Sen. Ben Nelson on Wednesday proposed immediate redeployment of U.S. troops within Iraq rather than waiting for a scheduled September progress report from Gen. David Petraeus.

“We should not wait until Sept. 15 to start doing what we need to do,” Nelson said.

Nelson, a moderate Democratic voice in the Senate’s Iraq war debate, said U.S. soldiers should “get out of the business of trying to quell sectarian violence” in Baghdad and focus their efforts on anti-terrorism and border security.

“Redeploy, not withdraw, our troops,” he told his weekly telephone news conference from Washington.

U.S. soldiers should be used to “pursue al-Qaida operatives” rather than be engaged in a civil war, Nelson said.  And they should patrol and secure Iraqi borders while training and equipping Iraqi forces.

Nelson said he’ll propose those changes in “a realistically (and) tactically feasible, bipartisan amendment” to the Senate’s defense authorization bill.

A progress report circulating in Washington this week indicates the Iraqi government has met none of the benchmarks established by Congress to measure Iraqi success in reaching political accommodation and stabilizing the country, Nelson said.

“We don’t have to wait until we get another report” in September, he said.  “We have to make the decision now to redeploy the troops.”

Instead of continued engagement in a civil war, Nelson said, U.S. soldiers should be “fighting al-Qaida, which is our enemy and the enemy of the Iraqi government.”

U.S. troops “shouldn’t have to protect (Iraqis) from themselves,” he said. 

Reach Don Walton at 473-7248 or at dwalton@journalstar.com.