US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said today he told President George W. Bush the Iraq war was lost and the recent US troop increase had accomplished nothing.
Mr Reid, the Senate's top Democrat, described part of a meeting with Mr Bush at the White House today - the same day bombs killed almost 200 people in Baghdad in the worst day of violence since a US-backed security crackdown was launched there earlier this year.
"This is the message I took to the president," Mr Reid said at a news conference. "Now I believe myself ... that this war is lost, and that the surge is not accomplishing anything, as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday," said Mr Reid, of Nevada.
"I know I was like the odd guy out yesterday at the White House, but at least I told him what he needed to hear, not what he wanted to hear," he added. Suspected Sunni al-Qaeda militants detonated a string of bombs in mostly Shia areas of Baghdad yesterday.
The worst was a truck bombing that killed 140 people in the deadliest single insurgent attack since the 2003 US-led invasion. In their meeting, Mr Bush and congressional Democrats failed to settle their fight over funding for the Iraq war, as lawmakers pressed Mr Bush to accept a troop withdrawal timetable.
The White House and its Republican allies call such timetables "surrender dates" and say Mr Bush will reject them. The president accuses Democrats of trying to micromanage the war, and has vowed to veto any bill that includes a pullout date.
Mr Reid said his message for Bush was to recall a turning point in the Vietnam War, in the mid 1960s, when Reid said President Lyndon Johnson decided to send thousands more troops to Vietnam despite knowing the conflict was not winnable.
"The (Iraq) war can only be won diplomatically, politically and economically, and the president needs to come to that realization," Mr Reid said.
Mr Bush is adding 30,000 troops to the war effort, mostly in Baghdad, although not all have arrived. Washington has 146,000 troops in Iraq and more than 3,200 US soldiers have lost their lives there.