The US isn't leaving Iraq, it's rebranding the occupation

[Better Believe It]

The US isn't leaving Iraq, it's rebranding the occupation
Obama says withdrawal is on schedule, but renaming or outsourcing combat troops won't give Iraqis back their country
By Seumas Milne
August 4, 2010

For most people in Britain and the US, Iraq is already history. Afghanistan has long since taken the lion's share of media attention, as the death toll of Nato troops rises inexorably. Controversy about Iraq is now almost entirely focused on the original decision to invade: what's happening there in 2010 barely registers.

That will have been reinforced by Barack Obama's declaration this week that US combat troops are to be withdrawn from Iraq at the end of the month "as promised and on schedule". For much of the British and American press, this was the real thing: headlines hailed the "end" of the war and reported "US troops to leave Iraq".

Nothing could be further from the truth. The US isn't withdrawing from Iraq at all – it's rebranding the occupation. Just as George Bush's war on terror was retitled "overseas contingency operations" when Obama became president, US "combat operations" will be rebadged from next month as "stability operations".

But as Major General Stephen Lanza, the US military spokesman in Iraq, told the New York Times: "In practical terms, nothing will change". After this month's withdrawal, there will still be 50,000 US troops in 94 military bases, "advising" and training the Iraqi army, "providing security" and carrying out "counter-terrorism" missions. In US military speak, that covers pretty well everything they might want to do.

What is abundantly clear is that the US, whose embassy in Baghdad is now the size of Vatican City, has no intention of letting go of Iraq any time soon. One reason for that can be found in the dozen 20-year contracts to run Iraq's biggest oil fields that were handed out last year to foreign companies, including three of the Anglo-American oil majors that exploited Iraqi oil under British control before 1958.

The Iraq war has been a historic political and strategic failure for the US. It was unable to impose a military solution, let alone turn the country into a beacon of western values or regional policeman. But by playing the sectarian and ethnic cards, it also prevented the emergence of a national resistance movement and a humiliating Vietnam-style pullout. The signs are it wants to create a new form of outsourced semi-colonial regime to maintain its grip on the country and region. The struggle to regain Iraq's independence has only just begun.

Read the full article at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/aug/04/us-iraq-rebranding-occupation

[saigon68]

1. Wow only 50,000 "Nation Builders" left (forever)

[another saigon]

17. that is not even counting

these guys...

[saigon68]

61. Ah yes---- the THUGS of Blackwater

[Nye Bevan]

2. It's not an "occupation" if US troops are staying at the Iraqis' request.

If that's an "occupation" then the US is still "occupying" Germany.

[Better Believe It]

3. Are they staying at the request of the Iraqi regime or the Iraqi people?

Comparing Germany to Iraq is not a very good analogy.

[Nye Bevan]

4. Iraq has an elected government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_legislative_election,_2010

[Better Believe It]

5. The results of the election are still in dispute and has not been settled.

And it's now illegal for Iraqi workers to organize labor unions. The old Sadam dictatorship laws making labor unions illegal have been reinstituted.

You call such a government a democracy?

[Nye Bevan]

7. It's not perfect but it's not Burma or Zimbabwe.

The transition from dictatorship to democracy does tend to be a little messy. But if the current Iraqi administration feels that keeping some US troops in their country is beneficial I don't really have a problem with that.

[MattSh]

62. WOW! You think democracy is on the agenda??? n/t

[another saigon]

6. oh really?

Iraq's Political Impasse: Who Needs a Government?



It's not much of a surprise that Iraq's dysfunctional political class still has yet to form a government five months after its election. More of a surprise is that the country hasn't fallen apart as a result of the political stalemate. After all, the five months of foot-dragging by Iraq's politicians after the previous election in 2005 was the prelude to civil war. This time, while Iraq remains a dangerous place and al-Qaeda-inspired militants are active in several cities, levels of violence have remained fairly stable — and far below their 2007 zenith. The fact that the country has held together without a government is even more remarkable considering that the U.S. is keeping to its timeline for troop withdrawals despite the political uncertainty. There will be just 50,000 U.S. troops in Iraq by August, down from more than 165,000 in 2007.

It remains to be seen whether or not the stable security situation will persist as the U.S. presence diminishes. Much of the debate in policy circles has focused on the readiness of Iraq's military to stand on its own. American officials tout the improved efficacy of Iraqi security forces, and their ability to plan and stage combat operations without U.S. assistance. Critics point out that while the White House has declared that all U.S. combat troops will be gone by August, American forces still run combat operations in dangerous cities such as Mosul, though the military calls them "stability" operations, and will probably continue to do so for some time. (See a timeline of the war in Iraq.)

But the debate about Iraq's military capacity may be beside the point. A major reason for the country's stability despite the political limbo is that the political class still sees more to be gained from playing the democratic political game than by returning to the streets. For now, they may have little choice: Iraq's political leadership, many of whom had lived in exile in the Saddam Hussein era, achieved their current positions on the basis of the democratic elections staged by the U.S. after it toppled the dictatorship. As a result, they have to at least appear to respect the wishes of the voters, and Iraq's voters voted overwhelmingly for secular, multi-sectarian coalitions that ran on platforms committed to national unity and the rule of law.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2006256,00.html#ixzz0vjuQDS1B

[Joe Chi Minh]

36. So does the US.

[indepat]

26. Like the History Channel's comparing Saddam's threat to Hitler's is beyond ludicrousness of the

highest magnitude? :shrug:

[Dr.Phool]

18. !

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:


Their request?

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[Joe Chi Minh]

33. Nye would have afit with his leg up if he saw you taking his name in vain.

You sound like a regular imperialist. No ifs or buts.

[ThomThom]

48. as long as the government was installed by us and maintains

it's position from our control of the country to me that is an occupation with a "puppet" government
fake elections with fear and intimidation don't really count, in my book

[burnsei sensei]

65. It is an occupation all the same.

How does it feel to be an imperialist?

[evirus]

8. queue sensationalist BS

transitioning from the only measure of state power to a reserve measure of state power is not the same thing as an occupation force. you're making liberals look bad when you start this nonsense.

[msongs]

9. its an occupation force and the statement about end of combat etc is a lie nt

[evirus]

10. any evidence of that is what exactly?

you can't just claim something is a lie because you find an opponent's position agreeable.

[pocoloco]

15. Jesus fucking Christ!!

""providing security" and carrying out "counter-terrorism" missions."

Can't you fucking read??

[ThomWV]

22. +1

[another saigon]

27. do you need to have the article explained to you?

<snip>

Meanwhile, the US government isn't just rebranding the occupation, it's also privatising it. There are around 100,000 private contractors working for the occupying forces, of whom more than 11,000 are armed mercenaries, mostly "third country nationals", typically from the developing world. One Peruvian and two Ugandan security contractors were killed in a rocket attack on the Green Zone only a fortnight ago.

The US now wants to expand their numbers sharply in what Jeremy Scahill, who helped expose the role of the notorious US security firm Blackwater, calls the "coming surge" of contractors in Iraq. Hillary Clinton wants to increase the number of military contractors working for the state department alone from 2,700 to 7,000, to be based in five "enduring presence posts" across Iraq.

The advantage of an outsourced occupation is clearly that someone other than US soldiers can do the dying to maintain control of Iraq. It also helps get round the commitment, made just before Bush left office, to pull all American troops out by the end of 2011. The other getout, widely expected on all sides, is a new Iraqi request for US troops to stay on – just as soon as a suitable government can be stitched together to make it.

What is abundantly clear is that the US, whose embassy in Baghdad is now the size of Vatican City, has no intention of letting go of Iraq any time soon. One reason for that can be found in the dozen 20-year contracts to run Iraq's biggest oil fields that were handed out last year to foreign companies, including three of the Anglo-American oil majors that exploited Iraqi oil under British control before 1958.

The dubious legality of these deals has held back some US companies, but as Greg Muttitt, author of a forthcoming book on the subject, argues, the prize for the US is bigger than the contracts themselves, which put 60% of Iraq's reserves under long-term foreign corporate control. If output can be boosted as sharply as planned, the global oil price could be slashed and the grip of recalcitrant Opec states broken.

The horrific cost of the war to the Iraqi people, on the other hand, and the continuing fear and misery of daily life make a mockery of claims that the US surge of 2007 "worked" and that Iraq has come good after all.

[Better Believe It]

11. So the banning of labor unions is also "sensationalist" bull shit?

[evirus]

12. how is that anything other than a red harring?

are we talking about labor unions or the military's involvement with iraq?

[msongs]

13. putting non violent teens in shackles in court is ok in your view as well. wonderful nt

[Better Believe It]

24. What's a red harring?

[d_b]

29. busted

[Better Believe It]

31. Did you mean a "red harangue" as in a long passionate leftist pinko speech?

Just askin.

:)

[Joe Chi Minh]

34. Which do you think the people would have preferred: Socialism under

Saddam, or the neocons' using Iraq for their free market experiment, privatising everything?

No don't bother to answer that. I know what you'll say.

[Better Believe It]

37. Sadam was a socialist? That's news to socialists!

Is that why he executed radicals and socialists?

[Joe Chi Minh]

43. Much of his regime seems to have been socialist. Ever heard of Stalin. To

the best of my knowledge, Communism, is sometimes referred to as Socialism. And certainly it has a more valid claim to it than so-called National Socialism. But fancy your not knowing that about his regime. Do you only take in the MSM's propaganda?

Of course his kind of socialism (evidently, with a small 's') was also a particularly maniacal despotism. Capisce? I'm sure any dictator would savagely put down any political movement that he believed theatened his power, even if it used the same political claim/cover/pretext. Probably, particularly in such cases. Stalin never ceased purging those he felt threated his power.

Sarkozy and Merkel are socialists compared to Obama and most Democratic politicians - or NuLab(c) in the UK.

[Better Believe It]

50. Can you name any socialist organizations in the United States that supported Sadam's regime?

Just because someone calls him/herself a socialist, doesn't make it so.

And most Marxists believe that Joseph Stalin betrayed the ideals of the Russian Revolution and that he led a counter-revolution which overthrew the leaders, political structure and program of the early "communist" government in the Soviet Union.

[Joe Chi Minh]

70. What is it with you two? Read these sites linked below:

And don't come back to argue the toss with me. The world and his wife know Communism was hijacked by Stalin, Ceausescu and a host of others. It goes with the secularism. As did Saddam's regime, much to the delight of the US. I was referring to the reality of the ordinary peoples' basic needs being provided for.

Incidentally, you can be quite sure of one thing: eventually, the basic needs for the survival of the poorer folk were nevertheless provided for even under Stalin - which cannot be said of the US, today. Or the UK - as long as people, male and female, young and old, are sleeping in shop doorways or 'tented cities'.

Of course, being Stalin, he'd effectively murdered millions and millions of them with his collectivisation madness. Another failure of common-sense intrinsic to secularism. Until Putin got a grip of the billionnaire plunderers of the country, many yearned for a return of Stalin's day. So what the blazes Stalin has to do with the price of fish and chips defies me!


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba'ath_Party

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_socialism

[Better Believe It]

73. You're contradicting yourself.

"the basic needs for the survival of the poorer folk were nevertheless provided for even under Stalin .... Of course, being Stalin, he'd effectively murdered millions and millions of them with his collectivisation madness."

Thus millions of poor peasants were provided for just moments before they died in force collectivisation schemes! Thanks Comrade Joe .... for nothin!

[Joe Chi Minh]

74. On the contrary. Again, it's that literacy problem you have. Note in

the second paragraph, the word, 'eventually', and in the third, the abbreviated pluperfect, "I'd". Back to the drawing-board, yet again.

Uncle Joe.

Note that there is no causal connection between killing millions of people and eventually providing for the basic needs of the survivors and their families. Quite the contrary.

[Joe Chi Minh]

71. That was the point I was making. A nominally Communist state may and usually, in reality,

becomes, a dictatorship or oligarchy. It will still retain considerable public infrastrucure.

[burnsei sensei]

66. Communism and socialism are not to be confounded.

nt

[Joe Chi Minh]

72. Socialism was hijacked by secularists, just as Communism was, by

individualisms who saw it as an opportunity to get a leg up, themselves. Their idealism is a front in almost all cases.

Nevertheless, it is better that vice should pay tribute to virtue, if it means a brake is put on the polarisation of the country's wealth which capitalist will alway work towards, deploying even greater duplicity.

[grantcart]

75. Well we are only there to protect the US Oil companies new contracts

Oh in the open bidding the US Oil Companies didn't get any contracts!!

[piratefish08]

14. New Coke

[raouldukelives]

16. It's almost like it was never about liberating people

And all about oil wells. Almost. Of course we know it was for international peace and the promotion of democracy.

[glitch]

19. It was just about looting, our dollars, their oil. The people are collateral nuisances.

Us and them, although they caught the brunt of the brutality.

[burnsei sensei]

67. Amen. We must free the people from their oil.

It's such a great burden to them.

[Dr.Phool]

20. Not to forget that we had to comply with Osama's demands to vacate Saudi Arabia.

So we invade and occupy Iraq. Build permanent imperial military bases there, and Gee, Whiz, Bang.

Mission Accomplished!

[Joe Chi Minh]

35. I saw a brief but very funny cartoon the other day. I just wish I could

find it.

An old man began digging a hole in the sand, when suddenly oil spurted up. Before you could say Jack Robinnson, an American tank drew up on his left and a gun-toting soldier appeared on his right! To bring democracy, of course. Had you fooled there!

[david13]

21. Hey Bill, I remember Vietnam. The same old bombs and bullets,

all the dead soldiers and civilians, but kinder and gentler words to describe it all.
Thats the american way.
dc

[ProSense]

23. "After this month's withdrawal, there will still be 50,000 US troops in 94 military bases"

Down from 144,000 U.S. troops and 357 bases.

[seafan]

25. Gareth Porter reported the same. "Remissioning" was the Petraeus plan for Iraq since late 2008.

From yesterday's UK Guardian:

The US isn't leaving Iraq, it's rebranding the occupation, by Seumas Milne, August 4, 2010

.....

Meanwhile, the US government isn't just rebranding the occupation, it's also privatising it. There are around 100,000 private contractors working for the occupying forces, of whom more than 11,000 are armed mercenaries, mostly "third country nationals", typically from the developing world. One Peruvian and two Ugandan security contractors were killed in a rocket attack on the Green Zone only a fortnight ago.

The US now wants to expand their numbers sharply in what Jeremy Scahill, who helped expose the role of the notorious US security firm Blackwater, calls the "coming surge" of contractors in Iraq. Hillary Clinton wants to increase the number of military contractors working for the state department alone from 2,700 to 7,000, to be based in five "enduring presence posts" across Iraq.

The advantage of an outsourced occupation is clearly that someone other than US soldiers can do the dying to maintain control of Iraq. It also helps get round the commitment, made just before Bush left office, to pull all American troops out by the end of 2011. The other getout, widely expected on all sides, is a new Iraqi request for US troops to stay on – just as soon as a suitable government can be stitched together to make it.

What is abundantly clear is that the US, whose embassy in Baghdad is now the size of Vatican City, has no intention of letting go of Iraq any time soon. One reason for that can be found in the dozen 20-year contracts to run Iraq's biggest oil fields that were handed out last year to foreign companies, including three of the Anglo-American oil majors that exploited Iraqi oil under British control before 1958.

The dubious legality of these deals has held back some US companies, but as Greg Muttitt, author of a forthcoming book on the subject, argues, the prize for the US is bigger than the contracts themselves, which put 60% of Iraq's reserves under long-term foreign corporate control. If output can be boosted as sharply as planned, the global oil price could be slashed and the grip of recalcitrant Opec states broken.

The horrific cost of the war to the Iraqi people, on the other hand, and the continuing fear and misery of daily life make a mockery of claims that the US surge of 2007 "worked" and that Iraq has come good after all.

.....

Gareth Porter, investigative historian and journalist specializing in US national security policy, has been reporting many details about this over the past 18 months.



Obama drops pledge on Iraq

By Gareth Porter
Asia Times

August 5, 2010

WASHINGTON - Seventeen months after President Barack Obama pledged to withdraw all combat brigades from Iraq by September 1, 2010, he quietly abandoned that pledge on Monday, admitting implicitly that such combat brigades would remain until the end of 2011.
Obama declared in a speech to disabled US veterans in Atlanta that "America's combat mission in Iraq" would end by the end of August, to be replaced by a mission of "supporting and training Iraqi security forces".

That statement was in line with the pledge he had made on February 27, 2009, when he said, "Let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end."
In the sentence preceding that pledge, however, he had said, "I have chosen a timeline that will remove our combat brigades over the next 18 months." Obama said nothing in his speech on Monday about withdrawing "combat brigades" or "combat troops" from Iraq until the end of 2011.

Even the concept of "ending the US combat mission" may be highly misleading, much like the concept of "withdrawing US combat brigades" was in 2009.
Under the administration's definition of the concept, combat operations will continue after August 2010, but will be defined as the secondary role of US forces in Iraq. The primary role will be to "advise and assist" Iraqi forces.

An official who spoke with Inter Press Service (IPS) on condition that his statements would be attributed to a "senior administration official" acknowledged that the 50,000 US troops remaining in Iraq beyond the deadline would have the same combat capabilities as the combat brigades that have been withdrawn.
The official also acknowledged that the troops would engage in some combat but suggested that the combat would be "mostly" for defensive purposes. That language implied that there might be circumstances in which US forces would carry out offensive operations as well.

IPS has learned, in fact, that the question of what kind of combat US troops
might become involved in depends in part on the Iraqi government, which will still be able to request offensive military actions by US troops if it feels it necessary.

Obama's jettisoning of one of his key campaign promises and of a high-profile pledge early in his administration without explicit acknowledgement highlights the way in which language on national security policy can be manipulated for political benefit with the acquiescence of the news media.

.....

Porter further explains Gates' and Petraeus' roles in pressuring the new Obama Administration to maintain ongoing presence in Iraq:

Only a few days after the Obama speech (February 27, 2009), Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was more forthright about the policy. In an appearance on Meet the Press on March 1, 2009, Gates said the "transition force" remaining after August 31, 2010, would have "a very different kind of mission", and that the units remaining in Iraq "will be characterized differently".

"They will be called advisory and assistance brigades," said Gates. "They won't be called combat brigades."

But "advisory and assistance brigades" were configured with the same combat capabilities as the "combat brigade teams" which had been the basic US military unit of combat organization for six years, as IPS reported in March 2009.
Gates was thus signaling that the military solution to the problem of Obama's combat troop withdrawal pledge had been accepted by the White House.

That plan had been developed in late 2008 by General David Petraeus, the Central Command chief, and General Ray Odierno, the top commander in Iraq, who were determined to get Obama to abandon his pledge to withdraw all US combat brigades from Iraq within 16 months of taking office.

They came up with the idea of "remissioning" - sticking a non-combat label on the combat brigade teams - as a way for Obama to appear to be delivering on his campaign pledge while actually abandoning it.

The "remissioning" scheme was then presented to Obama by Gates and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen in Chicago on December 15, 2008, according a report in the New York Times three days later.
It was hardly a secret that the Obama administration was using the "remissioning" ploy to get around the political problem created by his acceding to military demands to maintain combat troops in Iraq for nearly three more years.

.....

From early 2009:


US-IRAQ: Generals Seek to Reverse Obama Withdrawal Decision

By Gareth Porter
February 2, 2009

WASHINGTON, Feb 2 (IPS) - CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus, supported by Defence Secretary Robert Gates, tried to convince President Barack Obama that he had to back down from his campaign pledge to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months at an Oval Office meeting Jan. 21.

But Obama informed Gates, Petraeus and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen that he wasn't convinced and that he wanted Gates and the military leaders to come back quickly with a detailed 16-month plan, according to two sources who have talked with participants in the meeting.

Obama's decision to override Petraeus's recommendation has not ended the conflict between the president and senior military officers over troop withdrawal, however. There are indications that Petraeus and his allies in the military and the Pentagon, including Gen. Ray Odierno, now the top commander in Iraq, have already begun to try to pressure Obama to change his withdrawal policy.

A network of senior military officers is also reported to be preparing to support Petraeus and Odierno by mobilising public opinion against Obama's decision.

Petraeus was visibly unhappy when he left the Oval Office, according to one of the sources. A White House staffer present at the meeting was quoted by the source as saying, "Petraeus made the mistake of thinking he was still dealing with George Bush instead of with Barack Obama."

Petraeus, Gates and Odierno had hoped to sell Obama on a plan that they formulated in the final months of the Bush administration that aimed at getting around a key provision of the U.S.-Iraqi withdrawal agreement signed envisioned re-categorising large numbers of combat troops as support troops. That subterfuge was by the United States last November while ostensibly allowing Obama to deliver on his campaign promise.

.....

From this thread: Seymour Hersh: Army is “in a war against the White House — and they feel they have Obama boxed in.”, October 19, 2009



Hersh and Porter continually hit the mark.




The Guardian piece concludes:

.....

Even without the farce of the March elections, the banning and killing of candidates and activists and subsequent political breakdown, to claim – as the Times did today – that "Iraq is a democracy" is grotesque. The Green Zone administration would collapse in short order without the protection of US troops and security contractors. No wonder the speculation among Iraqis and some US officials is of an eventual military takeover.

The Iraq war has been a historic political and strategic failure for the US. It was unable to impose a military solution, let alone turn the country into a beacon of western values or regional policeman. But by playing the sectarian and ethnic cards, it also prevented the emergence of a national resistance movement and a humiliating Vietnam-style pullout. The signs are it wants to create a new form of outsourced semi-colonial regime to maintain its grip on the country and region. The struggle to regain Iraq's independence has only just begun.

While in America, the Bush curse endures.

[Better Believe It]

28. Thank you. CASE CLOSED!

[Junkdrawer]

30. Just posted Gareth Porter's interview on The Real News....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x492250

[another saigon]

32. thank you!

finally, some reality based reporting!

[G_j]

38. +1000

[maryf]

44. a rose by any other name...

"While in America, the Bush curse endures." under a new brand...

[TBF]

39. The oil fields were the deal all along -

well that and Bush's personal vendetta. This is no surprise...

[maryf]

53. And we'll be there as long as the oil is flowing

and needs our "protection" :hi:

[grantcart]

76. Right except US companies didn't win any contracts undermining that whole meme.

[scheming daemons]

40. We still have 50K troops in Germany. Is that an "occupation"? Is WWII not over?

[TBF]

68. Thank you for bringing that up - they should come home too.

nt

[undeterred]

41. Our military has become our national religion.

[maryf]

42. K&R

keep this story alive, something has to cure the madness...thanks!! :yourock:

[bvar22]

45. Obama just waves his Magic Wand,

and **POOF***....
50,000 Combat Troops change into 50,000 Non-Combat Troops.

THAT is some serious Magic Wand that people here deny exists!!!

[FiveGoodMen]

46. Change you can see right through

[maryf]

55. Hope that is there one minute and gone the next!!! hocus pocus...

[TBF]

69. Well that's because we're fuckin' retards who don't understand chess.

:eyes:

nt

[johnnie]

47. Obama's plan

"A Responsible, Phased Withdrawal

Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. Immediately upon taking office, Obama will give his Secretary of Defense and military commanders a new mission in Iraq: ending the war. The removal of our troops will be responsible and phased, directed by military commanders on the ground and done in consultation with the Iraqi government. Military experts believe we can safely redeploy combat brigades from Iraq at a pace of 1 to 2 brigades a month that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 – more than 7 years after the war began.

Under the Obama-Biden plan, a residual force will remain in Iraq and in the region to conduct targeted counter-terrorism missions against al Qaeda in Iraq and to protect American diplomatic and civilian personnel. They will not build permanent bases in Iraq, but will continue efforts to train and support the Iraqi security forces as long as Iraqi leaders move toward political reconciliation and away from sectarianism."

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/iraq/index_campaign.php

[Radical Activist]

59. It looks like he's doing exactly what he promised to do.

That doesn't mean it's all a good thing but he's keeping his promises. And we know the howling that would happen on DU if he didn't.

[Poll_Blind]

49. "...the US, whose embassy in Baghdad is now the size of Vatican City, has no intention of letting go

Word. K&R.

PB

[amborin]

51. ny times reported this a month or so ago, interviewed top commanders, who said it's just semantics

[amborin]

52. ny times: 2 months ago: "an exercise in semantics" US not really leaving

http://upload.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=8682504&mesg_id=8682504

[maryf]

54. yep not just a military campaign but a marketing one...

thanks! :)

[tomp]

56. who, i would like to know, thought otherwise? nt

[Radical Activist]

57. McCain was probably right that we'll be in Iraq for 50 years or more.

We won't be at war that long, but we'll be in the country.

[sofa king]

58. Yes, we're still there. But now we won't fight back.

We'll just wave and toss out Hershey bars.

[Radical Activist]

60. How great is that?

Sofa King great!

I couldn't help it.

[dipsydoodle]

63. The US Administration

treating all and sundry as mugs.

[burnsei sensei]

64. Well what do you expect?

We have a Third Way president who adopts liberal rhetoric to gain support for conservative policies.
The Third Way isn't my way.