The Bush administration wants us to think it has an Iraq exit strategy.

The policy changes just announced – transferring political control to Iraqis by June – indicate the administration understands it cannot enter next year's election campaign burdened with the unholy mess existing in Iraq.

After June, U.S. troops will remain in Iraq only "at the invitation of the Iraqi government," according to Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi Governing Council. Reality is that the planned interim government, which will replace Chalabi and the Bush-appointed council, will be compelled to invite the troops to stay: Invited or not, they're not going anywhere.

Two questions deserve answers in analyzing this policy change: why now, and will it work?

Why now?

Most importantly because U.S. casualties are rising too fast. Since Bush announced "mission accomplished" May 1, U.S. deaths have passed 400, with dozens of attacks reported daily. Already this month, more than 60 Americans have been killed in combat operations. This trend is awkward for Bush's re-election campaign.

Reality has finally caught up with propaganda. Bush's advisers are split on policy, with the Pentagon's neoconservative nation-builders losing ground to pragmatists. Recent shifting of authority from the Pentagon to the White House was not enough to hide a failing strategy.

The Governing Council had to go. Composed largely of exiles, it won little support in Iraqi communities. It was unable to fulfill its mission of writing a constitution mainly because Iraqis would not have accepted a council-written constitution as legitimate.

Finally, the administration is not only losing public support – (latest Gallup polling shows disapproval of Bush Iraq policy at 54 percent and rising) but support from respected outside military analysts such as Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Cordesman's lengthy report on Iraq last week coincided with the Bush policy changes.

Some points made by Cordesman in his report entitled "Iraq: Too Uncertain to Call":

"Political, economic, social and military forces have been unleashed by the fall of Saddam Hussein that are only beginning to play out and will take years to have their full effect."

The administration "ignored clear and repeated warnings from State, intelligence officers and area experts" and formed an "ideological faith in a largely ineffective outside opposition."

Bush cannot "hope to achieve victory in the form of creating some shining example that will fully transform Iraq, much less transform the Middle East. This was at best a neoconservative fantasy. More practically, it has always been a rather silly one."

Efforts "to 'spin' these unpleasant realities out of existence are going to broaden the credibility problem the administration has developed by underplaying the risks before, during and immediately after the war."

Will it work?

By making changes, Bush is betting violence against U.S. forces falls off by next year's U.S. November elections for two reasons:

The U.S. military's Operation Iron Hammer, sending heavy bombs into Sunni strongholds, will drain the opposition's will to fight.

By next summer, Iraq will have its interim government charged with drafting a constitution (from a U.S. draft constitution handed it, a la MacArthur). Iraqis will see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Here are the problems:

Sunnis have been the main source of violence because, having historically run Iraq with only one-fifth of the population, they have lost the most under occupation. Shias are more tolerant of occupation because they stand to gain power (many hope for an Islamic Republic). Kurds hope for their own nation.

Sunnis will see little advantage in Bush's new policy. Bombs, as we saw in Vietnam, are a poor way to win hearts and minds.

Further, if Shias and Kurds dominate the interim regime as they now dominate the council and write a constitution weakening Iraq's unity and secularism, how do Sunnis gain?

If the new regime asks U.S. troops to remain, how do Sunnis gain?

Bush's changes are likely to change nothing. Were Iraq a Western nation with a democratic tradition, such changes, designed to move the nation toward majority rule, might help.

Reality is that Iraq has been dominated by Sunnis throughout its modern history, and tactical changes made by a U.S. occupier for domestic reasons won't change the historical dynamic.

The occupation can end today or in 10 years – after thousands more casualties and hundreds of billions more dollars – and the same power struggle will take place when we are gone. Bush cannot impose a made-in-America model on Iraq.

The Iraq war has "swelled the ranks and galvanized the will" of al-Qaeda bombers, wrote the International Institute of Strategic Studies last month. The four bombings in Istanbul last week, unlike anything modern Turkey has ever seen, are another example of the "forces unleashed" by Bush's war.

© Copyright 2003 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.

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