Moment Of Truth in Iraq

It is a measure of how vaporous the ground truths in Iraq have become that George W. Bush had to sneak into the country he conquered. Extra security was needed to proclaim that Iraq was more secure, the surge was working and the country was worth more American blood and treasure. Before the surprise trip on Sept. 3, a TIME correspondent was summoned to a Starbucks in downtown Washington, where he was informed of the Iraq mission — and then prohibited from telling anyone other than his spouse and his boss. At dusk on Sunday, Sept. 2, passengers boarded Air Force One inside its massive hangar at Andrews Air Force Base. Once darkness fell, the hangar doors opened, and the plane pushed out onto the runway for takeoff, its lights off and its window shades drawn. Laptops were returned in midflight, but their owners had to disable the wireless functions to prevent the President's plane from being tracked across the globe. Twelve hours later, Air Force One touched down, and Bush stepped out onto the tarmac of another well-secured U.S. air base for an eight-hour visit to Anbar province.

Much of what happens in Iraq is bewildering and contradictory. A surge in U.S. troops has helped secure the capital — but seems to have pushed the violence elsewhere. Casualties among U.S. troops were down slightly in July and August but are surpassing last year's levels. An avalanche of new progress reports is interpreted by both proponents and opponents of U.S. policy as validation of their positions. Even the President's comments about troop levels can be confounding: Bush made the trip in part to pressure a reluctant Congress to permit his 30,000-troop surge, announced in January, to continue a while longer. And yet it was Bush who, during his brief visit to Anbar, hinted openly that troop withdrawals might begin soon. He told reporters that General David Petraeus informed him that "if the security situation continues to improve the way it has, we may be able to achieve the same objectives with fewer troops."

Americans sense intuitively that Iraq has a way of reducing what was once solid and certain into sand. Lawmakers from both parties expected September to be a month of reckoning for the President's Iraq policy — a stop-or-go moment when the U.S. would decide whether to continue the surge or begin an inevitable pullback. But even before Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker utter a word to Congress, that debate looks almost moot. Bush appears ready to continue the surge for another six months or so, and the Democrats lack the votes to check him. So what will unfold instead in Washington this month is not a debate about the surge but the beginning of a debate about what comes after: How long will the U.S. be in Iraq? (Probably a decade, possibly more.) How many troops will be needed? (Probably 130,000 to start, hopefully less.) What will the mission be after the surge? (Get in line — it's anyone's guess.) Will the Iraqis get their act together? (Not soon, as things stand now.)

Those puzzles are just for starters, their answers merely estimates. If you are following along at home, here are five other questions to keep in mind:

Did the surge work?
Yes and no. After Bush kicked a handful of other generals out or upstairs early this year, Petraeus changed tactics abruptly, threw a ring of fresh troops around most of Baghdad and crimped the flow of explosives into the city, making life there markedly better. The surge took place in a belt of outposts around the capital, where troops barricaded roads into the city, worked with local residents to flush out insurgents and spent millions creating safe zones where markets and normal life could return. Average Iraqis tell Time that Baghdad feels safer; sectarian violence in the capital has been reduced, Pentagon officials say, and many Baghdad residents want the surge to continue. That's in part what the operation's architects had in mind when they sketched it out last fall.

But from the beginning, the surge was as much a political strategy as a military campaign. U.S. commanders in Iraq repeatedly stressed that American troops were simply buying time for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government to do two things: buck up Iraqi security forces and take steps toward reconciliation that would, everyone hoped, lessen violence. The surge was designed to carve out a quiet space in which compromise rather than violence would rule. On this front, there is not much good news. Al-Maliki does not appear to need — or even want — to lead any hard negotiations. That's largely because the three major Shi'ite blocs in the Iraqi government are operating under what they feel is a historical mandate to undo centuries of injustice against them by Sunnis. In practice, this means giving the Sunnis no quarter in negotiations. "The Shi'ites feel they are carrying the burden of history and that they will betray their entire community if they agree to even one concession," says an Iraqi political analyst who asked not be be named. "This is not a matter of practical politics. It is a holy duty."