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Most US Troops Out of Iraqi Cities: US Commander
BAGHDAD - Most US troops have moved outside Iraqi cities and the American pull-out from the country's urban centres, due by the end of the month, is on schedule, the top US commander said on Monday.
General Ray Odierno added that American forces will leave the restive northern city of Mosul as well.
A US soldier carries a box of belongings as his unit prepares to hand control of the base to the Iraqi army in Baghdad's Sadr city on June 11, 2009. Most US troops have moved outside Iraqi cities and the American pull-out from the country's urban centres, due by the end of the month, is on schedule, the top US commander said.(AFP) "The dark days of previous years are behind us," Odierno told reporters at a press conference in Baghdad. "It is a fitting time that our combat forces move out."
He added that US forces "have been slowly withdrawing from the cities for the last six months", and said "the majority of US forces are already out of the cities".
Under a landmark security accord signed in November between Baghdad and Washington, US forces must leave Iraqi cities by the end of this month, and all of Iraq by the end of 2011.
Asked how many US troops would remain in urban centres in training or advisory capacities after the June 30 deadline, Odierno said he could not give specific details, but said the number would be "very small".
Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh, who was also at the press conference along with Defence Minister Abdul Qader Obeidi and Interior Minister Jawad Bolani, added that the number of US troops in Iraqi cities would "change according to need".
There had been concerns that US forces would have to remain in Mosul, seen as the last stronghold of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Odierno disputed this, insisting his forces will leave Mosul by the end of June.
"We had reservations (about the situation in Mosul) a few months ago," he said. "I feel much more comfortable now, where we are in Mosul."
He added that it was "time for us to leave all Iraqi cities, to include Mosul."
Colonel Gary Volesky, the top US officer in Nineveh province, of which Mosul is the capital, told AFP on Sunday that he had "a number of plans but, right now, I am wired to nothing."
Volesky, commander of the US Army's 3rd Brigade 1st Cavalry Division and in charge of around 3,500 troops, said he had "not been told what they want yet, so we are unadvised."
He said attacks on Iraqi and US forces in Mosul were averaging five a day, with between 30 to 40 percent of those attacks targeting American troops.
Five combat outposts in Mosul remain to be handed over to Iraqi security forces but plans were in place for them to be transferred by the end of the month, Volesky said.
Odierno said the United States had so far handed over 142 bases to Iraqi control, with 320 still remaining, but did not specify how many of the remaining bases were in Iraqi cities.
Iraqi defence ministry spokesman Major General Mohammed al-Askari told AFP last week that American forces had transferred 120 out of 157 bases in Iraqi cities.
Though violence has dropped considerably in recent months -- May saw the fewest Iraqi deaths from violence since the US-led invasion in 2003 -- attacks remain common in Iraq, especially in Baghdad and Mosul.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki warned last week that attacks could increase in the coming weeks, because the US withdrawal at the end of the month would be a lightning rod for insurgents and militias seeking to undermine confidence in the Iraqi security forces.
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Show All"Asked how many US troops would remain in urban centres in training or advisory capacities after the June 30 deadline, Odierno said he could not give specific details, but said the number would be "very small"."
Leaving any combat troops in Iraqi cities would violate the SOFA.
How does this apply to the Green Zone?
Are they really out of Iraqi cities if they are still in them?
If "combat forces" will be out of ALL Iraqis cities in two weeks as required by the SOFA (which they clearly won't), what will they be doing for the next two and a half years to justify roughly the same amount of war funding that they received for combat operations?
I'll keep this post short and only provide links to a couple of articles that are worth reading; although I think that the piece by Dahr Jamail is more than worth reading.
"The Return of the Resistance",
by Dahr Jamail, truthout.org, May 31, 2009
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/the-return-of-the-resistance
"US opposes Iraqi popular vote on troop withdrawal",
by Tom Eley, wsws.org, June 13, 2009
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=55086
The latter has to do with the Iraqi referendum that, so far, is supposed to be held at the end of July, and the U.S. has evidently been trying to "screw around" with this scheduling, as of lately.
Deepa
But what about the American mercenaries????
There are more American mercenaries in Iraq than the American soldiers.
"WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama reversed his decision to release detainee abuse photos from Iraq and Afghanistan after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki warned that Iraq would erupt into violence and Iraqis would demand that U.S. troops withdraw from Iraq a year earlier than planned, two U.S. military officers, a senior defense official and a State Department official told McClatchy .
In the days leading up to a May 28 deadline to release the photos in response to an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit, U.S. officials, led by Christopher Hill , the U.S. ambassador to Iraq , told Maliki that the administration was preparing to release photos of suspected detainee abuse taken from 2003 to 2006.
When U.S. officials told Maliki, "he went pale in the face," said a U.S. military official, who along with others requested anonymity because of the matter's sensitivity.
The official said releasing the photos would lead to more violence that could delay the scheduled U.S. withdrawal from cities by June 30 and that Iraqis wouldn't make a distinction between old and new photos. The public outrage and increase in violence could lead Iraqis to demand a referendum on the security agreement and refuse to permit U.S. forces to stay until the end of 2011.
...Iraq is scheduled to hold a referendum by July 30 on the accord, which calls for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops by the end of 2011. If the accord were rejected, the U.S. would have to withdraw from Iraq within a year of the vote or by the summer of 2010. Some U.S. officials fear that would be before Iraq's security forces are ready to protect their country on their own."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20090601/wl_mcclatchy/3243795
Bill O'Reilly also agrees with Maliki, Bush, Cheney and Obama:
"Hating America. That is the subject of tonight's Talking Points Memo. No way, no way am I going to quiet down about the far left wanting to release military pictures of prisoner abuse. Those photos were taken in the course of criminal investigations, probes, that put some American military people in prison. But now anti-American loons want to see those pictures, knowing they would embarrass America and put our military in the field in even more danger.
"Just about every military expert in the country believes and exposition of prisoner abuse will result in dead soldiers."
After the massacres and rapes of Fallujah is there anything left to move out of? For the rest I suppose it's all GI's out and XI's in.
Odierno has no more true credibility than any other US military officer: if his commanders want a lie, he will say it. He would never have made it far if he could not repeat the many required laws.
Maliki's comments on photos are self-serving. Who can expect a Quisling who cooperated in the deaths of so many of his fellow citizens to be anyone other than a "dead man walking" after the US pulls out (and maybe before).
A very long time ago, an LA Times headline read something like "TROOPS OUT OF VIETNAM."
On closer inspection, the troops had moved into Cambodia.
There's a lot of shell-game fol de rol in all these troop counts -- and probably a lot of straightforward lies, too.
Gee, let's move them to Afghanistan. Now we're reducing the troops in Iraq. Let's move them into the countryside. Look, they're not in the cities. Let's move them back into the cities. Look, they're out of the countryside, too. Let's hire 150,000+ mercenaries. Look, we have an all volunteer army, and we only have 150,000 troops in Iraq (a while back).
If these guys noses' grew like Pinocchio's, they'd be wearing some fine baguettes.
We can't leave until Israel says we can.