WASHINGTON - Military commanders are drawing up plans for a faster withdrawal of American troops from Iraq in anticipation that President-elect Barack Obama will reject current proposals as too slow, Pentagon and military officials said Wednesday.
The new plans would provide alternatives to a timetable drawn up by the top American commanders for Iraq to bring troops home more slowly than Mr. Obama promised during his presidential campaign. Those plans were described to Mr. Obama last month.
WASHINGTON - It is one of the most troublesome questions right now at the Pentagon, and it has started a semantic dance: What is the definition of a combat soldier? More important, when will all American combat troops withdraw from the major cities of Iraq?
The short answers are that combat troops, defined by the military as those whose primary mission is to engage the enemy with lethal force, will have to be out of Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009, the deadline under a recently approved status-of-forces agreement between the United States and Iraq.
WASHINGTON - U.S. military leaders and Pentagon officials have made it clear through public statements and deliberately leaked stories in recent weeks that they plan to violate a central provision of the U.S.-Iraq withdrawal agreement requiring the complete withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops from Iraqi cities by mid-2009 by reclassifying combat troops as support troops.
The scheme to engage in chicanery in labeling U.S. troops represents both open defiance of an agreement which the U.S.
If British troops are indeed withdrawn from Iraq
by next June, it will signal the end of the most shameful and
disastrous episode in modern British history. Branded only last month
by Lord Bingham, until recently Britain's most senior law lord, as a
"serious violation of international law", the aggression against Iraq
has not only devastated an entire country and left hundreds of
thousands dead - it has also been a political and military humiliation
for the invading powers.
WASHINGTON - On the campaign trail, Senator Barack Obama offered a pledge that electrified and motivated his liberal base, vowing to "end the war" in Iraq.
But as he moves closer to the White House, President-elect Obama is
making clearer than ever that tens of thousands of American troops will
be left behind in Iraq, even if he can make good on his campaign
promise to pull all combat forces out within 16 months.
What does the
US-Iraq Security Pact mean for the antiwar movement? It certainly
may cement an American perception that the war is finally over,
stranding the peace movement as public opinion turns its attention to
the economy and the Obama administration.
The media obsession over who's
in and who's out of consideration for the Obama Cabinet brings the
admonition on the famous "War Room" wall of Bill Clinton's 1992
presidential campaign to mind: "It's the Economy Stupid!" Those
of us eagerly awaiting relief from the debacle called the Bush administration
should avoid getting swept up the in DC parlor game of who is getting
what position in the new administration and focus instead on the fundamental
changes we need the Obama administration to start making.
BAGHDAD - Followers of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr
marched on Friday against a pact letting U.S. forces stay in Iraq until
2011, toppling an effigy of President George W. Bush where U.S. troops
once tore down a statue of Saddam Hussein.
Thousands of demonstrators chanted and waved Iraqi flags in
Baghdad's Firdos square, where U.S. forces pulled down a statue of the
ousted Iraqi dictator when they took the city in 2003.
BAGHDAD - Iraqi and American leaders say that a new security pact
will have all U.S. forces and military contractors out of Iraq by 2012,
but 14th Ramadan Street is skeptical.
"Americans won't leave," said Mazin Ali, 30, a coach driver. "They are
the decision makers in all Iraq. The decision is theirs."
