Key US Senate panel approves Petraeus to head US forces in Iraq

[Ron Burgundy]

AFP - The Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously approved Lieutenant General David Petraeus's nomination to head US forces in Iraq, with a confirmation vote by the full Senate likely to come later in the day.

Until recently in charge of training Iraqi security forces, Petraeus received the support of all 25 committee members, both Democrats and Republicans, during two days of hearings.

Congressional sources said the general's confirmation vote could be taken up at a full Senate session later Thursday.

At Tuesday's hearing, Petraeus, slated to replace General George Casey as the commander of the 134,000-strong US force in Iraq, promised US lawmakers he would never keep the truth from them if President George W. Bush's new Iraq strategy did not work.

"The situation in Iraq is dire, the stakes are high, there are no easy choices. The way ahead will be very hard," he said. "But hard is not hopeless."

Bush two weeks ago announced the new strategy for Iraq, calling for an additional 21,500 troops to stem growing violence. It has been met by deep skepticism from the Democrat-controlled Congress and a slew of resolutions and measures criticizing it.

Petraeus, 54, is the most celebrated general to come out of the Iraq war, and the Bush administration has pointed to his record of success as the best guarantee that its new strategy can work.

He commanded the 101st Airborne Division during the invasion of Iraq and pacified the restive area around the northern city of Mosul in its aftermath by rapidly reviving the local economy and establishing Iraqi governing bodies.

When an initial attempt to create Iraqi security forces collapsed amid Sunni and Shia uprisings in the spring of 2004, Petraeus was called back to rebuild what is now a 325,000-member Iraqi security force virtually from scratch.

He returned in September 2005 to head the US Army Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he wrote the army's first manual on counter-insurgency warfare in two decades.

But the escalating insurgent and sectarian violence has eroded many of Petraeus's previous accomplishments.

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070125/pl_afp/usiraqmilitary [link]