US President George W Bush intends to reveal a new Iraq strategy within days, the BBC has learnt.
The speech will reveal a plan to send more US troops to Iraq to focus on ways of bringing greater security, rather than training Iraqi forces.
The move comes with figures from Iraqi ministries suggesting that deaths among civilians are at record highs.
The US president arrived back in Washington on Monday after a week-long holiday at his ranch in Texas.
The BBC was told by a senior administration source that the speech setting out changes in Mr Bush's Iraq policy is likely to come in the middle of next week.
Its central theme will 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.
First I want to say that I'm not surprised that the Bush administration is proposing this troop surge. There have been plenty of rumors and stories in the mainstream media, over the past couple of months, saying that the Bush White House is considering adding more troops. On January 1, 2007, I posted a story where the Bush administration was considering sending an increase of 20,000 American troops into Iraq, but that Marine Corps General James Conway wondered if there was a justifiable military reason for this increase. I also have a December 20, 2006 story, where Secretary of State Condi Rice said that President Bush was considering an increase of American troops in Iraq. And I have a December 19, 2006 story, where the Bush White House and the Joint Chiefs engaged in a major argument over the troop surge. So this proposed Bush troop surge has been bandied about for some time--perhaps ever since the Iraq Study Group's report has been released.
But the BBC story does present one incredible detail regarding this proposed surge. And that is the new Bush theme of "sacrifice." This sacrifice theme is just another Bush PR-ploy in continuing to sell this disaster of a war to the American people, even though the American people have expressed their desire for getting out of Iraq. The BBC story says that Bush will make a speech regarding this troop increase within days--probably during Bush's State of the Union Speech. The State of the Union speech is a perfect time for this announcement. Since this story of the troop surge has likely been leaked to the media by Bush officials, the mainstream media will spend a huge amount of time spinning this increase before Bush's SOTU address. Bush will certainly weave this theme of sacrifice in his SOTU speech, perhaps invoking a number of references from Franklin Roosevelt. I can certainly see Bush trying to equate his new theme of sacrifice in the global war on terror, with that of FDR asking the American people to make sacrifices during the Second World War. We'll have to see what happens when President Bush makes his SOTU address.
The second story I want to talk about here is this MSNBC story on the Bush troop surge:
WASHINGTON - Although nothing is final until President Bush puts his stamp on it, administration officials tell NBC News the president has all but decided on a temporary surge of additional American forces into Iraq in an effort to bring sectarian violence in Baghdad under control.
While no one is talking specific numbers, military officials believe it would involve some 20,000 additional soldiers and Marines.
Most of the increase would be achieved by extending the deployments of those troops already in Iraq by 90 days and accelerating the deployments for troops scheduled to deploy by sending them into Iraq sooner.
Administration and some military officials believe that without adequate security, particularly in Baghdad, any progress in Iraq would be difficult if not impossible.
Once the level of violence is brought under control, the U.S. military could then conceivably concentrate on accelerating the training for Iraqi security forces and the turnover of more territory to the Iraqis.
There are a couple of details in this story that is not found in the BBC story. First, there is the continued confirmation that this surge will be around 20,000 troops. This number has also been raised countless times over the past couple of months. The MSNBC story provides more details on this strategy, where the surge of American troops will be needed to provide greater security around Baghdad before the U.S. can provide accelerated training of Iraqi security forces. Instead of increasing American forces in Iraq to provide training, we get this complicated plan of increasing American troops to provide security before we can train the Iraqi forces. The big question to ask here is how long will it take for this small surge of 20,000 American troops can provide enough security in Iraq so that they can accelerate the training of Iraqi security forces? Because I don't think that an increase of 20,000 American troops will be enough to provide security in Iraq, or even Baghdad.
But there is more in this MSNBC story:
But administration officials stress the military option is only one part of a larger, more comprehensive strategy.
The plan also would throw more U.S. money at Iraq for reconstruction and a jobs program.
In addition, the U.S. would turn up the political heat by pressuring the Shiite-led government to aggressively crack down on the Shiite militias, particularly the Mahdi Army led by Muqtada al-Sadr, believed responsible for killing hundreds of Iraqi Sunnis in a bloody round of sectarian retributions.
At the same time the U.S. would appeal to moderate Sunnis to work harder to reach some kind of conciliation with the Shiite majority or risk being entirely shut out of any future government in Iraq.
The plan, of course, is fraught with peril. Some U.S. generals — and many experts outside the current military — warn that a short-term surge in forces will not have any long-term effect on the violence in Iraq. Even worse, they fear it will result in a dramatic increase in American casualties, just as the number of U.S. forces killed in the Iraq war has topped 3,000.
Talk about a huge contradiction here! First, the Bush administration wants the Iraqi government to crack down on the Shiite militias that are engaging in a civil war with the Sunnis. The Maliki government is not going to even attempt to crack down on Sadr's Mahdi Army--not unless Maliki wants to commit political suicide. Second, Bush is continuing to side with the Shiites in this ethnic civil war, mainly by continuing to support Maliki, over that of the Sunnis. There is no way the Sunnis are going to reconciliate with the U.S. here. Finally, if the Bush administration either forces Maliki to crack down on Sadr's army, or have U.S. troops attempt to crack down on the Shiite militias, then those U.S. soldiers in Iraq are going to be targeted by both Shiites and Sunnis. It is bad enough that U.S. forces are sitting in a county engaged in an ethnic and religious civil war, but it is going to be a real disaster if the U.S. starts picking sides in this war.
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