In Northern Iraq, a Vote Seems Likely to Split

There was a hope, not long ago, that democracy would mean peace and stability for Nineveh, a place where cultures and armies have clashed since biblical times. Instead, democracy is hardening divisions — of people, of resources, of land — in ways that threaten the future of Iraq itself.

Last year’s election of a new provincial governor and council spawned political deadlock, inflamed by ethnic tensions. A boycott by a third of the council’s new members since last summer has crippled the government’s work at a time when Iraqis were promised that the elections would improve it.

Basic services remain meager, the economy feeble. The violence, though diminishing, is relentless, ravaging a crossroads of peoples and faiths in the plains where Arab Iraq meets the Kurdish mountains.

“This is the democracy the Americans brought,” said Hussein Mahmoud Ahmed, a Shabak, a member of a small minority group that occupies the plains.

It is a sentiment increasingly heard across Iraq as the country prepares to elect a new Parliament on March 7. The vote — only the country’s third since the American invasion in 2003 — is considered crucial to forging a unified, functioning democratic state. Here in Nineveh Province, though, as elsewhere, it is highlighting Iraq’s alarming fragmentation.

Lebanon is a model Iraqis often cite, a democracy that produces gridlock among ethnic and sectarian parties as divided before elections as after them, resulting in an ever tense political paralysis. Bosnia is another. When it comes to land and borders, disputed between the Arabs and the Kurdish regional government, the divisions are as intractable as those of Israelis and Palestinians.

When the federal government started to build a textile factory in Mr. Ahmed’s village, Bartallah, in a part of Nineveh controlled by the Kurds, the Kurdish regional government halted the project lest it create jobs for workers loyal to Mosul, the largely Arab provincial capital.

In Qaraqosh, the ownership of land is so fraught politically that the community council created a “black book” to register the name of any Christian who sold property to “an outsider.”

“We are living as doves among wolves,” said Staifo Jamil, a leader of a community council that represents Qaraqosh, a Christian town that lives in such fear that it mustered its own irregular militia to stand watch.

Iraq’s democracy is still young, and compared with those of other countries in the region, it remains the most competitive, if not exactly robust. Voter apathy and disillusionment, however, are already taking root. The election, delayed for months by bickering in Baghdad, has become a contest not of ideas as much as for advantage in the way the vote itself will be conducted and the parliamentary seats distributed.

The murky process to disqualify candidates with ties to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party knocked out at least 10 candidates allied with the governor, Atheel al-Nujaifi, a Sunni who sought to restore Arab dominance in a still divided province. Among them was the mayor of Mosul, Zuhar al-Araji, who once worked closely with the American military.

Nineveh remains split, as it has since 2003, between Arab- and Kurdish-controlled regions. The tensions are so high that the American military this month joined troops from both sides to police the line of control along a series of new checkpoints.

Politicians on both sides on the line complain of restrictions when they campaign on the opposite side: harassment of candidates, pressure on parties, violence. When Mr. Nujaifi recently crossed the unofficial boundary on his way to Tall Kayf, his convoy was pelted with stones and tomatoes and briefly held up by Kurdish troops, the pesh merga. On Sunday evening a woman running with a secular coalition that includes Mr. Nujaifi and a former prime minister, Ayad al-Allawi, was shot to death outside her home in Mosul.

Mr. Nujaifi’s election last year raised hopes that the post-2003 disenfranchisement of Sunnis in Nineveh, which once fueled the insurgency, was coming to an end, and some measure of reconciliation would result.

That it has not is one reason that few interviewed here expressed hope that the coming election would result in anything better.

“Nothing is going to happen,” said Saleh Hassan Ali al-Jubouri, the mayor of Ash Shura, a town on the Arab side of the Tigris River not far from the ancient ruins of Kalhu, or Nimrud.

“We know which part belongs to the Kurds and which part to Nineveh,” he said, when asked how the results in March might affect the territorial dispute that has cleaved the province. He repeated, with evident disdain, “Nothing is going to happen.”

What is striking is how faithfully Iraqis expect to vote by identity, despite campaign appeals to national unity.

Issues — basic services, economic development, security — all seem to stem from identity as much as politics. “First ethnicity, second political party,” was how the leading Kurdish official here, Khasro Goran, put it.

The new Parliament will include 31 members from Nineveh, and Mr. Goran expects the main national Kurdish coalition to win 10 seats — based not on polls, but on the estimated percentage of Kurds in the province. Nineveh’s small minority communities — Yazidis, Shabaks and Christians — have dedicated parliamentary seats reserved for their representatives.

Mr. Goran, who has led the boycott of the provincial council, blames the governor and his party for the increasing bitterness, saying stability in Nineveh will come only with respect for minority parties, like his.

He also acknowledged that Nineveh’s border with the three officially recognized Kurdish provinces to the north is enmeshed in the impasse between the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and that of the Kurdish regional president, Massoud Barzani, over the extent of Iraq’s federalism. That, as much as the local disputes, has perpetuated Mr. Goran’s boycott. Becoming the loyal opposition in Nineveh might imply recognition of Mosul’s political authority over the whole region.

“Some of the problems are local, but others are Iraqi,” Mr. Goran said in the Kurdish regional capital, Erbil, referring to the disputes that plague Nineveh. “And we have to pay the price.”

Khalis Isho, a candidate from Qaraqosh vying to win one of the Christian seats in Parliament, said that the country’s political leaders had failed — failed to embrace democratic values of rights and representative government, failed to learn that elections are only one part of democracy.

“I don’t believe we will reduce the activities of the terrorists until the thinking in Iraq generally and in Mosul in particular improves,” he said, “until they understand that peace in Mosul means peaceful coexistence.”

Election Panel Puts Off Start of Iraq Parliament Races

Iraq’s independent elections commission announced Thursday that the parliamentary elections campaign, scheduled to start Sunday, would be postponed for five days, as confusion reigned over an appeals court decision that overturned a ban on hundreds of candidates.

The campaign for the March 7 elections will now begin Feb. 12, said Qassim al-Obudi, a spokesman for the elections commission, to give officials time to try to determine which candidates are eligible to be on the ballots.

The decision appeared to deepen Iraq’s political crisis, as the speaker of Parliament called an emergency session to debate the court ruling and election officials appealed to Iraq’s Supreme Court for guidance.

Iraqi officials said some lawmakers had even begun discussing the possibility of postponing the elections until the candidates’ eligibility was resolved. That may prove problematic; the election has long been viewed as a milestone in the United States’ plans to withdraw combat troops from Iraq by the end of August.

The tumult followed the appeals court decision on Wednesday, which effectively allowed more than 500 candidates who were disqualified last month by a government commission to take part in the election. They had been accused of promoting the Baath Party of former President Saddam Hussein.

Technically, the court decided that the candidates’ status should be determined after the election, in what could be the makings of another crisis. “This doesn’t solve the crisis; it postpones it indefinitely,” said Hadi al-Ameri, a leading Shiite lawmaker who has tried to help mediate the dispute.

Many Iraqi politicians, along with foreign diplomats, have been pushing for a resolution to the dispute, saying the elections could lack credibility if hundreds of candidates were excluded.

Confusion over the appeals court’s decision led Faraj al-Haidari, the head of the Independent High Electoral Commission, to question whether it was binding.

“We sent the Supreme Court an urgent letter asking if we have to adhere to the appeals court decision,” Mr. Haidari said in an interview. “The appeals court neither found them guilty nor declared them innocent, which puts it in contradiction with the electoral law.”

Ali al-Dabbagh, a spokesman for the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, declared the ruling “illegal and unconstitutional.”

The latest escalation in the dispute over who is permitted to run in the elections has unsettled the political landscape. Iraqi law remains untested and perhaps bereft of mechanisms to reach a solution just a month before the vote.

“I know what is happening today, but no one knows what’s going to happen tomorrow,” said Omar al-Mashhadani, a spokesman for Parliament’s speaker, Ayad al-Samarrai.

Mr. Maliki has requested an emergency session of Parliament on Sunday, Iraqi state television reported. Mr. Samarrai agreed to call the session, and in turn asked for an emergency meeting of Iraq’s leadership on Friday or Saturday.

Reactions to the court’s decision to overturn the ban on candidates predictably broke along political and sectarian lines on Thursday.

Former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, whose main ally, Saleh al-Mutlaq, a Sunni leader, was among those barred, warned about the possibility that some candidates might still be disqualified. “The country will go into severe turmoil, I’m sure. It will cause a backlash,” he said in an interview.

Many critics of the ban viewed it as an attempt to marginalize secular and Sunni opponents of Iraq’s religious Shiite parties, including Mr. Maliki’s. Some leaders and voters had threatened to boycott the elections if officials went ahead with the ban, recalling the election in 2005, when many Sunnis refused to vote.

Religious Shiite leaders accused the appeals court of buckling to what they described as outside pressure, in particular from the United States.

Allowing the candidates to run in the elections “is a badge of shame on the forehead of the government,” Moktada al-Sadr, a radical Shiite cleric, said in a statement. “I am hopeful that the Iraqi people will not allow their return and their participation in a political process thought to be democratic.”

Iraqi legal experts defended the court’s decision to postpone the determinations of the candidates’ eligibility, calling it constitutional, and said election officials should respect the ruling. “The appeals court didn’t find the candidates who were included in the procedures innocent yet,” said Tariq Harb, a prominent lawyer. “It just delayed its decision.”

But Mr. Ameri, the Shiite lawmaker, said the ruling, by postponing decisions on eligibility until after the elections, could deepen the political crisis. Like others, he wondered whether lawmakers could actually be unseated after they had won elections, and, if so, what branch of the government would unseat them.

Clinton 'heartened' by Iraq move to reinstate candidates

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday she is "heartened" by an Iraqi decision to reinstate Sunni candidates and urged all parties to do nothing to undermine the legitimacy of elections.
"We were heartened by the decision earlier this week to reverse the deletion of the 500 names from the list for the upcoming election," Clinton told reporters.
An appeals panel ruled Wednesday in Baghdad that more than 500 candidates barred from Iraq's March 7 general election could stand after all. They were allegedly linked to former dictator Saddam Hussein.
But Iraq's premier Nuri al-Maliki convened parliament for Sunday to debate what his government branded an "illegal" decision to reinstate candidates with alleged links to ousted dictator Saddam Hussein.
The chief US diplomat said she wanted to make sure the election is free and fair.
"We do very much encourage all the parties ...in Iraq to ensure that nothing is done that undermines the legitimacy of this election," Clinton said.
Clinton's spokesman Philip Crowley on Thursday gave a similar reaction to the latest developments in Baghdad.

Iraq's voters show faith in Maliki regime

Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has finished first in provincial elections, strengthening the central government and weakening the religious parties that dominated after the fall of Saddam Hussein. But Iraqis still voted along sectarian or ethnic lines with Mr Maliki's successes all coming in Shia-dominated provinces.

The election commission announced yesterday that the premier's "State of Law" coalition had won 38 per cent of the votes cast in Baghdad and 37 per cent in Basra, Iraq's two largest cities. It also finished first in seven other provinces south of Baghdad. Among the Sunni Arabs, nationalist and secular parties did well.

Mr Maliki will be able to claim that his policy of strengthening the central government, which saw him confront at different times last year the Shia militia of the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the US government and the Kurds, has been endorsed by voters. The elections to the powerful provincial councils in 14 out of 18 provinces are seen as a preview for the parliamentary elections in December.

The Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), which had been the largest Shia party, did badly, winning fewer votes than Sadr followers in Baghdad and 11.6 per cent of the vote in Basra because its rulers were seen as failing.

The Prime Minister did well in part because Iraqis see security improving compared with the Sunni-Shia civil war of 2005-7 when, at its worst, 3,000 people died every month. In January this number fell to 199, the lowest figure since the US invasion. But in a sign that Iraq remains one of the most violent countries in the world, a bomber blew himself up yesterday in the Kurdish town of Khanaqin, Diyala province, killing at least 16 people.

The election so far has had two contradictory effects: it has reinforced the popular mandate of the government; but it has also heightened the political temperature in provinces such as Diyala, where control is contested by Sunni, Shia and Kurds. "The terrorists want to destroy the happiness of the Kurds over their election victory in Khanaqin," said Salahudin Kokha, a Kurdish leader.

There are also heightened tensions in the Sunni Anbar province where US troops were asked to stand by in case of trouble. A leader of the Awakening Council, the movement of tribal leaders and former insurgents who turned against al-Qa'ida and allied themselves with the US, said the vote had been stolen by Sunni rivals.

The elections have also led to important changes in the northern province of Nineveh which is contested between Sunni Arabs and Kurds and has remained very violent. The council had a Kurdish majority because of a Sunni boycott in 2005. But in Saturday's poll the Sunni al-Hadba bloc won 48.4 percent of the votes.

The voting shows that Mr Maliki and his Dawa party are stronger but the significance can be exaggerated. Although he fought a secular campaign, on important decisions Mr Maliki does not generally act without seeking the opinion of the Shia Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

The election has also been painted as a setback for Iranian influence but Mr Maliki is still going to keep close relations with Tehran while remaining on good terms with the US. One test of the success of the election will be how far the results are accepted by the losers.

Tens of Thousands Vote Early in Iraq

Tens of thousands of policemen and soldiers, doctors at hospitals, prisoners clad in orange jumpsuits and residents forced from contested towns cast early ballots Wednesday in provincial elections that will redraw Iraq's political landscape.

Regular voting is scheduled for Saturday to choose the equivalent of state legislatures in 14 of the country's 18 provinces. But early voting was allowed for certain groups, in particular the security forces, which will be deployed as part of a security clampdown. On election day, the government has ordered a nighttime curfew, the closing of Iraq's borders and airport, and a ban on traffic in towns and cities.

There was scattered violence Wednesday. Assailants gunned down two policemen in Tuz Khurmatu, 40 miles south of the disputed city of Kirkuk, and a bombing killed a policeman in the northern city of Mosul. But attacks so far have been relatively few compared with the onslaught that preceded Iraq's elections in 2005. Sunni Arabs largely boycotted that vote, delivering disproportionate power to Shiite Arabs and Kurds in some provinces.

Casting his vote at Nidhal High School for Girls, Lt. Gen. Hussein al-Awadi praised the quieter climate this time and suggested that sectarian tensions -- the Sunni and Shiite conflict that racked Baghdad in 2006 and 2007 -- had subsided.

"Today, these feelings have vanished," he said, his finger stained blue to prevent multiple voting. "Stability is apparent this time, and that was our ambition."

The three predominantly Kurdish provinces, part of an autonomous region in the north, will hold elections later this year. Voting in the province around Kirkuk, a city riven by competing ethnic claims, was delayed indefinitely.

In the 14 other provinces, where about 14,400 candidates are vying for 440 seats on the councils, the elections could bring a new alignment in almost each locale.

The Dawa party of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose popularity has been bolstered by the decline in violence, is seeking to chip away at the power of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, which controls four of the nine predominantly Shiite southern provinces. Followers of Moqtada al-Sadr, a Shiite cleric whose men have fought rival Shiites, the army and the U.S. military, are backing lists of nominally independent candidates.

"What makes us happy is the preparations we are seeing today -- a slap in the face of those who are betting that Iraqis will not go to the ballot boxes because they are despairing," Maliki said during a televised election rally in the southern city of Amarah.

In predominantly Sunni regions, secular and tribal forces have sought to end the near-monopoly on power of the Iraqi Islamic Party, one of the few Sunni parties to take part in the 2005 elections. In two provinces, sectarian and ethnic leadership may actually shift. In Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, Sunni Arabs expect to take a majority of seats on a council dominated by Shiites and Kurds. They expect to win another majority in Nineveh province, around the city of Mosul, where Kurds now control 31 of 37 seats.

Signs of potential conflict emerged Wednesday, too.

In Fallujah, about 35 miles west of Baghdad, some residents stocked up on food, worrying that the victory of candidates campaigning under the umbrella of U.S.-backed tribes that defeated insurgents in 2007 might inspire reprisal attacks by insurgents or rivals in the Islamic Party.

More than 25,000 Kurds, displaced under the government of Saddam Hussein, were allowed to vote in Nineveh. Election officials said the number was far short of the 100,000 who demanded the right to vote.

"There is concern that these lists will be manipulated and exploited," said Ahmad Awwad, a candidate for al-Hadba-a, a Sunni Arab party in the province.

Iraqi's Shiite political parties vie for power in south

n Najaf, the heart of Shiite Muslim Iraq, pedestrians linger on the sidewalks of a busy bazaar, men smoke fruit-flavored shisha tobacco in cafes, and a new first-class hotel with sparkling marble floors and dripping chandeliers is almost full. The battered capital of Baghdad seems much farther than 100 miles away.

Beneath this veneer of calm, however, an uneasy power struggle among southern Iraq's Shiite majority has emerged. In simple terms, the political battle can be understood in near opposites: nationalism vs. federalism, status quo vs. change, secularism vs. religion.

The Shiite parties that are vying for several hundred seats in Saturday's provincial elections are the State of Law coalition, affiliated with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his Dawa party, and its opponent, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. Candidates from two party slates backed by the populist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr also have entered the race.

The splintering among Shiite parties in this crucial vote points to the kind of Iraq - fractured, very likely - that U.S. troops could leave behind as they withdraw in the coming years.

"It will be a turning point in deciding the political map of Iraq," said Zuhair al-Hakim, a spokesman for the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.

A few years ago, Najaf, one of the holiest sites for Shiites because of its gilded Imam Ali shrine, was the site of fierce battles between U.S. and Iraqi forces and militiamen from Sadr's Mahdi Army. For now, at least, the bloodletting has stopped.

Signs of the election season are everywhere. Candidate banners flap above the streets and posters paper storefront walls. Little boys toss campaign cards through open windows as cars idle in checkpoint traffic.

On Saturday, the head of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq made a campaign stop at a soccer stadium, speaking to several thousand jubilant supporters. Shielded by a glass cage and flanked by dozens of armed guards, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim urged voters to cast their ballots, pick competent candidates and pitch in to monitor the polls.

"We want to develop the public services," he said. "We want to change Najaf into an international city."

Founded by exiles in Iran in 1982, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq has called for creating a semiautonomous region in the south, not unlike Kurdistan in the north. Such power would enable the party to seize control of the region's rich oil reserves and religious sites.

"Having regions and federalism will strengthen local economies, bring more job opportunities and protect the provinces from coups and dictatorships," Hakim said.

Najaf and surrounding areas long have been strongholds of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, but the State of Law coalition is proving to be a formidable opponent. Polls point to a rise in Maliki's popularity stemming from his administration's military clampdown on sectarian strife and the security forces agreement with the U.S. that he helped hammer out. That deal, which took effect Jan. 1, secured the transfer of power from American to Iraqi troops.

Maliki's party is pressing for a strong central government, as well as a more pragmatic approach to government. Now that security has improved, it maintains, Iraq can start building itself.

"We put the train on the rails, which is the most important thing," said Majeed Mustafa Zani, a leader in the State of Law coalition and a professor of Islamic economics. "Because this mission (of building Iraq) is so big, it takes more time."

Critics charge that Maliki shows signs of a strongman in the making. Besides setting up military forces that report directly to him, Maliki has established tribal councils in the south that help enforce security in neighborhoods. Maliki's opponents are angered further by the flood of government money to the councils, which are supporting his provincial candidates.

When, not if, to leave Iraq

Call it a timetable, phased withdrawal or (our favorite) "joint aspirational time horizons." The Iraq debate has shifted to when - not if - on the subject of a troop pullout.

The big winner in this shift must be Sen. Barack Obama. His quickie Mideast tour put the presumptive Democratic nominee in sync with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki who said he now favors a U.S. troop departure on roughly the same 16-month time frame that Obama suggests.

Even the White House got in the act by deploying the Bush-speak term "time horizons." The presumptive GOP nominee John McCain sidestepped the remarkable shift by denouncing, yet again, Obama's qualifications as a military leader.

The political parrying can't obscure what's happening. The Iraqi leadership is prepared for a U.S. exit. Daily life has stabilized, a fragile truce exists among warring factions, and Al Qaeda rebels aren't gaining ground. Any of these factors could change and delay a withdrawal, as worried U.S. military leaders cautiously suggest.

But the whispers and hints are gone, replaced by statements. Credit a stabilized Iraq or the pressures of a presidential race, but the leave-taking has begun.

For Obama, the past week was a gift. Challenged by McCain to prove his foreign-policy chops, Obama could have sleepwalked through a war-zone junket. But Iraqi leader al-Maliki essentially embraced his position for a withdrawal by the end of 2010. Obama's visit to Afghanistan allowed him to repeat a pledge to upgrade U.S. military numbers there to face an ascendent terrorist threat.

McCain's team must wonder what hit them. The senator found his stay-the-course message on Iraq disowned by nearly everyone. He was left to rail against Obama's inexperience and past vote against extra troops for Iraq, which McCain credits for today's relative peace.

Talk of a withdrawal timetable may neutralize the hot topic of Iraq in the presidential race. But that's only a short-run effect. The bigger, more important result may be an end to a disastrous chapter in the history of two countries.

Candidates' positions on Iraq differ less than you'd think

It would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall in Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's office a few days ago when the call came from the U.S. Embassy, demanding that he "clarify" his endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's plan to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq in 16 months.

(Photos, left to right - In March: Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham landing in Baghdad / Tech. Sgt. Jeffrey Allen, Reuters; On Monday: Democratic Sen. Barack Obama and Gen. David Petraeus in Baghdad / Ssg. Lorie Jewell, AP)

Not only did that boost the credibility of the Democrat's plan, it contradicted President Bush's position that there should be no timetable for a U.S. pullout. A few hours later, U.S. officials transmitted al-Maliki's statement that his remarks to the German magazine Der Spiegel had been "misunderstood (and) mistranslated."

Problem fixed? Apparently not. On Monday, as Obama visited Baghdad, al-Maliki's spokesman defiantly repeated the timetable idea, in English this time, saying the Iraqis would prefer to have U.S. troops out of Iraq by the end of 2010.

This tense back-and-forth was a vivid reminder that as conditions improve in Iraq, the U.S. is losing its ability to dictate terms to the sovereign government it has worked so hard to put in place. Less noticed is that the rapidly shifting events are beginning to make the presidential candidates' debate over Iraq seem oddly out of sync with reality.

Obama and Republican John McCain are maximizing their differences when they talk to voters, but in practical terms there's less and less daylight between them.

Rhetorically, Obama backs a fixed timetable for withdrawing American troops while McCain wants to stay as long as "victory" takes and beyond. But if the Iraqis want the U.S. out and they prove capable of taking over, both ideas lead to the same end on about the same schedule.

It's difficult, for example, to imagine a President McCain insisting on keeping U.S. troops in Iraq indefinitely if Iraq's government demands that they leave. Al-Maliki is acknowledging the reality that most Iraqis and most Iraqi politicians want U.S. forces out, at least as soon as they are confident that their own government can protect them.

At the same time, it's equally difficult to imagine a President Obama insisting on an inflexible withdrawal timetable if that means squandering security gains won with great American sacrifice. Though Obama has repeatedly insisted on a timetable, he has pointedly not said that every U.S. troop will be gone when the timetable ends. In fact, he has promised to leave a "residual force" of undefined size in Iraq, and carefully left himself an escape hatch in case the situation worsens. "You've got to make sure the country doesn't collapse," he says.

Thanks largely to the troop surge that Obama opposed, violence has lessened to the point that a timetable seems less and less unthinkable to its fiercest opponents, provided that it's linked to success on the ground. President Bush has signed on to a "time horizon" for withdrawing U.S. troops, and McCain said Monday that U.S. troops "could be largely withdrawn" within two years because the war is being won. That's remarkably close to what Obama wants.

So while the candidates demonize and distort each other's positions, reality is drawing them closer and closer. Both also support sending additional troops to Afghanistan.

The wild card is whether U.S. forces can hand off the fighting to their Iraqi counterparts, and here the news is promising. Lt. Gen. James Dubik, who until recently was in charge of the Army's effort to build Iraqi forces, told Congress earlier this month that Iraqi units would be able to take over front-line fighting as soon as April, allowing U.S. ground troops to shift to a support role.

The presidential debate over Iraq needs a reality check. Voters would do well to understand that the familiar differences echoing from the campaign trail are less significant than the new reality emerging in Iraq.

McCain Aide Says New York Times Rejection of Iraq Essay Unfair

John McCain was unfairly treated by the New York Times, which rejected an opinion piece the Republican presidential candidate wrote on Iraq after publishing one by Democratic rival Barack Obama, a top McCain adviser said.

``I'm sure they didn't tell Obama what he had to write,'' McCain aide Mark Salter said last night in Manchester, New Hampshire, where the Arizona senator will appear at a fundraiser today. ``Is it fair? No. But we don't expect fairness from them.''

The Times decided against publishing McCain's essay because it needed the candidate to revise the article to say specifically what he planned to do in Iraq, the newspaper said on its Web site, quoting David Shipley, editor of the op-ed page. Andrew Rosenthal, editor of the newspaper's editorial and op-ed pages, said the decision to ask for changes was ``standard procedure.''

``We look forward to publishing Senator McCain's views in our paper just as we have in the past,'' Rosenthal said in a statement on the Web site. ``We have published at least seven Op- Ed pieces by Senator McCain since 1996.''

The spat comes as Obama, 46, is on a weeklong overseas tour, including stops over the weekend in Afghanistan and Iraq, to burnish his foreign policy credentials. McCain and Obama have skirmished over Iraq policy, with McCain saying President George W. Bush's troop increase has helped quell violence and Obama calling for a timetable for bringing U.S. troops home.

In his July 14 essay in the New York Times, Obama said he would shift the focus of U.S. military operations from Iraq and send as many as 10,000 more U.S. troops to fight in Afghanistan.

`Is What It Is'

Earlier yesterday, when asked whether he felt Obama was getting unfair coverage because of his overseas trip this week, McCain said he would campaign as usual. ``It is what it is,'' McCain said.

Over the years, McCain, 71, and the New York Times have had a high-profile relationship.

When McCain was shot down in 1967 by the North Vietnamese, the Times put the story of his capture on its front page. At the time, McCain's father was commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific. The newspaper also put on its front page news of McCain's release as a prisoner of war five-and-a-half years later.

Earlier this year, the Times suggested, again in a front-page story, that McCain had had a romantic relationship with a telecommunications lobbyist about the time he considered running for president in 2000. McCain flatly denied that charge.

The Times endorsed McCain in the Republican primary.