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War, War, War See other War, War, War Articles Title: Gates Says `Modest Acceleration' in U.S. Troop Pullout From Iraq Possible July 29 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. is considering speeding up its withdrawal of troops from Iraq because the transition to local control is going better than expected, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said. “I think there is at least some chance of a modest acceleration because of the way General Odierno sees things going,” Gates told reporters traveling with him today as he left Iraq. General Ray Odierno is the top U.S. commander in Iraq. The faster pullback might occur before general elections in January, Gates said as he finished a trip to review military progress in Iraq since U.S. forces pulled back from urban areas on June 30. President Barack Obama is counting on stability to allow for the withdrawal of 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq by the end of 2011 so he can devote more resources to Afghanistan. Gates said he’ll leave the decision on speeding up the withdrawal to Odierno. “Nothing is going to happen very soon, but he’s looking at all the possibilities, and he’s very encouraged by things so far,” Gates said. “It is an indicator of his view that things are going pretty well.” Gates said that an accelerated pullout would at most involve withdrawing an extra brigade from Iraq. The U.S. currently has 14 brigades there and planned to draw down to 12 by the end of the year. Assistance Brigades As the U.S. pulls out forces, its mission in Iraq is due to shift to one oriented toward a half dozen so-called advisory and assistance brigades. Gates visited a newly converted advisory brigade yesterday at Tallil Air Base, in southern Iraq. “I was very encouraged by the nature of the Iraqi and American cooperation and the degree to which they were working together,” Gates said. Throughout Iraq, “the whole thing has gone considerably better than our expectations before June 30.” Tension between Iraq’s Arabs and Kurds is one of the factors that could thwart an earlier withdrawal. Iraq has struggled to reach agreement on how to distribute oil revenue and where to draw internal boundaries as officials in Baghdad squabble with the semi-autonomous Kurdish authorities in the north. Iraq is the Middle East’s third-largest producer of crude. Iraqi Constitution Gates told Kurdish Regional Government President Massoud Barzani in Irbil today and central authorities in Baghdad yesterday that the two sides should settle their differences peacefully within the Iraqi constitution, said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell. Arab and Kurdish leaders shared the view that it was important to reach “sustainable compromises” while U.S. troops are still in place, Gates said. “We all spent too much blood and treasure to lose the gains that have been made,” Gates said. Gates, who met Barzani at his home and office compound in a residential area of Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish region, backs the role of a United Nations high-level task force on the disputed internal boundaries as a forum for reaching “a lasting compromise,” Morrell said. Gates came away from the meetings “optimistic” that both sides are willing to work toward a compromise “sooner rather than later,” he said. Negotiating Table “He noted that at every negotiating table, history has a seat,” Morrell said. “The challenge, he said, is to put history at the end of the table and think about the future rather than the past.” U.S. forces are concerned that the centrally controlled Iraqi Army, which is predominantly Arab but contains some Kurdish troops, might get into a dispute with separate Kurdish militia units known as peshmerga and controlled by the regional government, Odierno told reporters traveling with Gates. “Probably our number one driver of instability is Arab- Kurd tensions,” Odierno said. “We think that many of the insurgent groups are trying to exploit the Kurd-Arab tensions in the north.” In the oil-rich province of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, 3,200 Kurdish troops guard territory they say is theirs. Across an undemarcated frontier that U.S. military officials call the trigger line, 12,000 government Iraq forces, primarily Arabs, face off with the Kurds. Military Nanny U.S. troops in Kirkuk play the role of military nanny to keep the armed units apart and the U.S. has put advisers in Kurdish units and in the Iraqi security forces to ensure proper communication and coordination. On June 28, a convoy of Iraqi troops on their way to Mosul tried to cut cross the trigger line. Alarmed Kurdish residents called on their leaders to stop the procession and the peshmerga moved to block it while U.S. officers successfully appealed to the Iraqis to make a U-turn and head south, said Major Christopher Norrie, a U.S. operations officer in Kirkuk. Gates visited Iraq after stopping in Jordan, where he met with King Abdullah II and called for more countries in the region to aid in the transition by normalizing relations with Iraq. Earlier on his trip he visited Israel where he said the U.S. plan to engage Iran over its nuclear program wasn’t open ended.
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#1. To: Brian S (#0)
Confucius say, "watch watch scum politicians do, not that they say"
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