US:Congress is set to reject president George Bush's new plan for Iraq in largely symbolic votes next week, but the Democratic majority is unlikely to refuse funding for extra troops.
As the Senate foreign relations committee started hearings on Iraq yesterday, it became clear that the president's plan enjoys only tepid support among Republicans and almost none among Democrats.
About 10 Republican senators are expected to vote against sending more troops and many others have expressed doubts about the new strategy's chances of success.
Senate majority leader Harry Reid has promised to force a vote on a non-binding resolution that would put legislators on record as opposing the troop increase, without questioning the president's authority to wage war.
"It would seem to me if there is a bipartisan resolution saying we don't support this escalation of war, that the president is going to have to take note of that," Mr Reid said.
By the time the Senate and the House of Representatives vote on a supplementary defence budget, however, the first new troops, which are due to be deployed in Baghdad next Monday, will already be in place.
Senator Edward Kennedy, who wants to refuse funding for a troop increase, acknowledges that it will be practically impossible to cut off funding in the defence budget.
"By that time," Mr Kennedy said, "the troops will already be there and then we'll be asked, 'are we going to deny the body armour to the young men and women that are over there?' "
Republican senator Gordon Smith, who opposes the troop increase, said he could not see how Congress could force a troop withdrawal if Mr Bush wanted to press ahead.
"Is it right, is it honourable to de-fund the troops when they're ordered to stay in place and we then budget away their bullets? That, to me, seems dangerous and deadly to our troops, and that is the crossroads that we're at, and it's a real dilemma," he said.
The president's plan involves the deployment of 17,500 combat troops - five brigades - to Baghdad and 4,000 marines to Anbar province in western Iraq.
The first brigade will arrive in Baghdad on Monday and the others will follow at monthly intervals, until all are in place by the summer.
The Iraqi government is committing three new brigades to Baghdad, starting on February 1st. White House counsellor Dan Bartlett said yesterday that Iraqis would take the lead in the operation to restore security in Baghdad.
"They are going to have more boots on the ground, they are going to be the ones doing the knocking on the door," he said.
At the start of three weeks of hearings yesterday, the Senate foreign relations committee heard a bleak account of the situation in Iraq from four experts.
Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution said that Iraqi civilians were now dying at a rate of 4,000-5,000 a month, a level close to that during the most violent periods of Saddam Hussein's time in office.
Phebe Marr, an Iraq expert who consulted with the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, said the disbandment in 2003 of Iraq's army and civil service had removed what had been the two key elements of the Iraqi state since the British mandate of 1919. She said that Iraq was today close to being a failed state.
All the experts who testified yesterday stressed the importance of involving Iraq's neighbours - including Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Turkey - in negotiating a political settlement within Iraq.
Secretary of state Condoleezza Rice will appear before the committee today before she travels to the Middle East in an attempt to persuade Arab countries that the US is serious about stepping up efforts to secure a permanent settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Arizona senator John McCain, the most prominent republican supporter of the president's plan, said yesterday that it represented the last chance for success in Iraq.
"If we don't succeed, we'll have to withdraw," he said.