WASHINGTON - Whatever decisions are made on US troop levels in Iraq, the United States must keep forces in the Middle East to hunt Al-Qaeda and deter Iran, the top Senate Republican said Tuesday.
Senator Mitch McConnell said decisions among Republican senators on whether to demand strategy changes in Iraq would await a crucial White House report next week.
But framing a brewing congressional showdown over Iraq in the context of the "war on terror," he said recent history showed America needed to stay on "offense" to protect its homeland.
"I would like to see us with at least some level of bipartisan agreement that we need a long-term deployment somewhere in the Middle East, in the future, for two reasons: Al-Qaeda and Iran," McConnell said.
"I hope that this reaction to Iraq and the highly politicized nature of dealing with Iraq this year doesn't end up in a situation where we just bring all the troops back home and thereby expose us, once again, to the kind of attacks we've had here in the homeland or on American facilities."
McConnell, firing an opening shot in the Iraq debate as Congress returned to work after its summer break, said it would be up to US generals and the president to decide the best place to station US troops in the long term.
"I think we need to be in the neighborhood of where the biggest problem is so we can deal with it there and not have to deal with it here," he said.
"Just simply by being in the neighborhood, it strikes me, it gives us a chance to go after Al-Qaeda wherever they show up.
"I think it's an important reminder to Iran that, you know, we're in the neighborhood."
Democrats disagree with McConnell's view, shared by President George W. Bush, that the Iraq war is a central front in the US battle against terrorism.
They see the war as a diversion from the struggle against Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistani border areas, and want to send troops there from Iraq, where they say they are bogged down in a civil war.
Members of Congress were gearing up for a string of hearings and debates over the surge, highlighted by testimony by war commander General David Petraeus and Baghdad ambassador Ryan Crocker next week.
col/ksh

09/04/2007 16:09 GMT