Tomorrow George W. Bush is expected to announce a new strategy for Iraq. By all accounts, he’s about to tear up the Iraq Study Group report and ignore the wishes of a war-jaded electorate in favor of “a surge.” Put simply, instead of drawing down US troops and crafting what might pass for an elegant exit, the US president is likely to bolster American military manpower by up to 20,000 troops. Most will be based in and around Baghdad.

“A New Way Forward” is the official name of the game, which is one of high risk for both the administration and Republicans keen to shore up their chances of a win in 2008. For the president, who has reluctantly admitted the US is neither winning nor losing in Iraq, the stakes are high. On the line are his reputation, his ideology and his place in history.

Few US generals, or politicians for that matter, believe increasing troops will quell the insurgency or lessen sectarian violence. Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the newly appointed hawkish senior commander in Iraq is one of a dwindling number that believes more force might turn things around.

Sheer force of numbers might have worked in the early months of 2003 if coupled with a hearts and minds policy and a will to retain the integrity of Iraqi institutions. But most believe an increased US military presence now will only exacerbate tensions. Indeed, some 70 percent of attacks are directed at occupation soldiers. More visible troops could end up as sitting ducks. So why is Mr. Bush so insistent on taking this route?

As former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld advised in a memo, just days before he was asked to resign, the administration must give the appearance of a win. Iraq isn’t the only consideration here.

If the US were to be forced out of Iraq with its tail between its legs, its deterrent capability would be severely reduced. Jeers of paper tiger would haunt Washington perhaps for decades to come. Internally, there would be a severe reckoning for the more than 3,000 dead US soldiers not to mention $320 billion wasted.

Faced with the choice of following the Iraq Study Group recommendations — dubbed a surrender document by the right-wing US media — or sticking with the program by injecting more troops and more billions into Iraq, it seems the president has chosen the “stay the course” course.

From Mr. Bush’s personal perspective, this has to be the preferable option. He is a man with almost an unshakeable belief in his own infallibility. Announcing a pullout plan when none of the original US objectives have been achieved — apart from the disgusting spectacle of Saddam’s hanging — would have been judged not only failure but abject failure. The commander-in-chief’s ego would have taken a severe battering, but worse, the new Democratic wolves in Congress would soon have been baying for blood in the form of impeachment, especially so since America would no longer be “at war” and shows of patriotism no more an absolute priority.

On Friday, Democrat leaders wrote to Bush in an attempt to persuade him from the “surge.” “Surging forces is a strategy that you have already tried and that has already failed,” they wrote. “We believe that trying again would be a serious mistake.”

Yet the Democrats, who now control the House and the Senate, have also previously indicated they will refrain from starving the war effort from funds. Some $70 billion as already been approved for 2007 but the White House now seeks a further $ 97.7 billion.

As long as the president can remain gung-ho and engaged until the 2008 presidential elections, he can hand the entire mess lock, stock and barrel over to his successor and blame him or her for the eventual outcome. Or so goes one school of thought. However, there are others, far more sinister.

The US is currently massing naval, air, marine and nuclear-armed forces within the region, and it is believed that the new strategy will not entertain Iranian or Syrian influence within Iraq.

Couple this with the recent expose in the London Times that Israel has drawn up plans to use nuclear bunker busters to destroy Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment plant and conventional weapons against the Arak and Isfahan facilities.

Naturally Israel has denied that it has any such intention, but if the Times is correct, then Tehran would retaliate against both Israel and its master the United States. In this case, the Americans are not in a position to display weakness by walking away from Iraq.

There is another consideration too. On Sunday, the Independent disclosed that Iraq’s “massive oil reserves, the third largest in the world, are about to be thrown-open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies” throughout a 30-year-period under a controversial law drawn-up by the US.

The paper rightly points out that this move gives critics of the war, who said it was waged for oil, renewed ammunition. If oil was, indeed, what the war was all about — it sure as heck wasn’t about WMD or Saddam’s links to Al-Qaeda — then the White House and its corporate cronies are not about to leave their baby unattended.

James Baker, Lee Hamilton and the others who helped produce the Iraq Study Group report failed to see the big picture. If the Bush administration’s priority was to save American lives and balance the books it would be poised to exit with as much dignity as it could muster. But if it’s salivating over cheap Iraqi oil, with knives drawn against Iran and Syria, this region should brace itself for a bumpy ride ahead.