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Bush to pull 8,000 troops from Iraq by February
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-09-09 14:46 WASHINGTON - US President Bush will keep roughly the same number of US forces in Iraq through the end of the year and pull about 8,000 troops home by February, a drawdown that's both slower and smaller than long anticipated. In a speech to be delivered Tuesday, Bush says more forces could withdraw in the first half of 2009. But for now, the situation isn't changing significantly. By the time the troops return home on the timeline Bush is proposing, someone else will be making the wartime decisions from the Oval Office.
The measured reductions in troops reflect the military's attempt to protect security gains in Iraq, while also freeing up some added forces in Afghanistan. The move also shows that Bush still commands when and how troops will withdraw, despite a fiercely opposition Congress and a soured American public. Bush's decisions amount to perhaps his last major troop strategy in a war that has come to define his presidency. He was to announce the details in a speech Tuesday, the text of which was released in advance by the White House. In all, about 8,000 US forces will be coming back, the president said. One Marine battalion, numbering about 1,000 troops, will go home on schedule in November and not be replaced. An Army brigade of between 3,500 and 4,000 troops will leave in February. Accompanying that combat drawdown will be the withdrawal of about 3,400 support forces over next several months. "Here is the bottom line: While the enemy in Iraq is still dangerous, we have seized the offensive, and Iraqi forces are becomingly increasingly capable of leading and winning the fight," Bush said in remarks prepared for delivery to the National Defense University in Washington. There are about 146,000 US troops in Iraq. Senior defense officials says Bush is adopting a compromise proposal from his military team. Gen. David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, had argued to keep troop levels fairly level through next June -- an even longer timeframe than Bush is embracing. But others, including Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said they believed that withdrawing troops more quickly from Iraq represented a small risk compared to the gain that could be made by shifting more to Afghanistan. |
