Word: trooped
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...soldiers say they have already been cooperating with their Iraqi counterparts. "I think there is going to be zero difference between what we do now and Jan. 1 and beyond," said Lieut. Colonel John Vermeesch just before the end of 2008. Vermeesch commands some 880 U.S. combat troops spread across five joint Iraqi-U.S. bases in northwest Baghdad. He is one of the battalion commanders in the 2nd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, a 4,000-troop force that arrived in Baghdad in mid-October to start a 12-month tour. They say they started complying with...
...military will face real hurdles as it pressures the Iraqis to carry out their end of the now formalized bargain. But not all the constraints laid out in the security pact are binding. A commanding coalition general still wields the power to authorize any operation unilaterally, and U.S. troops don't need to consult the Iraqis if responding to an imminent threat or in self-defense - a provision so broad that most of the limits on U.S. troop operations could effectively be bypassed if commanders deem it necessary to do so. "I would not view them as loopholes," Vermeesch says...
...report contains another caveat: the 1,106 civilian deaths this year that relate directly to U.S. troop presence - meaning Iraqis killed by U.S. troops or those civilians killed in attacks carried out by insurgents targeting U.S. troops - has remained relatively unchanged since 2006. "While deaths caused by Unknown perpetrators [e.g. car bombs in marketplaces] have plummeted by 87% from the peak year of 2006, civilian deaths [caused by "Coalition military or those who violently oppose them"]... have remained relatively constant throughout the last three years," the report states. "What remains certain is that Iraq under occupation is fraught with dangers...
...popular theory argues that the care and feeding of the right is a way to build cover for a progressive agenda. That may be true. Obama has enunciated some liberal foreign and domestic policy ideas, such as open-ended high-level talks with Iran, a rapid combat troop pull-out from Iraq and a possibly trillion dollar stimulus plan for the flagging economy: if he plans to roll them out soon, he might hope that one or two of his putative "advisers" will support him, or at least hold off on their attacks, because of his outreach...
...among his worst--clueless in crisis. Several of his appointees did perform honorably under difficult circumstances, however. One was Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who will continue to serve in the new Administration. Gates was a constant voice of sanity when it came to the sorts of weapons, tactics and troop levels that will be needed to fight the wars Bush left behind. There is no telling what sort of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice might have been in another Administration, but she deserves a going-away Teddy for standing up to Vice President Dick Cheney, especially when she defended...