Analysis: Grave Bush firm on Iraq

President George W Bush was at the Pentagon on Wednesday, where he held discussions with America's military leadership about a new strategic direction for the war in Iraq.

After the meeting he said the United States was not going to give up in Iraq, the stakes were too high.

For three days, Mr Bush has been in closed meetings all over Washington, searching for the new strategy which, his administration hopes, will halt Iraq's slow slide towards all out civil war.

No clues

At the Pentagon, Mr Bush emerged to face the cameras. At his side was Vice President Dick Cheney, the outgoing Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Peter Pace.

The chiefs of America's armed services stood awkwardly behind him. The president looked grave and even testy.

"The stakes are too high and the consequences too grave to turn Iraq over to extremists"
President George W Bush

He gave no clues as to what he had been told by his military advisers, nor as to what a new strategy might look like.

But an underlying theme was clear: America is not about to leave Iraq. "One thing people have got to understand," said Mr Bush, "is we will be headed toward achieving our objectives".

"And I repeat: If we lose our nerve, if we are not steadfast in our determination to help the Iraqi government succeed, we will be handing Iraq over to an enemy that would do us harm."

The president has said he will announce a new "way forward" for Iraq in a speech in January.

But the specifics of a new American strategy remain utterly unclear.

And the president is hearing a torrent of often contradictory advice: some in Congress call for "phased" withdrawal from Iraq; others, like Senator John McCain, argue for an increase in the American troop presence there; senior military officers say that Iraq cannot be won by military means alone.

The president seems to be all but ignoring last week's report from the Iraq Study Group.

A source close to the administration says Mr Bush was angered by what he saw as the report's negative and harshly critical tone. The report, said the source, "will not provide the architecture" for a new Iraq strategy.

'No consensus'

As the president made his way to the Pentagon, Senator Carl Levin, the Democrat who will chair the Senate Armed Services Committee, was speaking on Capitol Hill.

There was "no consensus" in Washington, he said, on how US troops should be deployed in Iraq, or whether they should be withdrawn.

"But there is a consensus or a near consensus on one key fundamental point", said the senator. "Unless the Iraqi leaders work out a political agreement, the violence is going to continue and Iraq is going to continue to descend towards civil war."

Sources close to the administration say the president is, in fact, considering sending thousands more troops to Iraq - a surge of military power, probably temporary, designed to give the government of Nuri al-Maliki some breathing space, and a chance to push forward efforts at "national reconciliation".

Mr Maliki is now under great pressure from the Americans to find a political solution to the violent rift between Sunni and Shia Muslims in Iraq.

To that end, an effort seems to be underway to recast the political makeup of Mr Maliki's government.

Political coalition

The Bush administration believes that a new coalition, made up of Kurdish representatives, moderate Shias, and moderate Sunnis could provide centrist support for Mr Maliki, and erode the influence of the radical cleric, Moqtada Sadr.

Tony Snow, the White House spokesman said the president was "consulting with people who have already made clear their desire to build this bloc".

"It's a coalition that I think has begun to coalesce simply because people do understand the importance of taking on violence in a serious way," he said.

Mr Bush's recent meetings with the Iraqi vice president, Tareq al-Hashemi, and the Shia cleric, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, are a part of this political effort.

This pressure on Iraq's politicians reflects a perception that has taken root in Washington - that America's options in Iraq are now very limited.

As one long-time Republican and adviser to several presidents put it recently, "I fear there is now no strategy that the US can employ that would be decisive in Iraq."

But at the Pentagon, Mr Bush was emphatic that American policy was still geared to success in Iraq, not a quick exit.

"We're not going to give up," he said. "The stakes are too high and the consequences too grave to turn Iraq over to extremists who want to do the American people and the Iraqi people harm."