[Peace-discuss] pure arrogance

[Dlind49 at aol.com]

U.S. Expects Long - Term Troop Stay in Iraq
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
 
Filed at 2:47 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- American officials say U.S. forces will be needed in Iraq 
long after a sovereign government is restored this summer, but they have yet 
to work out the terms of a continued presence.

Senior Pentagon officials said Thursday they were confident that the Iraqis, 
once given political control, would agree U.S. troops should stay. But some 
outside the government question whether that would hold true once an elected 
Iraqi government took over.

Anthony Cordesman, a close observer of the Iraq situation as a strategist at 
the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that if political 
control was turned over on July 1 to an Iraqi body that is not elected, it likely 
would align itself with U.S. objectives and therefore welcome a continued 
U.S. military presence. But once elections were held, the U.S. role would be in 
doubt, he said.

If the new Iraqi government decided it wanted American forces to leave, ``We 
would certainly be obligated to leave, under international law,'' Cordesman 
said.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's chief spokesman, Larry Di Rita, told 
reporters at the Pentagon that there is a ``fairly confident belief'' that most 
Iraqis accept the U.S. view that American troops will be needed over the long 
haul to ensure a stable transition to democracy.

The basis for a continued U.S. military presence under the authority of a 
transitional Iraqi government is ``being developed,'' Di Rita said without 
elaborating.

``I think there's a fairly comfortable understanding that the coalition has a 
lot to offer with respect to continued security in Iraq,'' Di Rita said, and 
``that people in Iraq understand that (and) want the coalition to continue to 
be involved in security in some way.''

Di Rita did not define the roles that U.S. troops would play once the 
occupation ended. Other officials have said troops will be needed to guide the 
development of Iraqi internal security forces as well as build an Iraqi army that is 
capable of defending against external threats.

U.S. troops also will be engaged in combat as long as the insurgency remains 
active.

The legal basis for U.S. troops operating in any foreign country is normally 
spelled out in a legal arrangement called a status of forces agreement, which 
defines legal protections for U.S. troops accused of crimes in that country. 
Without it, U.S. troops in Iraq would be subject to local Iraqi law, once the 
U.S. occupation authority is ended and a government is restored.

``That would be untenable,'' Cordesman said.

At this point it is unclear whether American authorities can work out such a 
complex legal agreement by June 30, when some form of transitional Iraqi 
government is due to take control.

Cordesman said U.S. officials at one time had hoped to have such an agreement 
worked out by this month, but that proved impossible because ``there is no 
clear government to work with.''

The U.S. plan is to gradually move responsibility for security into the hands 
of the Iraqis, thereby reducing the U.S. military's role. But senior 
officials say that process will take many months, if not years.

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Bush 
administration has a plan to accelerate the building of viable Iraqi security 
forces, which now number over 200,000 and include police, border guards, a civil 
defense corps and guards for certain key facilities.

``We're going to focus on Iraqi security forces like we've never really 
focused on them before, and you'll see some of that come out in the next week or so 
as we try to ensure we have unity of effort on the equipping and training and 
mentoring of Iraqi security forces,'' he said.

Even while the Bush administration works toward its goal of restoring Iraqi 
sovereignty by July 1, U.S. troops are dying at a rate of more than one a day. 
They are opposed by an insurgency that U.S. commanders say is aimed at 
preventing a stable Iraqi government from taking root.

Myers said he could not estimate with confidence how long U.S. troops will be 
needed in Iraq.

``I really do believe it's unknowable,'' he said. ``If I gave a good 
professional estimate, then that would be a standard that people would point to and, 
knowing that we can't know it perfectly, we'd get hammered.''

For planning purposes, the Army is assuming it will have to keep roughly 
100,000 troops in Iraq for at least another two years, the Army chief of staff, 
Gen. Peter Schoomaker, told Congress recently.