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Tuesday, May 22, 2007
White House preparing for 'post-surge' Iraq

An Iraqi boy inspects a damaged car after a massive car bomb tore through a market in the flashpoint Baghdad district of Amil, Tuesday.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The White House is engaged right now in high-level planning about the next phase in the war, with a focus on how to get the Iraqi government to take over a larger share of the combat role as the U.S. begins to draw down its own troops, according to senior administration officials.

One senior administration official said the planning is focused on what the White House calls "post-surge Iraq" after the White House starts to draw down the increased number of U.S. troops that President Bush started to put into place in January.

"What will our [military] posture be?" this senior official said of the focus of the planning being led by the National Security Council. "We're planning for down the road."

While senior officials are cautious not to put a timetable on the deliberations, the president told Reuters in an interview Monday that September will be an "important moment" in the overall debate over the war because that's when he's expecting a progress report from Gen. David Petreaus, his new commander on the ground.

The senior officials said some of the options being discussed include plans to train more Iraqi security forces and protect U.S. forces as they begin to transition out of a combat role. Administration officials are also wrestling with how to zero in on what the White House believes to be the two biggest impediments to stability on the ground in Iraq -- al-Qaeda forces as well as sectarian militias supported by Iran.

Democrats are pouncing on the White House planning, charging that the administration's "Plan B" is really a "Plan A" pushed by Democrats last year. That's because the move from a U.S. combat role to a supportive role -- coupled with the recent diplomatic initiatives to Iran and Syria -- mirror the proposals of the Iraq Study Group report rejected by the White House last December.

But senior administration officials insist their new round of planning is not a "Plan B" because in the words of one official, "a Plan B suggests that Plan A has failed" and the White House rejects that notion since they believe there has been some progress in recent months from the increase in US troops.

"So far, the indications are that things are moving forward in a positive direction," White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters Tuesday. "It seems to me that it's highly premature to be asking what happens if it fails when you've got success in Anbar, when you do have continued efforts to build greater capability going after bad actors, whoever they may be, within Baghdad."

-- CNN White House Correspondent Ed Henry
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