Forget talks, Bush prefers plan for 'surge' of 30,000 troops into Iraq

By Philip Sherwell, Sunday Telegraph

When President George W Bush meets his national security team at his Texan ranch this week to draw up a new military strategy for Iraq, a 56-slide PowerPoint presentation entitled Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq will be at the heart of their discussion.

President Bush discusses Iraq policy with Robert Gates and General Peter Pace at Camp David

The report, put together by Frederick Kagan, a conservative military analyst, and Jack Keane, a retired general, proposes "surging" at least 30,000 extra US troops into Baghdad and other Iraqi hotspots, as a first step to quelling the bloodshed and restoring security.

The strategy is at odds with the much-vaunted findings of the bipartisan panel of experts of the Iraq Study Group (ISG), not to mention the army's top commanders who argue that they do not need more forces on the ground and fear a further strain on resources.

But when Mr Bush announces his plans for Iraq next month, he is expected to draw heavily on the Kagan-Keane plan – put together over a single weekend last month, after a brainstorming session with other senior, former military officers and defence experts.

In a sign of the importance attached to the "Choosing Victory" blueprint, Gen Keane, 63, the army's acting chief of staff when he retired three years ago, spent most of Friday in meetings at the White House and Pentagon.

advertisementBy contrast, the ISG report was the result of nine months of work. But Mr Bush was dismayed by its main recommendations — engaging Iran and Syria in talks and withdrawing most US combat troops by early 2008 while intensifying training of Iraqi forces.

The president is viscerally opposed to talk of exit strategies or any change of course that smacks of defeatism, even though US public opinion has turned sharply against the war, costing the Republicans control of Congress last month.

He was immediately impressed when aides briefed him on the report by Gen Keane, a decorated Vietnam veteran who is now a national security consultant and senior Pentagon adviser, and Mr Kagan, a military historian who taught for 10 years at the prestigious West Point military academy.

Between his talks on Friday, Gen Keane, a bluntly spoken career paratrooper, told The Sunday Telegraph why he believed the "surge" strategy was attracting such attention at the White House.

"We are running out of time fast and no other option offers the hope of quelling the violence before we lose control of the situation," he said. "Extra training and advisers are a very good idea but they won't have a fast enough impact to solve the problems we face now. We have to attempt to give Iraqis security in Baghdad and then al Anbar."

Mr Kagan, 36, told The Sunday Telegraph that he was "very pleased" the presentation was the focus of White House thinking. "We know that this policy would reverse the strategy of some senior commanders to minimise troop levels there," he said. "But their approach is clearly not working."

The proposals have drawn heavy criticism from some defence analysts. "This plan is unrealistic and dangerous. Its title naively assumes that US military power can still be used to create a stable unified democracy," said Lawrence Korb, an assistant secretary of defence in the Reagan administration.

But Mr Bush is undeterred. And when his new defence secretary, Robert Gates, briefed him yesterday on his trip to Baghdad last week, he told him that troops on the ground believed reinforcements would have a major impact, in contrast to the scepticism of their commanders.

The president has already told Mr Gates to draw up plans for a long-term increase in the army and Marine Corps.