Prometheus 6

Bush Decides Direction of Iraq Policy
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:14 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush has decided the general direction he wants to take U.S. policy on Iraq and has asked his staff to work out the details as he wraps up a highly public review of the war and its aims. Bush scheduled a session Wednesday with senior defense officials at the Pentagon.

Military commanders who met Tuesday with Bush sought more advisers to train the Iraqis, not more U.S. combat troops in Iraq. They also urged the administration to pour significantly more funding into equipment for Iraqi security forces, according to a defense specialist familiar with the meetings.

Gen. John Abizaid, top U.S. commander in the Middle East, and Gen. George Casey, the top general in Iraq, want more armored vehicles, body armor and other critical equipment for the Iraqis, said the defense specialist, who requested anonymity because the discussions were private.

Abizaid has told the Senate Armed Services Committee that troop levels in Iraq need to stay fairly stable and the use of military adviser teams expanded. About 140,000 U.S. troops and about 5,000 advisers are in Iraq.

The message to Bush, the defense specialist said, is that the U.S. cannot withdraw a substantial number of combat troops by early 2008, as suggested in the Iraq Study Group report, because the Iraqis will not be ready to assume control of their country. Bush is delaying making public his new Iraq policy plan in part to allow officials to work out the funding, he said.

Bush already has visited this week with State Department officials to review options, hosted a few outside Iraq experts, and met with Iraq's Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi. Last week, the president held talks with the leader of the largest Shiite bloc in Iraq's parliament, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, and with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the president's staunchest war ally.

Iraq has proposed that its troops assume primary responsibility for security in Baghdad early next year and that U.S. troops be shifted to the capital's periphery, The New York Times reported on its Web site Tuesday night.

Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, told the Times that the plan was presented during Bush's meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Amman, Jordan, on Nov. 30.