Word: troop
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...many American troops, the picture of Iraqi troop performance is not quite as rosy. In Hilla, the largest town in the central Iraqi province of Babil, soldiers and residents say the violence was fiercest on March 25. And at least one American soldier said he was angry that the role of Iraqi troops was exaggerated after the battle. "A gunfight broke out and we were fighting [the Mahdi Army] for about four hours," the soldier told TIME. "The army article made it sound like we were just there supporting the Iraqi Army, but we did all the work. We just...
Some U.S. troop commanders also foresee an indefinite dependence. "When we can adjust and withdraw [from Babil province] is really conditions-based," says Colonel Thomas James, refusing to speculate on a date. Despite this, James, like many of his high-ranking colleagues, insisted that the focus should be on progress made. "Four years after my first deployment, it's amazing to see how much progress has been made," he said. But with the American praise of Iraqi troop performance far outshining the reality on the ground, it seems unlikely that Iraqi forces will be able to catch up with their...
Indeed, few Iraqis believe America will draw down troops soon, no matter what the rhetoric is. Even the allies of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who demands an immediate end to the "American occupation," expressed more apathy than a particular preference for Clinton or Obama - both of whom have called for a timetable for exiting the country. "Before each election campaign, we hear a lot of promises and slogans, but the reality after the election is something else," says Sadrist Member of Parliament Fawze Akram, who said he doubted any candidate would actually follow through on a speedy troop...
Tahsin al-Shiekhly, spokesman for the Baghdad Security Plan, which oversees police and military checkpoints in the capital, said the most important thing in the American elections is not who the President will be, but whether he or she will maintain the troop support in Iraq if the Iraqi government requests it. "The U.S. has a commitment to the people of Iraq. They liberated them and they have come to rebuild the country. Whoever the next President is - even Hillary Clinton - I don't think they will withdraw troops from Iraq," he said. But so long as that concern...
Even as General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker made their case on Capitol Hill for maintaining U.S. troop levels in Iraq, a key Iraqi advocate of sending them home was making a power play. Tensions had been high in Baghdad Tuesday morning, in anticipation of a million-strong march against the U.S. occupation called by Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. His Mahdi Army had been engaged in weeks of violent clashes with U.S. and Iraqi government forces in the capital and in the southern city of Basra, and many in the capital feared the worst. But on Tuesday...