Bush to Address Nation on Iraq Thursday

President Bush is spending the day rehearsing a speech in which White House officials say he will endorse General David Petraeus' recommendation to draw down 30,000 troops that were sent to Iraq earlier this year.

That would leave about 130,000 American troops in Iraq by the middle of 2008.

In testimony before Congress this week, General Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said the Bush administration's overall strategy in Iraq would remain largely unchanged once the temporary surge of troops is over.

White House spokesman Tony Snow says the surge is a success story, because it has allowed U.S. commanders to transfer more responsibility for frontline operations to Iraqi security forces.

But there has been little progress in Iraqi political reconciliation, which the president said was the main goal for the troop surge when he announced it in January.

Opposition Democrats say Iraqi politicians have no incentive to make compromises for political reconciliation because U.S. troops are providing security for their government.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met with the president Tuesday. She says she sees no sign of ending what she calls the administration's open-ended commitment in Iraq.

"So the president added 30,000 troops, and now he is saying a year-and-a-half later, nearly two years later, we will be back to where we started from," she said. "Please, it is an insult to the intelligence of the American people that that is a new direction in Iraq."

Pelosi says General Petraeus' testimony indicates that U.S. troops will be in Iraq, at least another 10 years.

White House spokesman Snow says Pelosi is wrong to claim there will be no change in the number of U.S. troops deployed in Iraq over 10 years. He says U.S. troops should be given credit for making, what he calls, a real difference.

A public-opinion poll by the Associated Press this week says 58 percent of Americans believe the troop surge has not helped stabilize Iraq.

The president's speech Thursday is another chance for him to try to rebuild support for U.S. involvement. A separate poll by CBS News this month shows 71 percent of Americans disapprove of his handling of the war. - VOA News