US general under fire over surge

Tuesday, 11 September 2007

The top US military commander in Iraq, General Petraeus, has come under heavy criticism in Congress as he reports on the progress of the US military surge.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos dismissed Gen Petraeus' assertion that military objectives of the surge were being met.

There were tactical successes but the surge was a strategic failure, he said, adding it was time for troops to leave.

Gen Petraeus told the Congress panel violence had declined after the surge.

In his testimony before a joint hearing by the House of Representatives Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees, he said he thought around 30,000 troops could be withdrawn by the middle of next year.

US ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker has also been testifying.

The BBC's Jonathan Beale in Washington says this evidence is unlikely to significantly alter public opinion or even shed any new light.

But US President George W Bush hopes that these two men's sober but overall positive assessment will now make it much harder to argue for America to pull out of Iraq, our correspondent says.

Meanwhile Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari backed the surge, saying the strategy had produced some tangible results.

'Strategic failure'

Representative Lantos, a Democrat, said he did not accept claims of military success.

"The current escalation in our military presence in Iraq may have produced some tactical successes. But strategically, the escalation has failed," he said.

"We need to get out of Iraq, for that country's sake and for our own. It is time to go."

Another Democrat Congresswoman, Lynn Woolsey, told the BBC Gen Petraeus was a "mouthpiece" of the White House, a position that he has flatly denied.

"We're into our four-and-a-half years now - if it was going to work with 160,000 troops, it would be working, and it isn't," she said.

But Republican Duncan Hunter defended the general, saying US progress had led to gains by Iraqi security forces, including an army which was "beginning to emerge as a professional force".

Gen Petraeus said "security incidents", including sectarian violence, had declined since the start of the surge.

He said some 30,000 US troops would be withdrawn by the middle of 2008, beginning with 2,000 marines in September. A decision on further troop cuts would be made in March.

Responding to criticism of his closeness to the White House, Gen Petraeus said his testimony had not been cleared by the Pentagon or the White House before he gave it, and that he had written it himself.

Speaking after Gen Petraeus, Mr Crocker said he believed it was possible for the US to see its goals achieved in Iraq.

A record 168,000 US troops are now in Iraq after 30,000 arrived in the surge between February and June.