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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. security operations in Baghdad are fundamentally flawed and President Bush will propose a "new course" during a televised address Wednesday night, a White House official said.

In the speech, Bush will announce a plan to send about 20,000 more troops to Iraq in an effort to pacify Baghdad, according to an unnamed U.S. official who spoke to CNN on Tuesday. The speech, scheduled for 9 p.m. ET, will be shown on CNN with a preview beginning at 7 p.m. and will be live online on CNN Pipeline.

Bush will propose an "Iraqi initiative" that requires U.S. support, Dan Bartlett, counselor to the president, told CNN on Wednesday. "What we've seen time and time again in the security operations we've attempted in the past in Baghdad had two real fundamental flaws," Bartlett said. Operations did not include enough Iraqi or U.S. troops "to hold the neighborhoods we had cleared throughout Baghdad," he said.

"Rules of engagement -- where troops could go, who they could go after --were severely restricted by politics in Baghdad," Bartlett said. "That's going to change as well."

"The president will chart a new course in Iraq tonight, one that will expect very different results, particularly from the Iraqis."

Iraq's fledgling government has been strained by infighting while sectarian violence and insurgent attacks have plagued many parts of the capital.

"It gives us the best chance to give the Iraqi government the kind of breathing space they're going to need to have political reconciliation," Bartlett said.

Iraq in control by November

Bartlett said Bush "will make very clear that America's commitment is not open-ended."

The unnamed U.S. official said Bush intends to hand control of the country to Iraqi forces by November, the official said.

Most of the additional 20,000 troops will be deployed in Baghdad, where American and Iraqi troops fought a 10-hour street battle with insurgents on Tuesday. But about 4,000 would be deployed to restive Anbar province, the heart of the Sunni Arab insurgency, the official said.

The first troops in the new wave could be a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division that is already in Kuwait, Pentagon sources said.

The official cautioned that the November date for Iraq control does not mean U.S. troops would withdraw by then.

Sources familiar with the White House deliberations also said that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had promised Bush that he would redeploy a large number of Iraqi troops from other parts of the country to help secure Baghdad. Those Iraqi troops' main goal would be to neutralize Shiite militias loyal to influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Al-Maliki has been reluctant to move against the militias until now because al-Sadr's political support has been crucial to al-Maliki's rise to power and continuation in office.

The additional deployment would be coupled with about $1 billion in new economic aid, on top of the more than $30 billion already committed to Iraq, the White House sources said.

The first deployments would begin by the end of January, a U.S. official said.

Supporters say more troops are needed to stave off a U.S. defeat in the nearly four-year-old war, which has cost more than $400 billion and the lives of more than 3,000 U.S. troops. ("This is a commander-in-chief who has decided not to fail in Iraq," Rep. Mike Pence, R-Indiana, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said after a meeting at the White House. "I found his arguments and his strategies persuasive."

The general public appears less convinced, as recent polls show little support for sending more troops.

Even supporters of a troop increase are unlikely to be satisfied, as some advocates have said as many as 35,000 more U.S. troops would be needed to be effective


                                         [refer to the CNN online]


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