In visit to Iraq, Gates indicates US troops to stay
During what will likely be his last visit to Iraq as US defense secretary, Robert Gates suggested Thursday that combat soldiers would stay on past the end of 2011, the date the Obama administration has claimed would see the end of the American military presence in the country. Well over 1 million Iraqis have died as a result of the illegal 2003 invasion and occupation of their country, several million have been made refugees, real unemployment remains close to 50 percent, and basic infrastructure—including water, sewerage, and electricity—has never recovered from US bombing. Gates suggested, in the mendacious language of imperialism, that the continuation of a large-scale American military presence would be provided only if requested by the Iraqi government.
“We are willing to have a presence beyond [2011], but we’ve got a lot of commitments,” Gates said, referring implicitly to US military operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Libya. “So if folks here are going to want us to have a presence, we’re going to need to get on with it pretty quickly in terms of our planning.”
In fact, there has never been any serious doubt that the US would carry on a large-scale and long-term military presence in Iraq, which has the world’s fourth largest proven oil reserves and is in a critical strategic location in the Middle East. Under Obama, who capitalized on broad popular anger over the US war on Iraq to win the presidency in 2008, a significant share of the US “drawdown” of combat troops has been done by giving new names to the same roles.
Voice of Russia: America to stay longer in Iraq as Afghan tensions grow