Thread: President Barack Obama addresses the nation from the Oval Office tonight

End of Iraq combat mission not victory lap
Julie Pace, Associated Press Writer – 14 mins ago

FORT BLISS, Texas – Hours before addressing the nation, President Barack Obama told U.S. troops just back from Iraq that his speech outlining the withdrawal of combat forces "is not going to be a victory lap" nor a cause for celebration. "There's still a lot of work that we've got to do to make sure that Iraq is an effective partner with us," Obama said on Tuesday of his decision to end the nation's combat mission in a war he once strongly opposed. "The main message I have tonight, and the main message I have to you, is congratulations on a job well done," Obama said.

He also noted that there remained "a tough fight ahead in Afghanistan ... A tough slog."

Before his visit, Obama telephoned former President George W. Bush, who ordered U.S. troops to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein in March 2003. Aides described the phone call from Air Force One as brief and declined to reveal what was said. "He did think it was important to reach out to President Bush, as he has done on occasion," Denis McDonough, chief of staff for Obama's National Security Council, told The Associated Press.

Ending the combat mission fulfills Obama's campaign promise to bring the war to a close. However a force of roughly 50,000 U.S. troops remains in a training and backup role. All forces are scheduled to be withdrawn by the end of 2011.

Also, Iraq is still torn with violence, and rival political factions have yet to form a government more than six months after national elections.

Obama spoke at a dining hall on this Army base in El Paso, Texas, which has been central to the war effort. The soldiers were among troops who recently returned from Iraq. "Welcome home," Obama said to shouts of "hooah."

He thanked them for their sacrifice.

Noting that the long and unpopular war was a source of "political disagreements" at home, Obama said "the one thing that we don't argue about is the fact that we have the finest fighting force in the world."

"The fact of the matter is that because of the extraordinary service that all of you have done and so many people here at Fort Bliss have done, Iraq has an opportunity to create better future for itself and America is more secure," Obama said. "The country appreciates you," he said.

Of his 8 p.m. EDT speech, Obama said, "It's not going to be a victory lap. It's not going to be self-congratulatory."

It was part of a calculated White House effort not to encourage parallels to Bush's premature "Mission Accomplished" speech aboard an aircraft carrier in 2003, just three months after the war began. "A million men and women in uniform have now served in Iraq," Obama noted.

After speaking, the president shook hands with each of the soldiers and family members gathered in the base dining hall, asking where they or their loved ones had served. He also met separately with families of deceased troops.

As he left the room, Obama said, "Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share this time with you and see all of you face to face. Just know that we're all thinking about you and all praying for your families."

To those who will face future missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama said, "We will be relentless in making sure you have what you need to come home safely."

Fort Bliss has seen repeated troop deployments to Iraq. Some of its servicemen and women are among the troops who remain in Iraq.

The administration has called the change of mission in Iraq an important milestone, but not a cause for celebration. "We are in transition," Obama observed.

Obama's comments were echoed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who told an American Legion audience in Milwaukee, "This is not a time for premature victory parades or self-congratulation, even as we reflect with pride on what our troops and their Iraqi partners have accomplished."

"I am not saying all is, or necessarily will be, well in Iraq," he continued, noting the continued violence and lack of a new government. The combat mission in Iraq has left more than 4,400 U.S. troops dead and thousands more wounded.

Obama was an early critic of the war, speaking out against it during the U.S. invasion and promising during his presidential campaign to bring the conflict to an end. The White House sees Tuesday's benchmark as a promise kept and has gone to great lengths to promote it as such, dispatching Vice President Joe Biden to Iraq to preside over a formal change-of-command ceremony and raising Tuesday night's remarks to the level of an Oval Office address, something Obama has only done once before.

Appearing on nationally broadcast interviews Tuesday morning, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs repeatedly brushed aside questions about whether Obama would credit Bush's troop surge with helping to pave the way for the withdrawal.

However, McDonough, the Obama national security adviser, told the AP Obama will "recognize the surge as one among many issues that contributed to our ability to protect our interests" in Iraq.

Top Republicans were dubious. "Some leaders who opposed, criticized, and fought tooth-and-nail to stop the surge strategy now proudly claim credit for the results," House GOP leader John Boehner said, in excerpts of a speech he was to give to the American Legion convention in Milwaukee. "Today we mark not the defeat those voices anticipated — but progress."

Since the start of the war, 200,000 personnel from Fort Bliss have deployed to Iraq, serving in every major phase of the war. Fifty-one soldiers from the base died there and many more were wounded.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100831/...re_us/us_obama

Friday, September 3, 2010
AP Calls Obama A Liar

There is no other reasonable interpretation.

Here is how Obama described the end of combat operations in Iraq in his speech Tuesday night: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=129565656

Tonight, I'd like to talk to you about the end of our combat mission in Iraq, the ongoing security challenges we face, and the need to rebuild our nation here at home....

So tonight, I am announcing that the American combat mission in Iraq has ended. Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country.

This was my pledge to the American people as a candidate for this office....

Here is a memo AP passed along to its staff in response to Obama's address and statements by administration officials echoing Obama: http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45&aid=190064

To begin with, combat in Iraq is not over, and we should not uncritically repeat suggestions that it is, even if they come from senior officials. The situation on the ground in Iraq is no different today than it has been for some months. Iraqi security forces are still fighting Sunni and al-Qaida insurgents. Many Iraqis remain very concerned for their country's future despite a dramatic improvement in security, the economy and living conditions in many areas.

As for U.S. involvement, it also goes too far to say that the U.S. part in the conflict in Iraq is over.

President Obama said Monday night that "the American combat mission in Iraq has ended. Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country."

However, 50,000 American troops remain in country. Our own reporting on the ground confirms that some of these troops, especially some 4,500 special operations forces, continue to be directly engaged in military operations. These troops are accompanying Iraqi soldiers into battle with militant groups and may well fire and be fired on.

I guess it depends on what the meaning of "combat" is. Or "mission."

If Obama had qualified his description, for example referring to the end of "major combat operations" and specifically mentioning the continuing need to "secure" the country, there is no doubt the press would have left him alone and praised his accuracy. http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/05/01/bush.transcript/

http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.co...bama-liar.html

September 9, 2010
US Government Report Argues for Police Force for American Interventions Overseas
Matthew Harwood truthout

President Barack Obama's declaration Tuesday that the US combat mission in Iraq is officially over may give some Americans hope that US foreign policy may become less invasive and adventurous, especially if American troops begin to return home from Afghanistan by the end of 2011.

Yet, inside the defense establishment, some intellectuals continue to examine the need for the United States to build a paramilitary police force to deploy to fragile or failing states to restore security and order. In May 2009, the federally financed RAND Corporation published a 183-page report, "A Stability Police Force for the United States: Justification and Options for Creating US Capabilities". The report, conducted for the US Army's Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI) at the Army War College, examined the need for a "stability police force" (SPF), which it described as "a high-end police force that engages in a range of tasks such as crowd and riot control, special weapons and tactics (SWAT) and investigations of organized criminal groups." Most soldiers do not possess the specialized skills an SPF officer needs to prevent violence, the report notes. "Most soldiers are trained to apply overwhelming force to secure victory, rather than minimal force to prevent escalation." The SPF would also train indigenous police forces, much like what occurs today in Iraq and Afghanistan.

According to the study led by Terrence K. Kelly, a senior researcher at RAND, the United States clearly needs an SPF. "Stability operations have become an inescapable reality of US foreign policy," the report states. The RAND report estimates that creating such a paramilitary police force would cost about $637 million annually, require about 6,000 personnel and that it should be headquartered inside the US Marshals Service (USMS), not the US Army.

"Of the options considered," the RAND report argues, "this research indicates that the US Marshals Service would be the most likely to successfully field an SPF, under the assumptions that an [military police] option would not be permitted to conduct policing missions in the United States outside of military installations except under extra-ordinary circumstances and that doing so is essential to maintaining required skills." The idea here is that members of an SPF would be a "hybrid force" and could be embedded in police and sheriff departments nationwide to retain their policing skills when not deployed overseas. When needed, a battalion-sized SPF unit could be deployed in 30 days.

This recommendation did cause a small number of libertrians to take notice of the report after it was published because of the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids using the military for domestic policing inside the United States. Libertarian William Grigg blogged on LewRockwell.com that he feared that an SPF could be used domestically. "If 'peacekeepers' end up patrolling American streets, they probably won't be foreigners in blue berets, but homegrown jackboots commanded by Washington," Grigg wrote.

Chris Calabrese, a legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, was less fearful of an SPF, but he told Truthout that the report's recommendation to headquarter "a super police force that would be deployed both foreign and domestically in the US Marshals Service" did violate the spirit of the Posse Comitatus Act. "In essence, you have this force that would in theory be a civilian force that would be part of the US Marshal Service but they would be deployed as part of the Army and the military forces," Calabrese said. "That would be their primary deployment purpose. Their civilian purpose would be secondary. They describe it as a training purpose. So who does this police force work for then?"

Talking to WorldNetDaily in January, Kelly did say an SPF could be deployed in the United States, although that's not what their primary purpose is. "If there were a major disaster like Katrina it could be deployed in the U.S. but that's not the purpose of the research," he said. "It's important to point out that the goal was to create a force that's deployable overseas. If it's to be used in the United States it would be a secondary thing and then only in an emergency."

The RAND Corporation would not make any of the report's authors available for an interview. Emails to the USMS asking for a comment on the report and its recommendations also went unanswered.

Calabrese also said there are practical concerns behind such a force outside of the Posse Comitatus Act. "It's also somewhat strange," he said. Calabrese wonders what would happen when SPF personnel get called up from wherever they're embedded to deploy overseas. "What happens to all the police work they're doing domestically?" he asked.

But the RAND report has more implications for the future of US foreign policy than it does about the militarization of police inside the United States. It signals that some defense and peace intellectuals believe that the United States will continue to intervene in fragile and failing states. After listing the stability operations that the United States has participated in since the end of the cold war - Panama (1989), Somalia (1992), Haiti (1994), Bosnia (1995), Kosovo (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003) and Haiti again in 2004 - the RAND report notes this trend will continue. "There are several countries where the United States could become engaged in stability operations over the next decade, such as Cuba and Sudan," according to the report.


>
> While an SPF could be part of a multilateral response
> directed by the United Nations, the RAND report also
> imagines times when the United States will need an SPF
> to restore security and order in another country because
> it has acted unilaterally. "While there may be times in
> which allies make important contributions, to do so would
> be to limit US freedom of action on the international
> stage."
>
> Robert Perito, a senior program officer at the United
> States Institute of Peace and the author of "Where Is
> the Lone Ranger When We Need Him? America's Search for
> a Post Conflict Security Force", believes a stability
> police force is necessary, especially after the looting
> and rioting that occurred in Baghdad after the US
> invasion of 2003. If the United States was able to
> prevent that disaster, the Iraq campaign could have
> gone differently.
>
> "We have a proven need for a capacity that would makes
> things better if it existed," Perito said. "We refuse to
> do it and we keep ending up with a negative result."
>
> The United States, however, once did have some of the
> capabilities of a SPF, said Perito until Congress scuttled
> it in 1974. The US Agency for International Development
> (USAID) once trained foreign police officers at the Inter-
> national Police Academy in Washington, DC. In a recently
> released paper from the PKSOI, retired US Army Col. Dennis
> Keller explains why Congress eventually ended US assistance
> to foreign police and closed the academy.
>
> "Congress's growing opposition to USAID's police training
> and assistance programs peaked in 1973, the concern being
> that police trainers had allegedly approved, advocated,
> or taught torture techniques to civilian police in some
> countries, which in turn had damaged the image of the
> United States," Keller writes. While other departments
> like Homeland Security, Justice and State do train foreign
> police, Keller notes there is no SPF capacity and that the
> training is a bureaucratic maze, carried out by large
> contract police trainers, like DynCorp and MPRI in Iraq
> and Afghanistan.
>
> He, like Perito, however, believes the United States needs
> a centralized, government-led policing capacity to restore
> order in a fragile and failing state before terrorist or
> criminal organizations fill the power vacuum and then
> transition to training police forces to carry out their
> public safety duties.
>
> Perito says four federal agencies entities have recently
> put forth proposals to create stability police forces to
> deploy overseas. He said two of those agencies were federal
> law enforcement entities, but would not name them, although
> he said one does have personnel in Iraq.
>
> "These are serious federal agencies," he said. "I don't
> have much of a fear that this is going to turn into a
> rogue force that goes wandering around getting into
> trouble."
>
> Perito, however, is skeptical there is any real movement
> to create an SPF from the upper echelons of the US govern-
> ment. "I don't think this is on the president's agenda,"
> he said.
>
> "From my perspective, I really wish it was true, that this
> was moving forward at a rapid clip," Perito said. "But I
> don't think it's imminent."