush regime will have murdered the same number of American citizens in Iraq as did American citizens in New York on 9/11.

A New Phrase Enters Washington's War of Words Over Iraq NY Times December 21, 2006 WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 - First there was the "mission accomplished" banner. Then, last year, there was a "plan for victory" and, just this past October, the presidential assertion, "Absolutely, we're winning." Now that President Bush is seeking "a new way forward" in Iraq, he is embracing a new verbal construction to describe progress there: "We're not winning. We're not losing." The latest shift in the official language of the war is begging the question: Well, which is it? A tie? A draw? Something else? Mr. Bush essentially endorsed the not-winning-not-losing assessment in an interview with The Washington Post on Tuesday by way of attributing it to Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. When asked if the United States was winning in Iraq, Mr. Bush said, "An interesting construct that General Pace uses is, 'We're not winning; we're not losing.' " To those who closely follow the president's rhetoric on the war, the answer was something of a dodge. "This is pretty weak, but they have pretty weak material to work with at this point," said Christopher F. Gelpi, a political scientist at Duke University whose research on public opinion and the war has been studied by the administration. "He's in a difficult rhetorical situation because he stuck so long with the 'we're making progress' argument, yet clearly he does finally understand this is his last chance to make a major policy correction in Iraq." At his news conference Wednesday Mr. Bush was emphatic that victory in Iraq was achievable and that winning was what he had in mind even when he referred to General Pace's remarks. Yet, by the generally accepted David-versus-Goliath rules of counterinsurgencies, the insurgents are winning so long as the counterinsurgents are not. "The basic theory of counterinsurgency warfare is that the defenders must demonstrate momentum towards victory or success," said Loren B. Thompson, an analyst at the Lexington Institute, a military policy organization in Virginia. "If you can't prove you are making progress then by definition you are losing." White House officials say that in this war there are insurgents attacking other insurgents as well as counterinsurgents; there are terrorists, armed gangsters and an occupying force - the United States-led coalition - all fighting each other too, and so the usual rules and definitions do not apply. In short: a dizzying mix of forces in Iraq has resulted in a dizzying mix of definitions of winning and losing as the administration has sought to recalibrate expectations for a public that was initially promised a swift victory and now just seems to want to hear it straight. "When they say, 'We're not winning; we're not losing,' that's being 'realistic,' " said William Safire, whose column, "On Language," appears in The New York Times Magazine. "And 'realistic' is a word that's being kicked around now," he said. This week began with a debate over what former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell meant when he said on "Face the Nation" Sunday, partly quoting the Iraq Study Group report, "So if it's grave and deteriorating and we're not winning, we are losing." But he also said, "We haven't lost." Addressing that comment on Monday the White House spokesman, Tony Snow, said: "Look, what Colin Powell is saying, 'We're not winning, so therefore we must be losing,' and then he says, 'all is not lost.' So I'm just - I'm not going to get - what I am saying is that we will win, and we have to win." Vexed at continued questions, he finally resorted to giving a grammar lesson: "You're trying to summarize a complex situation with a single word or gerund, or even a participle," he said. "And the fact is that what you really need to do is to take a look at the situation and understand that it is vital to win." Comment: !!! So George is "in a difficult rhetorical situation", is he? What about the people of Iraq? There situation is somewhat more real than just rhetorical.

Iraq: U.S. generals leary of plan for more troops www.chinaview.cn 2006-12-21 19:50:23 BEIJING, Dec. 21 (Xinhuanet) -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates met with top U.S. generals at Camp Victory Wednesday during his visit to Iraq and was told they are leary of President George W. Bush's possible proposal to deploy more troops to the war-ravaged country. Bush has said he is considering that idea and others in his search for a fresh path in a 3 1/2-year-plus war that has no end in sight and has lost the support of much of the American public. Gates made the surprise trip because the administration has been under intense pressure to forge a new strategy. The unannounced visit came just hours after the president conceded the United States is not winning the conflict. After meeting with top U.S. generals, Gates acknowledged concerns that rushing thousands more American troops to the battlefront could allow the Iraqis to slow their effort take control of the country. "It's clearly a consideration," Gates said of how adding more American troops might affect Iraqi leaders. "I think that the commanders out here have expressed a concern about that." Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said he supports increasing troop levels only when there is a specific purpose for their deployment. Other military leaders have expressed uncertainty over the purpose and results of bringing in more troops.

Gates Plans Report to Bush on Iraq LOLITA C. BALDOR 12.22.06, 11:55 AM ET Defense Secretary Robert Gates is taking what he learned during three days of meeting with military and political leaders here directly to President Bush. Gates, due back in Washington from Iraq on Friday night, was scheduled to see Bush at Camp David first thing Saturday morning, said Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser Stephen Hadley and deputy national security adviser J.D. Crouch, who has been coordinating Bush's review of Iraq policy, were also to attend the discussions at the Maryland mountain retreat where Bush was spending Christmas. As the president weighs a course correction in the increasingly unpopular war, the White House also announced that Bush would convene a meeting of his full National Security Council next Thursday during a several-day stay at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. That session was not designed to arrive at final decisions, but to continue to whittle down the options, Perino said. Before leaving Baghdad, Gates declined to say whether he plans to recommend a short-term increase in U.S. troop levels. But he said he believes the U.S. and Iraqis have "a broad strategic agreement between the Iraqi military and Iraqi government and our military." "There is still some work to be done," Gates said. "But I do expect to give a report to the president on what I've learned and my perceptions." Speaking to reporters at Camp Victory, with the sounds of artillery fire and jet aircraft in the background, Gates said that "clearly there are more discussions that need to take place in Washington and more specific recommendations." He said Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, was continuing to work with Iraqi officials, with more details expected in the days ahead. Gates said he is "quite confident that what I've heard from the Iraqis of their plans this week, that we will be able together, and with them in the lead, we will be able to make an improvement in the security situation in Baghdad." Gates also said that he does not believe there is a large split among Iraqi leaders about whether there should be an increase in U.S. troops. The issue, he said, is how the Iraqis assert their own leadership in taking charge of their own fate. The new defense chief, who was sworn in on Monday, traveled to Iraq with a mandate to scope out a new war strategy, as the Bush administration continues to search for a way to bring the violence in the embattled country under control. To that end, Gates shuttled back and forth across Baghdad over the last three days meeting with his military commanders and Iraqi government officials, and gathering input from U.S. troops. On Iran, Gates told reporters there has been an increase in Naval forces in the Persian Gulf. But he denied that it was a direct reaction to any movements by Iran to pursue a nuclear program. Instead, Gates said, the message to the Gulf countries is that the United States is going to be an enduring presence in the region. "We've been here for a long time and we will be here for a long time," he said. Gates' visit comes as Bush is reassessing U.S. policy in the war, which is widely opposed by the American public after 3 1/2 years of bloodshed. Among the president's options is whether to quickly add thousands of U.S. troops to the 140,000 already in Iraq, in hopes of staunching the escalating violence in Baghdad and elsewhere. Flanked by Casey and Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gates said he has asked Casey to confer with Iraqi military leaders and the prime minister to make specific recommendations on how to improve the security situation. "Clearly success will only be achieved by a joint effort with Iraqis taking the lead," he said. Gates has said he did not talk about specific numbers of U.S. troops with the Iraqi officials. During his meetings here, Gates assured the Iraqis of "the steadfastness of American support." Gates said he discussed with the Iraqis how their government could reverse the deteriorating security problem. Besides an unrelenting insurgency, killings and kidnappings between Sunnis and Shiites are approaching civil war dimensions with U.S. and civilian casualties rising. Gates said there are several approaches that could be used to improve security, yet offered few details. Gates started his day Friday having breakfast with six Army soldiers with the 10th Mountain Division to discuss their mission training Iraqi troops in southern Iraq. The group is part of Task Force 2-15, which has about 400 soldiers embedded with the 4th Brigade of the 6th Iraqi Army Division. Lt. Col. Bob Morschauser, a soldier from Fairless Hills, Pa., said the Iraqis are improving and gaining confidence. He said the U.S. troops are hoping the Iraqis will be able to operate on their own in less than a year. Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed