WASHINGTON — It would take “a complete failure” of the Iraqi security forces for the U.S. to resume combat operations there, the top American commander in Iraq said as the final U.S. fighting forces prepared to leave the country.
With a major military milestone in sight, Gen. Ray Odierno said in interviews broadcast Sunday that any resumption of combat duties by American forces is unlikely.
“We don’t see that happening,” Odierno said. The Iraqi security forces have been doing “so well for so long now that we really believe we’re beyond that point.”
President Barack Obama plans a major speech on Iraq after his return to Washington, according to a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity Sunday because details were being finalized. The speech will come shortly after Obama returns to the White House on Aug. 29 from his vacation at Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.
About 50,000 U.S. troops will remain in the country until the end of next year to serve as a training and assistance force, a dramatic drawdown from the peak of more than 170,000 during the surge of American forces in 2007.
U.S. involvement in Iraq beyond the end of 2011, Odierno said, probably will involve helping the Iraqis secure their airspace and borders.
If the Iraqis asked that American troops remain in the country after 2011, Odierno said U.S. officials would consider it, but that would be a policy decision made by the president and his national- security advisers.
South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, who’s on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that he hopes “we will have an enduring relationship of having some military presence in Iraq. I think that would be smart not to let things unwind over the next three or five years.”
On Thursday, the 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division began crossing the border from Iraq into Kuwait, becoming the last combat brigade to leave Iraq. Its exodus, along with that of about 2,000 remaining U.S. combat forces destined to leave in the coming days, fulfills Obama’s pledge to end combat operations in Iraq by Aug. 31.
In interviews with “Face the Nation” and CNN’s “State of the Union,” Odierno said it may take several years before the U.S. can determine if the war was a success.
“A strong democratic Iraq will bring stability to the Middle East, and if we see Iraq that’s moving toward that, two, three, five years from now, I think we can call our operations a success,” he said.
Iraq’s political parties have been bickering for more than five months since the March parliamentary elections failed to produce a clear winner.
