WASHINGTON: President George W Bush on Wednesday warned Americans of the need for new "sacrifices" in Iraq next year, and said hard choices await in a war he now grimly admits the United States is not winning.
"I'm not going to make predictions about what 2007 will look like in Iraq except that it's going to require difficult choices and additional sacrifices," Bush said in a news conference, warning, "the enemy was merciless and violent."
A somber Bush had earlier admitted for the first time that the United States was not winning in Iraq.
"We're not winning, we're not losing," Bush said in an interview with Wednesday's Washington Post, in a reversal of a remark he made before congressional elections in November: "Absolutely, we're winning."
Bush is under fierce pressure to change course in Iraq, following the rout of his Republican party in the polls, rising public demands to bring the troops home and mounting US combat deaths.
He has been locked in a string of consultations with heavy-hitting national security and foreign policy aides in his administration, and is expected to lay out a change of course early in the New Year.
But Bush has backed away from calls by the independent Iraq Study Group to seek to pull most combat troops out of Iraq by early 2008 and for a direct dialogue with US foes Syria and Iran.
The White House said on Tuesday Bush may temporarily increase the number of US troops in Iraq but denied he was feuding with top military commanders over such a plan.
"It's something that's being explored," spokesman Tony Snow said amid reports Bush might order a 'surge' of tens of thousands of soldiers in a bid to quell what the Pentagon warns is the worst violence on record.
Bush also announced in the Post interview that he would seek to expand the overall size of the US military.
"I'm inclined to believe that we do need to increase our troops, the army, the Marines," he said, adding that he had directed Defense Secretary Robert Gates to consult military commanders on the issue and report back.
Bush declined to put a number on the increase, and disputed former US secretary of state Colin Powell's assertion over the weekend that "the active army is about broken" due to strains from Iraq and Afghanistan.
"I haven't heard the work 'broken,' but I've the word 'stressed,'" said the president, who told the Post that more ground forces were required to fight the global war on terrorism set off by the September 11, 2001 terrorist strikes.
"It is a accurate reflection that this ideological war we're in is going to last for a while, and that we're going to need a military that's capable of being able to sustain our efforts and to help us achieve peace," he said.
"We need to reset our military. There's no question the military has been used a lot," said Bush.
Political pressure over Iraq mounted after the Pentagon warned on Monday that violent attacks in the country had soared to the highest level on record.
An average of 959 attacks per week were recorded between August 12 and November 10, the highest recorded level since Congress ordered the Pentagon to issue the reports in 2005.
That represented a 22 percent jump in attacks over the three months.
Moqtada al-Sadr's Shiite Mahdi Army militia was described as the single largest threat to stability.
US troop levels in Iraq have recently dipped to 129,000 but have generally hovered around 140,000. Since the March 2003 invasion, 2,947 US soldiers have been killed there, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.
