BUSH ADVISORS LOCKED IN INTERNAL DEBATE: NO PLAN TO BE ANNOUNCED THIS YEAR...

Reaction To The Delay…Hagel: “Unpardonable”…Reid: “Serves No One’s Interests”…

By JIM RUTENBERG and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: December 13, 2006

WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 — The White House said Tuesday that President Bush would delay presenting any new strategy for Iraq until early next year, as officials suggested that Mr. Bush’s advisers were locked in internal debates on several fronts about how to proceed.

The absence of an immediate new American plan for Iraq is adding to anxiety among Iraq’s moderate neighbors, who identify with the country’s minority Sunni Arab population, and has opened the way for new proposals from many quarters, in Iraq as well as in Washington, about the next steps. But several administration officials said Mr. Bush had concluded that the decisions about troops, political pressure and diplomacy were too complicated to rush in order to lay out a plan to the nation before Christmas.

The White House decision prompted criticism from Democratic Congressional leaders and from at least one Republican senator who said Mr. Bush was failing to show sufficient urgency about Iraq despite months of escalating violence there. >>>cont

LinkHere