US Congress to hear Iraq report

WASHINGTON – Lawmakers here prepared for a week of political clashes as the US war commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, was set to plead yesterday for more time to pacify the fractured nation.

On the eve of a hotly anticipated appearance in Congress by the general and the US ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, the Republican party accused Democrats of a ‘desperate new PR strategy to impugn Petraeus’. Petraeus faces a hostile barrage from Democrats over when troops can come home from a four-year war that has killed more than 3 700 US soldiers, tens of thousands of Iraqis and cost half a trillion dollars.The general will argue that President George W.Bush’s strategy of surging 28 500 extra troops into Iraq, announced in January, has slashed sectarian violence and should be extended.”I expect him to say that.And I really respect him.And I think he’s dead, flat wrong,” said Democratic Senator Joseph Biden, a contender in the 2008 White House race just back from Iraq.Biden said on NBC television Sunday that Bush “is putting American forces in the middle of a civil war to maintain the status quo.That is unconscionable, and he’s wrong.”Petraeus is expected to accept gradual cuts in the 168 000 US troops in Iraq starting early 2008, though the reductions are unlikely to satisfy anti-war Democrats.”My sense is that we have achieved tactical momentum and wrested the initiative from our enemies in a number of areas of Iraq,” Petraeus wrote in a weekend letter to US forces, while expressing disappointment at the pace of political reconciliation in Baghdad.Petraeus and Crocker were scheduled to testify in Congress yesterday and today, complementing a report on the war that Bush must deliver to lawmakers by September 15.Bush plans a national address this week to lay out a vision for future involvement in Iraq.Yesterday’s presentation was billed as the most high-profile appearance on Capitol Hill of a US military commander since General William Westmoreland addressed the House and the Senate in 1967 on the state of the war in Vietnam.Nampa-AFPPetraeus faces a hostile barrage from Democrats over when troops can come home from a four-year war that has killed more than 3 700 US soldiers, tens of thousands of Iraqis and cost half a trillion dollars.The general will argue that President George W.Bush’s strategy of surging 28 500 extra troops into Iraq, announced in January, has slashed sectarian violence and should be extended.”I expect him to say that.And I really respect him.And I think he’s dead, flat wrong,” said Democratic Senator Joseph Biden, a contender in the 2008 White House race just back from Iraq.Biden said on NBC television Sunday that Bush “is putting American forces in the middle of a civil war to maintain the status quo.That is unconscionable, and he’s wrong.”Petraeus is expected to accept gradual cuts in the 168 000 US troops in Iraq starting early 2008, though the reductions are unlikely to satisfy anti-war Democrats.”My sense is that we have achieved tactical momentum and wrested the initiative from our enemies in a number of areas of Iraq,” Petraeus wrote in a weekend letter to US forces, while expressing disappointment at the pace of political reconciliation in Baghdad.Petraeus and Crocker were scheduled to testify in Congress yesterday and today, complementing a report on the war that Bush must deliver to lawmakers by September 15.Bush plans a national address this week to lay out a vision for future involvement in Iraq.Yesterday’s presentation was billed as the most high-profile appearance on Capitol Hill of a US military commander since General William Westmoreland addressed the House and the Senate in 1967 on the state of the war in Vietnam.Nampa-AFP