WASHINGTON - Washington was braced Monday for a potentially defining moment on Iraq, with US commander General David Petraeus poised to give Congress a hotly-anticipated report on the unpopular war.
The talismanic four-star general, accompanied by US ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker, was expected to tell lawmakers President George W. Bush`s `surge` strategy had slashed sectarian violence and should be extended.
But Democrats demanding immediate troop reductions launched a pre-emptive strike against Petraeus, arguing the surge of 28,500 extra soldiers had failed in its prime objective -- driving Iraqis towards political reconciliation.
Petraeus and Crocker were due to appear at rare joint session of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees, at 12:30 pm (1630 GMT), in one of the most eagerly awaited political set pieces in years.
Hours before stepping into the spotlight, Petraeus got a boost from Baghdad, where Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told Parliament violence had dropped 75 percent in the restive provinces of Baghdad and Anbar under the surge.
"We have succeeded in preventing Iraq from sliding into a civil war in spite of all the destabilizing actions by local and international groups," Maliki said.
Monday`s hearing marked the start of a momentous week for US Iraq strategy.
The general and ambassador were due to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees on Tuesday.
Bush, who is bound by law to provide a report on the progress of the war in by Saturday, was expected to make a televised address to the American people later in the week.
A New York Times/CBS News Poll out Monday reflected the key role played by Petraeus as the public face of a war which has now killed 3,700 US soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians.
When asked to choose who could best end the war in Iraq, 68 percent of those polled said they most trusted military commanders, 21 percent said Congress, and a measly five percent said the Bush administration.
The Times also reported Petraeus would ask for a six-month delay on deciding whether to carry out major troop reductions.
There are currently some 168,000 US troops in Iraq, and Petraeus has informed Bush that some 4,000 of them -- one brigade -- can return home starting in mid-December, the Times said quoting US officials.
But the general wants to wait until March to decide when to withdraw remaining extra troops and return to the pre-surge level of 130,000, the paper said.
Democratic Senator Joseph Biden, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations committee, led the Democratic attack.
"I really respect him, and I think he`s dead, flat wrong," Biden said of Petraeus on NBC television.
"The truth of the matter is that ... this administration`s policy and the surge are a failure."
Democrats are also quarreling with figures that Petraeus is expected to use to prove sectarian violence has been slashed under the surge.
An official US government auditor said last week that he was uncomfortable with the "methodology" used to reach such conclusions.
The leader of minority Republicans in the House of Representatives John Boehner, a key White House ally, on Monday warned that the stakes for America`s future could not be higher.
"This is a defining week for this Congress and this nation," Boehner wrote on National Review Online.
"History will remember how we performed this week."
Petraeus previewed his testimony in a weekend letter to US troops, saying "my sense is that we have achieved tactical momentum and wrested the initiative from our enemies in a number of areas of Iraq."
But he admitted the pace of political progress had been slower than US officials hoped when Bush announced the surge in January.
Monday`s presentation is billed as the most high-profile appearance on Capitol Hill of a US military commander since General William Westmoreland addressed the House and the Senate in 1967 on the state of the war in Vietnam.
Calls to stay the course in Iraq are "the same kind of thinking, actually, that got us mired in Vietnam," Democratic Senator John Kerry said on ABC television Sunday, calling the Iraq mission "disastrous."
col/mac

09/10/2007 13:46 GMT