Gen. John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East during most of the Iraq war, said Wednesday that he will retire in mid-March.
Abizaid has opposed a major increase in U.S. troops in Iraq – an idea President Bush is considering – saying extra forces would only increase Iraqis’ dependency on U.S. forces and strain a U.S. military that’s already stretched.
Abizaid, at a news conference in Baghdad, said “the time is right” for his retirement and “it has nothing to do with dissatisfaction” with U.S. strategy in the war.
Abizaid, 55, is the longest-serving head of the U.S. Central Command, with authority over more than 200,000 U.S. troops in the Middle East, South Asia and the Horn of Africa. He began in July 2003 what was supposed to be a three-year stint in the post and agreed to stay on until early 2007 at the request of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, said Maj. Matt McLaughlin, a Centcom spokesman.
