US to pull out of Iraq after nearly 9 years of war

WASHINGTON- President Barack Obama vowed on Friday to pull all US troops from Iraq this year, symbolically ending the war but dashing US hopes of leaving a few thousand troops to buttress a still shaky Iraq and offset neighboring Iran’s influence.

After months of negotiations with officials in Baghdad failed to reach an agreement to keep possibly thousands of US troops in Iraq as trainers, Obama announced he would stick to plans to pull out the remaining force of 40,000 by year’s end.

“After nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over,” Obama told reporters.

The announcement was a milestone more than 8 ½ years after the Bush administration led the invasion to topple Saddam Hussein based on warnings of weapons of mass destruction that turned out not to exist.

Obama made his announcement after a video conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. He said the two leaders agreed to stick to an earlier arrangement to pull the remaining US troops by year’s end.

The prospect of extending the troop presence was very sensitive for Iraq’s fractured political elite.

Maliki, heading a tenuous coalition including politicians vehemently opposed to foreign troops, eventually advocated a training presence but rejected any legal immunity for US soldiers. Those terms were deemed unacceptable in Washington.

Obama, eyeing a 2012 re-election campaign likely to be fought over his handling of the US economy, is looking to wind down a decade of war in the Muslim world that did lasting damage to the US image worldwide and stretched its military and budget to the brink.

In Iraq, where the US force peaked at about 190,000 during the height of President George W. Bush’s troop surge in 2007, almost 4,500 US soldiers have died and the war has cost US taxpayers over $700 billion in military spending alone.

Even as leaders of Iraq’s fragile democracy seek to distance themselves from Washington, Iraq is only slowly getting to its feet after years of ferocious violence that shattered its society and killed tens of thousands of people.

While Washington has hailed Iraq’s halting progress, especially as tumult has swept the Middle East, its political system remains gripped by perennial deadlock on issues dividing a religiously and ethnically fractured country.

Violence there is a far cry from the sectarian slaughter of 2006-07, but Iraq still suffers daily attacks from a stubborn insurgency allied with al Qaeda, and from Shi’ite militiamen.

Shared vision for Iraq?

Obama’s announcement in the White House briefing room was freighted with political overtones.

The president, who was an early opponent of the war and campaigned on a promise to end it, repeated his mantra that “the tide of war is receding.”

But prominent Republicans criticized the president. Senator John McCain told Reuters the decision went against the advice of US military commanders, could embolden Iran and likely would be met with alarm by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is already concerned about US commitment to his country.

“In retrospect, I don’t think the political side of the Obama administration ever had any serious intentions of keeping a residual force there because none of their actions were serious,” said McCain, who lost to Obama in the 2008 presidential election.

About 160 US soldiers will remain behind under State Department authority to train Iraqi forces along with a small contingent of soldiers guarding the US Embassy. There will also likely be a US special operations presence in Iraq.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Friday the United States would start negotiating with Iraq about military training assistance after US forces withdraw this year. Such an arrangement could potentially involve a troop presence in the country.

“Once we’ve completed the reduction of the combat presence, then I think we begin a process of negotiating with them in order to determine what will be the nature of that relationship,” Panetta told reporters traveling with him to Indonesia.

He did not rule out having US trainers rotate through Iraq, without being stationed there.

Obama’s announcement underscored the gaps that remain between US and Iraqi priorities and political realities.

“This has been inevitable,” said David Mack, a former US ambassador in the Middle East.

“National security strategists in both Washington and Baghdad made a strong case for keeping US military forces beyond 2011, but the domestic politics in both countries were against it,” he said.

US military role

The US military role in Iraq has been mostly reduced to advising the security forces in a country whose military was rebuilt from scratch following the 2003 invasion.

Lingering weaknesses in Iraq’s military capability would have been one reason to keep a larger US troop presence.

Another was Iran. Chronically critical of Iran’s nuclear program, Washington is especially sensitive to the prospect of an expansionist Iran, following its recent allegations about a foiled Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington.

“We remain very concerned that Iran is meddling, not just in the affairs of Iraq but of other countries in the region. And that’s unacceptable,” Pentagon spokesman George Little said this week when discussing a possible extended troop presence.

Brian Katulis, a security expert at the Center for American Progress in Washington, said the specter of Tehran dictating decisions to Baghdad was a red herring.

“Iranian influence is overstated,” he said. “And it’s not as if a few thousand US troops was going to be a linchpin.”

Even without soldiers, the US presence will remain substantial. US officials say the embassy in Baghdad, an imposing, fortified complex by the Tigris River in Baghdad’s Green Zone, will be the largest in the world. TIMELINE-Timeline of Iraq war

Here is a timeline of major events related to the war.

· Oct. 11, 2002 - The US Congress votes overwhelmingly to authorize President George W. Bush to use force against Iraq, giving him a broad mandate to act against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The Bush administration had argued that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction posed an immediate threat to US and global security. Bush said that “the gathering threat of Iraq must be confronted fully and finally.”

· Feb. 6, 2003 - US Secretary of State Colin Powell sought international backing for military action against Iraq in a presentation before the UN Security Council, using satellite photos and communications intercepts to try to show Iraq’s deceptions over weapons of mass destruction.

· March 20, 2003 - US-led forces invade Iraq from Kuwait to oust Saddam Hussein. The U.S.-led effort crushes the Iraqi military and chases Saddam from power in a span of weeks.

· April 9, 2003 - US troops seize Baghdad. Saddam goes into hiding. Lawlessness quickly emerges in Iraq’s capital and elsewhere, with US troops failing to bring order.

· May 1, 2003 - President George W. Bush declares that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended” and that “in the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.” As he spoke aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, a banner behind him stated, “Mission Accomplished.”

· Summer 2003 - An insurgency arises to fight U.S.-led forces. US forces fail to find weapons of mass destruction.

· Dec. 13, 2003 - US troops capture Saddam, bearded and bedraggled, hiding in a hole near Tikrit.

· Jan. 28, 2004 - Top US weapons inspector David Kay acknowledges to the US Congress that “we were almost all wrong” about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

· Spring 2004 - Insurgency intensifies with violence in Falluja and elsewhere in the mainly Sunni Muslim Anbar province as well as violence by followers of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in major Shi’ite cities in the south. The United States also faces international condemnation after photographs emerge showing abuse of detainees at the Abu Ghraib jail.

· Feb. 22, 2006 - Bombing of a shrine in Samarra sparks widespread sectarian slaughter, raising fears of civil war between Iraq’s majority and minority.

· June 7, 2006 - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, is killed by US forces.

· Dec. 30, 2006 - Saddam Hussein hanged by masked executioners after receiving a death sentence from an Iraqi court for the killings of 148 men and boys in a northern Iraqi town in 1982.

· January 2007 - Bush formulates and announces a new war strategy including a “surge” of US troops into Iraq to combat the insurgency and pull Iraq back from the brink of civil war.

· June 15, 2007 - US military completes its troop build-up to around 170,000 soldiers.

· Aug. 29, 2007 - Moqtada al-Sadr orders his Mehdi Army militia to cease fire.

· Nov. 17, 2008 - Iraq and the United States sign an accord requiring Washington to withdraw its forces by the end of 2011. The pact gives the government authority over the US mission for the first time, replacing a UN Security Council mandate. Parliament approves pact after negotiations 10 days later.

· Feb. 27, 2009 - New US President Barack Obama announces a plan to end US combat operations in Iraq by Aug. 31, 2010.

· June 30, 2009 - All US combat units withdraw from Iraq’s urban centers and redeploy to bases outside.

· Oct. 4, 2011 - Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki wins support from political blocs on keeping US troops as trainers, but they reject any deal that would grant US troops immunity as Washington had requested.

· Oct. 21, 2011 - Obama says the United States will complete a withdrawal of all its remaining troops in Iraq by the end of 2011 after the two countries failed to reach a deal to leave several thousand US troops behind. The Pentagon said there have been more than 4,400 US military deaths in Iraq since the 2003 invasion.