Bush Rejects Calls to Delay Iraq Vote

President Bush insisted today that the elections scheduled to take place at the end of January in Iraq go forward as planned, saying “it’s time for the Iraqi citizens to go to the polls.”

“That’s why we are very firm on the Jan. 30 date,” Bush told reporters.

The president’s remarks, while adhering to established administration policy, sent an unwavering signal in the face of pressure from Sunni figures that the election be postponed-a position that supporters of the interim government of Ayad Allawi have also taken.

There has been a broad-based Sunni effort to delay the elections, but it has been opposed by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the leading Shiite cleric in Iraq, who the U.S. government recognizes as one of the most powerful figures there. The Bush administration has largely stayed out of the debate-and Bush’s response to a reporter’s question thus added weight to the long-held position that the elections should take place as scheduled. His comments also defied critics who have argued that the country is too unstable to have meaningful and democratic elections.

The U.N. Secretary General, Kofi Annan, and the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, have said that the depth and breadth of the insurgency in Iraq would make it nearly impossible to hold legitimate elections.

On Wednesday the Pentagon unveiled plans to increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq to about 150,000-the highest level since the U.S. occupation began in the spring of 2003-in an effort to reduce violence during the election period.

Bush, at the photo session held with Olusugen Obasanjo, the president of Nigeria, said the U.S. military commanders in Iraq “requested some troops delay their departure home, and the expedition of other troops to help these elections go forward, and I honored their request.”

“The strategy, of course, is (to) have the Iraqis defend their own freedom,” Bush added. “And we want to help them have their presidential elections. And at some point in time, when Iraq is able to defend itself against the terrorists who are trying to destroy democracy -- as I have said many times -- our troops will come home with the honor they have earned.”

“It’s time for those people to vote, and I am looking forward to it. It’s one of those moments in history where a lot of people will be amazed that a society has been transformed so quickly from one of tyranny and torture and mass graves, to one in which people are actually allowed to express themselves at the ballot,” Bush said.

The troop increase, larger than commanders have outlined before, will require that about 10,400 troops remain in Iraq beyond their expected return dates to bolster U.S. forces during the elections at the end of January. As well, 1,500 soldiers from two battalions of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division will be deployed from Ft. Bragg, N.C., to add to the 138,000 U.S. troops now in Iraq.

The extensions are “mainly to provide security for the elections, but it’s also to keep up the pressure on the insurgency after the Fallouja operations,” Brig. Gen. David Rodriguez of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff told reporters on Wednesday.

Along with the scheduled arrival of thousands more soldiers this month and next as part of scheduled troops rotations, the extensions will send the number of U.S. forces higher than at any point since the Pentagon began decreasing the force of about 170,000 that stormed into Iraq in March 2003.

Rodriguez said Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, opted to extend deployments — rather than hasten the departure of units scheduled to leave for Iraq — in order to have seasoned soldiers there during the elections.

“The ground commander believes that the most experienced troops are the ones he needs to stay there longer during this critical time surrounding the Iraqi election,” Rodriguez said. “They’re the ones who know the ground best, who have worked with the people closest.”

Pentagon officials expect troop levels in Iraq to fall below 140,000 once the elections are over, but Army planners are drawing up contingency plans in case the violence in Iraq requires that more troops remain.

The announcement was criticized by opponents of the war and some relatives of enlistees who questioned whether the increase would be effective.

“Bringing the troop levels up just puts more people at risk,” said Charley Richardson, co-founder of Military Families Speak Out, which represents 2,000 military families opposed to the war.

“We believe the troops need to be brought home, not increased. Increasing troop levels is not going to make the situation there any better, and increasing them for a short period of time so they can run their elections so the Bush administration can look good is not a good policy for Iraq and the world.”

The 82nd Airborne Division often is called the military’s emergency force, and it keeps one brigade of troops on call at all times for rapid deployment.

For the 3,500 members of the 1st Calvary Division’s 2nd Brigade, this is the second extension of their Iraq tour, originally scheduled to be 10 months. The brigade had planned to return to Ft. Hood, Texas, last month, but will remain in Iraq until March.

Also to be extended are 4,400 troops of the 25th Infantry Division’s 2nd Brigade from Hawaii; 2,300 Marines from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit; and 160 logistics soldiers from the 66th Transportation Company, based in Germany.

Such extensions can be a blow to morale and military readiness, said Michael Hoffman, co-founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

“You’re going to be extending deployments of guys who have already done their time there, which will drive the troops’ morale even deeper down,” Hoffman said. “The guys are going to be basically forced to stay there. This is getting ridiculous. We have members who are in Iraq right now who have been e-mailing me about how happy they are to be finally going home. But at this point, a lot of these guys are not going home.”

Separations caused by war can be an unwelcome fact of life for military families. Alma Smith, 33, is upset that her husband, Starkey, 27, a sergeant in the 89th Military Police Brigade at Ft. Hood, is returning to Iraq with his unit, which is redeploying soon in a move separate from Wednesday’s announcement.

“I’m not too happy right now,” Smith said, explaining that plans to buy a house and have a child had been derailed “It’s just hard because we’re going through a lot of stuff. This doesn’t give us any time together.”

Christopher Smith, 30, of the 4th Infantry Division at Ft. Hood, returned from Iraq with his unit in March. Smith said many relatives of enlistees were upset about repeat deployments and extensions.

“It’s like Christmas,” Smith said. “You get excited and then it just doesn’t happen. It’s hard on the family members and the society. But there really isn’t anyone to blame. You can’t blame the Army. You can’t blame the soldiers. It’s just the situation.”

A week ago, Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, the deputy commander of the U.S. Central Command, said the military probably would extend the deployments of one additional brigade for the Iraqi elections, and that the troop levels in January would be 140,000 to 145,000.

Pentagon officials insisted the new requirement of 150,000 troops was not a sign that generals in Iraq believed the insurgency was is growing or that the security situation was deteriorating.

In the weeks after the fall of Baghdad, U.S. commanders in Iraq estimated they would need 30,000 troops by the fall of 2003. The deadly insurgency and the inability of the Bush administration to convince more countries to commit troops have kept the U.S. force in Iraq at more than 100,000 troops throughout the occupation and have strained a U.S. military reduced in size since the Cold War ended.

The number of countries willing to keep troops in Iraq has declined. Honduras, New Zealand, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Spain and Thailand have left; Hungary is pulling out by March, and Poland is debating whether to reduce or end its commitment of 2,500 troops.

Ivo Daalder, a Brookings Institution expert on the military, said every increase in U.S. troop levels in Iraq had been called temporary, but had turned out to be permanent. He said given the rise in the number of attacks against U.S. troops, this increase was likely to end up the same way.

“Quite apart from the election, we don’t have enough troops to deal with the situation as it is, given the strategy we have embarked upon to defeat the insurgency militarily,” Daalder said.

Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a member of the Armed Services Committee who traveled to Iraq last month, said Wednesday’s announcement pointed to how costly and demanding the war had become.

“This will be a long and very expensive process for the United States,” Reed said. “It is still not clear whether Iraq will emerge from this chronic violence as a viable and stable country.”

Daalder said that although U.S. troops were loyal to the war effort, the frequent lack of certainty in their mission could cause problems.

“The majority of the kids that go in are more than willing to go in and do their job,” Daalder said. “They only have one demand: They want to know when it’s over and they can go home.

“In Vietnam, they were there for a year, and it was a real year. It was 365 days; it wasn’t 369 days. You could write it on the back of an envelope and cross them off as the days went by,” he said. “These kids can’t do that in Iraq. That has to be an extraordinarily damaging concept.”

Times staff writers Esther Schrader and Emma Schwartz in Washington contributed to this report.