Special report: Tension escalates in Iraq

    

U.S. President George W. Bush holds his traditional year-end news conference in the Indian Treaty Room of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at the White House complex in Washington Dec. 20, 2006.  (Xinhua/Reuters Photo) Photo Gallery >>>

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President George W. Bush acknowledged for the first time on Tuesday that the United States is not winning the war in Iraq, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

    "We are not winning, we are not losing," Bush said in an interview with the Washington Post.

    The assessment was a striking reversal for Bush who declared, days before the November elections, "Absolutely, we are winning," the report said.

    Bush also said that he has ordered Defense Secretary Robert Gates to develop a plan to increase the troop strength of the Army and Marine Corps, heeding warnings from the Pentagon and Capitol Hill that multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan are stretching the armed forces to breaking point, the report said.

    Bush is expected to hold a press conference on Wednesday to announce plans to expand U.S. military in Iraq.

    In the bipartisan Iraq Study Group report, former secretary of state James Baker and former Indiana congressman Lee Hamilton concluded the situation in Iraq "is grave and deteriorating."

    However, Bush has rejected the dire conclusions of the report and its recommendations to set parameters for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops to begin next year, and he has insisted that the violence in Iraq is not a civil war.

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