Bush to order 21,500 more troops to Iraq

President George W. Bush told sceptical Americans yesterday he will send about 21,500 extra US troops to Iraq and admit it was a mistake not to have more forces fighting the unpopular war in the past.

Defying Democrats and unswayed by polls showing the public opposes a fresh infusion of American troops into the nearly four-year-old war, Mr Bush acknowledged American patience is running thin and placed more of a burden on the Iraqi government to perform.

Senior administration officials said 17,500 troops would go to Baghdad and 4,000 to volatile Anbar province, with the first wave of troops expected to arrive in five days. Others will come in additional weeks, joining about 130,000 already in Iraq.

Under the plan, the Iraqi government will deploy additional Iraqi troops to Baghdad with a first brigade deploying on February 1 and two more by February 15.

Mr Bush acknowledged that sectarian violence "overwhelmed the political progress that we expected" and will "make clear our current strategy in Iraq is not working," a senior administration official said.

One official said Mr Bush believes there is a need to "muscle up to step back". They expect that by summer, perhaps August, they can gauge whether the strategy is working.

The officials said the cost of the troop increase would be around $5.6 billion. An additional $1.2 billion would finance rebuilding and jobs programmes with the aim of cutting down on the supply of new recruits for militias.

Democratic leaders in the US Congress say they plan to hold symbolic votes in the House of Representatives and the Senate on Mr Bush's plan. This will force the President's Republicans to take a stand on the proposal and could isolate him politically over his handling of the war.

Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin said Mr Bush had made "the wrong decision" and that the President had violated his own pledge to heed the advice of his generals, some of whom had opposed the troop increase.

Democrats could try to cut funding for the revised war strategy, but so far the party's leaders have shied away from threats to do that.

In his 9 p.m. (0200 GMT today) White House address, Mr Bush acknowledged past mistakes, including saying more US and Iraqi troops should have been used in prior military operations in Iraq.

Mr Bush called for turning over security of all Iraqi provinces by November, but officials cautioned that this did not represent a timetable for a US pullout. Iraqis currently control only three of 18 provinces.

The President faces a tough sell, after nearly four years of war and scenes of carnage that have undercut his argument that victory is possible in Iraq.

A USA Today/Gallup poll said Americans oppose the idea of increasing troop levels in Iraq by 61 per cent to 36 per cent.

Many of Mr Bush's own Republicans expressed unease with the idea of a troop increase, with many noting that an effort last year to try to stabilize Baghdad by adding troops was followed by more violence.