The United States may need to bolster its troop presence in Iraq and extend the deadline for transfer to Iraqi rule, amid an insurgency that could lead to civil war, a leading Republican lawmaker said on Sunday. "It may be that we do need more troops ... because I think we have to have security (in Iraq)," U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican and head of the Senate foreign relations committee, said on ABC television's "This Week." Lugar said he is worried that when the U.S.-led coalition turns over sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30, the new government will be unable to deal with the violence. "They're at a point in which clearly they can't control the situation," he said. "You have the militia that has not been disarmed, and if in fact the worst situation comes, the militia begin to fight each other, that is, civil war."
| Which is why we're not leaving. |
Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright also said more U.S. troops were probably needed in Iraq, and the Bush administration should get other countries to contribute more forces.
| Plenty of other countries there already -- oh, you mean the French? |
"There has been, from the very beginning, a mistake in military planning, where the original forces that went in were potentially not sufficient," said Albright, appearing on the same program. "So there has been a complete mismatch between the military and the political planning in Iraq," she said. Lugar said he supported a proposal from Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the top Democrat on the foreign relations panel, that calls for U.S. President George W. Bush to convene a summit with European leaders -- including those who opposed the war -- and repair the U.S.-European alliance. "He (Bush) should tell them that none of us can afford failure in Iraq," Biden wrote in a editorial in the Sunday edition of The Washington Post.
| But Chirac and Zappy are counting on just that. |
Biden's plan would also have the president seek a U.N. Security Council resolution to create a high commissioner who would be in charge of handling's Iraq's political transition, similar to U.N. arrangements in the Balkans and Afghanistan.
| Yassss, the mighty UN. Look at the recent masterful job they've done in Darfur. |
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