The White House, in its most detailed public plan yet for success in Iraq, said on Wednesday it expects to reduce United States forces there in 2006, but warned the country is likely to face violence ”for many years to come”.
”No war has ever been won on a timetable and neither will this one,” US President George Bush’s National Security Council said in a policy paper entitled National Strategy for Victory in Iraq, dated November 2005.
The White House released the strategy to set the stage for a speech a few hours later by Bush, who hoped to convince a sceptical US public two-and-a-half years after the war began that he has a plan to end it.
Long-term victory will come when Iraq is ”peaceful, united, stable and secure, well integrated into the international community, and a full partner in the war on terrorism”, according to the 35-page document.
”Many challenges remain,” it says, warning that ”terrorism and insurgencies historically take many years to defeat” and that ”Iraq is likely to struggle with some level of violence for many years to come”.
There are currently about 159 000 US troops there, and about 2 100 have been killed since Bush launched the March 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, most in the bloody insurgency that followed.
”Although we are confident of victory in Iraq, we will not put a date certain on when each stage of success will be reached, because the timing of success depends upon meeting certain conditions, not arbitrary timetables,” it says.
Confirming recent statements by the White House and the Pentagon, the policy paper suggests that the US military will reduce its presence in Iraq next year after building it up ahead of the country’s December 15 elections.
”We expect, but cannot guarantee, that our force posture will change over the next year, as the political process advances and Iraqi security forces grow and gain experience,” it said.
That could mean a reduction in the US military presence ahead of the November US legislative elections at a time when Bush’s Republicans worry the unpopular war will cost them dearly in the voting booth.
Bush was to make remarks on Wednesday at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, at a time when his poll numbers have sunk to their lowest to date and more and more Americans want him to chart a course for a quick US withdrawal.
White House spokesperson Scott McClellan said on Tuesday that the speech, the first in a series of appeals for support ahead of Iraq’s elections, would centre on efforts to train Iraqi security forces to replace US soldiers.
McClellan said the strategy paper is a declassified version of the plan from which US officials have been working for some time. — Sapa-AFP