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Bush: Strategy shift in Iraq

BY CRAIG GORDON | Newsday Washington Bureau

July 26, 2006

WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush yesterday announced plans to dispatch thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops to confront Baghdad's spiraling violence, but the move raised questions about a hoped-for U.S. troop drawdown this year.

Bush announced the plan during a White House visit by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who requested more U.S. help after his recent Baghdad security crackdown failed.

Bush did not say how many U.S. troops would be involved, though White House officials stressed they would be troops moved from other parts of Iraq, not an increase to the 127,000 U.S. troops already there.

But Bush sidestepped a question on whether this would scuttle plans to bring out some American troops by year's end. Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, has drafted a plan to bring home 7,000 troops this year, and tens of thousands more in 2007.

"Conditions change inside a country," Bush said. "And the question is, are we going to be facile enough to change with - will we be nimble enough, will we be able to deal with the circumstances on the ground? And the answer is, yes, we will."

The plan amounts to a significant reversal in U.S. strategy in Iraq, which is based on building up Iraqi security forces to act independently with less and less U.S. help.

Instead, this plan would put U.S. troops and military police side-by-side with Iraqi forces, and calls for a neighborhood-by-neighborhood crackdown on death squads and other sectarian violence - potentially putting more American forces in the line of fire.

U.S. commanders decided that the risk of losing Baghdad completely to sectarian violence could destroy any hopes of building a stable democracy there, and therefore was worth the added commitment of U.S. forces, military officials said.