Word: anbar
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...multiple briefings on Iraq: a military update at 7 a.m., an intelligence report after that, political briefings through the day and finally a memo from his staff before he goes to bed. But during his recent surprise visit to al-Asad air base in the middle of Iraq's Anbar province, the President got an altogether different kind of report. In a concrete building sheltered from the 110°F (45°C) heat outside, Captain Lee Hemming, a Marine Cobra helicopter pilot, stood nervously opposite his Commander in Chief and a phalanx of fellow Marines and described his mission...
...their owners had to disable the wireless functions to prevent the President's plane from being tracked across the globe. Twelve hours later, Air Force One touched down, and Bush stepped out onto the tarmac of another well-secured U.S. air base for an eight-hour visit to Anbar province...
...positions. Even the President's comments about troop levels can be confounding: Bush made the trip in part to pressure a reluctant Congress to permit his 30,000-troop surge, announced in January, to continue a while longer. And yet it was Bush who, during his brief visit to Anbar, hinted openly that troop withdrawals might begin soon. He told reporters that General David Petraeus informed him that "if the security situation continues to improve the way it has, we may be able to achieve the same objectives with fewer troops...
...were in part the result of luck. Al-Qaeda violently overplayed its hand and started randomly killing Sunnis who refused to ally themselves with the terrorist organization. And in some places, America won the Sunnis over the old-fashioned way: by paying them. The question is how widely the Anbar model can be applied elsewhere. It is easy to forget that Anbar is the one part of Iraq that is largely Sunni and thus doesn't suffer from the same kind of civil strife that upends order in other parts of the country. And if Anbar was truly secure...
...time, acknowledging that the natural rotation schedule will leave him with fewer troops, a reduction from 20 to 15 combat brigades over the next year. Bush may try to hold his Republicans in place and bollix antiwar Democrats by announcing a quick withdrawal of a brigade or two from Anbar and the north, but that will be politics, not policy. And policy-the question of what, if any, role the U.S. military should have in Iraq-is where the congressional questioning should focus. Will Petraeus propose moving U.S. troops into the restive Shi'ite south? What will he do about...