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CBS' Katie Couric concluded her weeklong Road Ahead tour of Iraq and Syria with a controversial endorsement of the linkage between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein: "The 9/11 attacks started the War on Terror, which then started the War in Iraq." Yet in her commentary summing up the lessons she learned from her trip she was much more equivocal: "Iraq is a country where conclusions and solutions are as elusive as 24-hour electricity…No one can really predict how this history lesson will end."
Couric was, however, certain of two things. She singled out Shiite militias in their "quest for power and influence." They "continue to terrorize the population while their biggest sponsor, Iran, waits in the wings." And she denigrated the Shiite-dominated rule of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, finding "the absence of a strong Iraqi government." She concluded that the "last-ditch effort" for the United States military occupation must be "a bottom-up strategy…win the confidence and the loyalty of the people one neighborhood at a time." Then she pointed out the flaw in a neighborhood-based approach: "How can you give power to the people when there is no power…when the business of just living leaves them exhausted and hopeless?"
In an Exclusive follow-up to her July report blaming government corruption for the lack of basic services in Iraq, NBC's Lisa Myers introduced us to Judge Radhi al-Radhi, the leader of the commission that blamed Prime Minister al-Maliki for shielding corrupt ministers and allies. Judge al-Radhi claimed that bureaucrats have ripped off hospitals, diverted food supplies and used stolen oil revenues to purchase weapons for militias. In its defense, the Iraqi government has fingered the judge himself as corrupt. When militias attacked al-Radhi's neighborhood, he resigned and fled the country. He is now expected to apply to the United States for political asylum.
The major news next week, of course, will be the Congressional testimony of US military and diplomatic leaders, Gen David Petraeus and Amb Ryan Crocker. ABC's Martha Raddatz previewed Petraeus' presentation from Baghdad on Tuesday and, in effect, the entire regional tour by CBS' Couric has fulfilled the same function. So now NBC's David Gregory files his scenesetter from inside-the-Beltway. Gregory pointed out that Petraeus publicly admits that political reconciliation "has not worked out as we hoped" but nevertheless predicted that the general will call for current troop levels in Iraq to be maintained until spring 2008. "For months he has talked less about tactics than timing."
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