More US Troops for Iraq

The rotation would involve the replacement of the bulk of the 132,000 US troops now in Iraq and will include some 35,000 to 45,000 national guard and reservists, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

US civil rights leader Reverend Jesse Jackson on Thursday slammed his government’s war on Iraq as having "no moral foundation" and warned of looming global crises and a cycle of violence brought on by US arrogance.

The renowned black rights leader and former presidential candidate said there was "no future, no growth, no prosperity" in the violence killing US soldiers and Iraqi civilians, and stressed the war merely invites "blowback" on the American people.

"The world believed that this war was about oil, not terrorism; about payback, not regime change; about destroying Saddam Hussein rather than destroying the weapons of mass destruction; about empire, not democracy," Jackson said in a speech at Bangkok’s Thammasat University.