Freeze to leave 100,000-plus in Iraq as Bush exits

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military's plan to stop its withdrawal from Iraq will leave at least 100,000 troops in the war zone, and likely far more, through the end of President George W. Bush's administration.

The United States now has 160,000 troops in Iraq after a "surge" last year added 30,000 personnel to help halt the country's slide into civil war.

This year, the Pentagon began to pull some of those extra troops out. It plans to withdraw 20,000 combat troops from Iraq by mid-July, leaving a force of about 140,000.

Then the withdrawal will stop, under a plan announced on Tuesday by Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq. Petraeus told the U.S. Congress he would halt troop cuts for 45 days, a period stretching into mid-September, so that commanders can assess security conditions.

After the 45 days, a second evaluation period will begin that is meant to determine whether security conditions allow Petraeus to send more troops home.

Petraeus would not say how long that second evaluation period would last.

Even if withdrawals are resumed, the pace would likely match the current withdrawal rate of one brigade, or about 3,500 troops, per month. Military officers say that pace allows for an orderly and safe reduction in force.

But that means even in a security environment that allows large-scale withdrawal to resume quickly, no more than 14,000 troops would likely be taken out of Iraq before a new president takes office in January 2009.

Security and policy experts predicted far fewer would leave Iraq before Bush leaves the White House. Many said they did not expect any withdrawals after mid-July for the rest of 2008, arguing the military needs time to properly assess security conditions and that commanders will want a steady force level when Iraq holds provincial elections, expected in October.

Asked how long the halt in withdrawals would last, Michael O'Hanlon of Brookings Institution, said, "pretty much the rest of Bush's presidency."

"There's no reason to think that you should resume the process at all in the second half of 2008," he said. "The pace at which things change in Iraq is not that fast."

(Reporting by Kristin Roberts, Editing by Eric Beech)