Kissinger adds to criticism:

Published: 11/20/2006

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, one of the Republican Party's most respected senior statesmen, says that the Bush administration may have to give up on democracy in Iraq to salvage the goal of stabilizing the country.

Kissinger, who has frequently advised US President George W Bush in the three years since the US invaded Iraq, told the Los Angeles Times that he believes democracy for now is out of reach for Iraq.

"I think that's reality. I think that was true from the beginning," he was quoted as saying in the Sunday edition.

His comments, coming after the US electorate earlier this month dealt ruling Republicans a resounding defeat in Congress, largely over the lack of progress in the war in Iraq, sharpened the criticism aimed at the White House even from within Bush's own ranks.

Kissinger's analysis also broadens the options being proposed for the war.

Meanwhile, Republican presidential hopeful John McCain, a US senator who as a Navy pilot spent several years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, told ABC News on Sunday that US soldiers are "fighting and dying for a failed policy."

He repeated his longstanding call for more US troops in Iraq, saying Sunday that the 145,000 soldiers already there need reinforcements to ensure military victory.

McCain, 70, is exploring making a bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008.

Kissinger, who supported the 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, said it would have been better for the US to postpone democratic development and instead quickly install a strong Iraqi leader.

"If we had done that right away, that might have been the best way to proceed," Kissinger was quoted by the Los Angeles Times as saying. He called it "a mistake to think that you can gain legitimacy primarily through the electoral process."

The centre-left Democrats need to move quickly to consolidate their election victory and lead the way out of the Iraq crisis.

The Democrats elected to Congress range from leftwing legislators in secure districts to moderates who represent conservative states and hold a wide range of opinions on Iraq, include some who support the war but are critical of the Bush administration's strategies. The intra-party diversity leaves Democrats struggling to speak with a clear voice on the issue.

Senator Carl Levin, expected to chair the Armed Services Committee in January when the centre-left Democrats take control of Congress, has called for a phased US troop withdrawal within four to six months.

"We cannot save the Iraqis from themselves," Levin said recently. "We've been told repeatedly by our top uniformed military leaders that there is no purely military solution in Iraq; there is only a political solution in Iraq."

McCain conceded that sending more US troops to Iraq would be difficult.

"There's only one thing worse, and that is defeat," he said. "If we leave this place in chaos, ... they'll follow us home."

McCain did not specify on Sunday how many reinforcements are needed, but in the past he has called for an additional 20,000 ground troops.

Before the invasion, at least one key military leader advocated an overwhelming force of 400,000 or more for the invasion but was overruled by defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who advocated a smaller force, in line with his strategies to reform the military into a leaner, more nimble force.

Responsibility for much of the failure in Iraq has been laid on Rumsfeld, whose resignation was announced on November 8, the day after the Congressional elections.

Although Bush justified the war as a mission to stop Saddam from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, serious quantities of illicit weapons were never found. Bush later broadened the goal of the war to installing democracy in Iraq as a beachhead for reform across the troubled Middle East.

Kissinger emphasized that he, too, had supported the invasion, and said that his remarks were those of a "friend of the administration who thinks well of the president."

Within the US political establishment, two major efforts are underway to find a solution in Iraq.

Since April, a bipartisan group appointed by Congress, the so- called Iraq Study Group, has been discussing the issue and is expected to release its findings next month. Republican co-chair James Baker, another former secretary of state, has advocated opening talks with Iran and Syria as part of a wider Middle East solution - an approach that Kissinger seemed to support.

The second effort was started by the White House after the elections, to pull together efforts within the administration to develop its own map for change.

Up until Election Day, Bush insisted that the US was winning the war, but afterward conceded that mistakes may have been made.

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