Obama announces end of Iraq combat mission; President says ‘highest priority’ will be security of troops and civilians
February 27, 2009, Camp LeJeune, NC – President Barack Obama on Friday declared that the United States would end its bloody and costly combat mission in Iraq by late summer of 2010 — but a dramatic force reduction was not expected until after Iraq’s elections at the end of this year.
“Let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end,” he said in a speech at the Marine Corps base at Camp Lejeune, N.C. “As we carry out this drawdown, my highest priority will be the safety and security of our troops and civilians in Iraq.”
Obama went on to praise the troops and thank them for their service.
“Under tough circumstances, the men and women of the United States military have served with honor, and succeeded beyond any expectation,” he said.
Even with the end of the combat mission, which would come three months later than Obama pledged during his presidential campaign, a force numbering between 35,000 to 50,000 American forces will stay behind in non-combat roles, with the final troops not slated to leave until Dec. 31, 2011.
“Our enemies should be left with no doubt: This plan gives our military the forces and the flexibility they need to support our Iraqi partners, and to succeed,” the president said.
‘Cautiously optimistic’
His decision to leave a sizable force was welcomed by some congressional Republicans, including former presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, while some Democrats were concerned too many troops would remain in Iraq.
“I am cautiously optimistic that the plan as laid out by the president can lead to success,” McCain said Friday on the Senate floor.
Obama gave few details about the pace of the withdrawal, but administration sources said it will guided by the needs of Gen. Raymond Odierno, the top commander in Iraq. They said Odierno felt it was important to keep an adequate combat force in Iraq at least until national elections there this December.
One official said Odierno wants a “substantial force on the ground in Iraq to ensure that the elections come off.” Another official said Odierno wanted flexibility around the elections. “The president found that very compelling,” the official said.
Obama earlier telephoned Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, and former President George W. Bush to brief them on his announcement, the White House said.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told lawmakers in a briefing Thursday that ground commanders in Iraq believe the plan poses only a moderate risk to security, McCain said.
There were no assurances that the residual force would not be pulled into battle should Sunni Muslim insurgent holdouts or disaffected Shiite Muslims resume wide-scale fighting.
Depending on the number of forces left behind, the military will have withdrawn between 92,000 and 107,000 American fighting personnel from Iraq nearly 7 1/2 years after the United States invaded and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein.
According to an AP count as of Thursday, at least 4,251 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003. Total Iraqi deaths are unknown but number in the tens of thousands and are perhaps above 100,000.
Remaining troops’ threefold mission
Obama said the U.S. force that remains after the combat mission is closed out will have a threefold mission:
– To train, equip and advise Iraq forces;
– To offer force protection for both U.S. military and civilian operations that will continue in the country;
– To engage in targeted counterterrorism missions either alone or in conjunction with Iraqi troops.
Senior administration officials said the plan was drawn up after a month of consultations with Gates, Mullen, Odierno and the military service chiefs.
Obama had promised the faster drawdown pace of 16 months during his campaign but also said he would confer with military commanders on a responsible exit.
17,000 more troops for Afghanistan
On a parallel track, Obama has ordered the dispatch of 17,000 more American forces to Afghanistan, to fight resurgent Taliban insurgents. As U.S. troops leave Iraq, that would free even more forces for deployment in Afghanistan.
Obama and his national security team briefed congressional leaders on the Iraq plan Thursday evening. Before the meeting, Democratic congressional leaders — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — both questioned the need for residual forces as large as 50,000.
“I am happy to listen to the secretary of defense and the president,” Reid said. “But when they talk about 50,000, that’s a little higher number than I had anticipated.”
Some Republican lawmakers were skeptical for a different reason. They were concerned that troops might be pulled out too fast and security gains sacrificed.
“While it may have sounded good during the campaign, I do think it’s important that we listen to those commanders and our diplomats who are there to understand how fragile the situation is,” said House Republican leader John Boehner.
McCain supportive
But McCain, who disagreed with Obama on Iraq policy when they competed for the presidency last fall, welcomed Obama’s new plan.
“I think the plan is significantly different than the plan Obama had during the campaign,” said McCain, referring to Obama’s campaign pledge to pull combat troops out of Iraq within 16 months of taking office if possible.
An existing U.S.-Iraq agreement, negotiated under Bush, remains in force and calls for U.S. combat troops to withdraw from Baghdad and other cities by the end of June, with all American forces out of the country by the end of 2011.
Gates has said that whatever Obama decided would be “a way station” since all U.S. troops must be out of Iraq by the end of 2011 under that agreement with Iraq.
“The thinking all along had been that any force left after we stopped combat operations would be focused on the counterterrorism mission, on training, advising, assistance, and that sort of thing,” he has said.
With Obama planning to ramp up the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan and banking on using the Iraq troop reduction to help slash a ballooning $1.3 trillion deficit, Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that once the drawdown began it would be “a one-way movement.”
“The issue now is slow calendar-based versus fast-calendar based,” he said.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
