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Army General Says Security in Baghdad Has Lost Traction
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The attacks -- the deadliest since the troop surge began -- came as a showdown between Bush and congressional Democrats over a war-funding bill is coming to a boil.
Both the House and Senate have approved supplemental war funding bills that offer timetables for troops to be withdrawn from Iraq over the next year. Bush has vowed to veto any bill with a timetable, saying decisions on troop levels should be made by military commanders -- not lawmakers. The showdown has been brewing since Democrats won control of the House and Senate in the November elections.
Today, Gates suggested that the debate in Washington over war funding is sending an unmistakable message to lawmakers in Baghdad.
"One of the ancillary benefits of the debate on the Hill is that the Iraqis have to know, as I've said, that this isn't an open-ended commitment," he said.
Bush, meanwhile, continued today to make a case for the troop surge.
In a town-hall meeting at a high school in Tipp City, Ohio, he said withdrawing troops from Iraq would allow al-Qaeda to establish a "safe heaven from which to attack us again."
"That's what al-Qaeda says" it will do, Bush said. "Al Qaeda is the same group of folks that attacked us on September 11th."
Later, Bush said a troop withdrawal would embolden the enemy and threaten the United States, Israel "and every other moderate person in the Middle East."
"Imagine a scenario where the oil wealth of certain countries . . . came under the control of a radical extremist group," Bush said. "And then all the sudden you'd be dealing not only with safe haven for potential violent attack, you'd be dealing with the economic consequences of people who didn't share the values of the West."
This morning, the U.S. military announced that three American soldiers were killed and another was wounded yesterday in two attacks in Baghdad.
Two soldiers died and one was wounded when their vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device north of Baghdad, a military statement said. Another soldier died when a combat security patrol was attacked with small arms fire in a southwestern section of the Iraqi capital.
The names of the deceased soldiers will be released after relatives are notified, the military statements said.
More than 3,300 U.S. service members have been killed since the U.S.-led Iraq war began in March 2003.
