Bush seeks more Iraq war funding as bombs kill 24
Source: Reuters
(Updates with setback for Bush critics in U.S. Senate, paragraphs 18-20) By Ross Colvin BAGHDAD, Feb 5 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush asked for billions of dollars in new spending for the Iraq war on Monday, as car bombs killed 24 people in Baghdad and its besieged residents awaited a crackdown on sectarian violence. Bush, facing heavy criticism and slumping popularity over his Iraq strategy, wants to send in an extra 21,500 American troops, most of them to curtail attacks in Baghdad against U.S. forces and between factions of Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims. In the worst of three blasts, a car bomb aimed at a gas station in the religiously mixed southern neighborhood of Saidiya killed 10 people. Eight people were killed when another car bomb went off in a garage, while the third explosion near a children's hospital in central Baghdad killed six. The blasts wounded 111 people. On Saturday, a suicide truck bomb killed 135 people in a Shi'ite area of Baghdad -- the worst single bombing since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Bush asked the U.S. Congress, now run by his Democratic Party foes, to approve defense spending of $622 billion -- much of it for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- as he unveiled a $2.9 trillion budget request for the 2008 fiscal year. Even more money for Iraq may be needed, he warned. "Our priority is to protect the American people. And our priority is to make sure our troops have what it takes to do their jobs." Baghdad is on edge as residents, exhausted by four years of war, look for signs the security sweep promised by Bush and Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has begun. The U.S. military said a command center that will oversee the offensive in the capital, to be headed by an Iraqi general, would become operational within days. SETBACK FOR BUSH CRITICS Police said fighting erupted in Adhamiya after militants attacked the Sunni district in northern Baghdad. They gave no casualty figures but 15 people were killed there in a mortar barrage on Sunday. In Amil, a religiously mixed area of Baghdad, gunmen in police commando uniforms dragged people from their homes in a Sunni enclave and set houses ablaze, witnesses said. "I can see eight bodies, including an old man and two teenagers. No one can retrieve them because there are snipers on the roofs of some houses," said one resident. He said the gunmen retreated when a U.S. force of Abrams tanks and Stryker armored vehicles arrived. Residents were warned that anyone seen with a gun would be shot. Maliki's Baghdad security plan is seen as a last-ditch effort to quell soaring violence between majority Shi'ites and once dominant Sunni Arabs that has claimed 1,000 lives across Iraq in the last week. More than 3,000 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed in the war to date, with the violence sending waves of refugees into neighboring countries. Democrats have vowed close scrutiny of Bush's Iraq spending, but critics of the war suffered a major setback when a resolution repudiating the president's decision to deploy the extra 21,500 troops failed to advance in the Senate. Supporters of the measure, which would not have been binding on Bush, said it would be a warning that he must overhaul his strategy to start moving toward a withdrawal of the 138,000 U.S. troops now in Iraq. Opponents said it was a thinly disguised slap at Bush that would dishearten U.S. troops and signal American disunity. The 17,000 additional troops Bush has committed to Baghdad would help Iraqi forces sweep through neighborhoods, clearing them of militants and illegal weapons. Gen. David Petraeus, the new senior U.S. commander in Iraq, will head to the war zone, and Bush said his message was to "get this plan in place as quickly as possible." A previous attempt to clear militants failed last summer because, U.S. commanders said, there were not enough Iraqi troops to hold gains made by the Americans and because Shi'ite politicians stopped them from arresting Shi'ite militants. In the budget, Bush estimated $50 billion in Iraq war spending for 2009 after proposing $145 billion for 2008. The budget did not give a forecast beyond 2009 but Bush said that did not imply a date for a withdrawal of U.S. troops. "There will be no timetable set," Bush said. "And the reason why is because we don't want to send mixed signals to an enemy or to a struggling democracy or to our troops." For the full story on the budget, click on [nN05440515] (Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed, Aseel Kami, Ibon Villelabeitia in Baghdad and Susan Cornwell in Washington)
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