Plan would allow Anbar surge, limit Baghdad crossfire - Marine Corps News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Marine Corps Times

Plan would allow Anbar surge, limit Baghdad crossfire

A new bipartisan Iraq plan surfaced Monday that would allow a buildup of U.S. troops in the Anbar province to battle foreign fighters and insurgents but would limit exposure to sectarian strife in Baghdad.

The chief architect of the plan is Sen. John Warner, R-Va., the former chairman and now ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who last fall declared things were not going as well in Iraq as the Bush administration was saying.

“It is not meant to be confrontational, but instead to provide a sense of bipartisan resolve that I hope we can achieve with regard to our new strategy in Iraq,” Warner said. “We agree with the president. A failed state of Iraq will threaten world peace for a long time to come.”

Joining Warner in sponsoring the resolution are Democrat Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Norm Coleman of Minnesota. That makes for a middle-of-the-road group of moderate Republicans and a conservative Democrat who do not support the Bush plan for a 21,500-troop increase in Iraq, but who also would not vote for legislation that picked a direct fight with the administration.

The key language in the draft resolution would put the Senate on record as disagreeing with the proposed troop increase and urging President Bush to consider “all options and alternatives.”

What makes the Warner-Nelson resolution different is that it says some troop increases may be warranted. It supports increasing troops in the Anbar province to battle with insurgents associated with the al-Qaida terrorist network and to deny a safe haven for terrorist groups. A modest troop increase in Baghdad also is possible to see if the Iraqi government can keep its part of the bargain by increasing security.

The Warner-Nelson resolution will not be on the table Wednesday when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee votes on an Iraq resolution. Warner said he and his cosponsors wanted to wait to see what the committee produced, and would likely offer their resolution as an alternative when the measure comes up for debate on the Senate floor in two or three weeks.

Collins said those two missions may not necessarily require any additional troops but might be possible by redistributing forces already in Iraq.

Collins said there have been four previous occasions when the U.S. temporarily increased troop levels to try to get a handle on escalating violence. “None of them produced a long-lasting change,” she said, adding she was “very skeptical” that the new Bush strategy would have any better effect.

Warner said the chief objective is to use U.S. forces where they might be successful, while keeping them out of the sectarian fighting, which is an internal Iraqi matter.

“I personally, speaking for myself, have great concern about the American G.I. being thrust into that situation, the origins of which sometimes go back over a thousand years, and trying to sort out, with the difficulty of language, with the difficulty of understanding the culture, how best to react to Sunni upon Shia, Shia upon Shia, Sunni upon Sunni and other things,” Warner said.