Washington – President Bush acknow ledged for the first time Tuesday that the United States is not winning in Iraq and said he plans to expand the size of the “stressed” armed forces to face a long-term global struggle against terrorists.
Bush has adopted the formula advanced by his top military adviser to describe the situation. “We’re not winning; we’re not losing,” Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. The assessment was a striking reversal for a president who, days before the November elections, declared, “Absolutely, we’re winning.”
In another turnaround, Bush said he has ordered Defense Secretary Robert Gates to develop a plan to increase the troop strength of the Army and Marine Corps, heeding warnings from the Pentagon and Capitol Hill that multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan are stretching the armed forces toward the breaking point.
“We need to reset our military,” said Bush, whose administration opposed increasing force levels as recently as this summer.
But in a wide-ranging session in the Oval Office, the president said he interpreted the Democratic election victories six weeks ago not as a mandate to bring the U.S. involvement in Iraq to an end but as a call to find new ways to make the mission there succeed. He confirmed that he is considering a short-term surge in troops in Iraq, an option that top generals have resisted out of concern that it would not help.
Although the president offered no specifics, other U.S. officials said the administration is preparing plans to bolster the nation’s permanent active-duty military with as many as 70,000 additional troops.
The administration is drafting a supplemental request for more than $100 billion in additional funds for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, on top of the $70 billion already approved for this fiscal year, according to U.S. officials. That would be more than 50 percent more than originally projected for fiscal 2007, making it by far the most costly year since the 2003 invasion.
Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress has approved more than $500 billion for terrorism-related operations, including those in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. An additional $100 billion would bring overall expenditures to $600 billion, exceeding those for the Vietnam War, which, adjusted for inflation, cost $549 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service.
“It is an accurate reflection that this ideological war we’re in is going to last for a while and that we’re going to need a military that’s capable of being able to sustain our efforts and to help us achieve peace,” Bush said.
