Bush says US troop reduction possible

AL-ASAD AIR BASE, Iraq - President Bush, making an unannounced visit to this isolated and well-fortified air base in Anbar Province, said yesterday that continued gains in security in Iraq could allow for a reduction in US troops and called on the Iraqi government to follow up with progress toward rebuilding and political reconciliation.

During eight hours on the ground here, Bush received an update on the war from General David Petraeus, the US commander, and US Ambassador Ryan Crocker. He then met with Iraqi political leaders and Sunni tribal figures who have allied themselves with US forces.

"General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker tell me if the kind of success we are now seeing continues, it will be possible to maintain the same level of security with fewer American forces," the president said.

Bush's trip - his third to Iraq since the war began in 2003 - comes at a pivotal moment in the debate over the future of the conflict. Petraeus and Crocker are scheduled to testify before Congress next week on the war's status since Bush ordered 30,000 additional troops into the country earlier this year. Their testimony is to be followed on Sept. 15 by a White House report to Congress assessing progress in Iraq.

Bush has argued that the strategy he announced in January, which took the US force in Iraq to more than 160,000 troops, is showing signs of success and deserves more time. In Washington, he is widely ex pected to continue pressing that view in his report to lawmakers.

Yesterday's gathering, essentially a US-Iraqi war council of top leaders on both sides, was convened in a Sunni-dominated province where fighting is on the wane. Administration aides said the choice of location was intended to signal that gains here could be replicated in other parts of the country.

Bush said that he and other members of his national security team "came here today to see with our own eyes the multiple changes that are taking place in Anbar Province." Last summer, he recounted, he was told that Anbar was lost. But Iraqi citizens "refused to give in," and as a result the province is far calmer today, he said.

(Speaking with reporters on Air Force One as it flew from Iraq to an economic summit in Australia, Bush stressed that any drawdown of troops was conditioned upon continuing improvements in security. No decision had been made on a reduction, he said. But security had improved to the point that he could "speculate on the hypothetical," he said.)

Bush's trip was conducted in strictest secrecy until he landed, making headlines around the world.

Several influential Republicans have joined Democrats in recent months to demand that Bush begin withdrawing US troops. During the visit, Bush affirmed that the United States would not abandon Iraq but warned that progress in reducing violence here must be solidified with political action by the central government. Bush acknowledged that "the challenges are great" and that the pace of progress overall remains "frustrating" both for Iraqis and for Americans.

In a meeting with a group of cheering Marines before he departed, Bush said that stability in Iraq would deny terrorists a base from which they could "plot and plan attacks on our homeland."

Any pullout would not be based on fear or politics, he said. "When we begin to draw down troops from Iraq, it will be from a position of strength and success, not from a position of fear and failure," he said. "The decision will be made on a calm assessment by our military commanders based on the conditions on the ground, not a nervous reaction by Washington politicians or poll results in the media."

The air base where the meeting took place is located in the northern Iraqi desert. Captured by Australian troops from former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's forces during the early weeks of the war, it has a 13-mile perimeter and is home to 7,000 Marines and 3,000 Army soldiers.

Bush met with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other top Iraqi leaders. Afterward, flanked by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, he said: "We had a good, frank discussion."

Bush said he urged Iraqi leaders to take concrete actions, such as sharing oil revenues among different ethnic groups, to support "bottom-up reconciliation" in areas such as Anbar Province, located in western Iraq, where Sunnis have been working with US forces to fight extremist insurgent groups such as Al Qaeda in Iraq.

He "congratulated them . . . for the achievement" of signing an agreement in the past week to work together on provincial elections, the status of former members of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party, and other issues but emphasized it was only "a starting point," national security adviser Stephen Hadley told Pentagon reporters.

In a meeting that followed with the Iraqi leaders and Sunni sheiks from Anbar Province, Bush sat at the center of the table and, according to Hadley, "encouraged the connection" between the two groups, calling on national leaders to support Anbar Province's reconstruction and inviting the sheiks to participate in political reconciliation at the national level.

Gates said the Anbar Province sheiks told Bush that the additional 4,000 Marines sent to Anbar as part of the troop increase "helped cement the gains" in pacifying the province.

According to a US military officer, attacks in Anbar Province, calculated on a 90-day average, have fallen by more than half since the beginning of the year.

Sunni leaders in Anbar Province have begun to accept as unrealistic "any notion as many had years ago after the fall of Saddam that somehow there would be . . . a return to Sunni rule," a senior defense official said. Now, the official said, they realize that joining in a unified Iraq would bring them jobs and economic benefits, including some of the $10 billion the central government plans to distribute to the provinces this year.