Iraq will ask US troops to stay post-2011, says Panetta

www.bbc.co.uk...

Iraq will ask the US to keep troops in the country beyond an end-of-2011 pullout deadline, says the nominee to be the next US defence secretary.

Outgoing CIA director Leon Panetta said he had "every confidence that a request like that will be forthcoming".

"It's clear to me that Iraq is considering the possibility of making a request for some kind of [troop] presence to remain there [in Iraq]," Mr Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday.
He said that whether that happened depended on what Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki might ask for.
But if Baghdad did make such a request, he added, Washington should say yes.

Plus Gates pretty much said the same thing. Will the US actually pull out at the end of this year? I think its highly doubtful. If anything, im guessing we will pull only a small number out.

Oh and I forgot about this - theres more al-qaeda in Iraq than in Afghanistan now. (There is only supposed to be like 100 in Afghanistan right?)

He said there were still some 1,000 al-Qaeda members in Iraq, and the situation remained "fragile".

Yeah. They can ask but the US response should be the obvious, "Sorry. we'd like to help you out some more but from the looks of things, you aren't really serious about seeing this thing through and we did have an agreement so we'll be leaving when we were asked to, and it's been great working with you" End of story. Then leave. Because they asked us to, and it's supposedly they're country now, so we should leave, re-equip and focus on the real problems the US has, with it's own problems maintaining the security of our own borders, and our own national interests! We made an agreement and we should stick to it, and hold Iraq's government to the agreement. And start drilling for out own oil for a change!

reply to post by CosmosKid


Thousands of people made this prediction, that US would stay. Even if US troops leave, they already created a permanent base.

US has a new trick up its sleeve now, it calls a permanent base, an embassy. Funny, never knew embassies had 17000 staff, in military terms, that's called a corps, or 1 - 2 divisions.

People really have this belief that US went to Iraq to liberate them and then leave. May GOD help humanity against ignorance.

reply to post by confreak


Well, I'm not ignorant. What I'm saying is that there shouldn't be any US troops in Iraq in the first place, unless of course we had declared war on them, in the manner specified under the Constitution of the United States of America. In which case, we wouldn't have to be screwing around now with the whole "Stay or Go" issue. The leadership of our country, and by that I mean the congress and senate have let us down again, and by doing that, compromised the ability of the military to function as designed. The ultimate stupidity of putting the troops on the ground without declaring war first is unforgivable. And the same mistake keeps getting made over and over and over. So now, the obvious "right" thing to do is just get out of there, and stop making the same mistake again and agin. The military is not supposed to be used for "political" objectives. The military is not supposed to be used to "win hearts and minds". It is supposed to be used to achieve a foreign policy objective, and that would be to compel the surrender of an advisary in an armed conflict. Anything else is a tragic waste of manpower, money and time. The "leadership" screws up, and the militaey gets has to pay with lives, for politics. Thats what happens when you have the best government "money" can buy.