Word: iraq
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...earlier this week, continued strikes will fuel "anti-American sentiments." Such ire could doom Washington's efforts to rid Pakistan's lawless frontier of the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces that regularly launch attacks on U.S. and NATO forces in nearby Afghanistan. Highlighting how Afghanistan has eclipsed Iraq as a strategic issue, Baghdad didn't demand anything more of Obama than, in the words of a government statement, to work together to achieve "security and stability in Iraq, to preserve its sovereignty and protect its people's interests...
...Obama will start filling the senior national-security posts in the new Administration. Candidates for secretary of state are believed to include former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke and Chuck Hagel, a GOP senator from Nebraska who did not seek re-election and has been critical of the war in Iraq. A spokeswoman for John Kerry denied rumors that the Massachusetts senator and failed 2004 presidential nominee was also seeking the job. In the running to serve as Obama's national security adviser are James Steinberg, who served as Clinton's deputy national security adviser, and James Jones, a retired Marine...
...Obama's biggest immediate challenge overseas will be to scale back the 150,000 U.S. troop contingent now in Iraq, and shift some of them to reinforce the 32,000 American soldiers now in Afghanistan. While national-security experts agree such a shift needs to happen, the key question is its timing. If U.S. forces are pulled out of Iraq too soon, U.S. commanders there argue, the fragile gains achieved the over the past 18 months could erode, and ultimately bring on a civil war. Obama has said he would like to pull up to 10,000 troops a month...
...remain in his position, at least for the first year of the new Administration. Backers of such a move say the new commander-in-chief could use the continuity Gates would offer, but critics counter that keeping him on could delay Obama's promised U.S. troop pullout from Iraq and fail to signal a clear break from Bush's policy...
...Should Gates be passed over or decline to continue serving, former Clinton Navy Secretary Richard Danzig is a leading contender to run the Pentagon. And Danzig made clear last month where an Obama Administration might lean in the wars currently underway. Iraq in "now a political problem; security and the presence of military is important, but we need to get the Iraqis catalyzed to come to grips with handling front line combat issues themselves," said Danzig in a breakfast with reporters. While the Pentagon must begin "moving additional combat brigades to Afghanistan," Danzig stressed that "there are opportunities...