The White House was on Friday considering an even deeper military commitment in Iraq, with a short-term deployment of 20 000 extra forces to Baghdad, a day after the United States army chief warned that the force could break under the strain of the war.
Meanwhile, the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, ruled out a diplomatic overture to Syria and Iran to enlist their support in stemming the chaos in Iraq.
The two developments reinforce reports that the White House is leaning towards a broad rejection of the recommendations from the Iraq Study Group for a withdrawal of US combat forces by early 2008, and for the opening of talks with Tehran and Damascus.
Although President George Bush has yet to reveal his new strategy for the war, deferring that announcement to the new year, Rice indicated that the administration’s highly visible review of its policies in Iraq is unlikely to lead to major changes.
In a meeting with editors at the Washington Post, she said that a deal for Syrian and Iranian cooperation on Iraq would come at too high a price. Instead, she argued, Damascus and Tehran may be moved to try to improve the situation in Iraq by their own self-interest.
“You have to ask if Iran and Syria have, in fact, decided that it’s in their interest to have an Iraq that is more stable than the one now,” she said. “I assume they’ll act. I assume they’ll do it. And that we aren’t the ones who have to tell them to do it.”
The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that the Bush administration was exploring the possibility of sending 20 000 additional troops to Iraq to stabilise Baghdad and accelerate the training of the Iraqi army. The McClatchy news service quoted US officials as saying the administration was considering a short-term deployment of as many as 40 000 more soldiers and marines in Baghdad.
Such moves defy public opinion, with a new poll for National Public Radio on Friday showing nearly two-thirds of Americans favouring a withdrawal of US forces from Iraq in early 2007 despite the threat to Iraqi stability.
They also run counter to the warnings from the US’s most senior general, the chief of army staff, General Peter Schoomaker, who warned Congress on Thursday that US forces were dangerously overstretched. “The army is incapable of generating and sustaining the required forces to wage the global war on terror without its components — active, guard and reserve — surging together,” he told a commission of Congress.
He called for an expansion of the force by 7 000 troops a year, and the lifting of restrictions on the mandatory call-up of National Guards and reservists. “Without recurrent access to the reserve components, through remobilisation, we will break the active component,” he warned.
The general also opposes the idea of a temporary increase in troops. “We should not surge without a purpose, and that purpose should be measurable and get us something,” he told reporters later.
US military commanders in Iraq are also opposed to the deployment of extra troops. However, Pentagon officials believe that a temporary increase in the number of US troops embedded with Iraqi forces could speed up training.
Senator John McCain, the leading contender for the Republican leadership in the 2008 elections, also endorses more troops for Iraq, telling reporters during a trip to Baghdad this week that the forces could help bring stability both to the Iraqi capital and western Anbar province.
The impression that the administration would be unwilling to embrace the findings of the study group has deepened this week, with US officials saying Bush is convinced that a withdrawal from Iraq would lead to even greater chaos.
Andrew Card, a former White House chief of staff, told the Boston Globe on Friday that the president is unlikely to follow recommendations that “cause him to abandon the mission or leave Iraq as a kind of pot boiling over with hatred”. — Guardian Unlimited Â