Obama: Iraq Pullout 'As Quickly As We Can' To Maintain Stability

[babylonsister]

Obama May Find Iraq Manageable as Bush Agrees to Pullout Plan

By Ken Fireman


Dec. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama will inherit several crises when he becomes president on Jan. 20. Curiously, Iraq may prove to be the least of them.

This hardly seemed possible when the long presidential campaign began in 2007. Then, the U.S. military presence in Iraq ranked at the top of voters’ concerns, and the debate over whether to end it on a timetable or hold on until sectarian violence cooled was a central issue.

The debate now is largely moot, because of steadily improving security conditions and the fact that outgoing President George W. Bush has already agreed to pull U.S. troops out of Iraqi cities by June and from the whole country within three years.

“That bridge has been crossed,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters on Dec. 2, the day after Obama announced his reappointment to head the Pentagon. “The new factor is that we have agreed to some deadlines that change the nature of the mission in considerable ways.”

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