His Iraq policy repudiated by American voters, rebuffed by his father’s closest political ally and rejected even by the predecessor he mourned yesterday, President Bush starts a new political year ready to gamble.

As he led the tributes yesterday to President Ford, Mr Bush was putting the finishing touches on a highly controversial new strategy that will redouble his commitment to Iraq. In the coming days he is expected to announce not the beginning of the US disengagement his critics want, but a deepening of the effort to build a stable and democratic nation there.

This likely new approach is not only fraught with military and political risks, but increasingly represents a very lonely furrow for the man in the White House. It is backed perhaps just by Mr Bush and a handful of close advisers, in the face of opposition from senior military commanders, a resurgent Democratic party that takes control of Congress this week, and even from many within his own Republican party.

Those close to the discussions say the President is leaning against the recommendation of the Iraq Study Group, headed by James Baker, his father’s Secretary of State, for a steady drawdown of US troops. Instead, advisers say, he favours a “surge” of American forces of perhaps 30,000 or more troops in addition to the 140,000 there, with the aim of restoring order in Baghdad especially. Senior military commanders have been sceptical. General John Abizaid, head of US Central Command, has publicly expressed doubts, and will be stepping down shortly. General George Casey, the commander of US forces in Iraq, is also known to be cautious — he too may soon leave his job. So entrenched have been the military doubts that one adviser said that there had been no serious discussion of the “surge” strategy until it was proposed by an outside group of military thinkers about a month ago. Mr Bush will be both bucking the views of senior military and taking a large political risk. Tomorrow, the new Democratic-controlled Congress convenes for the first time. Democrats intend to use their control to assail the President’s Iraq policy. Within the first week, Joseph Biden, the chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, and Tom Lantos, the chairman of the House f oreign relations committee, will hold hearings that will dissect in critical detail the Iraq policy and the new approach.

Even more problematic for Mr Bush is that growing numbers of senior members of his own Republican party are against a significant troop increase in Iraq. Chuck Hagel, the Nebraska senator and a possible Republican presidential candidate, recently returned from Iraq to tell friends he was convinced a surge in US troops would be folly.

Among other potential Republican successors to Mr Bush, only John McCain, the Arizona senator, has publicly committed himself to a deeper engagement in Iraq. The rest will wait and see how events unfold this year.

It is unlikely that Congress will use its powers to block the President’s goals in Iraq. Though it could, if it chose, vote against authorising necessary funds for the military, that seems unlikely — but it will surely ensure the political risks for Mr Bush are even larger than they seem now.

Washington delayed its return to work yesterday for the obsequies for President Ford. But the themes of these pressing strategic debates seemed to hang heavy in the air above the reflective ceremonial.

Mr Ford himself, it was revealed in an interview published after his death, had opposed the Iraq war privately. Aides close to Mr Bush say that he is determined not to repeat the mistakes of Vietnam.

And Mr Bush has been influenced heavily in his thinking, it seems, by Henry Kissinger, the Secretary of State to Mr Ford and Richard Nixon. According to Bob Woodward’s book, State of Denial, in 2005 Mr Kissinger sent Mr Bush a copy of his famous 1969 “salted peanut” memo to Mr Nixon. In it the Secretary of State warned against troop withdrawals from Vietnam, saying that they would become to the American people like salted peanuts — “the more US troops come home, the more will be demanded”.

Mr Bush may take strength from the knowledge that judgments about presidential decisions can be notoriously fickle. When he left office 30 years ago, Mr Ford was widely derided for pardoning Mr Nixon. Today that act is seen as a necessary healing measure for the bitterly divided
post-Watergate America and Mr Ford went to his final rest yesterday to the salutes and praise of a grateful nation.

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