Analysis: Forget talks, Bush set on plan for 'surge' of 30,000 troops into Iraq

When President George W Bush meets his national security team at his Texan ranch this week to draw up a new military strategy for Iraq, a 56-slide PowerPoint presentation entitled Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq will be at the heart of their discussion.

The report, put together by Frederick Kagan, a conservative military analyst, and Jack Keane, a retired general, proposes "surging" at least 30,000 extra US troops into Baghdad and other Iraqi hotspots, as a first step to quelling the bloodshed and restoring security.

The strategy is at odds with the much-vaunted findings of the bipartisan panel of experts of the Iraq Study Group (ISG), not to mention the army's top commanders who argue that they do not need more forces on the ground and fear a further strain on resources.

But when Mr Bush announces his plans for Iraq next month, he is expected to draw heavily on the Kagan-Keane plan – put together over a single weekend last month, after a brainstorming session with other senior, former military officers and defence experts.

In a sign of the importance attached to the "Choosing Victory" blueprint, Gen Keane, 63, the army's acting chief of staff when he retired three years ago, spent most of Friday in meetings at the White House and Pentagon.

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