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Obama Plays Down Plan for Post-2011 Iraq Troop Presence

Gareth Porter* – IPS – August 23, 2010

WASHINGTON – When the Barack Obama administration unveiled its plan last week for an improvised State Department-controlled army of contractors to replace all U.S. combat troops in Iraq by the end of 2011, critics associated with the U.S. command attacked the transition plan, insisting that the United States must continue to assume that U.S. combat forces should and can remain in Iraq indefinitely.

But the differences between the administration and its critics over the issue of a long-term U.S. presence may be more apparent than real.

All indications are that the administration expects to renegotiate the security agreement with the Iraqi government to allow a post-2011 combat presence of up to 10,000 troops, once a new government is formed in Baghdad.

But Obama, fearing a backlash from anti-war voters in the Democratic Party, who have already become disenchanted with him over Afghanistan, is trying to play down that possibility. Instead, the White House is trying to reassure its anti-war base that the U.S. military role in Iraq is coming to an end.

An unnamed administration official who favours a longer-term presence in Iraq suggested to New York Times correspondent Michael Gordon last week that the administration’s refusal to openly refer to plans for such a U.S. combat force in Iraq beyond 2011 hinges on its concern about the coming Congressional elections and wariness about the continuing Iraqi negotiations on a new government.

Vice-President Joe Biden said in an address prepared for delivery Monday that it would take a “complete failure” of Iraqi security forces to prompt the United States to resume combat.

Obama referred to what he called “a transitional force” in his speech on Aug. 2, pledging that it would remain “until we remove all our troops from Iraq by the end of the next year”.

He also declared an end to the U.S. “combat mission” in Iraq as of Aug. 31. But an official acknowledged to IPS that combat would continue and would not necessarily be confined to defending against attacks on U.S. personnel.

The administration decided on the transition from military to civilian responsibility for security at an interagency meeting the week of Jul. 19. It made the broad outlines of the plan public at an Aug. 16 State Department news briefing and another briefing the following day, even though crucial details had not been worked out.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Middle Eastern Affairs Colin Kahl and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Michael Corbin presented the administration plan for what they called a “transition from a military to civilian relationship” with Iraq.

The plan involves replacing the official U.S. military presence in Iraq with a much smaller State Department-run force of private security contractors. Press reports have indicated that the force will number several thousand, and that it is seeking 29 helicopters, 60 IED-proof personnel carriers and a fleet of 1,320 armored cars.

The contractor force would also operate radars so it can call in airstrikes and fly reconnaissance drones, according to the New York Times Aug. 21.

Kahl argued that the transition is justified by security trends in Iraq. He said al Qaeda is “weaker than it’s ever been”, that Moqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army has been “largely disbanded”, and that there is no strategic threat to the regime.

That provoked predictable criticism from those whose careers have become linked to the fate of the U.S. military in Iraq and who continue to view the United States as having enormous power to decide the fate of the country.

Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution, a frequent visitor to Iraq at the invitation of Gen. David Petraeus and his successor Gen. Ray Odierno, dismissed the idea of giving the former U.S. military role in Iraq to the State Department and Kahl’s assessment of security trends as far too optimistic.

Some officials were talking “as if we’re on the five-yard line,” Pollack told the Christian Science Monitor. “We’re on more like the 40 – and it’s probably our 40.”

Pollack argued that the U.S. has great influence in Iraq, which it must use for “persuading” Iraqi leaders to do various things. If the U.S. troop presence ends in 2011, he argued, U.S. power would suffer.

Other variants of that argument were offered by Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations and Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, both of whom have been frequent guests of the U.S. command in Iraq and have generally hewed to the military view of Iraq policy.

Former ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, who shared the media spotlight and adulation of Congress with Petraeus in 2007- 2009 before retiring from the Foreign Service, opined that the military needs to keep enough presence in Iraq to encourage Iraq’s generals to stay out of politics.

The real position of the administration over the issue is not much different from that of its critics, however. In answer to a question after a briefing Aug.17, Kahl said, “We’re not going to abandon them. We’re in this for the long term.”

Then Kahl observed, “Iraq is not going to need tens of thousands of [American] forces.” That is consistent with the figure of 5,000 to 10,000 being called for by the military, according to the administration official quoted in New York Times Aug. 18.

At another point, Kahl said, “We’ll just have to see what the Iraqi government will do,” adding that the “vast majority of political actors in Iraq want a long-term partnership with the United States.”

It is been generally assumed among U.S. officers and diplomats and the Iraqi officials with whom they talk that once a new Iraqi government is agreed on, it will begin talks on a longer-term U.S. troop presence, as former National Security Council official Brett H. McGurk told the New York Times last month.

At a Pentagon press conference Feb. 22, Gen. Odierno, U.S. overall commander in Iraq, referred to the purchase by the Iraqi government of “significant amounts of military material from the United States,” including M1A1 tanks and helicopters.

Odierno said he expected it would require a “small contingent” to “train and advise” the Iraqis. That formula implicitly anticipated a continuation of the U.S. combat presence in the guise of “advisory and assistance” units.

But the administration apparently made it clear to Odierno and others that they were not to contradict the administration’s public posture that U.S. troops were being withdrawn by the end of 2011.

During the interagency meeting that adopted the Obama administration transition plan, Odierno told reporters at a breakfast meeting Jul. 21 he expected U.S. troops to be down to zero by the end of 2011.

Meanwhile, the Nouri al-Maliki government is not admitting publicly that it would consider such an extension of the U.S. troop presence. The spokesman for al-Maliki said Aug. 12 there are alternatives to keeping U.S. troops in the country, such as signing “non-aggression and non- interference pacts” with neighbours.

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in 2006.

August 23, 2010 Posted by aletho | Deception | 1 Comment

Iraq war dissenter Kelly’s postmortem report remains secret

Is British Attorney-General Grieve up to the job?

By Christopher King | 23 August 2010

Dr Kelly allegedly committed suicide when identified as the high-profile within-government dissenter from the Blair government’s lies about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction immediately prior to the Iraq war. His postmortem files are secret.

Although, when in opposition, Mr Grieve undertook to review the Kelly records, now that he is in government he declines to do so. He insists that Kenneth Clarke, the justice secretary, should make any decision to release them. He is quoted as saying,

• It’s right to say that hunches, theories are not enough – there has to be evidence. And if the evidence is available and people feel that they have the evidence, then if they send it to me it will be considered
• I have no reason to think … and not a shred of evidence to suggest that there has been a cover up. I know that some people have put some theories forward but if you’re going to put a theory forward like that you need some evidence and as matters stand at the moment I haven’t seen.

One can only ask: “Is Mr Grieve up to the job?” This is nonsense and obfuscation of the most puerile sort. The onus is not on conspiracy theorists to produce evidence of a cover up. The onus is on Mr Grieve to justify keeping Dr Kelly’s postmortem records secret, away from a public inquest. We have never heard a valid reason for this.

Mr Grieve has said: “I have been given no evidence to suggest an alternative cause of death.” That is because Mr Grieve will not release the postmortem report for independent examination and establishment of the facts. That is where such evidence will be if it exists.

As for evidence of a cover up, it lies on his desk. A group of doctors has written to him to say that Dr Kelly could not possibly have died from cutting the matchstick-sized ulnar artery given by Lord Hutton as his means of suicide. Perhaps Mr Grieve does not understand that this means that other causes of Dr Kelly’s death should be considered. Conceivably, he has not realized that the doctors have introduced an element of suspicion into Dr Kelly’s death. He shows no curiosity himself about the matter, which begs the question whether he is the man to hold the post of the government’s highest legal officer.

Mr Grieve speaks of theories. Let us consider the theory held by President Bush and Prime Minister Blair that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons. A theory that Saddam had such weapons, a nuclear programme and mobile chemical factories was presented as fact to the United Nations by the American secretary of state in the presence of Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, who willingly accepted it.

Britain and the United States devastated Iraq, killed and made millions refugees on the basis of these theories – which were proven false, absolutely groundless, without a shred of truth. It was a war justified by speculation and supposition.

Dominic Grieve himself voted in favour of this murderous, illegal war without examining the baseless theories proposed for it. He clearly had no curiosity about facts at that time and still seems to be disinterested in them.

Dr David Kelly was a man of facts. His death was the result of conflict between facts of which he had personal knowledge as a weapons inspector and the manufactured theories and suppositions, even lies, peddled by Anthony Blair and swallowed whole by members of parliament who were too lazy, stupid or lacking in morality to accept the factual reports from the weapons inspectors, of whom Dr Kelly was one. His death is an integral part of this war of deceit and the facts about it need to be made known. The doctors who have requested sight of Dr Kelly’s postmortem papers are showing the sort of curiosity and spirit of inquiry as to facts that Mr Grieve should have shown before voting for the Iraq war.

Dominic Grieve has learned nothing from the Iraq war. At least Kenneth Clarke, the justice secretary, voted against it. He made a good speech at that time and an excellent one in favour of a judicial enquiry into the war – which parliament failed to approve. Let us turn our backs on Dominic Grieve in disgust and look to Kenneth Clarke to release these papers. Mr Clarke is one of very few politicians of principle and good sense. We live at a time when such men are desperately needed.

Theorists and conspiracy theorists, such as myself, who wish to know the truth about Dr Kelly’s death are not inventing conspiracy theories. We are investigating the genuine, proven conspiracy of the war that the Blair-Brown government peddled to this country and Europe and inflicted on the Iraqi people.

If Dr Kelly did not commit suicide then he was assassinated. Let us use terms carefully. Assassination is not merely murder. It implies targeted, planned killing by professional murderers. It has always been considered a despicable crime for this reason, although our government now carries it out in Afghanistan in collusion with American practice.

Dominic Grieve’s professed solicitousness for the feelings of Dr Kelly’s family will apparently influence him in dealing with Dr Kelly’s papers. It is unprecedented for family feelings to influence an investigation involving suspicion of foul play. That suspicion now exists. I can only say that if a member of my family were to die in suspicious circumstances I would move heaven and earth to determine the truth. Who would not? Mr Grieve’s mock solicitousness is contemptible.

The truth is surely that Mr Grieve recognizes the position and does not like it. The Kelly files are clearly a hot potato and he does not want the responsibility of dealing with them. His nonsensical response and reluctance to release them, when he could easily do so and put an end to speculation, increases the probability that there is something to hide.

August 23, 2010 Posted by aletho | Deception | Leave a comment