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Gold9472
09-04-2006, 10:13 AM
Bush shrugs off Iraq war report

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/world.aspx?ID=BD4A264199

9/4/2006

WASHINGTON — US President George Bush kept up his preelection offensive on Iraq despite a new Pentagon report describing a deteriorating security situation.

Initial results from a new US-Iraqi campaign to improve the security situation in Baghdad were encouraging, Bush said on Saturday, and insurgents had failed to drive Iraq into full-blown civil war.

The US president acknowledged “a bloody campaign of sectarian violence” and the “difficult and dangerous” work of trying to end it.

On Friday, however, the Pentagon reported that death squads increasingly targeting mainly Iraqi civilians heightened the risk of civil war. The report, the latest in a series required by congress, said the Sunni-led fight “remains potent and viable”.

“Conditions that could lead to civil war exist, and concern about civil war within the Iraqi civilian population has increased in recent months,” the report said.

A growing number of members of congress — including a few in the president’s own party — are calling fora shift in the Bush administration’s Iraq strategy or a shorter timetable for starting a substantial withdrawal of American forces.