"If we had the troops, I'd increase the troops," he said. "But we don't have the troops."
Administration officials say that waning U.S. public support for the war has become one of their major concerns, if only because Iraqis on all sides increasingly wonder how long the Americans will stay.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday April 02, 2006 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 40 words Type of Material: Correction
Iraq war anniversary: A March 19 article in Section A misspelled the first name of a former professor at the U.S. Army War College who is now at the private Council on Foreign Relations. He is Stephen Biddle, not Steven.
A poll released last week by the Pew Research Center found that public support for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq had reached its lowest point since the 2003 invasion. Half of the respondents said they wanted to bring U.S. troops home as soon as possible, compared with 44% who said the troops should stay "until the situation is stabilized."
Reflecting the increasingly partisan cast of the issue, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, in the Democratic response to Bush's radio address Saturday, called on the president to give the Iraqi government more responsibility for security "so our troops can responsibly be redeployed."
"The administration's dangerous incompetence has made the job harder," she said.
A former senior official said that he did not expect political pressure to affect Bush's decisions on Iraq this year but that the 2008 presidential election could be a different story.
"There is deep concern in the White House that 2008 will be a referendum on Iraq," he said. "I don't think the president will be affected by the congressional elections. But in 2007, at some point, does he say, 'I'm going to do what's right, no matter what the political consequences?' Or does he say, 'We gave the Iraqis every chance; we can't want a successful Iraq more than the Iraqis want it?'
"Leaving Iraq in its current state would be a very serious strategic setback for us," he said. "It would be a defeat. We can dress it up. We can try to recover from it. But it's a defeat."
