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Bush, acknowledges Iraq mistakes, orders in more troops
US President George W. BushBy Olivier Knox
AFP
WASHINGTON
Petroleumworld.com 01 11 06US President George W. Bush told a war-weary US public that he accepts blame for strategic blunders in Iraq, and that he is ordering 21,500 more US troops into battle.
In his much-anticipated prime-time speech late Wednesday Bush also warned Baghdad's leaders they must do more to shore up ebbing US support.
"If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises" to fight sectarian violence, "it will lose the support of the American people, and it will lose the support of the Iraqi people," he said.
The president said his new push was aimed at crushing terrorists, insurgents and rogue militias, and helping Iraq's security forces take control of the entire country by November.
"The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people, and it is unacceptable to me," he said in a speech nearly four years into the conflict. "Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me."
Unveiling what is seen as a last-ditch effort to pull Iraq from the brink, the US president also promised to take aggressive steps to curtail what he described as Iranian and Syrian help to those attacking Iraqi and US troops.
Opposition Democrats, fresh from retaking the US Congress in part thanks to anger at Bush's handling of Iraq, said they planned symbolic votes on the embattled president's plan. But they stopped short of vowing to cut off war funding.
"Escalating our military involvement in Iraq sends precisely the wrong message and we oppose it," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement after the speech.
Recent polls show the president faces an uphill battle: much of the US public opposes sending more troops to Iraq, while many of Bush's Republican allies fear the political cost of backing the unpopular war.
Bush is pinning fading hopes for a viable democracy in Iraq on escalating US forces.
"I have committed more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq," he said.
Aides said the plan called for deploying five additional US Army brigades -- about 17,500 troops -- to Baghdad and another 4,000 marines to Al-Anbar, scene of fierce Sunni-led insurgency.
Bush somberly warned that "even if our new strategy works exactly as planned," terrorists and sectarian groups behind clashes and suicide bombings that have torn Iraq apart "will make the year ahead bloody and violent."
"We must expect more Iraqi and American casualties," said the president, whose poll numbers have plummeted as the US toll has climbed to more than 3,000 dead.
Bush did not say how long the new deployment would last. But he rejected Democrats' calls for a withdrawal in four to six months.
"To step back now would force a collapse of the Iraqi government, tear that country apart, and result in mass killings on an unimaginable scale," he said.
Bush also accused Iran and Syria of letting terrorists and insurgents use their territory to enter and exit Iraq, and charged Tehran with giving "material support" for attacks on US troops.
"We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq," he said.
Bush said US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would travel to the Middle East on Friday to promote a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and pressure Iraq's neighbors to help keep it from tipping into chaos.
"Countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf States need to understand that an American defeat in Iraq would create a new sanctuary for extremists and a strategic threat to their survival," he said.
In a rare specific admission of failure, Bush pointed to past efforts to secure Baghdad and said that not enough US and Iraqi troops had been deployed. He also said that Iraq's government had placed politically driven restrictions on who could be targeted and how.
This time, the White House said, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has promised to reinforce Baghdad security with up to 12,000 Iraqi troops and made clear that any rogue armed groups will be targeted.
The new plan will cost 5.6 billion dollars for the new US troops and about 1.2 billion in new spending aimed at shoring up Iraq's battered economy, civil society, infrastructure and judicial system, the White House said.
The US military has about one million men and women in uniform, but the bulk of them are in support roles and not in front-line combat units.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates is to announce plans Thursday to significantly increase the size of the active duty US Army and Marines, stretched thin by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and with active-duty personnel exhausted by constant wartime service, Fox News reported.
Gates will also present a plan to increase the frequency that the Pentagon can send army reserve troops and National Guard soldiers -- the latter nominally under the control of state governors -- into active duty, according to Fox.
The was no information in the report on the size of the planned increase.
Bush said he would seek to expand the size of the Army and Marines in a mid-December interview with the Washington Post, but did not put a number on the increase at the time.
AFP 11 0914 GMT 01 07
Copyright© 1999 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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