In his speech Wednesday announcing his new Iraq strategy, President Bush assured Americans that the Iraqi government had promised to cooperate, but some experts are deeply skeptical that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki can deliver the things Bush is demanding: cracking down on militias, writing new laws on oil wealth distribution and the political process, and eliminating sectarian factions within Iraq's security forces.

"The track record up to this point has certainly not been encouraging," said Flynt Leverett, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and a former National Security Council official.

"There's nothing in that track record that would make you think the present political configuration in Iraq is capable of dealing with those issues," he said...

The United States has a limited set of tools to press the Iraqi government to act on its promises, the analysts said. Its biggest lever -- the threat to withdraw U.S. troops -- is diminished by Bush's warnings that failure in Iraq could be near-apocalyptic.

"What is he going to do six months from now when the Iraqi government has not lived up to its side of the bargain?" Leverett asked. "Is he really going to come and say, 'We gave them a last chance, they didn't live up to it, and now we have to reconsider'? I think he's much more likely to widen this conflict..."

But many analysts said that, like it or not, the Iraqis' ability to reach some kind of political reconciliation is key to any successful U.S. strategy at this stage of the war.

"If the plan is going to work, it's going to be because the Iraqi government steps up to the plate," Leverett said. "Success ... is almost 100 percent contingent on the Iraqi government doing stuff that it has been incapable of doing up until now. What do I think the chances are the Iraqi government is actually going to do these things? Very, very small."

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