Timeline of The Iraq War Troop Surge of 2007 - January 2007

January 2007

U.S. troop levels in Iraq are at 132,000.

• January 5, 2007: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to Bush stating, “Surging forces is a strategy that you have already tried and that has already failed. Like many current and former military leaders, we believe that trying again would be a serious mistake.”

• January 10, 2007: Bush officially announces the troop surge. “I’ve committed more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq.” Also in his speech, Bush defines the purpose of the surge. "Our troops will have a well-defined mission: to help Iraqis clear and secure neighborhoods, to help them protect the local population, and to help ensure that the Iraqi forces left behind are capable of providing the security that Baghdad needs.”

• January 11, 2007: Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Neb) stated the surge was, ”The most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam.”

• January 18:
  • Harry Reid issues excerpts from Senate testimonies under the title "The Iraq Accountability Project: A Wrap-Up of This Week's Senate Oversight on Iraq"

• January 19 --
  • During a news conference with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, the top U.S. commander in Iraq Gen. George Casey estimated that the 21,500 additional U.S. troops sent to Iraq will only need to stay until around late summer.
  • Three four star generals testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee advising that the US pull out of Iraq
    • Gen. Jack Keane said he recommended sending far more troops than the 21,500 envisaged in the president's plan and he also said he opposed allowing Iraqi military forces to take the leading role in the envisaged Baghdad operations. Giving Iraqi forces the lead role "makes no sense to me. I don't understand that," Keane said in his testimony
    • Barry McCaffrey said "I personally think the surge of five U.S. Army brigades and a few Marine battalions dribbled out over five months is a fool's errand."
    • Marine Gen. Joseph Hoar, the former head of U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, which includes the Iraq theater of operations, urged a full pull-out of U.S. forces from Iraq, saying "In the Marines, we say, 'When you're in a hole, stop digging.'"

• January 22, 2007: Senator John Warner (R-VA) introduces resolution opposing Bush’s Iraq plan.