US plans action against ‘Iranian, Syrian elements’: New Bush strategy for Iraq
By Anwar Iqbal
WASHINGTON, Jan 10: President George Bush is expected to announce the dispatch of 21,500 more US troops to Iraq, a senior White House official told journalists on Wednesday.
The official, briefing newsmen on Mr Bush’s address to the nation on Thursday (Wednesday night in the US), said the president would also ask the Congress to sanction $6.8 billion for the deployment.
According to an agency report, US troops will increase operations against Iranian and Syrian elements in Iraq. In a key operational shift, a document revealed, the new strategy will include a bid to `counter Iranian and Syrian action that threatens coalition forces’.
A White House official said US troops would `increase operations against Iranian actors’. “The coalition will intensify efforts to counter Iranian and Syrian influence inside Iraq.”
The expected move has irked the Democrats, who warned that they would oppose any plan that calls for an increase in the number of US troops in Iraq.
White House Counsel Dan Bartlett told CBS News that the plan is to send 11,000 more troops in the next few weeks, followed by a second wave in March, April and May on several conditions.
According to the plan, 17,500 of these troops will be deployed in Baghdad and about 4,000 will be sent to the volatile Anbar province. The Iraqi government will also provide additional troops to work with the American soldiers.
The increases will take place in waves, with the first additional brigade of 3,500 to 4,000 troops, expected to arrive in Iraq on Jan 15.
In return, Mr Bush will ask the Iraqi government to curb Shia militias; distribute oil revenue among Shias, Sunnis and Kurds; and ease restrictions on the former Baathist Party, the official said.
Mr Bush will acknowledge in unusually stark terms how dire the situation is - because of errors in assumptions and failures by the government in Iraq to follow through on promises. He will also concede that it was a tactical mistake not to send more troops to Iraq earlier.
The new strategy also shifts US goal from a focus on training Iraqi security forces to securing the battered population. It calls for decentralising the US-led reconstruction efforts and channelling more economic assistance to the most violent areas.
Mr Bartlett said that the rules of the past, where for instance US forces in Baghdad `sometimes were handcuffed by political interference by the Iraqi leadership’, must end.
"They (the Iraqis) are going to have more boots on the ground," he said. "They're going to be the ones doing the knocking on the door."
Currently, there are about 144,000 US troops in Iraq. More than 3,000 have died since the war began in 2003 -- a toll that is making the war increasingly unpopular among Americans.
Besides new deployments, the additional fund President Bush is seeking will also be spent on creating jobs and on reconstruction projects inside Iraq, said the administration official.
The $6.8 billion will be added to a broader war-spending bill Mr Bush will unveil next month for fiscal 2007. The total price tag for the emergency legislation was already expected to reach $100 billion, making 2007 the costliest year yet for the war.
The opposition Democrats, who now control both chambers of the US Congress, intend to hold symbolic votes in the House and Senate on President Bush’s plan; seeking to isolate the president politically over his handling of the war.
KENNEDY MOVE: In the Senate, Democrat Edward Kennedy has sponsored legislation requiring Mr Bush to get congressional approval before sending more troops to Iraq.
On Tuesday, President Bush warned House Democrats that a US withdrawal from Iraq would force Saudi Arabia to look elsewhere for protection and potentially destabilise Egypt, the region's most populous country.
Democrats say there are other ways to tackle the growing violence in the country.
“I think the real question is, 'Is it the responsibility of the American military to try to quell sectarian violence that the … Iraqi government has not demonstrated its willingness to quell?'" said Congresswoman Heather Wilson., who represents New Mexico.
"An escalation of troop levels in Iraq was a mistake and we need a political accommodation rather than a military approach to the sectarian violence there," said Barack Obama, a Democratic senator from Illinois.
