A debate is intensifying inside the White House over whether President George Bush should try to prevent more Republican defections by announcing intentions for a gradual withdrawal of troops from high-casualty Iraqi areas, the New York Times said on Monday.
Citing administration officials and consultants, the newspaper said administration officials fear the last pillars of political support among United States Senate Republicans for Bush’s Iraq strategy are ”collapsing around them”.
The president and his aides had thought they could wait to begin discussions about any change in strategy after September 15, when the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and US ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker must present a much-anticipated report on Iraq’s security and political progress.
But these aides acknowledge it appears that forces are converging against Bush just as the Senate prepares this week to begin what promises to be a contentious debate on the war’s future and financing, the newspaper said.
Four more Republican senators, including Pete Domenici of New Mexico last week, have recently declared they can no longer support Bush’s strategy.
As a result, the newspaper said, aides are telling Bush that if he wants to forestall more defections, it would be wiser to announce plans for a far more narrowly defined mission for US troops that would allow for a staged pullback.
That strategy was proposed by the Iraq Study Group late last year, but the president rejected it.
September 15 looks like an end point for the debate, not a starting point, one administration official told the Times. ”Lots of people are concluding that the president has got to get out ahead of this train.”
The Times said that Defence Secretary Robert Gates has been quietly pressing for a halving of the number of brigades patrolling the most violent sections of Baghdad and surrounding provinces by early next year.
The remaining combat units would take up the more limited mission of training Iraqi units, protecting Iraq’s borders and taking on al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the Sunni extremist group affiliated with Osama bin Laden.
Officials describe Stephen Hadley, the national security advisor, as concerned that the loss of Republicans could accelerate this week, a fear shared by Karl Rove, the president’s longtime strategist.
Of particular concern to administration officials is what Senator John McCain of Arizona will say when he returns from a trip to Iraq.
McCain, a candidate for the Republican nomination for president, has faced political troubles because of his steadfast support of the war, and there is speculation he may declare the Iraqi government incapable of the kind of political accommodations the president’s surge was supposed to permit, the paper said. – Reuters