WASHINGTON – President Bush, drafting an overhaul of his faltering and unpopular war plan, heard Saturday from a Pentagon chief who had just returned from Iraq with a positive impression of Iraqi leaders’ plans to address sectarian violence.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates finished his first week on the job by delivering a report to Bush on the three days he spent talking with Iraqi leaders, U.S. commanders and American soldiers. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace, who traveled with Gates to Iraq, helped make the presentation.
The early-morning meeting at Camp David in Maryland’s mountains lasted about an hour. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser Stephen Hadley and Hadley’s deputy, J.D. Crouch, who is coordinating the administration’s Iraq review, also participated.
“The president is pleased with the progress being made” to design a new policy, said Blain Rethmeier, a Bush spokesman. “The president is leaving all options on the table on the way forward.”
With public support for the war falling as violence and U.S. deaths rise, Bush has been eager to show he is ready to make changes – even while he rejects calls from Democrats, who take control of Congress next month, for significant troop withdrawals to begin soon. The president has talked often in recent weeks about the long commitment America must make to Iraq.
He is expected to announce his revamped Iraq strategy in a speech to the nation between New Year’s Day and his Jan. 23 State of the Union address.
“If you’re serving on the front lines halfway across the world, it is natural to wonder what all this means for you,” Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address. “I want our troops to know that while the coming year will bring change, one thing will not change, and that is our nation’s support for you and the vital work you do to achieve a victory in Iraq.”
There are several signs that a proposal to add thousands of U.S. troops to the 140,000 already in Iraq – as a way to control escalating violence, particularly in Baghdad – is gaining favor at the White House.
The Los Angeles Times reported Saturday that Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and other military leaders in Iraq, who had been the primary voices skeptical of a “surge” in troops, have decided to endorse the idea.
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