Unbowed by public doubts, President George W Bush plans to announce today that he will send about 20,000 more US troops to Iraq as part of a long-delayed shift in strategy in the unpopular war.
Mr Bush's plan may represent his last best chance to salvage the US mission in Iraq and turn around frustration with his handling of the war.
Administration officials said Mr Bush will announce plans to deploy about 20,000 more US troops to join 140,000 already in Iraq -- most to Baghdad and 4,000 to volatile Anbar province.
They said Mr Bush will call for turning over security of all Iraqi provinces by November, but they cautioned that this did not represent a timetable for a US pullout. Iraqis currently control only three of 18 provinces.
A defense official said Mr Bush will announce an increase in the training of Iraqi security forces through a program in which US trainers live and work within an Iraqi unit.
The president has a tough sell ahead of him, after nearly four years of war and scenes of carnage that have undercut his argument that victory is possible in Iraq.
Democrats in control of the US Congress vowed ahead of the 9 pm address in the White House library that they would fight what they called an escalation of the conflict, which has already claimed more than 3,000 American lives.
Democratic leaders in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, who planned to meet Mr Bush today before his speech, said they would seek a vote on his planned troop increase.
"In my view, we may be about to make a critical mistake by moving in exactly the wrong direction in Iraq. Instead of a surge we should be looking at a way to begin orderly troop reduction," said West Virginia Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd.