WASHINGTON - US President George W. Bush is shoring up support among both wavering Republicans and anti-war Democrats for his embattled Iraq strategy, a top White House aide said Sunday.
Speaking as Congress awaits a pivotal report on the progress of Bush's "surge" of thousands more troops into Iraq, new White House counselor Ed Gillespie said the tactic was paying dividends on restoring security.
During August, he told Fox News, the surge "has had the intended effect of helping to secure the population, and that is now translating into the goal of allowing for progress to be made on the political front in Iraq as well."
"And so I think that we hear from members of Congress from both sides of the aisle who have been over to Iraq during this August break who have come back and have seen this progress and have told their constituents about it."
US lawmakers are returning from their summer break for a week of hearings and political theater to set the stage for Bush's critical progress report on the Iraq war, due by September 15.
In the week of September 9, war commander General David Petraeus and US ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker will deliver their verdicts on the war, in one of the most significant appearances in Congress for years.
At stake is the fate of Bush's last-ditch strategy to deploy an extra 28,500 extra troops into Iraq, after a highly unpopular four-year war that has killed more than 3,700 US troops and tens of thousands of civilians.
The president wants to push the surge into early next year, but Democrats are set to try again to force him to bring most combat forces home by May, arguing that Iraqi authorities have failed to hold up their end of the bargain.
"The purpose of this surge was to give breathing room to acquire some political reconciliation. There is no political reconciliation," Democratic Senator Joseph Biden, a 2008 White House contender, told CBS.
"It doesn't matter how many troops we put there. Unless you have a political settlement, when we leave we're going to leave chaos behind. You'll find you have a regional war," he said.
Gillespie said the mood of some dissident Republicans would be clearer this week when Congress reconvenes.
"But my sense is that people agree that it would be premature to impose an artificial time line for withdrawal on our troops at a time when we are seeing progress being made," the White House counselor said.
"And a policy of premature, precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would be the wrong policy and would have very dangerous consequences for the American people here at home," he said.
09/02/2007 15:02 GMT