NYP:
President Barack Obama will announce Friday that the US will completely withdraw its troops from Iraq by the end of 2011, FOX News Channel reported.
Obama is expected to make the announcement at a 12:45 p.m. White House press briefing.
Obama held a video conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki earlier Friday.
“Today the president will announce that we will fulfill our commitment and complete the drawdown of US troops from Iraq by the end of the year,” a White House official said, according to FOX. “This will allow us to say definitively that the Iraq war is over, and that the partnership between the US and Iraq will be a normal one between two sovereign nations.”
The official said Obama and Maliki “strongly agreed that this is the best way forward for both countries.”
The announcement comes after the Pentagon denied a report over the weekend that the US had decided to remove nearly all its forces from Iraq by the end of the year.
“Suggestions that a final decision has been reached about our training relationship with the Iraqi government are wrong,” Pentagon press secretary George Little said Saturday. “The discussions are ongoing.”
A media report citing an anonymous White House official had said all US forces would leave Iraq except for about 160 troops attached to the US Embassy.
In August, Obama pledged during his economic bus tour of the Midwest that the US “will be getting our troops out of Iraq by the end of this year.”
Well, they never should have been there to begin with. Under our new foreign policy, deposing dictators who oppress there people is only a US interest if, ironically, the US has no real discernible strategic interest in doing so.
So. Saddle up, boys. It’s off to Africa next!
Pottery Barn Rule? Never heard of it.
Libyan resistance leader quits
What could go wrong?
We’ve killed KaDaffy so our mission in … Iraq is complete? Somebody whack the King of Lichtenstein so we can get our troops out of Korea.
he must have a deal with Iran and Russia worked out to where they wait til after the election to get jiggy with Iraq’s ass
Don’t give O any ideas, motionview. Next he’ll claim we need to off Queen Liz to withdraw from Afghanistan.
Our culture is too corrupt anymore to engage in nation-building, because it takes more than one election cycle to finish the task.
Time to take the Marshal Plan paradigm off the table until we’re a better nation than we are now.
I am all for reducing the presence in Iraq (if less is needed now), but not to make a political point and possibly have it blow up again.
We need to win in 2012.
Or perhaps he’s just inept.
All foreign powers except for the US, Pablo.
We’re in the “create chaos” business now.
“Or perhaps he’s just inept”
Or a
ManchurianIranian candidate.How bad are his internals looking that he has to have his Madison Avenue victory parade now instead of next year?
I am sure the boasting that “he kept his promise!!1!1” will be so loud, no on will be able to hear the rejoinder – “but this was all pursuant to the agreement that BOOOOOSSH made with the Iraqis years ago…”
Oh, and the sound of cash registers ringing? That is just MPRI anticipating the fees they will get to train Iraqis oustide of Iraq…
er “outside” Iraq.
I really do have “resist we much” typing disorder.
LTC, I’d like to think Bush meant to keep an American base in Iraq for some time after now, don’t you think?
Like we did in the Philippines, Germany, Japan, Britain…
I would have hoped we would at least keep, say, Balad AFB and 20-30 thousand Americans there.
Oh well, maybe our national interests lie further south…Uganda I guess.
Were I running as a Republican candidate, I think my statement would be something like this, knowing how the media likes to spin and all: “I’m happy the war is over, and Bush’s vision has been vindicated. We leave a stable Iraq behind, and they have determined they no longer need our support. I wish them well, and hope they can be a beacon to others in the region.”
I don’t think anything like that’s what the current slate has been saying…
So, let’s see: George Bush saw to it that 25 million Iraqis were liberated from a brutal tyranny . . . and now Barack Obama has seen to it that 25 million Iraqis stand a good chance of falling backward into a new oppressive regime.
And the Iraqis will look back in ten years and think, wow, that Barack Obama sure was an international relations genius?
Lee, I don’t suppose there’s much we can do from Iraq regionally that we can’t do from Kuwait as far as air power goes.
LTC John, Obama promised he’d have our troops out of Iraq in 16 months. That would have been May 2010. Now we’re on track, as per the BOOOOSH!!! SOFA and the failed Obama negotiations to renege on that promise to get it done after 35 months. I blame Gitmo.
So, does this mean that America’s war in Germany is ongoing since we’ve still got troops there? How about Japan?
Well, the Turks aren’t waiting to invade the Kurdish areas in northern Iraq.
“No blood for yellowcake!”
Of course, we won’t start hearing that until January 21, 2013.