January 15, 2006	Sunday	Zilhaj 14, 1426

WASHINGTON, Jan 14: A veteran US congressman who set off a firestorm in November by calling for a quick American withdrawal from Iraq is now predicting ‘the vast majority’ of US troops will leave the country by year’s end, or maybe even sooner.

John Murtha, the top Democrat of the House defence appropriations subcommittee, said late on Friday that President George Bush would be forced to accept an Iraq pullout plan because inaction will likely result in Republicans losing control of Congress in the November mid-term elections.

“I think the vast majority will be out by the end of the year and I’m hopeful it will be sooner than that,” he told CBS’s “60 Minutes” program, according to excerpts of the interview released by the network.

Although both the Senate and the House of Representatives remain firmly in Republican hands, John Murtha said he believed Congress will pass a plan calling for pullout of US troops from Iraq because of rising voter dissatisfaction with the current course.

“You’re going to see a plan for withdrawal,” Mr Murtha insisted, adding that he believed the president will be forced to accede to it — or risk losing control of Congress.

“I think the political people who give advice will say to him, ‘You don’t want a Democratic Congress. You want to keep a Republican majority, and the only way you’re going to keep it is by reducing substantially the troops in Iraq,’” Mr Murtha said.

More than 140,000 US soldiers are currently deployed in Iraq.

The first veteran of the Vietnam War elected to Congress triggered what amounted to a political earthquake last November, when he publicly called for US withdrawal from Iraq in six months, insisting the war was grounded in ‘a flawed policy wrapped in illusion’.

The appeal marked the first time a mainstream US politician, who had voted to authorize the invasion, referred to Iraq as a lost cause.

The White House initially blasted the congressman’s appeal as tantamount to ‘surrender’, but later toned down its attacks, saying the president just had an honest policy disagreement with him.

Still, in a move reminiscent of 2004, the conservative Cybercast News Service released on Friday the results of its ‘investigation’ of Mr Murtha’s war record, in which it questioned his right to wear two Purple Heart medals.

The report quotes three people claiming to know Mr Murtha well as saying the congressman did not deserve these honours, and one of them, Vietnam veteran Don Bailey, even called Mr Murtha ‘a phoney and a liar’.

HOT ISSUE: Recent opinion polls, however, give credence to Mr Murtha’s prediction that the coming congressional election may turn on Iraq.

A CNN/USA Today/Gallup survey indicated that 85 per cent of Americans believe that Iraq will be either ‘extremely important’ or ‘very important’ in the November contest, in which all 435 House and a third of Senate seats will be up for grabs.

The public is largely split on a future course, with 49 per cent saying the administration should come up with a withdrawal timetable regardless of the situation on the ground and 47 advocating soldiering on. —AFP