THE PLANNER.(The Talk of the Town)

Watching George Bush's televised speech last week, when he revealed what he called "the main elements" of his plan to rescue Iraq, was like watching a slightly nervous lieutenant colonel read PowerPoint slides. There was an unmistakable presence of bullet points; the plan is not altogether clear, but it seems to involve two deputy Iraqi commanders in Baghdad, nine administrative districts, eighteen Iraqi brigades, a large number of neighborhood police stations, and, oh yes, the dispatch of twenty-one thousand five hundred additional American troops. In a sincere tone of voice, the President also announced a door-to-door campaign "to gain the trust of Baghdad residents."

Bush said that America's military commanders had assured him that "this plan can work"--an oddly hedged phrasing. It was one of several fudges in his text, which recalled some of the rhetorical tactics his Administration employed to build support for the disastrous invasion of Iraq, almost four years ago. The President implied, for example, that his escalation had been conceived to support "the new Iraqi plan" to bring security to Baghdad, when it is well established that Iraq's democratically elected Prime Minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, did not ask for any additional American troops and has agreed to accept them only under pressure. There were other tortured uses of language: Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that the plan was just a "temporary surge," but temporary, he continued, in the sense of having no fixed end.

The President cowed Democrats in early 2003 by describing his choice then as a stark one between the invasion and overthrow of Saddam Hussein and a state of indefinite peril. He now claims that his opponents in Congress, who increasingly include members of his own party, face a choice between his "surge" and complete withdrawal from Iraq, with its attendant risk of chaos--more chaos, that is, than Bush's war has already created. Of course, as the bipartisan Iraq Study Group made clear in its report last month, there are many policy choices besides an increase of troops which do not entail a total military withdrawal in the foreseeable future.

As Bush prepared to announce his plan, the White House overruled dissenters at the Pentagon in a manner reminiscent of its management of intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the invasion. On November 15th, General John P. Abizaid, the commander of all American military forces in the Middle East, testified publicly to Congress that he did not see a need for more American troops in Iraq. He apparently changed his mind later; in any event, he announced his retirement just before Christmas. Around the same time, the Washington Post reported that the Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously opposed sending fifteen thousand or more troops to Iraq. There is no indication that the chiefs have all abandoned their doubts since then; they seem only to have agreed to follow orders. Gates told Congress late last week that the plan for more troops had originated with commanders in Iraq. But a short time later the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Peter Pace, testified that the commanders had requested considerably fewer troops than President Bush ultimately decided to send.

Presumably, the skepticism among uniformed officers is influenced by the numerous cases in recent military history, of diverse countries and diverse armies, which indicate that a counterinsurgency plan of the type Bush has embraced is very unlikely to succeed. ...