U.S. General Says Iraq Exit Is on Track
* SEPTEMBER 30, 2009, 5:25 A.M. ET
online.wsj.com
By YOCHI J. DREAZEN
WASHINGTON -- The top U.S. commander in Iraq said the U.S. is on pace to withdraw tens of thousands of troops from Iraq in coming months despite a spate of recent attacks there.
In an interview, Gen. Raymond Odierno, who is due to testify on Capitol Hill about the war Wednesday, said American troop levels in Iraq will fall to 115,000 by year-end and then to roughly 50,000 by mid-2010. A bilateral security accord between Washington and Baghdad calls for the remaining troops to leave Iraq by the end of 2011.
The comments from Gen. Odierno offer the clearest indication to date of how senior commanders in Baghdad envision winding down the U.S.-led war in Iraq, which the Obama administration sees as a lower national-security priority than the war in Afghanistan.
They come as the Pentagon holds on to a request from the top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, for up to 40,000 reinforcements. The Obama administration is re-evaluating its entire Afghan strategy in the wake of flawed presidential elections there and a wave of Taliban violence.
Gen. Odierno warned that the war in Iraq is far from over, with political challenges -- such as unresolved Kurdish-Arab tensions over oil and control of northern Iraq -- posing serious challenges to the country's future stability. "It's not so much about an insurgency anymore," he said in the interview at the Pentagon. "The disputes are about the very nature of the Iraqi state."
Gen. Odierno arrived in Iraq in April 2003 with the Fourth Infantry Division, and has spent a total of nearly four years in the country. He said he is increasingly confident Iraq's recent security gains are irreversible despite high-profile attacks like the string of bombings in Baghdad last month that killed roughly 100 people. "We'll have bad days in Iraq," he said. "But the bad days are becoming fewer. The numbers of deaths are becoming fewer. We're making slow, deliberate progress."
Gen. Odierno said remnants of al Qaeda in Iraq and other militant groups were carrying out some operations in Baghdad, but had been unable to re-create the sophisticated bomb-making networks they used to destabilize the Iraqi capital during the bloodiest days of Iraq's civil war.
The militants are instead working to expand their foothold in the volatile city of Mosul and to carry out new bombings in northern Iraq designed to exacerbate Kurdish-Arab tensions there, the commander said.
"That's the No. 1 potential driver of instability," he said. "I worry that the political rhetoric can lead to violence and real problems up in northern Iraq."
Gen. Odierno said the country was facing political uncertainty in advance of the parliamentary elections scheduled for January. The most intensive jockeying is taking place within the country's Shiite Arab majority, whose two largest parties are likely to abandon a longstanding alliance to run against each other.
At the American high command in Baghdad, senior officials are continuing to hone their withdrawal plans. The U.S. has closed or relinquished more than 100 small bases, and plans to leave dozens of other small outposts in coming months.
Write to Yochi J. Dreazen at yochi.dreazen@wsj.com
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A9
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