Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2007 | 7:26 a.m.
No matter what Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker say at the long-awaited Senate hearing today on Iraq policy, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee has deemed their strategy a failure.
Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware , who is running for president as a Democrat, told the Sun on Monday that during his recent visit to Iraq - his eighth - "I saw a failed policy."
Biden, who has visited Nevada several times in recent months in hopes of winning the state's early Democratic presidential caucus, said current Iraq policy relies on the presumption that Iraqis will soon be able to replace American soldiers and Marines, and the notion that improved security will allow for political reconciliation.
On both counts, President Bush has failed, said Biden, who in 2002 voted to authorize Bush to go to war .
A recent report of a group of retired military officers said Iraqis won't be able to replace Americans for at least 12 to 18 more months .
Both Crocker, American ambassador to Iraq, and Petraeus, who's running the military effort there, acknowledged that the supposed security gains made since an additional 30,000 troops were sent to Iraq have not been matched by similar political progress in a country deeply riven by ethnic and religious conflicts that have now cost tens of thousands of lives.
An additional 4 million Iraqis have been displaced, driven from their homes by sectarian militias.
Petraeus and Crocker, appearing at a House hearing Monday, said the "surge" strategy was leading to slow but measurable gains, including a reduction in sectarian violence, which the White House has hailed as signs of progress.
(Other analysts, including the Government Accountability Office and a number of news agencies, have issued reports based on numbers at odds with those Petraeus presented. Officials from other government agencies, including the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, have questioned , most recently in The Washington Post, the methodology the military is using to measure sectarian violence .)
Petraeus also pointed to success in Al Anbar province, once a violent hot spot, but now a place where Sunni insurgents have switched sides and are working with Americans to defeat al-Qaida in Iraq.
Biden said this success reinforces his belief that the Iraqi government should be decentralized so local officials can make decisions and quell violence.
The senator has been part of a number of high - profile Senate hearings during his lengthy career, and early on he understood the power of a televised hearing with the onset of 24-hour news.
Today, though, may be without precedent with the appearance of a military officer in a time of war.
Asked how the hearing will go, he said: "The way you frame it is: Let's assume everything you say is true. Tell me when the Iraqi military can relieve American forces. And what prospect is there for Sunnis, Shia and Kurds to have a strong central government trusted by all three?"
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