WASHINGTON, 15 September 2007 — After 4 1/2 years in Iraq, President George W. Bush on Thursday finally talked about reducing American troop strength there.
In his 24-minute address from the Oval Office, Bush said a total of 5,700 troops should be home by the end of the year, and he said he would pull out by next summer the additional combat forces he sent in January — roughly 21,700 troops — from the current high of 169,000.
Bush called for an “enduring relationship” with Iraq that would keep American forces there “beyond my presidency” arguing that a free and friendly Iraq was essential for the security of the region and the United States.
Although the president offered no forecast for how long it will take, Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, told reporters late Thursday that current US projections anticipate Iraq reaching nationwide “sustainable security” by June 2009.
On CNN’s “Larry King Live” show, presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama said that, in his speech Bush said one happy result of a US victory in Iraq would be to drive Al-Qaeda out of that country, but that the terrorist group “didn’t exist in Iraq before our invasion.”
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican and presidential candidate did not agree. “President Bush understands that our most crucial objective in Iraq is to make sure it does not become a safe haven for Al-Qaeda and jihadist terrorists. But that’s just what would happen if Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards have their way. Our troop presence has emboldened Sunni leaders to resist Al-Qaeda. This is progress, important progress.”
On MSNBC, commentator Chris Matthews said Bush had been dealing in “false promises and false arguments again and again and again.”
A day after Bush said that progress justified a large continued US military presence in Iraq, the White House told Congress yesterday that Iraqi leaders have gained little new ground toward meeting key military and political goals, a discouraging assessment.
The report underscored the difficulty of Bush’s argument that American sacrifice was creating space for political progress by Iraqis. The administration’s first required report on benchmarks, in July, showed the Iraqi government was making satisfactory progress toward meeting eight of 18 goals and unsatisfactory progress on eight others. Two others couldn’t be rated for performance.
The follow-up report to Congress concluded that Iraqis have done enough to move only one benchmark — allowing former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party to hold government positions — from the unsatisfactory to satisfactory column.
