Bush 'to reveal Iraq troop boost'

The BBC are reporting that Bush is to make his announcement on the new Iraq policy next week, and that the central theme of his speech is to be "sacrifice".

The speech, the BBC has been told, involves increasing troop numbers.

The exact mission of the extra troops in Iraq is still under discussion, according to officials, but it is likely to focus on providing security rather than training Iraqi forces.

The proposal, if it comes, will be highly controversial.

Already one senior Republican senator has called it Alice in Wonderland.

The need to find some way of pacifying Iraq has been underlined by statistics revealed by various ministries in the Iraqi government, suggesting that well over 1,000 civilians a month are dying.

This is a typical Bush reaction to the sensible suggestions that were contained in the Baker Report. I note that Bush will consider troop increases and yet is still avoiding the Baker Report's suggestion that Iraq's neighbours, Syria and Iran, be approached and consulted.

The Baker Report advised:

The United States should immediately launch a new diplomatic offensive to build an international consensus for stability in Iraq and the region. This diplomatic effort should include every country that has an interest in avoiding a chaotic Iraq, including all of Iraq’s neighbors. Iraq’s neighbors and key states in and outside the region should form a support group to reinforce security and national reconciliation within Iraq, neither of which Iraq can achieve on its own.

Given the ability of Iran and Syria to influence events within Iraq and their interest in avoiding chaos in Iraq, the United States should try to engage them constructively.

Bush, it would appear, is going to ignore these recommendations completely. Likewise, it is safe to assume that he will also ignore the Baker Report's call for a renewed effort to bring peace in the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, a call echoed by Tony Blair as the most important way of winning the war on terror.

Instead, the increase in troop levels will be the equivalent of the "last push" that many right wing commentators have been calling for.

And, of course, this "last push" will take place in an Iraq further divided by the hanging of Saddam Hussein, and act which brought hundreds of pro-Saddam supporters on to the streets vowing revenge and rendering Maliki's hope that it would be seen as a unifying action as the pipe-dream many of us always thought it was.

The death of Saddam will only make reconciliation between the Shias and the Sunnis even harder to obtain, which means, of course, that Bush is sending more US troops into an even more bitterly divided Iraq - were such a place imaginable.

Nor is this policy one that is even backed by General Casey, the top commander in Baghdad, who has said that further troops were not needed, indeed, Casey argues that they may actually prove counter-productive:

In a telephone interview on Friday, General Casey continued to caution against a lengthy expansion in the American military role. “The longer we in the U.S. forces continue to bear the main burden of Iraq’s security, it lengthens the time that the government of Iraq has to take the hard decisions about reconciliation and dealing with the militias,” he said.

It would appear that Bush is still intent on achieving "victory" in Iraq, a victory that most sensible people on the planet now realise is impossible to achieve. To this end, more young Americans will be called upon to make a "sacrifice".

How many more must die before Bush admits that he has lost? The Baker Report offered Bush a face-saving exit strategy, but it would appear that Bush is about to ignore that Report and march on into madness.

Is Pelosi still opposed to impeachment? It's perhaps time for her to reconsider this.

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tag: Bush, war on terror, Iraq, Iraq war, troops, US foreign policy, civil war, Baker report, Iraq Survey Group, stay the course