IRAQ - American Politics.

The Democratic plan, which critics have described as a "slow bleed" of US forces in Iraq, followed a 246-182 vote in the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives on Feb. 16 disapproving of the president's 21,500 troop "surge". It also followed the 56-34 vote in the Senate on Feb. 17 on a similar non-binding resolution, which fell four votes short of the 60 needed to cut off a Republican filibuster.

Seven of the 49 Republican senators joined Democrats on Feb. 17 to express disapproval of Bush's handling of the war. The Democratic Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, on Feb. 18 said his party was drawing up plans to amend the 2002 congressional vote which originally authorised Bush to go to war in Iraq in March 2003. Levin said the amendments would redefine the role of the US military in Iraq from a "combat mission to a support mission". Troops would pull out of the crossfire of the growing civil war and focus on fighting al-Qaeda. Levin told Fox News: "We have got to shift responsibility to the Iraqi leaders to take control by bringing US troops out of Baghdad and out of Iraq".

Democrats on Feb. 18 said they were considering stringent conditions on Bush's request for $93 bn in new Iraq and Afghanistan war funding, which was to be considered in the following week. John Murtha, a Democratic House leader, said lawmakers would be able to "stop the surge" in its tracks by requiring that new troops sent to the field be fully equipped and trained. There would be a condition troops be deployed for one year only.

Army chiefs have complained the military was dangerously overstretched. But Republican Newt Gingrich, a former speaker and potential 2008 presidential candidate, on Feb. 18 said: "You are watching the US Congress in the process of systematically undermining US foreign policy. They intend to gradually grind down our ability to be effective in Iraq, day by day, amendment by amendment - this is very destructive".

Despite a growing number of defections, Republican leaders hope to compel Democrats into voting to cut off funding of US troops in Iraq, which they believe will prove deeply unpopular with the US public. This is despite widespread disaffection with the war.

The Bush administration accuses the Democrats of "gambling on failure" before they have given Bush's "new way forward" in Iraq a chance. Although a double car bomb killed at least 60 people in Baghdad on Feb. 18, the White House said there were signs of a reduction in violence in the capital after the escalation of the US military presence there. White House spokesman Tony Snow on Feb. 18 said: "The cost of leaving before we have succeeded is just too high for this president - or any president - to risk". Democratic Senate majority leader Harry Reid on Feb. 18 described the war as "the worst foreign policy mistake in American history".

The Background: President Bush had begun 2006 assuring the Americans he had a "strategy for victory in Iraq". He ended the year closeted with his war cabinet on his ranch devising a new strategy, because the existing one had collapsed. The original plan, championed by Gen. George Casey Jr., then the top US commander in Baghdad now replaced by Gen. David Petraeus, and backed by Donald Rumsfeld, then the defence secretary now replaced by Robert Gates, called for turning over responsibility for security to the Iraqis, shrinking the number of American bases and beginning the gradual withdrawal of US troops. But the plan collided with Iraq's ferocious unravelling, which took most of Bush's war council by surprise (see sbme1-IraqFallingdownJan8-07).

In August 2002, the US military was so confident of success in Iraq that it predicted a withdrawal would occur by December 2006, with just a token force remaining. The optimism was reflected in a secret Pentagon battle plan which forecast an easy victory, according to declassified documents secured by the Washington-based National Security Archive (NSA). Instead of withdrawal there has been a troop surge with 150,000 US military personnel in Iraq and more than 600,000 Iraqis estimated to have been killed.

NSA Executive Director Tom Blanton said: "This was buck passing. The military said let the State Department handle the post-invasion; meanwhile, Rumsfeld was making sure the State Department had nothing to do with it. None of the top leaders wanted to ask 'what happens next'". US military commander Tommy Franks, who resolutely refused to conduct any count of Iraqi deaths, believed that by December 2006 only 5,000 American troops would still be in the country. The predictions were included in Central Command's PowerPoint briefing slides, which were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and are posted on the web by the NSA at (www.nsarchive.org).

The slides were code-named Polo Step and were used in briefings to President Bush and Rumsfeld. A slide titled "Phase IV - Notional Ground Force Composition" showed US force levels declining steadily from 270,000 to just 5,000 within 45 months (December 2006) of the invasion phase, as Iraq proceeded from "stabilisation" to "recovery" to "transition". There was never any mention in the slides that an insurgency would take place or even that occupying forces would face acts of violence.

It was presumed that reconstruction would take place in an atmosphere of goodwill. Blanton said: "Delusional. It was not na?vety. It was blinkered. Questions were not asked".

Polo Step came into being in November 2001 when Bush told Rumsfeld he wanted an updated examination of what a war in Iraq would entail. Bush demanded that this be done in extreme secrecy to maintain the deniability factor.

Bush and British PM Tony Blair have consistently stated that no decision had been taken in 2001 to invade Iraq. Rumsfeld ordered Franks to prepare a commander's estimate, which led to Polo Step.

August 2002 was an important time for developing the strategy. President Bush had yet to go to the UN to declare Saddam's supposed weapons programmes a menace to international security, but the war planning was well under way. The tumultuous upheaval which would follow the toppling of Saddam's Ba'thist dictatorship was known antiseptically in planning sessions as "Phase IV". It was the least defined part of the strategy. After the main fighting was over, there was to be a two- to three-month "stabilization" phase, then an 18- to 24- month "recovery" phase. That was to be followed by a 12- to 18-month "transition" phase. At the end of this stage - 32 to 45 months after the invasion began - it was projected that the US would have only 5,000 troops in Iraq.

As it turned out, the assumptions on Iraqi and US forces were quickly overturned, partly as a result of new US policy decisions. Instead of staying in garrisons as envisioned, many of the Iraqi soldiers fled after the war began. Senior US commanders hoped to quickly recall the Iraqi troops to duty anyway, but that option vanished in May 2003 when L. Paul Bremer 3rd, the US civilian administrator in Iraq, issued an edict formally disbanding the Iraqi Army.

The message that the US should gird itself for a substantial multi-year occupation seemed to be superseded when Franks issued new guidance to his commanders a week after the fall of Baghdad on April 9 that they should be prepared to reduce US troops in Iraq to about 30,000 by September 2003. A series of ad hoc decisions and strategy changes followed as the insurgency grew and security deteriorated.

A new military plan has recently been put into effect, which the White House asserts may yet salvage a positive outcome. Almost four years after the invasion, however, the "stable democratic Iraqi government" the US once hoped for seems to exist only in the command's old planning slides.