WASHINGTON — President Bush announced Tuesday that he will keep the U.S. force strength in Iraq largely intact until the next president takes over, drawing rebukes from Democrats who want the war ended and a bigger boost of troops in troubled Afghanistan.
Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, who has advocated pulling all U.S. combat forces out of Iraq within 16 months of taking office, said Bush’s plan to bring 8,000 combat and support troops home by February “comes up short.”
“It is not enough troops, and not enough resources, with not enough urgency,” Obama told reporters while campaigning in Riverside, Ohio.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he is “stunned that President Bush has decided to bring so few troops home from Iraq and send so few resources to Afghanistan.”
GOP nominee John McCain has also said more troops are needed in Afghanistan, where there has been a resurgence of the Taliban and a growth in violence. He said Tuesday that Bush’s announcement of troop withdrawals next year from Iraq “demonstrates what success in our efforts there can look like.”
The president’s drawdown is not as strong or swift as many had anticipated. It had been widely expected that Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, would perhaps call for a reduction in the number of combat brigades from 15 to 14 this fall.
Instead, no more Army combat brigades will withdraw in 2008, the final year of a Bush presidency that has come to be dominated by the war.
The 8,000-troop drawdown represents about 5.5 percent of the 146,000 U.S. troops in Iraq now.
