Report on Iraq will tell it straight

By Alister Bull

HILLA, Iraq (Reuters) - The top U.S. military commander in Iraq on Thursday promised the truth from a progress report on the country that he will deliver to Washington in September.

"We are not going back to present examples of success," General David Petraeus told Reuters and two other foreign reporters who accompanied him on a trip to the city of Hilla, south of Baghdad.

"We are going back to present the truth, to provide a forthright, comprehensive assessment of the situation at the time."

The report to U.S. lawmakers by Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker will examine how much has been achieved since 28,000 extra troops were sent to the country for a major summer offensive to halt Iraq's slide into sectarian civil war.

The findings might be critical for future support from Congress, which can cut funding for the increasingly unpopular war and where calls for a troop withdrawal have mounted.

Two senior members of U.S. President George W. Bush's own Republican Party this week called for a new approach, reflecting public scepticism over the White House's Iraq strategy.

Petraeus said he was well aware that the "clock is moving back at a pretty high rate of speed" in Washington. But he vowed this would not influence the September assessment, and cautioned the report would acknowledge poor progress on some issues.

"The ambassador and I will go back and we will lay it out as it is," he said after a graduation ceremony for 1,000 Iraqi cadets at the Hilla Police Academy.