EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
- Corporate Win: Supreme Court Says Monsanto Has 'Control Over Product of Life'
- How the US Turned Three Pacifists into Violent Terrorists
- Cornel West: Obama 'Is a War Criminal'
- In 'March Toward Disaster,' World Hits 400 PPM Milestone
- Revealed: How US State Department 'Twists Arms' on Monsanto's Behalf
Popular content
Today's Top News
Pentagon Chief, Senators Clash Over Iraq Pullout
Pentagon chief Leon Panetta on Tuesday defended the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq next month in the face of sharp criticism from some lawmakers, arguing Washington had to accept that Iraq was a sovereign state.
Instead of uniformed troops, the United States plans to employ up to 16,000 private contractors to handle security and other tasks in Iraq that were performed by American soldiers. (AFP Photo/Mark Wilson) In a charged hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Panetta was grilled by Republican "hawks" who accused President Barack Obama of abandoning Iraq for his own political gain without making a genuine effort to broker a deal with Baghdad to keep some troops in place.
In a testy exchange with Senator John McCain, Panetta sparred with the lawmaker about how talks ultimately collapsed on a future US military mission.
"That's not how it happened," Panetta said.
McCain shot back: "It is how it happened."
Panetta voiced frustration with McCain's portrayal, saying Baghdad was not prepared to grant legal immunity to US forces and said it was not the case that the United States could simply decide what it wanted in Iraq.
"This is about negotiating with a sovereign country, an independent country. This was about their needs," he said. "This is not about us telling them what we're going to do for them or what they're going to have to do."
Although the Iraqi government was ready to adopt legal protections, US officials wanted the country's parliament to ratify the safeguards but that proved too difficult, Panetta said.
"I was not about to have our troops go there... without those immunities," he said.
Panetta, however, left the door open to a future US military presence if requested by Baghdad, an apparent contradiction of previous White House statements.
"We're prepared to continue to negotiate with the Iraqis. We're prepared to try to meet whatever needs they have," he said.
McCain, a Vietnam war veteran who pushed hard for the troop buildup in Iraq in 2007, said the Obama administration undermined the talks because it was either unwilling or unable to propose troops numbers or missions to Iraqi leaders early in the negotiations.
He and his fellow Republicans accused the White House of "political expediency" in pulling out troops and said it would leave Iraq vulnerable to the influence of neighboring Iran.
McCain said he believed that the decision "represents a failure of leadership, both Iraqi and American, that it was a sad case of political expediency supplanting military necessity, both in Baghdad and in Washington" with serious consequences for Iraq and US national security.
The US military's top officer, General Martin Dempsey, told lawmakers he was concerned about the future of Iraq after the pullout and acknowledged that no commander had recommended a full withdrawal from Iraq.
But he said he agreed that American forces could not operate without legal protections.
"In anticipation of the question about whether I'm concerned about the future of Iraq, the answer is yes," said Dempsey, citing Arab-Kurd tensions in the north.
But the general said "this isn't a divorce" and that the United States would maintain a role advising Iraqi's army, including counter-terrorism training "inside the wire" at camps for Baghdad's special forces.
Panetta said he was confident that Iraq could manage its security and counter Iran's influence.
"To be sure, Iraq faces a host of remaining challenges, but I believe Iraq is equipped to deal with them," he said.
Iraq's political leaders "basically reject what Iran's trying to do," he added.
Following the US invasion of 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime, US and Iraqi leaders agreed a security pact in 2008 that called for the departure of all American troops by the end of 2011.
With only 24,000 US troops still on the ground, the withdrawal from Iraq is in full swing, with convoys and aircraft transporting troops and equipment out of the country.
Instead of uniformed troops, the United States plans to employ up to 16,000 private contractors to handle security and other tasks in Iraq that were performed by American soldiers.
Iraq has declined offers from Turkey and Iran to train its forces, after the failure of talks with Washington on a post-2011 training mission, a high-ranking Iraqi official said Tuesday.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
16 Comments so far
Show All"the United States plans to employ up to 16,000 private contractors to handle security and other tasks"
And we know how law abiding and economical private contractors have been in Iraq so far. Xe-sus, give me a break!
Sen McCain, if you want troops over there so badly, get your uniform out of the closet, and head over there yourself, and take all your hawkish cronies with you! The Iraqi's don't want us there, and we the American people don't want to stay there!
McCain would be the perfect guy to lead. The first thing he would do is crash his plane like every other plane he flew, and when captured he could make public statements supporting the enemy like he did in North Vietnam. We need more heroes like Johnny-boy McCain.
Well, in a way, the Rethug chickenhawks have a point. Since when did we ever give a damn about the treaties and other obligations we make with other countries?
Exactly. McCain and the other Rethugs were simply being honest. Of course they got upset - as you said, the U.S. honors only those laws and treaties it wants to, and ignores the ones it doesn't. We have a verrrry long record of doing so, especially in the last 10 years. How dare Panetta say such trash as "it is a sovereign country??" Sovereign, shmovereign. The Empire will decide what happens, anywhere and everywhere around the globe, individual countries' wishes be damned (unless they have nuclear weapons, that is...then we shut the hell up and play very nicely with them).
It would be a shame if the Iraqis kill every last contractor after the US troops leave.
Republicans make Democrats look good
This is all theater.
McCain plays the heavy, so that Panetta can sound like he means what he says.
They are both pretending. This is especially apparent when Panetta describes Iraq as an "independent country."
The phony "lack of immunity" reasoning is being used to sell us a deceit.
Will there be immunity from Iraqi law for the so-called "private contractors", who are actually corporate agents of this corporate government Inc.? Remember how Blackwater thugs couldn't be put on trial here and couldn't be put on trial there?
"Private" means beyond any laws.
The layers of deception and misrepresentation, of which both McCain and Panetta are participants, makes the word insidious seem quaint.
If these guys aren't trying to kill people, then they are just killing time until they can kill some more people.
Lou Dubose cites a January 31 Senate Foreign Relations Committee Report in the November 15 Washington Spectator by noting that the Iraq embassy staff will rise from 200 to 800, plus a minimum of 3,000 contractors "who might contract their own helicopter fleet." The embassy "will be supported by a planned 15 satellite sites across the country; three air hubs, three police training centers, two consulates, two embassy branch offices, and five Office of Security Cooperation sites.
Roughly 17,000 individuals are expected to be under 'chief of mission authority,' mostly third-country nationals working as life-support and security contractors. The number of American diplomats in Iraq is projected to remain at roughly 650, with an additional several hundred functional staff posted at the embassy from a variety of other government agencies, including USAID and the Departments of Treasury, Justice, and Agriculture."
The cost? "After the transition is completed, the cost of State Department operations in Iraq is expected to reach $6 billion a year, of which $3 billion will go to actual diplomatic operations. The $6 billion figure is twice the previous year's Iraq budget and more than 25 percent of the State Department's entire operational budget."
Does anyone else consider this pure and unadulterated insanity??
We never should have gone in to Iraq. Saddam was our pal largely because he neutralized Iran. When we took out Hussein we took out our middle east leverage. We had no mission in Iraq and we still have no mission in Iraq. Why the hell would we want to stay?
Good points realveive...
It really is Greek Tragedy, in the hubris of Dubya.
You write: "We had no mission in Iraq and we still have no mission in Iraq."
Sure "we" had a mission. As Dubya said of Saddam Hussein, "He tried to kill my Daddy."
A multi-trillion-dollar oligarchical disaster going back to the revenge wars among Troy, Sparta, and Athens. Today, instead of salting the farmland we use "depleted uranium."
Same psychology, slightly more "advanced" weapons.
-30-
This is a monumental farce to see the republican neocons criticising this democratic neocon because he is following the Bush plan for the withdrwal of troops from Iraq. The Obama administration is doing more to enforce American rule by promoting war and expanding the American Empire than Bush even dreamed of but because of the phony wrestling match nature of American politics both parties must p;ay up non-existant differences for the ignorant public something to believe in.
Thalidomide,
"doing more to enforce American rule by promoting war and expanding the American Empire than Bush even dreamed of.."
Your comment seems to be clearer from the rest, what read so far. I sense most posters still believes the Repug's NeoCon is worst than Dim's NeoCon. You know the expression “scarey” and “scarier.” I also like Bill from Saginaw expression “dumb and dumber.”
The questions remain which side is “scarey,” “scarier” or “dumb, dumber.” An Obamapoligist would choose the Repug as the latter.:-)
"Thalidomide" and"sivasm"
Neither side is "scarier" on the cyclops of corporate control. Both arms of the monster are used for devouring its prey.
They work in service of the same, single vision and to fulfill the same ravenous (my deep apology to ravens) cravings, which seem insatiable because of the worms in its system.
As the worms work their way through the system of the monster, the monster is losing its vision and beginning to devour itself.
Right arm, left arm. It doesn't matter if one is blue and one is red. They serve one purpose and the vast majority of voters foolishly think that they have more "security" when the cling to either arm.
Maybe some of us will survive after the monster destroys itself, but by then there will be many more worms.
Our only glimmer of hope is to get away from the monster as soon as possible.
How absurd. McCain and fellow Senate Republicans accuse Panetta, Obama and the White House of withdrawing from Iraq for reasons of domestic "political expediency" by failing to press negotiations with the Maliki government to leave thousands of US troops there with immunity from Iraqi law after the 2011 deadline that the Bush administration agreed to. Such absurd horseshit.
What neither the Repugs nor the neoliberal Dems want to admit is that invading and occupying Iraq was a fiasco. Rather than a cakewalk (with a grand march on to Tehran as phase II), up jumped a broad-based nationalist, anti-American insurgency, alongside a vicious internal sectarian civil law among armed militia groups that forced hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians to flee into exile.
The only relative "winner" to emerge from this decade of mindless bloodshed in Iraq ironically was Iran - a realpolitik fact of life that the politicos of both major US parties adamantly refuse to acknowledge. When the dust finally settles, the smart money still is on Muktada al-Sadr, the most populist, vehemently anti-American Shiite cleric, to eventually succeed Maliki when the Pentagon at last completes its formal departure.
This exchange is pure partisan Kabuki theatre primarily for that reason. Heroic American troops cannot publicly be said to have died in vain. Bombs Away McCain and his neocon hawk friends hedge their issue framing for 2012 by pretending that if the Iraq War ends in a fizzle like Vietnam, we wudda shouda couda won - were it not for Obama, Hillary, and the Dems snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and stabbing our brave warriors in the back.
Not so, Panetta whines back in response. We did everything we possibly could to save face and maintain a strategic foothold. It was Bush's dumb war and dumb withdrawal deadline that tied our hands and which prevented us virile Democrats from proving we could successfully fight imperial wars smarter than you Republicans can - like Obama's successfully done in Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, and (of course) most brilliantly at Abottabad. There! Take that!
This is a theatre of the absurd squabble over who's to blame for a fading theatre of war. Nothing more to it than a food fight between dumb and dumber. Just two angry, testosterone fueled boys posturing and scrapping in a sandbox about who wimped out yesterday, and who will be tougher tomorrow.
Bill from Saginaw
"lack of immunity"
I think I learned the term for that concept back in history class. It was 'Extraterritoriality", which basically meant that the white guy from Europe got to do whatever the F he wanted to do to the locals and the locals couldn't do jack all about it. Usually it's framed by the people who lived under the policy as something very very bad. They really didn't like it when it was done unto them. There's a long history of the concept, I think the English may have advocated the policy back in the 1770s, but I could be stretching the point...
:)