DON’T WAIT FOR SEPTEMBER

As the Senate again turns its attention to Iraq, one question should dominate the debate: Why wait? Why wait until September to decide to redeploy U.S. troops when it is clear that a delay means many more U.S. soldiers killed for minimal progress.

When President Bush in January announced a surge in U.S. troops in Iraq to quell growing violence, he said that the top commander there would report on progress in September. The president must deliver an interim report by Sunday. While it is expected to show some security progress on 18 required benchmarks, it will be hard to demonstrate that the Iraqi government has achieved goals set by the United States.

With May being the most deadly month since the fighting began for U.S. troops and the Iraqi government still far from reaching political benchmarks, there is no reason to wait until September before changing strategy. Members of Congress already can see and the administration concedes that progress will not be adequate by September. In the meantime, more U.S. soldiers would be killed. Another soldier from Maine was killed this weekend, brining to nearly four dozen the number of soldiers with Maine ties who have died as a result of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This week, the Senate is expected to begin debate on a bill authorizing spending for military operations in Iraq for the next fiscal year, which begins in October. Funding issues will be overshadowed by debate over how long U.S. troops should remain in Iraq.

Several stalwart Republican senators, including John Warner, the former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, have distanced themselves from the Bush administration in recent days and called for a redeployment of U.S. troops out of Baghdad in coming months. Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins already have backed timelines for redeploying troops.

“Because it is abundantly clear that Iraq’s feuding sects will continue to choose bloodshed over reconciliation, now is the time to end the surge and transition our overall mission in Iraq to the limited anti-terrorism and related objectives,” Sen. Snowe said late last week.

It is possible that President Bush, seeing political support for his Iraq strategy slipping, may announce a new direction himself. To be acceptable, it must include reducing the number of U.S. troops in Iraq and pulling the remaining out of Baghdad to be stationed in areas in Iraq where fewer of them will be killed. They would continue to train Iraqi soldiers and continue missions outside Baghdad, but the message to the Iraqi government would be clear: It must make progress on the governmental benchmarks it has pledged to meet.

Anything short of this is just stalling for time. Congress does not need to wait to hear from Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, before deciding that reducing the number of troops in Iraq and moving those that remain out of Baghdad, along with increasing diplomacy with Iraq’s neighbors, is necessary.