Sessions: Time to draw down troops is coming

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a loyal supporter of President Bush, indicated Sunday that Republicans will be ready by September to look at bipartisan efforts to draw down the troops that were part of the surge to help secure Baghdad.

{mosads}“We have to be realistic,” Sessions said on CBS’s Face the Nation. “We have to know that we can’t achieve everything we’d like to achieve. We have a limited number of men and women we can send to Iraq, and we can’t overburden them.”

The senator added that, when General David Petraeus is reporting back on the progress of the surge in September, “I think most of the people in Congress believe, unless something extraordinary occurs, that we should be on a move to draw those surge numbers down.”

Sessions is advocating that the Iraqi government step up its efforts to defend their own country so that the U.S. military can move from a combat role to a support and training role.

“I don’t think we need to be an occupying power,” said Sessions, who hopes that bipartisan solutions can be found on Iraq. “This is a fine line we’ve walked, and this surge has got to be temporary.”

Sessions added that he believes Bush is “coming around” to his line of thinking.

“We cannot sustain this level, in my opinion, in Iraq and Afghanistan much longer,” said Sessions, adding that the U.S. is “facing some tough choices.”