Iraq Drawdown ‘Reconsidered,’ US Admits

Troop Reductions Unlikely to Begin in Earnest Until June at Earliest

With Iraqis still reeling from yesterday’s attacks which left 154 dead and over 600 wounded, the deadliest day in quite some time in the nation, US officials are finally admitting that the August “drawdown” is being reconsidered.

Initially Obama Administration officials had promised to have all combat troops out of Iraq by August of this year, leaving some 50,000 troops in the nation indefinitely afterwards. Even this pledge, a far cry from his campaign promise to have all the troops out by May, is looking increasingly unlikely.

With the March 7 election predictably ending in indecision and rising tensions, the US hasn’t even started removing its nearly 100,000 troops in earnest yet, and with just months left to meet that deadline they are admitting that it might not begin until “June at the earliest.

When US officials were selling Iraq’s election as a “stabilizing” influence the hope was that the drawdown would seriously begin just weeks after the vote. Now that the election seems to have made matters dramatically worse, not only the August deadline but the 2011 deadline must be considered in question.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.