Last September, U.S. Army General David Petraeus assured Congress that Iraqis would be able to end the bloody rivalry between Shiite groups in the oil-rich south by themselves. Late last month, the U.S. carried out air strikes to help struggling Iraqi troops fighting a Shiite militia for control of the southern city of Basra. Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, likely will have to explain why his optimism proved misplaced when he returns to Congress this week to defend his call for a pause in withdrawing troops once soldiers sent for last year's ``surge'' of reinforcements are brought home.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden said his panel will ask Petraeus tomorrow what the troop surge accomplished and what the U.S. will do next. That's ``not just a tactical question of U.S. force levels,'' Biden, a Delaware Democrat, told reporters on April 1. Congress wants to know what policy the U.S. will undertake to ``leave behind a self-sustaining government.''
Petraeus's testimony may raise the prominence of the Iraq War as a divisive presidential campaign issue. All three major candidates — Democratic Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and Republican Senator John McCain — plan to question the general at the hearings. The general also will also appear before the Senate and House armed services committees and the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
