Bush warns of ‘heavy fighting’

WASHINGTON – As Congress voted Thursday to finance the Iraq war through September, President Bush conceded that American forces will face tough fighting and many casualties in the months ahead, and possibly a “bloody” August as enemies try to “shake the will” of the United States.

With the narrow House vote to approve $100 billion for the military missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, Democratic leaders abandoned the timelines for U.S. troop withdrawals they had sought for months and that the president had vetoed in an earlier measure, but they pledged to fight again this fall.

The House voted 280-142 to approve the funds, and the Senate followed suit 80-14.

The outcome resolves the immediate stalemate over withdrawal dates in Bush’s favor. But it binds the president even more closely to a highly unpopular war, and it postpones only until fall the next open battle between the Democrat-controlled Congress and Republican White House – a time when Bush’s hand may be even weaker.

September is shaping up as a portentous month, with the new war funding expiring and Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, due to submit a progress report on the troop escalation Bush ordered earlier this year. A significant number of Republican lawmakers are saying they may abandon the president if conditions in Iraq have not improved by then.

Because insurgents are aware that September will be pivotal, the president said, forces intent on pushing the U.S. out of Iraq are likely to step up their assaults this summer.

“It could make August a tough month,” he acknowledged at a Rose Garden press conference.

“What they’re going to try to do is kill as many innocent people as they can to try to influence the debate here at home,” Bush said. “They recognize that the death of innocent people could shake our will. … So, yes, it could be a bloody – it could be a very difficult August.”

In Bush’s 50-minute news conference, his third of the year, he said the war spending bill holds the Iraqi government accountable by including benchmarks, something pushed by Democrats and accepted by the White House. It “reflects a consensus that the Iraqi government needs to show real progress in return for America’s continued support and sacrifice,” the president said.

Noting that the escalation, or surge, of military force that he ordered in January will not be fully deployed until late June, Bush said, “This summer is going to be a critical time for the new strategy. … We’re going to expect heavy fighting in the weeks and months (ahead).” And that, Bush conceded, will mean “more American and Iraqi casualties.”

Bush said he is eager, after more than four years of fighting in Iraq, for American forces to assume a “different configuration.”

Pressed for specifics, the president cited the report of the Iraq Study Group, which proposed that U.S. forces significantly scale back by early 2008 and serve largely as trainers and “force protection” for Iraqi military forces.

The feasibility of scaling back in this way will be part of what Petraeus evaluates in the report that he delivers in September, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday.

In his Rose Garden appearance, the president was also pressed about how much longer the public should expect to wait for “significant progress” in Iraq.

“We have yet to even get all our troops in place,” Bush cautioned. “And so Gen. Petraeus has said, ‘Why don’t you give us until September and let me report back?’ “

Sept. 30 is the end of the federal budget year, and the president’s Office of Management and Budget already has made it known it will be seeking roughly $145 billion more for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars the following fiscal year.

By then “we will know whether the surge is working or isn’t working,” said Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa. “I do not wish for a bad result, but I see the administration finally changing and finally recognizing this can’t be won militarily.”