Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Silat on November 10, 2006, 05:28:53 AM
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So if reps do it is it Cut & Run?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-2446744,00.html
Handover to Iraqi Army 'set for the end of next year'
By Ned Parker, Michael Evans and Richard Beeston
American and Iraqi officials have set a date for giving Iraq’s forces responsibility for security across the country.
Under a plan to be presented to the UN Security Council next month, the Iraqi Government would assume authority from coalition troops by the end of next year.
Only hours after Donald Rumsfeld was replaced as US Defence Secretary, American, British and Iraqi officials spoke openly about accelerating the handover process.
Baghdad made clear that it would use the Democrat victory in congressional midterm elections to push President Bush for concessions. Confidants of Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, said that they hoped defeat would make Mr Bush more open to ideas that he had previously rejected.
However, Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, sought to play down the impact of both the Republicans’ mid-term election losses and the dismissal of Mr Rumsfeld. She said that it was unlikely that there would be a “major upheaval” of US policy in Iraq.
In a speech to the Royal United Services Institute think-tank she said: “We will leave when they are confident that they can take the role of security in the country on their own shoulders.
“I ask those who are calling for more precipitate action to consider the consequences of such action: we would be leaving the Iraqi Government without the means to prevent a further escalation in the violence, without the tools to enforce the rule of law and without the authority to prevent their country from turning into a base for terrorism.”
All sides said that Mr Rumsfeld’s departure provided an opportunity to set a clearer timetable for withdrawing all foreign forces.
A new tone was set by President Bush. He said that he was open to ideas that would help the US to achieve its goals of defeating the terrorists and ensuring that Iraq’s democratic Government succeeded.
The plan being drawn up in Baghdad, with Washington’s approval, seeks a one-year extension of the UN mandate for foreign forces in Iraq.
But it also states that by December 2007, security in the country’s 18 provinces, apart from the most violent, be handed over to the Iraqi Army and police. US and British troops would play a support role.
The process has already begun in the South, where British forces have handed over two provinces this summer and hope to complete the transfer of a third by the year end.
British military sources said that the downfall of Mr Rumsfeld had given the coalition a golden opportunity to “rebrand” its strategy in Iraq. Under his era at the Pentagon, one senior British official complained, there was “very little flexibility”.
The two key aims of the strategy, training the Iraqi Army to take over security and helping the Baghdad Government to spread its influence throughout the country, remained unaltered. But it would be possible now to make clear to the whole Middle East that US and British forces intended to leave Iraq and that the countdown had begun.
Until now Washington and London have rejected setting out a timetable for a withdrawal of their forces. But yesterday British military officials suggested that it could be completed in the next year and a half.
Haidar al-Abadi, an Iraqi MP and member of Nouri al- Maliki’s inner circle, said that the Government hoped to raise the issue of a timetable with the US Administration, which rejected it during negotiations in June. Iraqi officials believe that Washington will be more receptive now because the Administration is “weaker” and less stubborn.
Mr al-Abadi said that a timetable would help to destroy the popular support of armed groups, who claim that American troops will never leave the country. Insurgent groups have repeatedly called for a date for a US withdrawal as their precondition for stopping attacks.
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on the new timetable, how long is it until iraq is a muslim fundamentalist theocracy?:O :O :O :noid :noid :cry
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Good Luck Iraq... you are going to need it.
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Originally posted by Silat
So if reps do it is it Cut & Run?
Handovers have already been occuring, just not for the most part reported. The only thing different here is they've set a date for "official" turnover but then there's the little caveat "except for the most violent". They also mention it as a "rebranding" of policy. Also, the date says nothing about troop withdrawal which is what the Dems want regardless of the result. As far as I can see we're at the same track except they've stuck in a notional date.
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Silat the real issue concerns Noodle Carts. Will they some day populate the streets of Baghdad as they do in Saigon today?
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I would imagine that a revised forward time schedule for planned transfers would be far more beneficial to Iraq than an unplanned, dump in your lap method precipitated by a sudden funding cut for overseas activity by Congress after January.
Choose your poison, I think (I sincerely hope I'm wrong and just being pessimistic) it will happen in much that manner.
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Originally posted by Mace2004
Handovers have already been occuring, just not for the most part reported.
Okay... I'll bite. How do you know this?
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Originally posted by Debonair
on the new timetable, how long is it until iraq is a muslim fundamentalist theocracy?:O :O :O :noid :noid :cry
...and when do we get to wax nostalgic about the good ole days with the stable government... er... I mean dictatorship.
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Originally posted by Sandman
Okay... I'll bite. How do you know this?
You'll just have to guess.
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I'm guessing that you're making **** up.
That's my guess.
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Coalition troops have moved from the left seat to the right seat in alot of areas, Sandman. In most cases the handovers aren't 100 percent, meaning Coalition troops are still around to give a helping hand and paternal advise from the left seat.
In a few areas the IA is autonomous, but so far they really suck at what they're supposed to be doing. There's even some concern about the percieved lack of impartiality of the rank-and-file IA trooper contributing to their failure to keep the peace.
*GASP*
;)
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Originally posted by Sandman
I'm guessing that you're making **** up.
That's my guess.
LOL, fine, you are free to guess whatever you would like to guess.;)