Top brass warns Iraq withdrawal may take 2 or 3 years
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WASHINGTON - President-elect Barack Obama's signature campaign promise to withdraw US combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office appears to be on a collision course with the nation's military brass, if comments yesterday from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are any indication.
In his first press conference since the election, Admiral Michael G. Mullen said he believes that the soonest all US forces could be safely withdrawn from Iraq is "two to three years."
"We have 150,000 troops in Iraq right now," the nation's top military officer told reporters at the Pentagon. "We have lots of bases. We have an awful lot of equipment that's there. And so we would have to look at all of that [and] the security conditions that are there. And clearly we'd want to be able to do it safely."
Mullen, who has completed the first year of a two-year term, has long supported drawing down US troops only as security improvements warrant and has repeatedly warned against setting a date certain to end the US military commitment.
His comments indicate that he is preparing to caution the incoming president, with whom aides say he has held at least one conversation, against a speedy withdrawal.
On the campaign trail, Obama said he would consult his top military advisers before ordering a withdrawal from Iraq, but also made the pledge a centerpiece of his presidential bid. Any backsliding on his pledge would probably provoke an outcry from antiwar Democrats, one of his key political constituencies.
But the biggest roadblock to realizing his plan to end the war in Iraq and divert more military resources to Afghanistan may emerge from Iraq. An agreement between the United States and Iraq recently approved by the Bush administration and Iraq's Cabinet calls for removal of US troops by the end of 2011. Once approved by Iraq's Parliament, which began debate on the measure yesterday, the agreement cannot be changed by either side for at least a year.
Democratic lawmakers, including Representative William D. Delahunt of Quincy, say they fear that the clause "may effectively tie the hands of the next administration."
BRYAN BENDER
US representatives' offices swamped with demand were being limited to 198 tickets each, and most had stopped taking requests. Senators' offices were expecting a larger allotment, 300 to 400 each, but they, too, had many more requests than they could handle. A total of 240,000 tickets have been printed, to be distributed by lawmakers to the public free of charge.
"People are desperate to become part of it," Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, said on the Senate floor. ". . . We could have more than 1.5 million people descend on the nation's capital."
Feinstein, who chairs the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, introduced a bill she aims to speed through the Senate this week that would make it illegal to sell or attempt to sell tickets to the Jan. 20 ceremony. It also would be illegal to forge tickets. Either crime would be a misdemeanor punishable by fines of up to $100,000 and a year in prison.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
In the book, Huckabee, who is already being talked about as a possible contender in 2012, brags about the success of his grass-roots campaign and also tries to settle some scores.
In "Do the Right Thing: Inside the Movement That's Bringing Common Sense Back to America," the former Arkansas governor has particular disdain for former rival Mitt Romney.
Huckabee says Romney was "anything but conservative until he changed the light bulbs in his chandelier in time to run for president," according to an account of the book on Time magazine's website.
Time says Huckabee also mocks Romney for suggesting in a debate that more investment in high-yield stocks could help resolve economic woes, saying, "Let them eat stocks!"
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