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| Bush resists major course change in Iraq | | By: Steve Holland | | .JPG) Sat Oct 21, 2006 6:20 AM ET
(Pic)- President Bush walks with Press Secretary Tony Snow through the Colonnade at the White House, October 18, 2006. REUTERS/Jim Young
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush said on Friday he will resist election-year pressure for a major shift in strategy in Iraq, despite growing doubts among Americans and anxiety over the war among Republican lawmakers.
"Our goal in Iraq is clear and it's unchanging," Bush told Republican loyalists, denouncing Democrats who want a course correction as supporting a "doubt and defeat" approach.
But less than three weeks before November 7 elections, pressure is growing in the U.S. Congress for a major shift in a war that has cost the lives of at least 73 Americans in October alone.
"I don't believe we can continue based on an open-ended, unconditional presence," Maine Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe was quoted as saying in The Washington Post.
"I don't think there's any question about that, that there will be a change" in the U.S. strategy in Iraq after the November 7 congressional elections, she added.
Addressing election-year concerns about Iraq that have many Republicans panicking about losing control of the U.S. Congress, White House spokesman Tony Snow said, "Political reasons do not win conflicts."
At the same time, Snow said Bush was open to adjusting military tactics in the face of a failed attempt to secure Baghdad.
Bush met for a half hour on Friday with visiting Gen. John Abizaid, who oversees the Iraq war as head of the U.S. Central Command, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
On Saturday, Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and top White House officials will meet U.S. military officials in Iraq for a long-scheduled videoconference. Abizaid will be a key presenter at that meeting, Perino said.
"The president is always listening to his commanders and his senior policy advisers on the tactics that are needed to win in Iraq and Afghanistan," she said.
Many Senate Republicans are awaiting the results of a special panel led by longtime Bush family friend and former Secretary of State James Baker, the Iraq Study Group, which is preparing recommendations for a shift in strategy.
The Baker report will not be issued until after the elections, in which Bush's Republicans risk losing control of the House of Representatives as well as the Senate.
COURSE CORRECTION?
White House officials say the recommendations will be reviewed seriously but have already rejected trial balloons such as a phased troop withdrawal, a dialogue with Iran and Syria, and a partitioning of Iraq.
Rumsfeld declined to say whether he believed a course correction was needed in Iraq.
"I think the way I'll leave it is I prefer to give my advice to the president," he said at the Pentagon. "I'm old-fashioned."
Democratic leaders of the House and Senate wrote a letter to Bush urging him to change course, saying the situation was deteriorating and "there is no effective plan for improvement."
"We've lost the hearts and minds of the people and we've become caught in a civil war," said Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. John Murtha, who drew Bush's ire a year ago by calling for a troop withdrawal from Iraq.
Bush, raising $1 million for Republican candidates, invoked President Ronald Reagan, saying Reagan had the strong will to win the Cold War and that it would take similar backbone to win the war against Islamic militants.
"Despite all of the opposition that the president faced from the Democrats, he didn't waiver," he said. "He stood for what he believed."
(Additional reporting by Donna Smith, Deborah Charles and Tabassum Zakaria)
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