The US is keeping hundreds of American troops and security personnel in Iraq, despite a recently-passed resolution from Congress that failed to reauthorize funding for the US military to train and support Iraqi security forces.
Most Americans have been led to believe that all US forces besides those guarding the massive American Embassy in Iraq have been withdrawn since the end of last year. But small units of up to 300 troops have remained in Baghdad to train Iraqi security forces and provide aid and support, allegedly for counter-terrorism operations.
In reality, US troops have been providing this support to elite Iraqi forces that report directly to the increasingly authoritarian Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. They have essentially been used as a secret police force for Maliki to attack, detain, and torture his political opponents and crack down harshly on public dissent.
There were attempts in the Washington pipe-line to negotiate with Iraq an agreement in which even more US troops would be sent back. But last month, Congress passed a resolution that did not reauthorize funding for these small units. “The authority for U.S. forces to train and assist the Iraqi security forces expired Sunday [Sept. 30],” reports The Cable‘s Josh Rogin.
Still, the Pentagon is scrambling to try and keep the forces there.
“No personnel will return immediately to the United States on Oct. 1, 2012 while DoD is reviewing the effect of not being authorized under the Continuing Resolution to continue the training of Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) following expiration of the Iraqi Security Forces Fund (ISFF) authority on Sept. 30, 2012,” Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Wesley Miller told The Cable. “The Department of Defense is reviewing the availability of other authorities that may authorize OSC-I to conduct training activities in Iraq.”
Despite claims by the Obama administration about “ending the Iraq war” and bringing our troops home, the US is still very much involved in Iraq, in training the abusive security forces, in propping up the corrupt and dictatorial Maliki government, and in trying to slowly slip more US forces into the country.
Why is it that this news does not even make me raise an eyebrow?
Mr.Hitler kept his troops in occupied countries w/o permission too.
Official USA troop numbers are down to the ostensible protection of the gargantuan USA embassy, as well as security "trainers". But there were at one point as many DoD contract mercenaries in Iraq as there were official USA forces — if they are all gone, which I seriously doubt, where have they gone … to Syria and Iran? How much of the rise in sectarian violence in Iraq is actually due to these mercenaries, in an effort to destabilize the Maliki government in their political swing towards greater affinity with Iran?
It makes Israel happy. That's all that matters.
America destabilized it, let her continue to foot the bill and maybe learn a valuable lesson.
Heh.
Anyone who seriously thought that the U.S. was serious when I claimed to be leaving Iraq is a few cards short of a pack.
The U.S. want to be close to that black gold, yes it does! Don't let your mother tell you any different!
One article a few months ago pointed out that the US State Department had brought in hundreds of trainers to ostensibly train the Iraqi police and the police told them to get lost. and they were down to just a couple dozen trainers. Where is Panetta in all this? It's time to fire a couple Generals like McCrystal as part of their empire building schemes.
Time to dismantle the warfare state. With Iran still in US/Israeli cross-hairs, no issue is more urgent.
Chickenhawks in Washington are divorced from reality. And what's worse: they love war, especially when it's conducted by US soldiers against regional foes of the Zionist regime.
In a normal world, those responsible for the Iraq invasion would be locked up for life or, like Saddam Hussein, hanged in disgrace. But 'Great Powers', we are constantly reminded, get to 'conduct war' (kill) with impunity. It's what Great Powers do (especially in the modern era of the imperial US president).
Incredibly, it was Saddam Hussein who presided over a relatively stable and secular country, not his 'democratic' successor. What Washington has created in Iraq is a living hell hole. Washington invaded and destroyed a politically flawed but independent, self-governing, and increasingly prosperous civilization in Iraq. Further, the reasons given for Washington's destruction of Iraq turned out to be a pack of lies. But since Saddam's Iraq was feared and hated by Israel and its operatives here, Americans were successfully fooled into believing that (1) aggressive war was essential and (2) that still there's no reason to punish those who responsible for the enormous blood-letting and destruction. In reality, the Iraq War actually turned out to be little more than political mass murder. Yet no one's responsible.
Why do they hate us? They hate us for our deeds.
I do agree that there are still a lot of troops in a country where they should no longer be and that doesn't want them, as is the case in Iraq, as well as every other country we've sent our troops to since 9/11. But we didn't send our troops to these countries to appease them, only to keep them from blowing up a couple more buildings full of people and to try to keep Americans safe, even the ignorant one's.
But i strongly disagree that our troops are only still in Iraq to "train abusive security forces" and "propping up a corrupt and dictatorial Maliki government" and especially with "To slip more U.S forces into the country", which doesn't even make sense, seeing as how everyone wants our troops out of there.
i do fear what will come when we have no troops in terrorism ridden countries, as much as i hate to say it, because those people are taught and brainwashed to hate us from the time they're born and nothing will stop that except to kill them all, which is completely out of the question.
Semper Fi.