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Gates sees troops cut to 100 000
15/09/2007 17:10 - (SA)
Washington - The US defence secretary Robert Gates says he hopes US troop levels in Iraq can be cut to 100 000 by the end of next year, well beyond the cuts President George W Bush has approved.
Stressing that he was not expressing an administration plan but only his hopes, Gates said it was possible that conditions in Iraq would improve enough to merit much deeper troop cuts than currently are scheduled for 2008.
Asked at a news conference on Friday whether he was suggesting that today's level of about 169 000 US troops might be lowered to about 100 000 by the end of next year, Gates replied, "That would be the math."
He quickly added, however, that because "there is no script" in war, his hoped-for cuts could vanish.
Conciliatory gesture
It was the first time a member of Bush's war cabinet had suggested in public such deep reductions, which perhaps was meant as a conciliatory gesture to anti-war Democrats and some wary Republicans in Congress who have been pushing for troop reductions, a change in the US mission and an end to the war.
Democratic leaders seized on a White House report sent to Congress on Friday as evidence that Bush's war policy is failing.
The assessment showed that the Iraqi government was making satisfactory progress toward meeting nine of 18 political and military goals, which is only one more satisfactory grade than the first such report showed in July.
"As hard as they may have tried to spin it, today's assessment by the White House on the political situation in Iraq once again shows that the president's flawed escalation policy is not working," said the majority Democrats' leader in the Senate, Harry Reid.
'Open-ended civil war'
"It certainly does not justify keeping 130 000 soldiers mired in an open-ended civil war as the president has chosen to do."
Next week, the Senate is expected to resume debate on anti-war legislation.
Gates used his news conference to launch an attack on efforts by Democrats to force Bush to change course in Iraq by imposing new restrictions on how the Pentagon uses or manages the armed forces.
Gates was particularly pointed in his criticism of a proposal by Democratic Sen James Webb to require that troops be given as much time at their home station as on deployments to the war front.
Today, active-duty Army units are on 15-month deployments with a promise of no more than 12 months' rest, and Marines who spend seven or more months at war sometimes get six months or less at home.
Gates said that while he believed such proposals are well-intentioned, they have serious flaws.
He said, for example, that Webb's proposed legislation, if enacted, would force him to consider again extending tours in Iraq.
"We would have to accept gaps in capability as units that rotate home aren't replaced right away for periods perhaps of weeks," Gates said.
It also might put troops' lives in greater danger by reducing opportunities for incoming units to get acquainted with their responsibilities by working for a few weeks with outgoing units, he said.
'Signal to potential adversaries'
"The other message that I worry that some of the amendments send is that it sends a signal to potential adversaries that we're stretched so thinly and that we are so strained that we cannot adequately respond to crises elsewhere in the world," Gates said. "And that's not a correct view, if others should take it, but it is a worry."
In a visit to a Marine base south of Washington on Friday, Bush said commanders in Iraq would "have the flexibility and the troops needed to achieve the mission."
He urged Congress to heed the advice not to withdraw too speedily given by Gen David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq.
"I also expect the Congress to support our men and women in uniform and their families," Bush said.
Gates took the optimism further in his Friday news conference. He said that if the current plan for troop withdrawals between now and next summer are carried out fully, it is possible that some US units will not have to serve a full 15 months.
"Maybe 14 months, 14 and a half months, 13 and a half months," he said. "We just don't know right now. It will all depend on a lot of ifs. But just looking at the mathematics of it, that's a possibility."
Gates opened the Pentagon news conference with an appeal for a bipartisan consensus on a way forward in Iraq.
Early signs
"The consequences of American failure in Iraq at this point would, I believe, be disastrous not just for Iraq but for the region, for the United States and for the world," Gates said. "No discussion of where and how we go from here can avoid this stark reality."
Gates also said he saw early signs that Iraqis of the Muslim Shiite sect may be starting to turn against Shiite extremists in the Mahdi Army who have gone too far with their violent ways, in the same way that a growing number of ordinary Sunnis have revolted against Sunni extremists to bring relative peace to the western Anbar province.
Bush announced on Thursday that he had approved a plan recommended by Petraeus to reduce troop levels from the current 20 combat brigades to 15 brigades by July.
Gates said it was too early for Petraeus or others to forecast with confidence the timing and scale of any additional cuts.
Bush has ordered Petraeus to make a further assessment and fresh recommendations next March.
"My hope is that when he does his assessment in March that General Petraeus will be able to say that he thinks that the pace of the drawdowns can continue at the same rate in the second half of the year as in the first half of the year," Gates said.
"That's my hope," Gates said. He added that experience has shown hopes can be quickly dashed in a war that has been far more difficult and costly than anyone in the administration had expected.
- AP
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