US has a whole new deal with Iraq, and won’t talk about it
Story by Jeff Schogol • 15h •
The U.S. government’s plan to transition to a new bilateral security agreement with Iraq is about as clear as mud.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, two U.S. officials said that the relationship between U.S. and Iraq is fundamentally shifting but repeatedly refused to say how many of the roughly 2,500 U.S. troops currently in Iraq will withdraw from the country – if any – under the new agreement and where those service members who stay behind will be based. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity under rules established by the State Department.
“We’re not going to speak to our plans concerning specific base locations or troop numbers,” a senior defense official said. “We have been and will continue to be in active dialogue with the government of Iraq about how our bilateral relationship will evolve, which will certainly include changes to our force posture and troop numbers. For now, that remains in a planning process and under review. Until those decisions are reached, we won’t be providing specific information on numbers and locations regarding something that hasn’t been decided.”
The United States has had a fraught relationship with Iraq for several decades. In 1991, the U.S military led a coalition that ejected the Iraqi army from Kuwait. Then in 2003, a U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq to oust its leader Saddam Hussein. The war turned into a bitter insurgency, which American forces had largely defeated when they left the country in December 2011.
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