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Bush to unveil new Iraq plan Wednesday
By Olivier Knox
AFP
WASHINGTON
Petroleumworld.com 01 09 07US President George W. Bush will roll out his new Iraq strategy in a speech at 9:00 pm Wednesday (0200 GMT), shaping the way the unpopular war will be fought for his final two years in office.
Bush's new plan was expected to couple an increase in US troop levels in Iraq, perhaps by as many as 20,000 soldiers, with a set of political, economic, and security benchmarks that Iraq's government must strive to meet.
But opposition Democrats, swept to control of the US Congress in November elections fueled by anger at the war, have preemptively warned that Bush will not get a "blank check" for more troops or billions of dollars in new spending.
"It is time to bring the war to a close," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote last week in a letter to Bush in which they called for a phased US withdrawal to start in four to six months.
Bush was to travel Thursday to Fort Benning, Georgia, a sprawling base known as "the Home of the Infantry," to push his plan while aides like Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates wooed US lawmakers.
"It's important to get congressional support," said White House spokesman Tony Snow, who declined to provide details of the new proposal.
"It's tempting to think, boy, this is going to set off a big old political firestorm -- and it very well may. But on the other hand, it may actually set off a period of reflection and constructive activity," he said.
Snow said he had asked major US television networks to carry the speech, which follows a sweeping overhaul of the US diplomatic and military leadership in Iraq nearly four years after the war began.
On Monday, Bush formally nominated his ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, to be the new US ambassador to the United Nations, replacing him with Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador in Pakistan since November 2004.
The Iraq war has left more than 3,000 US soldiers dead and thousands wounded -- with the Iraqi toll many times that -- since the March 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein. The ousted dictator was hanged December 30.
Bush's plan caps a months-long internal reevaluation of his Iraq strategy and came after the publication of a heavyweight panel's advice for repairing a war-fighting approach that even the president has acknowledged is failing.
The US president has rebuffed two of the Iraq Study Group's central recommendations -- the withdrawal of most US combat troops by 2008 in favor of an increased deployment of trainers to get Iraq's military up to speed, and direct talks with Syria and Iran.
Instead, Bush has reshuffled top aides, dropping defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, moving spy chief John Negroponte to be Rice's deputy, and changing the military commanders in Iraq proper and at the Central Command that oversees Iraq and Afghanistan.
US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack indicated that Rice would likely travel to the Middle East after the speech.
The New York Times, citing unnamed senior Bush aides, reported Sunday that the new plan aimed to draw more of Iraq's minority Sunnis into the political process, finalize a long-delayed measure on the distribution of oil revenue and ease restrictions on former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.
Pelosi told CBS television on Sunday that she opposed "escalation of the war" but took care to stress that Democrats would not cut off funding for US forces already in Iraq -- one of the few tools the US Congress has to shape policy.
"But that's not a carte blanche, a blank check to him to do whatever he wishes there," she said. "If the president wants to expand the mission, that's a conversation he has to have with the Congress of the United States."
AFP 082138 GMT 01 07
Copyright© 2001 AFP.All Rights Reserved.
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