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| Iraq |
| US commanders plan Iraq drawdown next year |
| 2007-08-18 |
| WASHINGTON - military commanders plan to maintain the current level of about 160,000 troops in Iraq until next year and then start to draw down, a general said on Friday. Army Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno said security in Iraq had improved in recent months as the result of the “surge” in forces ordered by President George W. Bush but the gains did not yet represent enduring trends. Much would depend on Iraqis’ ability to build on that progress, he said. Odierno, the top commander for day-to-day operations in Iraq, said extra units deployed for the build-up would leave between next April and August to keep a promise that their tour would not last more than 15 months. “The surge, we all know, will end sometime in 2008,” Odierno told reporters at the Pentagon by videolink from Iraq. He said commanders would be faced with a decision on whether to replace the units. “Right now our plan is not to backfill those units,” he said. A final decision has not been made and would fall to Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, Odierno said. But his remarks offered an insight into the thinking of commanders in Iraq before a much-anticipated progress report due next month to the Congress by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the ambassador in Baghdad. Odierno said the total number of attacks in Iraq were at their lowest level since August 2006, and attacks against civilians in particular were at a six-month low. He did not give figures reflecting the number of casualties in recent and past attacks. Civilian murders in Baghdad were down more than 51 percent since and Iraqi forces launched a crackdown in the capital earlier this year, he said. Odierno said the Baghdad murders were at their lowest level since just before the February 2006 bombing of the al-Askari mosque, a Shi’ite shrine in the city of Samarra, which set off a huge wave of sectarian violence. “Although our recent tactical successes are not yet enduring trends, we are heading in the right direction,” he said. He echoed statements by officials that military operations cannot alone heal Iraq’s sectarian divisions and Iraq’s government must approve measures to foster reconciliation between Sunnis, Shi’ites and Kurds. “We understand that our recent tactical successes will only add up if Iraqis take advantage of them and ultimately the government of Iraq is a key to progress,” Odierno said. “We are setting the conditions in buying the government of Iraq time to improve their capacity in order to gradually and steadily empower the Iraqi government and not hand them too much, too quickly,” he said. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #2 Odierno's obviously doing a great job, but for the billionth time, can anyone here play this game? Body language conveying anything other than relentless determination directly undermines our mission and gets more Americans killed in the long run. At the same time, it is utterly irrelevant to the domestic political situation, where (as though it wasn't obvious from the start) the opposition and the pathetic weather-vanes of the GOP lack the guts to do anything dramatic on Iraq. Somehow the political geniuses all over DC incl. the White House cannot recognize the obvious fact that Americans are sensitive to perceptions of progress or utility in our efforts and sacrifice, and not hung up on dates and deadlines. I believe the DOD has done focus group work over the last few years that documents this and other common sense things - but apparently either that's a rumor or the results aren't shared with the WH. Sheesh. Show bloody, bared teeth and a slightly maniacal visage to the world until you get what you want. Then it's time for transparency about future plans. Talking points for Odierno (he can use them without a royalty fee): "As we've said before our future actions will be determined by results and conditions here on the ground. Our actions on increasing or decreasing troop levels will be conditions-based, the only important conditions being our progress in achieving our objectives. There's no timetable in a war, and in this war the only end-point will be the achievement of our objectives. The enemy, and anyone else, had better think accordingly." There - is that so hard? |
| Posted by: Verlaine 2007-08-18 12:07 |
| #1 Not much reading between the lines necessary to see the surge is suceeding, at least in the Khaleej Times. It is a Reuters piece, however, so I'll watch the Washington Post tomorrow - they'll probably pick it up! |
| Posted by: Bobby 2007-08-18 07:20 |