Choose: More Troops in Iraq Will (Help) (Hurt)

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: June 19, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq — IF, in time, the attempt to implant a pro-Western, democratic political system in Iraq ends up buried in the desert sands, historians will have no shortage of things that went wrong. Equally, if the problems here ultimately recede, supporters of the enterprise will find vindication in the Bush administration's decision to hold course as others lost faith.

Either way, any reckoning will examine the numbers of American troops committed here: whether they were so thinly stretched that their mission was doomed from the start, or, as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said last week, American commanders were given 'exactly what they've recommended' in terms of troops.

Mr. Rumsfeld has long taken a 'less is more' approach to combat troop levels, and in a BBC interview Monday, he seemed to move toward those now pressing to reduce troop levels soon. 'The reason for fewer,' he said, 'is because ultimately it's going to be the Iraqi people who are going to prevail in this insurgency' - in other words, Iraqi, not American, troops are the ones who will win the war, if it can be won."