Word: iraq
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...local elections scheduled for early next year. Relations between Baghdad and the Kurdish autonomous region in the north remain troubled, with tension rising over the future status of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. Indeed, General David Petraeus, the man most quoted by McCain in making his case on Iraq, has warned that the gains achieved in Iraq over the past year are "fragile" and "reversible." While the security situation has improved dramatically, progress has been limited on the political reconciliation that the military surge was intended to foster...
That assessment could back up McCain's case against a hasty withdrawal from Iraq, although the fact that the Iraqi government has demanded it makes that a more complicated argument. Then again, if the intra-Iraqi power struggle creates a new security breakdown, various Iraqi political leaders may yet see considerable value in a continued U.S. presence, if directed against their foes...
...situation on the ground in Iraq that determines the future of the U.S. military mission there. For one thing, the fragile calm in Iraq coincides with an increasingly perilous Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan, raising pressure on the U.S. to divert more combat resources from its over-stretched military into that theater - an expanded military commitment favored by both John McCain and Barack Obama. Sending more troops to Afghanistan will require drawing down in Iraq...
Then, there's the financial crisis and looming global recession that will inevitably impose a far greater austerity on Washington. America's military deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan are expected to cost close to $200 billion for 2008 alone, and maintaining that commitment will become considerably more burdensome as Washington is forced to funnel many hundreds of billions of dollars into simply averting financial collapse. The looming global economic recession will further slash tax revenues available to the U.S. government...
...year ago, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the cost of funding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars from 2001-2017 to be around $2 trillion, or more - factoring in some $705 billion in interest payments in recognition of the fact that the war is being funded with borrowed money. (Nations typically increase taxes in order to finance protracted military conflicts; the Bush Administration, having cut taxes, has had to rely on the credit of others to wage its wars.) The current credit crisis and economic slowdown will considerably raise the pressure on the U.S. national debt, which had already grown from...