Gates: "So Far So Good" For Iraq Crackdown

The U.S. troop buildup and security crackdown in Iraq shows early signs of success, and politicians in Washington must not set "specific deadlines and very strict conditions" for military commanders, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said Sunday on Face The Nation.

"I think that the way I would characterize it is so far so good – it's very early," Gates told Bob Schieffer. "I would say that the Iraqis are meeting the commitments that they have made to us, that they have made the appointments; the troops that they have promised are showing up. They are allowing operations in all neighborhoods. There is very little political interference with military operations. So here, at the very beginning, the commitments that have been made seem to be being kept."

But, as the war enters its fifth year, violence and instability continue to plague the country outside of Baghdad. This weekend seven more U.S. service members were killed in Iraq, and, on Saturday, hundreds of civilians were made ill by chlorine-laden truck bombs. Gates said that the continued fighting outside the Iraqi capital was anticipated.

"General Odierno, the ground forces commander out there, and General Petraeus, the overall commander, both warned that as the surge took place into Baghdad – and as we cleared people from Baghdad – that there would be kind of a squirting effect," Gates said, "that some of these people, particularly the al Qaeda and the insurgents, would begin to operate in other places and try and still bring off spectacular attacks in Baghdad."

What the military needs now, Gates said, is to wait weeks and months to see if the new strategy is working.

The defense chief said legislative efforts by Democrats to limit the scope of the mission and to set deadlines for a troop withdrawal would be counter-productive. Earlier this week, a House committee pushed through a measure for a troop withdrawal deadline of Sept. 1, 2008, but a similar effort suffered defeat in the Senate on a separate plan to end the war.

"With respect to the specific bill in the House, the concern I have is that if you have specific deadlines and very strict conditions, it makes it difficult, if not impossible, for our commanders to achieve their objectives," Gates said. "As I read it, the House bill is more about withdrawal regardless of the circumstances on the ground than it is about trying to produce a positive outcome by incentivizing the Iraqis."

While Gates said that it is unlikely that enemies within Iraq would follow and American troops if they were to withdraw, he said that Iraq must be stabilized to deny terrorists and insurgents a base of operations.

"They've made no bones about the fact that once they've been able to establish a firm base in Anbar, or Iraq more broadly, that they intend to try to destabilize the neighbors and eventually attack the United States,". Gates said. "They've not made any secret of that."