Jordan's Abdullah: Iraq not ready for Jan. election

"It seems impossible to me to organize indisputable elections in the chaos we see today," said the king, who was due to meet French President Jacques Chirac in Paris on Tuesday. "Only if the situation improved could an election be organized on schedule. If the elections take place in the current disorder, the best-organized faction will be that of the extremists and the result will reflect that advantage. With such a scenario, there is no chance the situation will improve," he said.

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King Abdullah's comments come a few days after another US ally in the Muslim world, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, said the war in Iraq had made the war on terrorism "more complicated." President Musharraf told CNN Friday that going to war in Iraq had " brought more trouble to the world." Musharraf said the US is only fighting terrorism in "its current context," which is "not very farsighted."

A spokesman for the European Union, asked about King Abdullah's comments, said that the EU was committed to elections taking place in January and that " even imperfect polls have value."

Meanwhile, Reuters reports that the security situation has become so bad in Iraq, that it is now considered "the world's most hostile environment." Paul Beat, director of International Asset Protection at London-based Control Risks Group, said the violence of recent weeks marked a new stage in the conflict.

"Terrorists are operating in larger and larger groups and becoming more and more daring," Beat, a former counter-terrorist specialist in the British army, told Reuters on the sidelines of the forum in the United Arab Emirates on Iraq reconstruction. "They're launching bigger, multiple attacks. Now they use one vehicle at the entrance (to compounds) to knock out guards and then drive a second bomb through to get inside," he said.

A report by Knight Ridder, however, shows it's not just violence perpetrated by insurgents that ordinary Iraqis have to fear. According to figures released by the Iraqi Ministry of Health, more than twice as many Iraqis have died since April of this year as the result of operations by US and multinational forces and Iraqi police as from attacks by insurgents and terrorists.

Iraqi officials said the statistics proved that US airstrikes intended for insurgents also were killing large numbers of innocent civilians. Some say these casualties are undermining popular acceptance of the American-backed interim government. That suggests that more aggressive US military operations, which the Bush administration has said are being planned to clear the way for nationwide elections scheduled for January, could backfire and strengthen the insurgency.

James Robbins of National Review Online says, however, that opinion polls in Iraq show that while most Iraqis are concerned about violence, they believe that the situation is better than it was under former dictator Sadam Husein, and that " things will slowly get better." The polls also show that Iraqis believe it is very important to hold elections in January, Mr. Robbins says, even if they are seen by the rest of the world as being "unfair."

The point is that if we are going to have a public discussion of how the war is going or whether we should be optimistic about the future of Iraq (and I think we should be), our views should be based on something more substantial than off-the-cuff remarks by political spokesmen. It is understandable that news coverage will focus on violence, and administration critics will spin events as negatively as possible. But if solid majorities of Iraqis believe conditions are improving, I think we should take them at their word. They have a better grip on their own reality than we do.

The Washington Post reports that the US now says more than 135,000 Iraqi police will be needed to help secure the country. But Reuters reports that many of the claims made last week by President Bush about the progress in Iraq, including the level of training of current police recruits, are undermined by internal Pentagon documents.

The documents show that of the nearly 90,000 currently in the police force, only 8,169 have had the full eight-week academy training. Another 46,176 are listed as "untrained," and it will be July 2006 before the administration reaches its new goal of a 135,000-strong, fully trained police force. Six Army battalions have had 'initial training,' while 57 National Guard battalions, 896 soldiers in each, are still being recruited or 'awaiting equipment.' Just eight Guard battalions have reached 'initial (operating) capability,' and the Pentagon acknowledged the Guard's performance has been 'uneven.' Training has yet to begin for the 4,800-man civil intervention force, which will help counter a deadly insurgency. And none of the 18,000 border enforcement guards have received any centralized training to date, despite earlier claims they had, according to Democrats on the US House of Representatives Appropriations Committee.

Also...
• Are the terrorists failing? ( Washington Post)
• 'Backdoor' trials for Britons in Guant���namo ( Guardian)
• Iraq is not Vietnam, it's Guadalcanal ( Weekly Standard)
• Know thine enemy ( National Review)
• No haven for returning refugees ( BBC)

• Feedback appreciated. E-mail Tom Regan .