Washington – The Senate’s top Democrat offered qualified support Sunday for a plan to increase U.S. troops in Iraq, saying it would be acceptable as part of a broader strategy to bring combat forces home by 2008.
President Bush’s former secretary of state, however, expressed doubts that any troop surge would be effective, noting U.S. forces already are overextended.
“The American Army isn’t large enough to secure Baghdad,” said Colin Powell, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman during the 1991 Gulf War.
Yet the presence of more U.S. soldiers in Baghdad is precisely what Iraq’s Sunni vice president said is necessary to quell sectarian violence even though the Shiite-dominated government has proposed shifting U.S. troops to the capital’s periphery and having Iraqis take the primary role for security.
“Who is going to replace the American troops? … Iraqi troops, across the board, they are insufficient, incompetent, and many of them (are) corrupted,” said Tariq al-Hashemi, who met with Bush last week.
There are about 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and 5,000 advisers. Combat troops make up less than half of U.S. forces in Iraq.
Incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, whose party campaigned in the November congressional elections on changing course in Iraq, said he would be open only to a short- term increase.
“If the commanders on the ground said this is just for a short period of time, we’ll go along with that,” said Reid, D-Nev., citing a time frame such as two months to three months. But 18 to 24 months would be too long, he said.
