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WASHINGTON (AFP) - Expectations are mounting in Congress, including among the White House's Republican backers, that President George W. Bush will later this year have little option but to change course in Iraq.

Despite Bush's victory over anti-war Democrats in securing a new $100-billion budget to fund the war through September, attention on Capitol Hill is already shifting to the bitter political fights to come.

Lawmakers left Washington for a weeklong recess as a report said huge cuts in the current 147,000-strong US garrison in Iraq could be in the offing.