Defense official says ‘significant’ U.S. forces to stay through 2004

Washington ? Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said Thursday that “significant forces” from the United States probably would remain in Iraq through the end of next year.

Pressed by House Democrats about whether the administration planned to withdraw U.S. troops right before the 2004 presidential election, Wolfowitz assured them that no decisions were being made on political grounds.

“These are national security decisions; they have to be made on that basis,” he said.

Wolfowitz said that didn’t mean “we’re not trying to, in fact, get more Iraqis on the front lines, get them dying for their country so fewer Americans have to.”

While he declined to estimate how long troops would have to remain, Wolfowitz said “certainly no one I know believes that we are not going to be in Iraq with significant forces right through the end of next year.”

Wolfowitz appeared before the House Armed Services Committee with the U.S. civil administrator for Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, and other Pentagon officials. They were seeking support for President Bush’s proposal for $87 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bremer was speaking at three congressional hearings Thursday, his fourth consecutive day on Capitol Hill as the administration’s main salesman for the $87 billion proposal.

As of Thursday, 306 U.S. service members had died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq, according to the Department of Defense.On or since May 1, when President Bush declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended, 168 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq.

Before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Bremer rejected suggestions by Democratic and Republican lawmakers that the United States offer loans or loan guarantees to cover part of the proposal for rebuilding Iraq.

Bremer said Iraq already had too much debt and would need the revenue for reconstruction. Using it as collateral for a loan could create the appearance that “we are in some way taking a lien against oil revenues and therefore that’s why we fought the war,” Bremer said.

Democrats have accused the administration of trying to ram the plan through Congress without giving lawmakers enough time to consider it. Senate leaders say they hope to begin floor debate next week.

¢ Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed the Bush administration had begun to close ranks with critics at the United Nations on a resolution to govern nation-building in Iraq. “We are seeing some convergence of views,” he said after a five-power meeting.¢ In the north, eight American soldiers were wounded — three of them seriously — when their convoy was ambushed with roadside bombs and small arms fire in Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city.¢ The U.S. military said U.S. soldiers shot and killed two Iraqi policemen Aug. 9 in Fallujah and that an Army investigation found the servicemen acted in accordance with its rules of engagement.¢ President Bush said the Sept. 11 attacks “changed my calculation” about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein after the administration — early that year — downplayed Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.¢ Russian President Vladimir Putin implicitly criticized the United States for launching a war on Iraq without U.N. approval and demanded “direct participation” by the United Nations in rebuilding the country.¢ Acting Secretary of the Army Les Brownlee, visiting Iraq, said the United States had an adequate number of troops in Iraq to deal with resistance against its occupation there and did not need to increase the number.