Bush to make announcement on troop numbers

US president George Bush will keep roughly the same number of US forces in Iraq through the end of the year and bring about 8,000 troops home by February.

The reduction is both slower and smaller than had been anticipated.

In a speech to be delivered today, Mr Bush says more forces could be withdrawn in the first half of 2009. But for now, the situation is not changing significantly.

By the time the troops get home on the timeline Mr Bush is proposing, someone else will be making the wartime decisions from the Oval Office.

The measured reductions in troops reflect the military’s attempt to protect security gains in Iraq, while also freeing up some added forces in Afghanistan.

The move also shows that Mr Bush still commands when and how troops will withdraw, despite fierce opposition in Congress and a soured American public.

Mr Bush’s decisions amount to perhaps his last major troop strategy in a war that has come to define his presidency. He was to announce details in a speech today, the text of which was released in advance by the White House.

In all, about 8,000 US forces will be coming back, the president said.

One Marine battalion, numbering about 1,000 troops, will go home on schedule in November and not be replaced.

An Army brigade of between 3,500 and 4,000 troops will leave in February. Accompanying that combat drawdown will be the withdrawal of about 3,400 support forces over several months.

“Here is the bottom line: While the enemy in Iraq is still dangerous, we have seized the offensive, and Iraqi forces are becomingly increasingly capable of leading and winning the fight,” Mr Bush said in remarks prepared for delivery to the National Defence University in Washington.

About 146,000 US troops are in Iraq.

Senior defence officials say Mr Bush is adopting a compromise proposal from his military team.

General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, had argued to keep troop levels fairly level through next June, an even longer period than Mr Bush is embracing.

But others, including Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said they believed that withdrawing troops more quickly from Iraq represented a small risk compared to the gain that could be made by shifting more to Afghanistan.

It had been widely expected that Gen Petraeus would recommend a faster pullback in Iraq perhaps calling for a reduction in the number of combat brigades from 15 to 14 this fall. But several recent events may have changed the calculus.

Among the more important changes was the unanticipated decision by Georgia to bring home its contingent of about 2,000 soldiers after Russia invaded the former Soviet republic in early August.