- WASHINGTON (AFP) - Opposition
to a proposal to send additional American troops to Iraq grew stronger
in the United States over the Christmas weekend as President Bush pondered
new ways to stabilize the country sinking deeper into sectarian strife.Bush
discussed his options with new Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary
of State Condoleeza Rice and other senior security officials at his
Camp David retreat in Maryland on Saturday.And although the White House
declined to disclose specifics, top administration officials are reported
to be increasingly focusing on a proposal to pour up to 30,000 new troops
into Iraq to help the 140,000-strong US force already there quell sectarian
violence.
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- But a troop "surge" of that magnitude, experts
say, will have to be financed through new budget appropriations, which
in effect will give the new Democrat-controlled Congress a say in the matter.
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- The president was expected to ask for these funds early
next year as he announces his highly-anticipated new Iraq policy.
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- However, signals that emerged from Capitol Hill Sunday
indicated the White House may face a very uphill battle, if, as expected,
it embraces the proposal.
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- Democrat Christopher Dodd, a prominent member of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee who visited Iraq last week, said he
did not see how the "surge" could help reduce violence in Iraq,
which, in his view, has grown worse over the past months."The commanders
that I talked to last week and soldiers on the ground felt that a surge
in troops, some 15,000 to 30,000 additional troops, was not going to contribute
to the political or diplomatic solution that Iraq cries out for,"
Dodd told ABC News. "And so I believe it will be a mistake for us
at this juncture to be adding more troops."
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- Dodd, who is considering a 2008 presidential run, also
authored an article Sunday in Iowa's Des Moines Register newspaper, in
which he argued that the United States should begin the process of getting
troops out of Iraq -- "within weeks, not months."
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- "If continuing this sacrifice held the promise of
achieving American goals, I would support it," the senator wrote.
"But our presence there has become a barrier to our goals."
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- Under the senator's plan, US troops should be partly
withdrawn and partly redeployed to the Syrian border, northern Iraq, Qatar
and Afghanistan where they would join the fight against the resurgent
Taliban and expand the hunt for Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
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- Former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, who
also sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called Sunday for
a deadline to be set for pulling US troops from Iraq rather than increasing
their numbers.
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- "We sent 15,000 more troops to Baghdad last summer,
and today the escalating civil war is even worse," he argued in an
article in The Washington Post. "You could put 100,000 more troops
in tomorrow and you're only going to add to the number of casualties until
Iraqis sit down together at a bargaining table and compromise."
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- Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, who will control
the Senate agenda beginning next month, made it clear last week he would
be willing to support the "surge" only as a stop-gap measure
tied to "a program to get us out" of Iraq.
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- However, during his press conference Wednesday, Bush
insisted he was still determined to achieve "victory" in Iraq
and wanted to keep the troops there until the job is done.
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- Meanwhile, the idea of having more American soldiers
go to Iraq does not sit well with the public, either.
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- A CNN opinion poll conducted in mid-December showed only
11 percent of respondents supported the plan of boosting the US contingent
in Iraq.
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- That was down from 17 percent, who supported the "surge"
in a similar survey conducted jointly by ABC News and The Washington Post
just two weeks earlier.
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