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Isolated Bush faces rebellion over Iraq

Ewen MacAskill and Julian Borger

The wave of scepticism and outright hostility that greeted the President's strategy marks a significant change in the attitude in the U.S.

Anti-war protesters in Detroit, United States, on Thursday. — Photo: AP

U.S. PRESIDENT George W. Bush faced increasing isolation on Thursday night after his much-vaunted new strategy for Iraq met with overwhelming public and political opposition.

As Mr. Bush and his most senior staff embarked on a huge public relations exercise to sell the plan, he faced an embarrassing but hugely symbolic vote in Congress next week rejecting it.

In contrast with the deference he enjoyed in his first six years in office, the President is confronting for the first time a combination of reinvigorated Democrats and rebellious Republicans.

Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate, said: "In choosing to escalate the civil war, the President virtually stands alone."

He claimed to have the votes of about 10 dissident Republican senators, and predicted the passage of the resolution with bipartisan support would mark "the beginning of the end of the war in Iraq."

The wave of scepticism and outright hostility that greeted the President's strategy marks a significant change in the U.S. attitude to Iraq. A Washington Post-ABC poll carried out after Mr. Bush's televised address on Wednesday showed that 61 per cent opposed the plan while just 36 per cent backed it. In another poll by Associated Press and Ipsos, 70 per cent of Americans said they were against sending more troops.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair welcomed Mr. Bush's decision, saying it "makes sense," but global reaction was otherwise overwhelmingly negative.

The U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, is headed for the Middle East to try to win support for the plan from Arab governments allied to the U.S., though the immediate reaction in the region reflected the widespread scepticism in America.

There was concern in many Middle East capitals at the apparent threat of escalating the conflict to include Iran and Syria. Mr. Bush, in his speech, warned that the U.S. would "seek out and destroy networks" of insurgents moving into Iraq or based in these neighbouring countries. While U.S. commanders insisted that this did not signal an intention to go into Iran or Syria, Ms. Rice confirmed that all options were open.

In a taste of the new confrontational approach on Capitol Hill, Ms. Rice received a grilling when she appeared before the Senate foreign affairs committee to explain the plan. The Democratic Senator and 2008 presidential hopeful, Joe Biden, told her that Mr. Bush's plan was "a tragic mistake." Meanwhile, Democratic and Republican congressmen were lining up in TV studios to denounce the deployment of an extra 21,500 U.S. troops to Iraq.

Mr. Bush, who ignored recommendations from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group for a phased withdrawal, in favour of more troops, insisted in a speech at army headquarters at Fort Benning, Georgia, that the plan to pacify Baghdad would work. In a shift of strategy, the U.S. is planning to go into previous no-go zones, in particular the Shia militia stronghold of Sadr City.

Mr. Bush said the influx of more American troops, together with Iraqi forces, would be enough to to "clear, build and hold" militant areas. He warned that the new strategy "is not going to yield immediate results. It's going to take awhile."

The U.S. Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, stressed that the new deployment may not, as had been widely believed, be short-term. "It's viewed as a temporary surge, but I think no one has a really clear idea of how long that might be," Mr. Gates said.

He also announced that to help with the strain imposed by Iraq on the U.S. in meeting its worldwide commitments, he is to increase the overall strength of the army by 92,000. He added that whatever the differences over the decision to go to war in 2003, "there seems to be broad agreement that failure in Iraq would be a calamity for our nation of lasting historical consequence."

First collision

The vote on the new strategy will be the first collision between the White House and Congress since the Democrats secured control of both houses in November. Although the congressional vote is purely symbolic, the increasingly confident Democrats may move beyond that to try to block funding for extra troops. Such a tactic would have been virtually unthinkable even a week ago. Republicans loyal to Mr. Bush may try to block the vote by embarking on a filibuster. Among the Republicans who may join the Democrats in support of the resolution is Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam war veteran. He said: "This is a dangerously wrong-headed strategy that will drive America deeper into an unwinnable swamp at great cost. It is wrong to place American troops in the middle of Iraq's civil war."

Barack Obama, the Senator from Illinois who is among the current front-runners for the Democratic presidential nomination and a long-term opponent of the war, caught the mood of the Democrats when he said: "We are not going to babysit a civil war."

Hillary Clinton, the other Democrat front-runner, has been careful so far not to be too critical of the war and is in danger of being left behind by the new mood in her party.

Democrats, who control the Senate with 51 of 100 seats, would need 60 votes to clear a possible Republican procedural roadblock. Mr. Reid said: "We expect to have 60."

Qualified support for Mr. Bush came from Senator John McCain, the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination, who has long lobbied for extra troops. "I do not guarantee victory or success with this new strategy," Mr. McCain said. "If we do fail there's going to be chaos in the region and I believe that we would pay an even heavier price in American blood and treasure."

The British government said President Bush's announcement would not affect its own plans to hand over authority in southern Iraq to Iraqi forces and pull out British troops this year, but Mr. Blair claimed the divergent plans did not represent a U.S.-U.K. rift over policy.

"It is really important that we don't either give that impression or have that misunderstanding," Mr. Blair said in a TV interview in Plymouth, in the west of England. He argued that British policy was shaped by entirely different circumstances.

"The conditions in Baghdad are very different from those in Basra. In Basra we don't have the same threat from Al-Qaeda, we don't have the same sectarian violence to anything like the same degree, and we don't have the same insurgency."

The U.K. Defence Secretary, Des Browne, acknowledged that a crackdown by American troops on Shia militias in Baghdad could have a knock-on effect in the south, triggering Shia reprisals, but he said there were plans to deal with such an upsurge.

"We are well aware of that possibility and that is why we continually assess the risk, continually assess how we deploy our forces," Mr. Browne told a joint session of the House of Commons defence and foreign affairs committees. He said he expected Basra to be transferred to full Iraqi control this year, enabling British troops to start pulling out. "It is my expectation that we will be able to see that process through and that over the course of the coming months and this year that we are now expecting to see a reduction of troops by a matter of thousands," he said. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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