Bush resists major course change in Iraq

George W Bush

WASHINGTON - US President George W Bush said today he will resist election-year pressure for a major shift in strategy in Iraq, despite growing doubts among Americans and anxiety over the war among Republican lawmakers.

"Our goal in Iraq is clear and it's unchanging," Bush told Republican loyalists, denouncing Democrats who want a course correction as supporting a "doubt and defeat" approach.

But less than three weeks before November 7 elections, pressure is growing in the US Congress for a major shift in a war that has cost the lives of at least 73 Americans in October alone.

"I don't believe we can continue based on an open-ended, unconditional presence," Maine Republican Senator Olympia Snowe was quoted as saying in The Washington Post.

"I don't think there's any question about that, that there will be a change" in the US strategy in Iraq after the November 7 congressional elections, she added.

Addressing the doubts, White House spokesman Tony Snow said, "Political reasons do not win conflicts."

At the same time, Snow said Bush was open to adjusting military tactics in the face of a failed attempt to secure Baghdad. Bush was meeting today with visiting General John Abizaid, who oversees the Iraq war as head of the US Central Command.

Tomorrow, Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other US officials will meet US military officials in Iraq by videoconference.

Many Senate Republicans are awaiting the results of a special panel led by longtime Bush family friend and former Secretary of State James Baker, the Iraq Study Group, which is preparing recommendations for a shift in strategy.

The Baker report will not be issued until after the elections, in which Bush's Republicans risk losing control of the House of Representatives as well as the Senate.

White House officials say the recommendations will be reviewed seriously but have already rejected trial balloons such as a phased troop withdrawal, a dialogue with Iran and Syria, and a partitioning of Iraq.

"I think what the president is going to do is provide the reassurance that he is not somebody who gets jumpy at polls but instead is determined to meet the final goal and he understands that it's going to be a tough task," Tony Snow said.

Rumsfeld declined to say whether he believed a course correction was needed in Iraq.

"I think the way I'll leave it is I prefer to give my advice to the president," he said at the Pentagon. "I'm old fashioned."

Democratic leaders of the House and Senate wrote a letter to Bush urging him to change course, saying the situation was deteriorating and "there is no effective plan for improvement."

"We've lost the hearts and minds of the people and we've become caught in a civil war," said Pennsylvania Democratic Republican John Murtha, who drew Bush's ire a year ago by calling for a troop withdrawal from Iraq.

Bush, raising US$1 million ($1.51 million) for Republican candidates, invoked President Ronald Reagan, saying Reagan had the strong will to win the Cold War and that it would take similar backbone to win the war against Islamic militants.

"Despite all of the opposition that the president faced from the Democrats, he didn't waiver," he said. "He stood for what he believed."

- REUTERS