Combat Brigades Will Remain In Iraq Despite Obama’s Campaign Promises

I completely agree with leaving combat brigades in Iraq after the majority of the troops leave. The United States lost too many lives removing Saddam Hussein, and and too many lives establishing the fragile peace that now exists in Iraq, to prematurely remove all troops and allow Iraq to fracture from within. That would be criminal.

Our troops will ultimately operate in the background of the Iraqi Society with little disruption. There are currently about 40,000 stationed in Germany doing the same thing. The U.S. bases provide jobs for the surrounding area, and the troops consume food and utilize the local services. The presence of our troops will present a long-term picture of stability and security for Iraq, which is essential if Iraq expects other Countries to begin to make investments in the future of Iraq.

The disappointing thing about this news is that Obama was either very naive about our military and the situation in Iraq, or he was being outright dishonest to those Americans who ultimately voted for him. He's in the White House now, so I hope that it wasn't the latter.
Rees

from IPS News
By Gareth Porter
March 25, 2009

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Despite Obama’s Campaign Promises, Combat Brigades Will Stay in Iraq

WASHINGTON, Mar 25 (IPS) - Despite President Barack Obama’s statement at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina Feb. 27 that he had "chosen a timeline that will remove our combat brigades over the next 18 months," a number of Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs), which have been the basic U.S. Army combat unit in Iraq for six years, will remain in Iraq after that date under a new non-combat label.




A spokesman for Defence Secretary Robert M. Gates, Lt. Col. Patrick S. Ryder, told IPS Tuesday that "several advisory and assistance brigades" would be part of a U.S. command in Iraq that will be "re-designated" as a "transition force headquarters" after August 2010.



But the "advisory and assistance brigades" to remain in Iraq after that date will in fact be the same as BCTs, except for the addition of a few dozen officers who would carry out the advice and assistance missions, according to military officials involved in the planning process.



Gates has hinted that the withdrawal of combat brigades will be accomplished through an administrative sleight of hand rather than by actually withdrawing all the combat brigade teams. Appearing on Meet the Press Mar. 1, Gates said the "transition force" would have "a very different kind of mission", and that the units remaining in Iraq "will be characterised differently".



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



Obama’s decision to go along with the military proposal for a "transition force" of 35,000 to 50,000 troops thus represents a complete abandonment of his own original policy of combat troop withdrawal and an acceptance of what the military wanted all along - the continued presence of several combat brigades in Iraq well beyond mid-2010.



National Security Council officials declined to comment on the question of whether combat brigades were actually going to be left in Iraq beyond August 2010 under the policy announced by Obama Feb. 27.



The term that has been used internally within the Army to designate the units that will form a large part of the "transition force" is not "Advisory and Assistance Brigades" but "Brigades Enhanced for Stability Operations" (BESO).
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