IRAQ - A Very Costly War.

Rumsfeld spent his last day at the Pentagon on Dec. 15 as US military commanders debated changes in strategy to fight the Iraq war, which the controversial defence secretary has overseen for almost four years. Bush fired Rumsfeld after the Republicans were routed in the Nov. 7 mid-term congressional elections which served as a referendum on the war. This has now claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens and cost the American taxpayer more than $400 bn.

In January - when the US military death toll in Iraq will exceed 3,000 if current trends continue - Bush will outline a new Iraq policy. He has come under intense pressure to change course in the wake of the congressional elections, which handed power to the Democrats, and the publication of the ISG report, which excoriated his current policy.

It is less clear, however, how Bush intends to respond to the other main ISG proposal, which was to reshape the US military presence to focus more on training Iraqi security forces. This could lead to many combat forces leaving Iraq in the next 15 months. In the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff are proposing that the US pullback from active engagement with insurgents to focus on training Iraqis, a recommendation similar to the ISG proposal to boost the number of US trainers from about 4,000 to 20,000, and embed more US soldiers in Iraqi military units. But military commanders are also debating whether the US military should make one last surge in Iraq to attempt to stabilise Baghdad, which this year overtook the Sunni-dominated western province of Anbar as the most violent place in Iraq.

General John Abizaid, the top US commander in the Middle East, recently told Congress he did not believe a large increase in US forces would help quell the violence in Iraq. But John McCain, the influential Arizona Republican senator, one of a handful of lawmakers calling for more troops in Iraq, said on a visit to Baghdad on Dec. 15 that some military commanders wanted to add 10 more brigades, or about 35,000 troops. Bush has not indicated whether he would support a surge, but has hinted that he would be reluctant to start pulling troops out of Iraq soon, saying he rejected ideas that amounted to leaving before the "job was done".

Public opinion polls suggest the president may come under increased pressure to start withdrawing troops. The latest National Public Radio poll found that 47% of Americans strongly favoured starting to withdraw troops over the next seven months, even though 44% of those polled believed it would make Iraq less stable. And the debate over troop numbers in Iraq comes as the US army increasingly urges Congress to approve boosting the overall size of the US armed forces, which Rumsfeld had resisted.