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War in Iraq lost - top Democrat
19/04/2007 22:28 - (SA)
Washington - The war in Iraq "is lost" and a US troop surge is failing to bring peace to the country, said the leader of the Democratic majority in the US Congress, Harry Reid, on Thursday.
"I believe... that this war is lost and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week," Reid told journalists.
Reid said he had delivered the same message to US President George W Bush on Wednesday, when the US president met with senior lawmakers to discuss how to end a stand-off over an emergency war-funding bill.
Congress is seeking to tie funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to a timetable to withdraw US troops from Iraq next year, but Bush has vowed to veto any such bill and no breakthrough was reported from the White House talks.
Bush defends 'war on terror'
Bush was addressing an Ohio town hall meeting on Thursday and defending the war on terror launched in the wake of the September 11 2001 attacks.
"It is the most solemn duty of our country, to protect our country from harm," Bush told the invited audience in Tipp, Ohio.
"A lesson learned was that - at least in my opinion - in order to protect us, we must aggressively pursue the enemy and defeat them elsewhere so that we do not have to face them here."
The comments came a day after bombers killed more than 200 people in a slew of car bombings in Baghdad, dealing a savage blow to the US security plan which aims to deploy an extra 30 000 troops in the country to quell sectarian unrest. Unannounced visit
US defence secretary Robert Gates flew into Iraq on Thursday on an unannounced visit for talks with top US military commanders there.
He met General David Petraeus, chief of coalition forces in Iraq, his deputy, Lieutenant-Colonel Ray Odierno, and Admiral William Fallon, chief of US forces in the Middle East.
- AFP
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