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US President George W. Bush on Tuesday unveiled his first State of the Union address to a Democratic-controlled Congress.

"Our country is pursuing a new strategy in Iraq, and I ask you to give it a chance to work. And I ask you to support our troops in the field and those on their way," Bush said in the televised speech.

Bush rolled out his new Iraq strategy earlier this year, which combined political, diplomatic and military measures aimed at quelling the escalating violence in Iraq. A center piece of the new plan was to boost US troops in Iraq by 21,500, which, however, has met strong opposition from members of Congress.

There are currently more than 130,000 US troops in Iraq with over 3,050 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the start of the 2003 Iraq war.

"Many in this chamber understand that America must not fail in Iraq because you understand that the consequences of failure would be grievous and far reaching," Bush added.

Bush called upon Congress to allow a force increase for the Army of 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 Marines over the next five years, and unveiled his domestic agenda.

Bush promised to make balancing the budget a top priority for his administration in 2007, and announced he would be doubling the size of the Border Patrol to secure the US border.

As a way to "take pressure off the border," the United States should establish a temporary worker program, Bush said.

In his State of the Union address last year, Bush proposed the establishment of a guest worker program, but this failed due to strong opposition from some lawmakers.

The Republican-controlled House passed an immigration bill in the last Congress, which would make all undocumented immigrants inside the country criminals and require all employers to verify the immigration status of their employees. The bill sparked widespread protests across the country last year.

With such a program in place, Bush said, illegal immigrants would have to "sneak in," leaving border agents free to chase down drug smugglers, criminals, and terrorists. Estimated showed that over 12 million illegal immigrants currently reside in the United States, and most of them come from Mexico and other Latin American countries.

"We should establish a legal and orderly path for foreign workers to enter our country to work on a temporary basis," he said.

The president also promised to slash gasoline consumption by 20 percent in 10 years.

"It is in our vital interest to diversify America's energy supply -- and the way forward is through technology," Bush said.

The United States must continue changing the way the country generates electric power - by using clean coal technology; solar and wind energy; and clean, safe nuclear power, he said.

To protect the country against severe disruptions to its oil supply, Bush proposed doubling the US current capacity of Strategic Petroleum Reserve to 1.5 billion barrels in 2027. "To further protect America against severe disruptions to our oil supply, I ask Congress to double the current capacity of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve," he said.

Immediately after Bush's address, Democrats rebuked Bush's war policy in their response.
 
"The president took us into this war recklessly," Senator Jim Webb, a Democrat of Virginia, said in his prepared response to Bush's address. "We are now, as a nation, held hostage to the predictable -- and predicted -- disarray that has followed," he said.

Webb, a Vietnam veteran who was Navy Secretary during Republican President Reagan's administration, called for a new direction. "An immediate shift toward strong regionally based diplomacy, a policy that takes our soldiers off the streets of Iraq's cities and a formula that will in short order allow our combat forces to leave Iraq," he said.

(Xinhua News Agency January 24, 2007)