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“I urge members of both parties in Congress to listen to what they have to say,” the president said. “Congress shouldn’t jump to conclusions until the general and the ambassador report.”
Mr. Bush, who took no questions, did not say how large a troop withdrawal was possible. Nor did he say whether he envisioned forces being withdrawn sooner than next spring, when the first of the additional 30,000 troops Mr. Bush sent to Iraq earlier this year are due to come home anyway.
Departing Washington late Sunday in secret, Mr. Bush flew with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice directly to this sprawling American air base in Anbar Province, the Sunni stronghold that has seen significant security improvements in recent months. There he was joined in the 110-degree heat by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staffs, who had flown separately
Administration officials said Mr. Bush decided to hold face-to-face talks with General Petraeus and with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and other top Iraqi leaders before completing a review of his Iraq strategy later this month and before General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker return to Washington next week to deliver their long-awaited assessment of conditions in Iraq. “He has assembled essentially his war cabinet here, and they are all convening with the Iraqi leadership to discuss the way forward,” the Pentagon press secretary, Geoff Morrell, said.
By summoning Mr. Maliki and other top officials to the Sunni heartland of Iraq, a region the Shiite prime minister has rarely visited, Mr. Bush is seeking to demonstrate that reconciliation among Iraq’s warring sectarian factions is at least conceivable, if not yet a reality. Meeting with Iraqi leaders in a buff-colored one-story building near the runway, Mr. Bush effusively greeted Iraq’s president Jalal Talabani, the last of the five Iraqi officials to enter the small conference room. “Mr. President, Mr. President, the president of the whole Iraq,” Mr. Bush said, kissing Mr. Talabani three times on the cheek.
Also at the meeting were Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi, Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh and the Iraqi Kurdistan president, Massoud Barzani. Mr. Bush later presided over a meeting of the Iraqi officials with about 10 Sunni sheiks from Anbar Province.
Though Mr. Bush never left the confines of the air base on his six-hour visit, he declared: “I have come here today to see with our own eyes the remarkable changes that are taking place in Anbar Province.”
At a rally attended by 700 raucous marines and soldiers at the air base, Mr. Bush declared: “When we begin to draw down troops from Iraq, it will be from a position of strength and success, not from a position of fear and failure.” He added: “Those decisions will be based on a calm assessment by our military commanders based on conditions on the ground” and not “nervous reactions by Washington politicians or poll results in the media.”
Several administration officials say there has been progress in reaching a consensus on troop drawdowns in recent days, as Mr. Bush has met with his top commanders and military advisers. Speaking to reporters traveling with him, Mr. Gates said Monday that he had formulated an opinion about whether a troop reduction is possible in the coming months. He declined to reveal his view. Mr. Gates said the troop reductions would not just involve redeploying forces from Anbar Province but reducing the overall number of American soldiers in Iraq.
Describing the meeting on Monday between the tribal sheiks and Iraqi officials from Baghdad, Mr. Gates said, “There was a sense of shared purpose among them and some good-natured jousting over resources.” Asked about Mr. Bush’s comments on possible troop reductions, Mr. Gates told reporters: “Clearly, that is one of the central issues that everyone has been examining — what is the security situation, what do we expect the security situation to be in the months ahead” and “what opportunities does that provide in terms of maintaining the security situation while perhaps beginning to bring the troops level down.”