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Former Australian head of Military wants troops out of Iraq
COALITION troops should be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of 2006 to remove one of the biggest provocations for the country's terrorists, a former Australian military chief says.Peter Cosgrove, who retired as head of the Australian Defence Force in June, has tipped the end of next year as an ideal time for foreign forces, including Australians, to get out of Iraq. "I think we've got to train the Iraqis as quickly as we can and to a point where we take one of the focal points of terrorist motivation away, and that is foreign troops," General Cosgrove said in a candid interview on ABC television's Enough Rope program. "When there is an adequate Iraqi security force, foreign troops leave ... Iraq." Asked how quickly that should happen, he said: "Well I figure that if we could get that done by the end of 2006 that would be really good." Australia has 1370 troops in Iraq, including the recent deployment of 450 soldiers to the southern province of Al Muthanna. Prime Minister John Howard has vowed Australian troops will not be withdrawn before their work is finished. General Cosgrove said Australia is fighting the war against terrorism in "the only way we can" while preserving the maximum amount of civil liberties for the community. "When 9/11 happened we were tackled off ... a high building by terrorists and we were in free fall with them. We can't climb back up," he said. "We can't restore previous to 9/11. We're in a situation now where there is an overt, obvious, manifest phenomenon of global terrorism or networked terrorism." General Cosgrove's son, Phillip, was injured in a bombing while serving with Australian troops in Baghdad. The former ADF chief, who led an infantry unit in Vietnam, said coalition forces face a very different conflict in Iraq. "Certainly a different sort of a war to the one I was involved in in Vietnam where we were out and hunting through the jungle and all that sort of thing," he said. "(In Iraq) our soldiers are required to be enormously alert, but passive, so ... there's something unique about what they do which I think is to their great credit." General Cosgrove cited the American prisoner abuse scandal at Iraq's Abu Ghraib jail as a low point for coalition forces. "I couldn't believe that an element of the US armed forces would be involved in an improper way like that looking after detainees," he said. "I can understand that you don't mollycoddle people who are detained for one reason or another but that's light years away from maltreating them." Torturing prisoners, he said, is not acceptable in any circumstances. "You don't descend to (that) level. You've lost if you ... maltreat people. "Whatever we do, whatever we gain from people, we've got to do so in a way which leaves our morality, our integrity intact." Blah blah blah...... Posted by: God Save The World 2005-08-07 |
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