On a visit to Iraq last month, Gates told Iraqi leaders, "The clock is ticking." That and other comments by the Pentagon chief indicate he wants to see substantial progress toward political reconciliation in Baghdad very soon — progress justifying the sacrifices entailed in a heavier U.S. troop presence.

The U.S. death toll in Iraq has escalated in recent weeks, and commanders concede it is linked to the new strategy that puts thousands more troops on Baghdad's streets in the face of a relentless insurgency.

Gates and other senior administration officials have consistently said it's too early to know whether the troop buildup — now about 75 percent complete — will achieve its stated goal of reducing sectarian violence in Baghdad to a level low enough to permit Iraqi political leaders to forge compromises to stabilize the country.

What seems to be a point of dispute between Gates and some commanders is how much time to give the strategy. When an initial evaluation of progress is made in September, would a positive report be reason enough to begin withdrawing troops? What if the indications by then are that the strategy is not working, or not working fast enough?

Gates has publicly mentioned the possibility that security and political conditions may improve enough to let some of the 146,000 U.S. forces withdraw by the end of the year. He's not promised any pullout but has tended to stress the possibility, whereas senior commanders have emphasized their desire to give the Iraqis more time.

Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq whom President Bush sent to Baghdad in February to implement his new counterinsurgency strategy, said April 26, "We are really just getting started with the new effort." He said in an Associated Press interview on Tuesday that he and the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, would come to Washington in the first or second week of September to offer their assessment.

Petraeus made no mention in that interview of a possible troop drawdown this year. Asked about the possibility of changing course, based on inadequate results from the current strategy, Petraeus made a vague mention of possibly having to "modify objectives."

At a Pentagon news conference, Gates said Wednesday that whatever the September assessment by commanders, he does not foresee that it would produce "a precipitous decision" on troop levels but rather would "point us in a new direction, either because the surge is working or because the evaluation is that it's not."

At this point, Gates said, there is only "conceptual thinking" about an alternative strategy for Iraq, should the current approach be deemed a failure, rather than an actual contingency plan that could be put into action.

In Senate testimony hours earlier, Gates was asked about a reported comment by Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the No. 2 commander in Iraq, that indicated Odierno sees a longer timeframe — April 2008 rather than September 2007 — for judging the strategy's results. Gates was at a loss to explain the remark as reported. However, when it was raised later at the Pentagon news conference, Gates cited confusion about how long the troop surge, as the Pentagon calls it, could be maintained and how long it might be needed.

Gates has never committed to keeping up the surge beyond September.

"The surge needs to go through the beginning of next year, for sure," Odierno was quoted as saying in Wednesday's Washington Post. The Post also quoted him as saying, "What I am trying to do is to get until April so we can decide whether to keep it going or not" — a much longer time horizon than Gates has mentioned.

A spokeswoman for Odierno, Lt. Col. Josslyn Aberle, disputed the Post's account. In an e-mailed statement, Odierno said that in the Post interview he had remarked that with Gates' recent decision to extend troop tours in Iraq from 12 months to 15 months, "we have the ability to maintain the surge until April and I will make a recommendation in September" on whether to continue the surge "at least to the beginning of the year."

Aberle said in a telephone interview that Odierno believes September is too soon to expect to have a complete view of whether the U.S. strategy is viable.

"Is three months an adequate amount of time to show a true picture?" Aberle said.

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