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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jackhach who wrote (485607)	11/3/2003 9:14:33 AM
From: Kenneth E. Phillipps	Respond to of 769669

Looks like we will be spending a lot more borrowed money on Iraq. Iraq Needs More U.S. Troops, Former U.K. Envoy Says (Update1) Nov. 3 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. will be unable to improve security in Iraq, and curtail the kind of attack that killed 16 soldiers yesterday in the downing of a helicopter, without sending in more troops, a former U.K. ambassador to the country said. The U.S. needs the additional troops and equipment to provide security until Iraqi police and security forces are trained and can do a better job preventing attacks on police stations, aid agencies and oil infrastructure, said Sir Harold Walker, who headed the U.K.'s embassy in Iraq between 1990 and 1991. The Iraqi security officers may take as long as a year to train, he said. U.S. President George W. ``Bush is in a tremendous bind as he approaches election year because the big security situation is deteriorating and he can't do much about it in the short term without putting in more troops,'' Walker said in an telephone interview from London. U.S. public support for the war in Iraq is slipping as casualties mount and the financial cost of occupation and rebuilding the country grows. Bush is facing re-election next year on a policy that the presence in Iraq will help stop attacks on Americans and improve security in the Middle East. U.S. Poll More than half the people surveyed in a Washington Post-ABC News poll published yesterday said they disapprove of Bush's handling of the war in Iraq. More than 60 percent said the situation in Iraq will be ``very important'' in how they vote in next year's presidential election. The U.S. is giving Iraq $18.6 billion over the next few years to help rebuild the country's infrastructure, such as oil installations and health and education systems. That's on top of almost a $1 billion a week it's spending to finance military operations, and comes after the U.S. government posted a record budget deficit in fiscal 2003 of $374 billion. Yesterday's downing of a troop-carrying Chinook helicopter west of the capital, Baghdad, brought to at least 139 the number of U.S. soldiers killed in military action in the country since Bush declared the end of major combat on May 1 in the war to oust President Saddam Hussein. In addition to the 16 soldiers killed, 20 were wounded in the attack on the helicopter, Major Mike Escudie, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida, said today in a telephone interview. The initial death toll was 15. Treated in Germany ``This is more than we've seen in any given day,'' Colonel Rhonda Cornum, a spokeswoman, said today in a news conference broadcast from the U.S. military's medical center in Landstuhl, Germany, where 16 of the wounded soldiers were taken. ``We've pulled in staff from all over Germany to help.'' Three more Americans, including two civilian contractors working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, died in attacks yesterday. The toll was the highest for any day since May 1. ``These kinds of attacks are impossible to stop as there are too few resources on the ground for too big a task,'' said Andrew Brookes, a former U.K. Royal Air Force officer working as an air power analyst at the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies. The U.S. has about 116,000 troops in Iraq, with another 24,000 from allies such as the U.K., Poland and Australia, according to a spokeswoman for the U.S. military in Baghdad. That's down from about 150,000 U.S. troops during the war. The U.S. wants to double the number of Iraqis working in security from the current 100,000 by September next year, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday on the ``Fox News Sunday'' television program. Last Updated: November 3, 2003 07:34 EST