Doug Lorimer
With Republican legislators worried they will reap the result of voter discontent with US President George Bush's handling of the Iraq war in the mid-term congressional elections in early November, US officials have stepped up their PR campaign promising the withdrawal of troops from Iraq.
In a surprise visit to Baghdad on April 26, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld hailed the selection by the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) — the coalition of Shiite religious parties that holds 130 seats in the 275-member Iraqi parliament elected in January — of a new nomination for prime minister as a "turning point" that would enable a "partial withdrawal" of US troops from Iraq.
On April 21, Nouri (Jawad) al Maliki, the public spokesperson for caretaker PM Ibrahim al Jaafari, was selected by the UIA as its new candidate for PM.
Since the January election, Washington has pushed for Jaafari to be replaced as the UIA's nomination for PM. Jaafari won the nomination only with the backing of anti-occupation Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times in February, Maliki accused people who opposed Jaafari of acting as dupes for US ambassador Zalmay Khalizad.
Jaafari's prospects of retaining the UIA's nomination collapsed when Washington's campaign against him gained the support of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq — the other major component of the UIA, along with Sadr's supporters and Jaafari's Dawa party.
Under Iraq's US-imposed constitution, Maliki can only succeed Jaafari as PM if he is able to put together a cabinet acceptable to a majority of MPs within 30 days of his nomination.
US ABC News reported on April 26 that at a press briefing held after Rice and Rumsfeld met with Maliki, General George Casey, the top US commander in Iraq, "suggested today that the United States would soon reduce the number of troops in Iraq". The report added that "Pentagon planners said to ABC News that they hoped to pull more than 30,000 troops out by the end of the year, and possibly by as early as November".
"Depending on conditions in Iraq, Casey would initiate additional reductions by the end of the summer", ABC News reported. Casey has previously indicated he would like to reduce the number of US troops in Iraq to 100,000, 32,000 less than are in the country at the moment.
A key "condition" set by the Pentagon for achieving this — the ability of Washington's puppet Iraqi security forces to replace US troops in combatting Iraqi resistance fighters — is as far away as ever.
In testimony to the US House of Representatives international relations committee on April 27, US Army Brigadier General Michael Jones, after claiming the US had trained 250,000 Iraqi soldiers and police, admitted this "doesn't necessarily mean that is the size of an effective [fighting] force".
Indeed, Joint Chiefs of Staff head General Peter Pace told the US Senate armed services committee in February that there was only one Iraqi Army battalion, roughly 700 troops, capable of fighting the Iraqi insurgents without the US military's "support".
Maintaining US troop numbers in Iraq at the current level is proving to be a major strain on soldiers' morale. According to the March 1 Middle East edition of the US military's Stars and Stripes newspaper, a poll of active-duty US troops in Iraq found that 29% of them believe that US military forces should be withdrawn "immediately"; 22% said within the next six months.
In an attempt to relieve the strain on US Army soldiers and marines in Iraq, the US Navy "is sending thousands of men and women to support Army units", Associated Press reported on April 19.
"So far, some 1200 sailors have gone through an intense, two-week course", AP reported. It noted that normal basic US Army training lasts about nine weeks.
Commander Kevin Aandahl, spokesperson for the US Navy's education and training command in Florida, told AP that up to 10,000 sailors would be undertaking ground combat training over the coming months.
At a February 8 briefing at the Pentagon, Admiral Michael Mullen, the chief of US naval operations, had told reporters that the US Navy would start playing a bigger role in Iraq by adding more sailors to the 4000 already operating in the country.
From Green Left Weekly, May 3, 2006.
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