U.S. troops under great stress, says Graham

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After returning from a trip to Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Pakistan and Tunisia, the South Carolina Republican said U.S. troops would be required to remain in Iraq for a long time.

Though morale has improved since the Jan. 30 elections in Iraq, U.S. soldiers — especially National Guard and military reservists — are under great stress because of long deployment times, Graham told South Carolina reporters in a telephone conference call from Washington.

Fully training Iraqi soldiers is key, he said.

"The Iraqi military needs to be supported in every way because that's the ticket home for Americans," said Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, whose weeklong visit to Asia included his third visit to Iraq.

He said he and four other senators who went on the trip will push the U.N. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a group of Western allies, to become more involved in Iraq, he said.

Democratic Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and John McCain of Arizona were the other four.

Iraq needs help from advanced Western democracies to build institutions like a civilian-led defense department, Graham said.

"It's not money that's key in Iraq. ... It's time and patience," he said, adding that it will take Iraq years to become fully democratic just as it took Japan and Germany decades after World War II. "I hope NATO and the U.N. will seize this moment in time to increase their footprint in Iraq."

The Pentagon said Friday that nearly 1,500 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq since the war began nearly two years ago. Though the casualties dropped after the election, the extremist insurgency continues to flourish, the Bush administration said.

In a bid to improve frayed relations and jump-start greater cooperation, President Bush traveled to Europe on a goodwill tour this week. Graham said he would do his part in Congress to promote more global cooperation.

He said the world must monitor Iraq to ensure that the religious leader of the majority Shiite Muslims, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, doesn't transform Iraq from a fledgling secular democracy into a theocracy like neighboring Iran.

He hastened to add that Sistani hasn't given any such indication thus far.

"I am all for religious people participating in politics, but we don't want to have bloc voting that could be used to drive the country away from a democracy," Graham said, adding that his worst fear is of Iraq disintegrating into ethnic areas, each led by the Kurds, the minority Sunni Muslims and Shiites.