Reid backs short-term increase in U.S. troops

updated 5:43 p.m. ET Dec. 17, 2006

WASHINGTON - The Senate’s top Democrat offered qualified support Sunday for a plan to increase U.S. troops in Iraq, saying it would be acceptable as part of a broader strategy to bring combat forces home by 2008.

President Bush’s former secretary of state, however, expressed doubts any troop surge would be effective, noting U.S. forces already are overextended. “The American Army isn’t large enough to secure Baghdad,” said Colin Powell, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman during the 1991 Gulf War.

Yet more American soldiers in the Iraqi capital is precisely what Iraq’s Sunni vice president believes is necessary to quell sectarian violence — even though the Shiite-dominated government has proposed shifting U.S. troops to the capital’s periphery and having Iraqis assume primary responsibility for security in the city.

“Who is going to replace the American troops? ... Iraqi troops, across the board, they are insufficient, incompetent, and many of them (are) corrupted,” said Tariq al-Hashemi, who met with Bush in Washington last week.

There are about 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and about 5,000 advisers. Combat troops make up less than half of U.S. forces in Iraq.

Incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, whose party campaigned in the November congressional elections on changing course in Iraq, said he would be open only to a short-term increase.

“If the commanders on the ground said this is just for a short period of time, we’ll go along with that,” said Reid, D-Nev., citing a time frame such as two months to three months. But a period of 18 months to 24 months would be too long, he said.

“The American people will not allow this war to go on as it has. It simply is a war that will not be won militarily. It can only be won politically,” Reid said.

Other Democrats disagree
At least two other Democrats did not support Reid’s position on the additional troops.

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said that if it were a short-term increase, “won’t our adversaries simply adjust their tactics, wait us out and wait until we reduce again? So I think you’d have to ask very serious questions about the utility of this.”

Added Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., “I respect Harry Reid on it, but that’s not where I am.”

Kennedy, like Reed a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said there would be widespread opposition by members of his committee if Bush proposed a troop increase.

Powell said if more troops were proposed, make their mission clear, determine whether they can accomplish it and what size force is appropriate. “We have to be very, very careful in this instance not just to grab a number out of the air,” Powell said.

He noted that the Iraqi government leadership wants to take control of security for Baghdad. While saying he does not know if that is possible now, “This is the time to say to them, ‘Fine, you think you can do that. Show us not only the political will to do that, show us the political means you’re going to use.”’

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