But they were joined Tuesday by Sen. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, a respected Republican on foreign policy issues, who questioned whether the Bush administration strategy seeks realistic outcomes and suggested the White House needed to reconsider its policy.
"Simply appealing for more time to make progress is insufficient," Lugar said.
Still, Republicans mostly backed Petraeus' call for a pause in withdrawals this summer. Among them were Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, who argued that the U.S. must continue to support Iraqi efforts with a robust military presence.
"This means rejecting, as we did in 2007, the calls for a reckless and irresponsible withdrawal of our forces at the moment we are succeeding," McCain said.
Although the clash over troop levels dominated both hearings, the role of Iran loomed almost equally large, with Petraeus stating that Iranian-backed "special groups" -- radical elements within Shiite Muslim militias -- pose the greatest long-term threat to Iraqi stability.
Crocker, the top U.S. diplomat in Iraq, gave the most detailed analysis of Iranian goals in Iraq delivered by a senior U.S. official.
He said that Tehran had links to nearly every Iraqi Shiite faction and was attempting to create a proxy force within Iraq analogous to Hezbollah, the Iranian-supported Shiite movement in Lebanon whose militia rivals the national military.
"Iran is pursuing, as it were, a 'Lebanonization' strategy, using the same techniques they used in Lebanon, to co-opt elements of the local Shia community and use them as basically instruments of Iranian force," Crocker said. "That also tells me, sir, that in the event of a precipitous U.S. withdrawal, the Iranians would just push that much harder."
Iran denies supporting Shiite militias in Iraq.
Crocker cast doubt on reports that the Iranian unit known as the Quds Force brokered the cease-fire that ended open warfare between Shiite factions last month in Basra, but Petraeus said the unit had trained and equipped many of the extremist Iraqis responsible for recent violence in Baghdad.
"The hand of Iran was very clear in recent weeks," Petraeus said.
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peter.spiegel@latimes.com
julian.barnes@latimes.com
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