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Bush backs Petraeus on withdrawal

Iraqi men gather around a building badly damaged in a US military airstrike in Baghdad’s Shiite enclave of Sadr City yesterday. US air strikes in the embattled city killed at least four people as fighting raged for a fifth straight day between Shiite militiamen and security forces, officials said. PHOTO: AFP

Taking the advice of his top commander in Iraq, US President George W. Bush has decided not to order any more troop drawdowns beyond July, leaving open the possibility that about 140,000 US servicemen and women will still be in the war zone when the next president takes office.

In a 12 to 15-minute progress report, Bush was to announce shorter combat tours, but troops already in Iraq won’t be going home any earlier, at least for now. Senior defense officials said Bush would announce that Army units heading to Iraq after Aug. 1 would serve 12-month tours rather than their current 15-month deployment, a move that war critics say the president had to make to ease strain on the Army.

The White House disclosed few other details about the speech Bush was to deliver in the Cross Hall of the White House, five years after the US capture of Baghdad. Yet his words were expected to echo the congressional testimony by General David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, and US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker.

Bush was to have breakfast with the two in his private dining room, capping two days of televised exchanges on Capitol Hill that Petraeus and Crocker had with lawmakers, including the three senators vying to become next occupant of the Oval Office: Republican John McCain and Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Petraeus told Congress that it’s too early to talk about future drawdowns because the situation in Iraq remains fragile, and that while security has improved and Iraqi forces are shouldering more of the fight against extremists, Iraq still could descend again into chaos.

Embracing Petraeus’ recommendation, Bush will refrain from ordering any more troop cutbacks before mid- to late-September at the earliest. Even then, flare-ups in violence and a need to keep Iraq’s provincial elections safe this fall could mean the president will not be able to withdraw any more troops until late this year, if at all.

Bush will make the case that his troop buildup has succeeded in reducing violence in Iraq, despite recent increases in Baghdad and Basra. He’ll have a harder time arguing that political reconciliation ­ ­— his rationale for sending 30,000 more troops to Iraq last year — has been achieved.

Meanwhile, a US air strike killed four gunmen in a militia stronghold in Baghdad overnight but police said fighting appeared to ease yesterday after four days of clashes that have killed about 80 people.

Sadr City has been the focal point of fighting between black-masked Mehdi Army militiamen loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and security forces since Sunday.

“Sadr City looks quieter than in previous days although there is still sporadic gunfire,” a policeman in the slum said. “There is movement in the streets. Some shops have reopened.”

A roadside bomb killed a US soldier in Baghdad overnight, raising the US military death toll in Iraq to 20 for this month, putting this month on track to be the deadliest for US soldiers since September.

The US military said a helicopter fired two Hellfire missiles at gunmen who attacked a joint US-Iraqi security station in Sadr City, killing four.

The Iraqi military announced late on Wednesday it planned to lift a two-week old vehicle blockade in Sadr City on Saturday.

The blockade has prevented cars from entering or leaving the eastern Baghdad district of 2 million people, leading to piled up rubbish, food and medicine shortages, and what residents have described as a sense of claustrophobia.
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