CBS failed to note Abizaid's dismissal of the McCain-Graham plan “to save Iraq”

Written by Simon Maloy

Published

CBS national security correspondent David Martin reported that Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham “were in Baghdad ... warning it will take more than [20,000 additional troops] to save Iraq,” but Martin did not mention Gen. John Abizaid's assessment that such an increase would likely not improve the situation in Iraq.


On the December 14 broadcast of the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, CBS national security correspondent David Martin reported that the commander of American forces in the Middle East, Gen. John Abizaid, “has already said the military is not big enough to sustain even a modest buildup of 20,000 troops” in Iraq and that “influential Republican Senators John McCain [AZ] and Lindsey Graham [SC] were in Baghdad today, warning it will take more than that to save Iraq.” Martin, however, left out Abizaid's assessment that a troop increase such as the one McCain and Graham are promoting would likely not improve the situation in Iraq.

From the December 14 broadcast of the CBS Evening News:

MARTIN: The commander of American forces in the Middle East has already said the military is not big enough to sustain even a modest buildup of 20,000 troops.

But influential Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham were in Baghdad today, warning it will take more than that to save Iraq.

GRAHAM: We need an overwhelming troop presence in the short term to level out the violence, so people can work out their political solutions.

MARTIN: And increasing the size of the Army won't help any time soon. It would take a full year to recruit and train just 6,000 more troops.

As Media Matters for America has noted, there are serious questions as to whether McCain's plan to significantly increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq is feasible, given that McCain himself has asserted that the fate of the U.S. effort in Iraq will be decided in a matter of months, and yet he has acknowledged that sending 20,000 more soldiers into the region would require increasing the number of active forces by 100,000. While Martin reported that "[i]t would take a full year to recruit and train just 6,000 more troops," he failed to note that Abizaid told the Senate Armed Services Committee on November 15, “I've met with every divisional commander. General [George] Casey, the corps commander, [Lt.] General [Martin] Dempsey -- we all talked together. And I said, 'In your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq?' And they all said no. And the reason is because we want the Iraqis to do more.”