President Bush today opened a two-day meeting on Iraq with top advisers at the Camp David presidential retreat and said he would soon be receiving a new military recommendation on U.S. troop levels. In a news briefing at the end of the first day’s sessions, Bush also indicated that U.S. forces in Iraq will target the newly announced successor to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist killed in a U.S. airstrike north of Baghdad last week. Bush said he, members of his Cabinet and other key administration officials discussed Iraq extensively today with top U.S. officials in Baghdad via a secure videoconference hookup, addressing security, economic and energy issues in detail. Asked about the prospect of reducing U.S. troop levels in Iraq, Bush said the United States first needs to “make sure that we fully understand the Iraqi capability to be able to take the fight to the enemy” and secure the country. He noted that Iraq’s new defense minister, appointed last week after protracted wrangling among Iraqi political factions, just took office. Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. commander in Iraq, “will be making those assessments, as he told us today via the teleconference,” Bush said. “He says he will make these proper assessments and come back to us and make recommendations to us. Whatever we do will be based upon the conditions on the ground. And whatever we do will be toward a strategy of victory.”

Asked his reaction to today’s announcement by the group, al-Qaeda in Iraq, that a previously unknown militant has replaced Zarqawi, Bush said, “I think the successor to Zarqawi is going to be on our list to bring to justice.” The group said in an Internet posting that a man identified only as Abu Hamza al-Muhajer has taken over as its new leader.

Bush said earlier today the meeting was focused on “how we can help this new government succeed” as it tries to build democracy, expand reconstruction efforts and defeat an insurgency waged by disaffected Sunni Muslim Arabs and foreign Islamic radicals. According to a pool report from the meeting, Bush spent three and a half hours in the teleconference this morning with top U.S. officials in Baghdad’s heavily fortified “Green Zone,” notably Gen. Casey, U.S. Ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Gen. John P. Abizaid, chief of the U.S. Central Command. Bush also congratulated U.S. troops for “bringing Zarqawi to justice” by killing him Wednesday in an airstrike on a hideout near Baqubah. After conferring with his administration’s “Interagency Team on Iraq” today, Bush plans to gather his Cabinet for an unusual videoconference meeting Tuesday with the new government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad. White House officials say no announcements of U.S. troop reductions are expected to come out of the two-day session, the Associated Press reported. But Gen. Casey said Sunday he thought it would be possible to withdraw some of the 130,000 American troops in the coming months, provided Iraq continues to strengthen its security forces and consolidate its national unity government. As the meeting at the presidential retreat in Maryland got underway, Democrats demanded greater efforts to promote Iraqi self-sufficiency and enable U.S. troops to come home. In Baghdad, Iraq’s new minister of state for national security, Sherwan al-Waili, said that by the end of this year, “I believe that the number of the multinational forces will be probably less than 100,000 in this country. And by the end of next year, most of the multinational forces will have gone home.” Retired Army Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, who briefed Bush last week after a trip to Iraq and Afghanistan, said today the administration would be “very leery of announcing timetables.” But he said it was clear that “we’ve got to withdraw a substantial amount of our combat power” in the next six to 12 months.

Tags: Iraq, President Bush, Al-Zarqawi,

Source: Washigton post

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