As noted, Defense Secretary Bob Gates told reporters on Friday that President Obama’s combat-troop withdrawal plan had the support of Gens. David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno, the chief of U.S. Central Command and the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, respectively. And that raises an interesting question: What hasn’t More…
In a conference call with reporters immediately after President Obama’s Iraq withdrawal speech, Defense Secretary Bob Gates said that the withdrawal plan has the support of key military leaders.
I’m obviously very supportive of the decision the president has made, as is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
In 2003, then Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division that had participated in the invasion of Iraq, had a running joke with an embedded reporter, Rick Atkinson. Slyly acknowledging the unclear aims of the inchoate occupation of Iraq, the general would turn to the reporter and More…
The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post all follow The Associated Press’ break yesterday afternoon that President Obama is about to decide on a plan to withdraw combat troops from Iraq by August 2010. The Times has an interesting bit More…
Now that Tom Ricks, the best military reporter in the country, has published the second volume of his politico-military history of Iraq, The Gamble, my temptation is going to be to blog nearly every word of it. My copy is still on its way from the publisher, so I’m More…
Nancy Youssef at McClatchy reports that the top U.S. civilian and military officials in Iraq, Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Gen. Ray Odierno, have given the White House their assessments of U.S. troop withdrawals that would take 16, 19 and 23 months. Odierno’s predecessor as commander of U.S. troops in More…
Marc Lynch flags — and argues with — an apparent position taken by Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, in favor of taking until the end of 2009 to figure out how to withdraw troops more thoroughly. To some degree, I’m not really sure, judging from More…
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) asks about President Obama’s discussions about the pace of withdrawal from Iraq. Gates says they’re discussing transitioning forces from combat troops into an advisory role, which might adhere to the 16-month timeline Obama advocated during the presidential campaign, or could take until 2011 to complete. It’s More…
This morning I got an email from a spokesman for Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, objecting to my characterization of him in my Clinton-confirmation-preview story as “appearing to indicate that More…
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