Obama Announces Iraq Troops Will Be Withdrawn By End Of 2011

Detainee in Iraq Poses a Dilemma as U.S. Exit Nears

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WASHINGTON — As United States troops prepare to exit Iraq at the end of the month, the Obama administration is facing a significant dilemma over what to do with the last remaining detainee held by the American military in Iraq.

The detainee, Ali Musa Daqduq, a Lebanese suspected of being a Hezbollah operative, is accused of helping to orchestrate a January 2007 raid by Shiite militants that resulted in the death of five American soldiers. The administration is wrestling with either turning him over to the Iraqi government — as the United States did with its other wartime prisoners — or seeking a way to take him with the military as it withdraws, according to interviews with officials familiar with the deliberations.

But each option for dealing with Mr. Daqduq has drawbacks, officials say, virtually guaranteeing that his fate will add a messy footnote to the end of the Iraq war. Mr. Daqduq is likely to be a subject of negotiation when Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq meets with President Obama at the White House on Monday.

“There are serious and ongoing deliberations about how to handle this individual to best protect U.S. service members and broader U.S. interests,” said Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the National Security Council.

Mr. Maliki’s visit comes as the United States is joining a series of ceremonies here and across Iraq to proclaim — with a clear sense of uncertainty — the end of the war.

Even after the final American combat troops withdraw from Iraq by Dec. 31, a few hundred military personnel and Pentagon civilians will remain, working within the American Embassy as part of an Office of Security Cooperation to help in arms sales and training. Negotiations are expected to resume next year on whether additional American military personnel can return to further assist their Iraqi counterparts.

Hanging over the decision on what to do with Mr. Daqduq is the 2012 presidential campaign. Polls show that Americans approve of the withdrawal from Iraq by a ratio of three to one, and Mr. Obama is poised to leverage that sentiment by emphasizing the idea that Republicans were responsible for invading Iraq, while he guided the United States out.

Republicans, however, are seeking to frame the withdrawal in different terms: that Mr. Obama endangered national security by pulling out of Iraq too soon, and that he should have persuaded the Iraqis to allow United States troops to stay beyond the deadline agreed to by the Bush administration three years ago. Elevating the profile of Mr. Daqduq and highlighting any unsatisfactory outcome to his case could bolster such efforts to cast Mr. Obama’s Iraq record in a negative light.

The decision about what to do with Mr. Daqduq is complex, and time is running out. The ability of the military to hold any prisoners in Iraq is fast evaporating as it closes detention facilities and sends its remaining guards home, and so the military has been asking the administration to resolve his fate well before Dec. 31.

Under the status quo arrangement, Mr. Daqduq would be turned over to the Iraqis for possible prosecution. Officials are wary, however, because many former detainees have either been acquitted by Iraqi courts or released without charges, and Mr. Maliki could face political pressure to free Mr. Daqduq.

The administration, officials say, wants to find a solution in which Mr. Daqduq remains locked up — not only because of his suspected role in helping attacks on American troops, but also because his release could become a propaganda victory for Iran and Iraqi Shiite militants at a time of significant tensions.

It is not clear whether some important evidence of Mr. Daqduq’s suspected involvement in attacks on Americans — like a confession to American interrogators — would be admissible in an Iraqi court. Still, officials said, Iraqi prosecutors might be able to win a lengthy prison sentence on other charges, like entering Iraq illegally.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/12/w...q-poses-dilemma-for-obama.html?_r=1&ref=world
 
Premier’s Actions in Iraq Raise U.S. Concerns

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BAGHDAD — Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has moved swiftly to consolidate power in advance of the American military withdrawal, offering a glimpse of how Iraq’s post-American identity may take shape, by rounding up hundreds of former Baath Party members and evicting Western companies from the heavily fortified Green Zone.

As Mr. Maliki met with President Obama in Washington on Monday to discuss Iraq’s future after the end of a painful nearly nine-year war, his aggressive actions back home raised new concerns in the West, where officials have long been uneasy with the prime minister’s authoritarian tendencies.

The actions also underscored the many lingering questions about America’s uncertain ally, a prime minister who once found refuge in Syria and Iran and who will now help write the epitaph to the American invasion.

“There are two dominant narratives in Washington about Maliki,” said Ramzy Mardini, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington who recently published a report on the arrests. “Some say he is a nationalist; others say he is a puppet of Iran.”

Both are oversimplifications, he said: “Maliki is a Maliki-ist. His religion is the church of survivability.”

Mr. Maliki, whose bland public persona belies his mastery of Iraq’s zero-sum politics, will help decide if his nation preserves its fragile democracy or if it will return to one-man-one-party rule. As an exile from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq who escaped a death warrant, Mr. Maliki has proven his ability to retain power. But he is also criticized for holding tight to a security-first mentality. And as a Shiite leader who some say owes his current position to Iran’s backing, he has not made clear if Washington, or Tehran, will wield more influence.

A Western diplomat who has worked closely with Mr. Maliki said the prime minister’s mind-set still reflected the years after the American invasion when 3,000 Iraqi civilians were dying each month and sectarian war threatened to rip the country apart.

“He sees himself as fighting since 2006 to pull the country out of the brink,” the diplomat said.

But Mr. Maliki has also taken steps to put his stamp on the Green Zone, the physical center of government whose geography and very name became shorthand for the cloistered American presence. His son, Ahmed, has overseen raids evicting Western companies from the Green Zone in recent weeks. As the prime minister left for the United States, onerous new security procedures were put in place at the few entrances into the area.

That, and the scale and secrecy of the arrests in October and November, of 600 former Baathists, have raised new tensions in Iraq’s suspicious political atmosphere. They have fanned fears that Mr. Maliki will use the threat of terrorism and unrest as a pretext to strike political foes.

The Iraqi government said the arrests had been prompted by a tip from Libya’s transitional government that said documents revealed Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi was working with insurgents to stage a coup. Mr. Maliki has denied any sectarian or political motives behind the sweep, pointing out that both Shiites and Sunnis were arrested. In an interview with Iraq’s official television channel, he said the raids had captured loyalists to Saddam Hussein who were conspiring with Al Qaeda, not peaceful, low-level party apparatchiks.

“We do not have space in our government for those plotting against our government,” he said.

A person briefed on the raid by Iraqi security forces said some of the detainees were in fact military and intelligence officials from the old government. Other names on the target lists, however, included laborers, political adversaries of the government, the elderly — even dead people.

“It’s highly unlikely to be much validity behind” the coup plot, said a Western official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, to avoid upsetting relations with the Iraqi government. “Baathism here is a symbol that Maliki uses as a bogyman. It gives them the leeway to go around arresting people. It’s about a climate of fear.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/w...iraq-raise-concerns-about-maliki.html?_r=1&hp
 
Iraq War: U.S. Military Formally Ends The War

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(Reuters) - The U.S. military officially ended its war in Iraq on Thursday, packing up a military flag at a ceremony with U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta nearly nine years after the invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.

The last 4,000 American troops will withdraw by the end of the year, leaving Iraq still tackling a weakened but stubborn insurgency, sectarian tensions and political uncertainty.

"After a lot of blood spilled by Iraqis and Americans, the mission of an Iraq that could govern and secure itself has become real," Panetta said at the ceremony.

U.S. soldiers rolled up the flag for American forces in Iraq and slipped it into a camouflage-colored sleeve.

Nearly 4,500 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis lost their lives in a war that began with a "Shock and Awe" campaign of missiles pounding Baghdad, but later descended into a bloody sectarian struggle between long-oppressed majority Shi'ites and their former Sunni masters.

Saddam is dead, an uneasy politics is at work and the violence has ebbed. But Iraq still struggles with the insurgency, a fragile power-sharing government and an oil-reliant economy plagued by power shortages and corruption.

In Falluja, the former heartland of an al Qaeda insurgency and scene of some of the worst fighting in the war, several thousand Iraqis celebrated the withdrawal on Wednesday, some burning U.S. flags and waving pictures of dead relatives.

Iraq's neighbors will keep a close watch on how Baghdad will confront its problems without the buffer of a U.S. military presence, while a crisis in neighboring Syria threatens to upset the region's sectarian and ethnic balance.

President Barack Obama, who made an election promise to bring troops home, told Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that Washington will remain a loyal partner after the last troops roll across the Kuwaiti border.

Iraq's Shi'ite leadership presents the withdrawal as a new start for the country's sovereignty, but many Iraqis question which direction the nation will take once U.S. troops leave.

Some fear more sectarian strife or an al Qaeda return to sow terror in the cities. A squabble between Kurds in their northern semi-autonomous enclave and the Iraqi Arab central government over disputed territories and oil is another flashpoint.

Violence has ebbed since the bloodier days of sectarian slaughter when suicide bombers and hit squads claimed hundreds of victims a day at times as the country descended into tit-for-tat killings between the Sunni and Shi'ite communities.

In 2006 alone, 17,800 Iraqi military and civilians were killed in violence.

Iraqi security forces are generally seen as capable of containing the remaining Sunni Islamist insurgency and the rival Shi'ite militias U.S. officials say are backed by Iran.

But even for those enjoying a sense of sovereignty, security is still a major worry. Attacks now target local Iraqi government offices and security forces in an attempt show that the authorities are not in control.

"I am happy they are leaving. This is my country and they should leave," said Samer Saad, a soccer coach. "But I am worried because we need to be safe. We are worried because all the militias will start to come back."

Iraq War: U.S. Military Formally Ends The War
 
McManus: An elusive victory in Iraq

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With the final headlong withdrawal this month of U.S. troops from Iraq, President Obama fulfilled a campaign promise to end the war. But was the nearly nine-year mission a success?

Iraq is still struggling even to ensure its own security. Its air force has no jet fighters, and U.S. officials say it would be unable to detect incoming aircraft in time to stop them. The Iraqi army is improving, but its ability to mount complex operations remains weak. The Iraqis still have a long way to go on intelligence, training and logistics.

On the political side of things, the democratic system the U.S. fought to establish is becoming increasingly authoritarian and remains divided along tribal and sectarian lines. Its ruling coalition includes parties allied with Iran. Its minority Sunni Muslims and Kurds are worried about their futures.

At the almost perfunctory ceremony Thursday in a dusty courtyard at Baghdad's international airport to formally mark the U.S. military mission's end, no one even tried to use the word "victory."

But that shouldn't come as a surprise.

Two years ago, the Army general who is now chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Martin E. Dempsey, commissioned a panel of historians to study how wars come to an end. Dempsey could see that the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, conflicts to which he and his colleagues had devoted almost a decade, weren't heading for the clear conclusions that Americans yearn for. "Whatever happened to good old-fashioned victory?" the general, a former English professor at West Point, wondered at the time.

The answer, the scholars told him, was that most wars don't end with clear-cut winners and losers, especially long counterinsurgency wars of the sort we've been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. In that kind of conflict, it's hard to know when it's safe to claim progress, let alone victory.

In Washington, the withdrawal is an election-year talking point for both Republicans and Democrats. Obama is claiming credit for ending an increasingly unpopular war. Contenders for the GOP nomination are charging that Obama has "abandoned" Iraq, and that he should have pushed harder to win permission for about 5,000 military trainers and advisors to stay behind. (Negotiations on that issue broke down after Iraq refused to grant legal immunity to the troops who would remain.)

In Baghdad, the withdrawal was an even hotter political issue. Iraqi politicians, including Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, have spent years promising to end the American military presence. Negotiating a new agreement to allow thousands of foreign troops to remain in the country would have divided the coalition that keeps Maliki in power. The prime minister decided not to risk his job and to take credit for an American withdrawal instead.

Because of the Iraqi order to leave, the job of training and advising Iraq's armed forces has been taken away from a U.S. military command with years of hard-won experience and handed to a newly formed (and necessarily untested) civilian organization run by the State Department.

Officials acknowledge that they are scrambling to set up the new Office of Security Cooperation, and say privately that they will need luck as well as skill for it to come out right.

The State Department has never tried to run a mission this big, with an estimated 16,000 civilians and contractors, many of them doing jobs — training security forces, advising intelligence agencies, even flying helicopters and driving armored vehicles — that are normally military functions.

Given these circumstances, even carefully hedged claims of success at the Baghdad ceremony Thursday sounded a little like bravado.

"We salute the fact that Iraq is now fully responsible for directing its own path," Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said. "The mission of an Iraq that could fully govern and secure itself has become real."

In other words: Mission Partly Accomplished.

Doyle McManus: Not much 'victory' at end of Iraq war - latimes.com
 
As Iraq War Troops Return, No Welcome-Home Parade Planned

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WASHINGTON -- Americans probably won't be seeing a huge ticker-tape parade anytime soon for troops returning from Iraq, and it's not clear if veterans of the nine-year campaign will ever enjoy the grand, flag-waving, red-white-and-blue homecoming that the nation's fighting men and women received after World War II and the Gulf War.

Officials in New York and Washington say they would be happy to help stage a big celebration, but Pentagon officials say they haven't been asked to plan one.

Most welcome-homes have been smaller-scale: hugs from families at military posts across the country, a somber commemoration by President Barack Obama at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

With tens of thousands of U.S. troops still fighting a bloody war in Afghanistan, anything that looks like a big victory celebration could be seen as unseemly and premature, some say.

"It's going to be a bit awkward to be celebrating too much, given how much there is going on and how much there will be going on in Afghanistan," said Don Mrozek, a military history professor at Kansas State University.

Two New York City councilmen, Republicans Vincent Ignizio and James Oddo, have called for a ticker-tape parade down the stretch of Broadway known as the Canyon of Heroes. A similar celebration after the Gulf War was paid for with more than $5.2 million in private donations, a model the councilmen would like to follow.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said last week that he was open to the idea but added, "It's a federal thing that we really don't want to do without talking to Washington, and we'll be doing that."

A spokesman for the mayor declined to elaborate on the city's reasons for consulting with Washington. Ignizio said he had been told by the mayor's office that Pentagon officials were concerned that a celebration could spark violence overseas and were evaluating the risk.

Navy Capt. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, said that he has not heard that issue raised and that New York has yet to make a formal proposal. He also said officials are grateful communities around the country are finding ways to recognize the sacrifices of troops and their families.

The last combat troops in Iraq pulled out more than a week ago. About 91,000 U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are in Afghanistan, battling a stubborn Taliban insurgency and struggling to train Afghan forces so that they eventually can take over security. Many U.S. troops who fought in the Iraq War could end up being sent to Afghanistan.

A parade might invite criticism from those who believe the U.S. left Iraq too soon, as well as from those who feel the war was unjustified. It could also trigger questions about assertions of victory.

Mrozek noted that President George W. Bush's administration referred to military action in the Middle East as part of a global war on terror, a conflict that's hard to define by conventional measures of success.

"This is not a war on a particular place or a particular force," he said.

As Iraq War Troops Return, No Welcome-Home Parade Planned
 
Iraq U.S. Troop Withdrawal: Celebrations As American Forces Leave

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BAGHDAD — Hundreds of Sunni Muslims gathered in Baghdad Friday to celebrate the withdrawal of American forces, but in a sign of the sectarian divisions that re-emerged immediately after their departure, Shiite Muslims did not join the event.

The celebration took place near the Abu Hanifa mosque, the main house of worship in the primarily Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah in northern Baghdad. To secure the event, Iraqi troops blocked traffic on roads leading to the mosque and searched people approaching the area.

During the rally, men and children waved Iraqi flags and raised banners praising those who resisted the U.S. presence in Iraq.

"Baghdad is the castle of resistance," one banner read. "The deeds of the heroes are stronger than the weapons of the occupiers," read another banner. Women threw chocolates to the crowd as a sign of joy.

In his sermon, the mosque's preacher, Sheik Ahmed al-Taha, accused the Americans of stirring up sectarian tension among Iraqis.

"The occupiers created the sectarian conflict as an exit from the quagmire they found themselves in when they were facing 200 military operations against them every day. By dividing Iraqis, the Americans made Iraqis attack each other instead of attacking them," al-Taha told worshippers.

The preacher also called on the government to demand compensation from the Americans for the loss of lives and damage caused during the occupation.

The lingering sectarian divisions Iraq faces was clear during the prayer service and rally, which was almost entirely Sunni. Shiites had been invited to join the celebration but did not show up.

Shiites have even given the departure of the U.S. forces a different name than the Sunnis have. Sunnis generally call it the "evacuation day," whereas Shiites often refer to it as the "fulfillment day" as a way to show that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who leads a Shiite-dominated government, fulfilled his promise to get all the troops out of the country.

Tensions between Sunnis and Shiites have deepened since al-Maliki's government issued an arrest warrant for the country's top Sunni politician. The government is also trying to push out another member of his government, leaving many Sunnis to question whether they will ever have a place in the Iraqi power structure.

Iraq U.S. Troop Withdrawal: Celebrations As American Forces Leave
 

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