Iraq war over, US troops coming home, Obama says

BEN FELLER

AP White House Correspondent

WASHINGTON — America’s long and deeply unpop­u­lar war in Iraq will be over by year’s end and all U.S. troops “will def­i­nitely be home for the hol­i­days,” Pres­i­dent Barack Obama declared Friday.

Stretch­ing more than eight years, the war cost the United States heav­ily: More than 4,400 mem­bers of the mil­i­tary have been killed, and more than 32,000 have been wounded.

The final exit date was sealed after months of inten­sive talks between Wash­ing­ton and Bagh­dad failed to reach agree­ment on con­di­tions for leav­ing sev­eral thou­sand U.S. troops in Iraq as a train­ing force. The U.S. also had been inter­ested in keep­ing a small force to help the Iraqis deal with pos­si­ble Iran­ian meddling.

The task now is to speed the pull­out of the remain­ing U.S. forces, nearly 40,000 in number.

Stay­ing behind in Iraq, where bomb­ings and other vio­lence still occur, will be some 150–200 U.S. mil­i­tary troops as part of embassy secu­rity, the defense attachés office and the office of secu­rity coop­er­a­tion. That’s com­mon prac­tice but still a dan­ger to Amer­i­can forces.

Obama, an oppo­nent of the war since before he took office, nev­er­the­less praised the efforts of U.S. troops in Iraq. He said Amer­i­can sol­diers would leave “with their heads held high, proud of their success.”

For Obama, Friday’s announce­ment capped a remark­able two days of national secu­rity suc­cesses, though there’s no indi­ca­tion how much they will mat­ter to re-election vot­ers more con­cerned with eco­nomic woes at home.

On Thurs­day, the pres­i­dent her­alded the death of Libyan dic­ta­tor Moam­mar Gad­hafi and a day later the end to one of the most divi­sive con­flicts in U.S. history.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost the U.S. more than $1.3 trillion.

Obama did not declare victory.

He did speak, though, about the string of wins on his watch — none big­ger than the killing of Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader behind the Sept. 11, 2001 ter­ror­ist attacks. The Afghanistan war still rages, but there, too, Obama has moved to end the com­bat mis­sion by the end of 2014.

This was, in essence, the third time Obama had pro­nounced an end to the war, allow­ing him to remind the nation he had opposed it all along — a stance that helped his White House bid in 2008.

Shortly after tak­ing office, Obama declared in Feb­ru­ary 2009 that the com­bat mis­sion in Iraq would end by Aug. 31, 2010. And when that mile­stone arrived, he said it was “time to turn the page” on Iraq and put the focus back on build­ing up the United States. On Fri­day, he said: “After nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over.”

The U.S.-led inva­sion of Iraq was launched in March of 2003 after reports, later dis­cred­ited, that the coun­try was devel­op­ing weapons of mass destruc­tion. By early April, Amer­i­can Marines were help­ing Iraqis pull down a statue of Sad­dam Hus­sein in Bagh­dad. Sad­dam was cap­tured in Decem­ber of that year and exe­cuted in 2006, but the war dragged on.

The end­ing was set in motion before Obama took office. In 2008, Pres­i­dent George W. Bush approved a deal call­ing for all U.S. forces to with­draw by Dec. 31, 2011.

At issue was whether that deal would be rene­go­ti­ated to keep thou­sands of U.S. forces in Iraq. The Obama admin­is­tra­tion and Iraqi gov­ern­ment spent months debat­ing whether the United States would keep troops to main­tain a train­ing force, to pro­vide added sta­bil­ity in a coun­try where spec­tac­u­lar attacks still occur, and to serve as a hedge against Iran.

Through­out the talks, Iraqi lead­ers refused to give U.S. troops immu­nity from pros­e­cu­tion in Iraqi courts, and the Amer­i­cans refused to stay with­out that guarantee.

Obama never men­tioned that issue on Friday.

He said that after speak­ing with Iraqi Prime Min­is­ter Nouri al-Maliki, both were in agree­ment on how to move for­ward. Obama said the two nations will now deal with each other in the nor­mal fash­ion of sov­er­eign coun­tries and will keep open the idea of how the United States might help train and equip Iraqi forces.

“Over the next two months, our troops in Iraq, tens of thou­sands of them, will pack up their gear and board con­voys for the jour­ney home,” Obama said. “The last Amer­i­can sol­dier will cross the bor­der out of Iraq with their heads held high, proud of their suc­cess, and know­ing the Amer­i­can peo­ple stand united in our sup­port for our troops.”

The Asso­ci­ated Press first reported last week that the United States would not keep troops in Iraq past the year-end with­drawal dead­line, except for some sol­diers attached to the U.S. Embassy.

“Both coun­tries achieved their goals,” said Iraqi gov­ern­ment spokesman, Ali al-Moussawi. “Iraq wanted full sov­er­eignty while the United States wanted its sol­diers back home, and both goals are achieved.”

In addi­tion to remain­ing mil­i­tary forces, Denis McDo­nough, White House deputy national secu­rity adviser, said the U.S. will have 4,000 to 5,000 con­trac­tors to pro­vide secu­rity for Amer­i­can diplomats.

Defense Sec­re­tary Leon Panetta said the United States will now “turn our full atten­tion to pur­su­ing a long-term strate­gic part­ner­ship with Iraq based on mutual inter­ests and mutual respect.” He said the goal is to estab­lish a rela­tion­ship with Iraq sim­i­lar to other coun­tries in the region.

“Iraq is a sov­er­eign nation that must deter­mine how to secure its own future,” Panetta said.

Obama’s announce­ment was applauded by con­gres­sional Democ­rats, includ­ing Sen­ate Major­ity Leader Harry Reid, who called it “the right deci­sion at the right time.”

Repub­li­cans were more skep­ti­cal. Many praised the gains made in Iraq and gave Obama at least par­tial credit but expressed con­cern that get­ting troops out would bring that progress into question.

Sen. Lind­sey Gra­ham, R-S.C., said he feared that “all we have worked for, fought for and sac­ri­ficed for is very much in jeop­ardy by today’s announce­ment. I hope I am wrong and the pres­i­dent is right, but I fear this deci­sion has set in motion events that will come back to haunt our country.”

GOP pres­i­den­tial hope­ful Mitt Rom­ney accused Obama of an “aston­ish­ing fail­ure” to secure an orderly tran­si­tion in Iraq, and said, “The unavoid­able ques­tion is whether this deci­sion is the result of a naked polit­i­cal cal­cu­la­tion or sim­ply sheer inep­ti­tude in nego­ti­a­tions with the Iraqi government.”

The U.S. said repeat­edly this year it would enter­tain an offer from the Iraqis to have a small force stay behind, and the Iraqis said they would like Amer­i­can mil­i­tary help. But as the year wore on and the num­ber of Amer­i­can troops that Wash­ing­ton was sug­gest­ing could stay behind dropped, it became increas­ingly clear that a U.S. troop pres­ence was not a sure thing.

The issue of legal pro­tec­tion for the Amer­i­cans was the deal-breaker.

But admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials said they feel con­fi­dent that Iraqi secu­rity forces are well pre­pared to take the lead in their country.

McDo­nough said that one assess­ment after another of the pre­pared­ness of Iraqi forces con­cluded that “these guys are ready; these guys are capa­ble; these guys are proven; impor­tantly, they’re proven because they’ve been tested in a lot of the kinds of threats that they’re going to see going forward.”

The pres­i­dent used the war state­ment to once again turn atten­tion back to the econ­omy, the domes­tic con­cern that is expected to deter­mine whether he wins re-election.

“After a decade of war,” he said, “the nation that we need to build and the nation that we will build is our own.”

Posted by AP News on Oct 21 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.