US Military commanders are drawing up plans for a faster withdrawal of American troops from Iraq in anticipation that President-elect Barack Obama will reject the current proposals as too slow, a media report said today.
US Military commanders are drawing up plans for a faster withdrawal of American troops from Iraq in anticipation that President-elect Barack Obama will reject the current proposals as too slow, a media report said today.
The new plans would provide alternatives to a timetable, that had envisioned bringing of troops back home more slowly than Obama promised during his presidential campaign, the New York Times said citing Pentagon and military officials.
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The officials were quoted as saying that Obama had not requested the new plans, but that they were being prepared in response to public statements from the president-elect and on the basis of conversations between military officials and members of Obama's transition team.
Obama met last week in Washington with his national security team, including Robert M Gates, the defense secretary, and Adm Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff.
A drawdown in Iraq, the Times said, is seen as a prerequisite to any significant American military buildup in Afghanistan, where Obama is ready to add up to 30,000 troops over the next two years, a near doubling of the current American force there of about 31,000.
The broad outlines of the military plan for Iraq presented to Obama in December envisioned withdrawing two brigades, or some 7,000 to 8,000 troops, over the next six months, officials said.
American military officials, the paper said, have declined to be more specific about other details in that plan, by Gen David H Petraeus and Gen Ray Odierno, the top American commanders responsible for Iraq.
But officials have also made clear that the plan did not set forth as fast a withdrawal as Obama pledged during the presidential campaign, when he repeatedly promised to have all combat troops out of Iraq within 16 months of his taking office, or by May 2010, the paper said.
Officials with Obama's transition team were quoted as saying he remains committed to that goal, although he has also said he will listen to the recommendations of his commanders.
In an interview to the Times yesterday, Vice President-elect Joseph R Biden, said he was "not prepared to talk about" new troop-level options.
Brooke Anderson, the national security spokeswoman for the Obama transition, told the paper, "We have had briefings from the Bush administration, including Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen, about current plans for Iraq and Afghanistan, and we appreciate the information that has been shared."
Anderson said that as president Obama would meet with his commanders "to make a determination to how we move forward to safely redeploy our combat brigades in 16 months." Senior military officers were quoted as saying they have anticipated that Obama will seek speedier options for Iraq troop withdrawals.
But they have also expressed uneasiness about a quick withdrawal and are unclear at this point about Obama's overall strategy in Afghanistan.
"It is more than a question of how fast and how low; it includes calculating how much risk you are willing to take in Iraq," one senior military officer told the paper of the discussions over a withdrawal
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