Opinion (Robert Fox): Cheney's last stand

The new policies for Iraq due to be announced on January 10 could be the final act in the Freudian politics of the Bush family. According to the leaks, and they have been more than in your average suburban water main, George Bush is going to set recommendations by Papa Bush's old consiglieri, led by James Baker, neatly on their head.

"Staying the course is not an option" stated the Iraq Study Group of Baker and Hamilton. But that is just what the president is about to order. US troops are not to leave Iraq until "the insurgents are beaten". That means the troops will be on the ground for a month of Sundays, with no remission for good conduct. Wisely, Baker-Hamilton suggested that the resolution to Iraq's state of meltdown is not primarily a military issue.

Yet Bush, and Dick Cheney even more so, see the matter as being almost entirely military. Cheney believes that more US troops in Baghdad and seats of the insurgency in the Sunni Triangle like Ramadi can in the end deliver "success", if not "victory." The president is expected now to order in between 20,000 and 30,000 more combat troops. Some 11 combat brigades will start clearing Baghdad sector by sector of militias and insurgents.

US combat teams have tried this before, of course, but this time they will be told to stay on after they have cleared each zone. This is the key part of the plan produced by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a favourite haunt of Dick and Lynn Cheney. The report's author Frederick Kagan told BBC Newsnight this week, "this has never been done before. This time the Americans will take and occupy these places."

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