Pelosi sees no 'justification' for leaving 50,000 troops in Iraq David Edwards and Muriel Kane

Published: Thursday February 26, 2009





Print This Email This Although President Barack Obama has not yet officially laid out his plans for withdrawing US troops from Iraq, an unauthorized leak earlier this week suggested that he intends to maintain a "residual force" of up to 50,000 US troops in the country, even after withdrawing the majority of American forces -- a figure that has raised the hackles of liberal Democrats.



That figure has already raised eyebrows about the reason for such a large number of "residual" troops and suspicions that the US military might be planning to continue combat operations under the guise of training and support -- a major issue in the Vietnam War.



"What's important about this is that we are on a path to ending the war,"

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Wednesday. But "I don't know what the justification is for the presence of 50,000 troops in Iraq."



"I do think that there's a need for some," Pelosi explained, "but I don't think that all of them have to be in country. They can be platformed outside. ... I would think a third of that, maybe 20,000 ... 15 or 20,000."



Maddow turned to Tom Andrews, a former Congressman from Maine and now the director of the Win Without War coalition, who began by agreeing with Pelosi that "it's a very good step."



But Andrews also expressed concerns about whether Obama's plans will abide by the status of forces agreement which the Bush administration negotiated last fall with the Iraqi government. That agreement calls for American troops to "pull back to bases outside Iraq's cities by the end of June 2009 and withdraw entirely from Iraq within three years."



"One of the questions ... is not only the numbers of residual troops left, but who are these residual troops," Andrews said. "What's the difference between a combat troop and a residual troop? Will a residual troop find itself in the middle of combat. ... I think a key to this is the president on Friday announcing very clearly that he supports this status of forces agreement, with its clear goal of having all US forces out by a date certain."



"It's very dangerous," Andrews added of the potential he sees for the US military to attempt to evade deadlines for withdrawal. "We've got military planners telling the press that they're going to get to that number -- of the reduction of combat troops -- just by redefining a combat troop as a residual force."



Andrews also noted that author Tom Ricks says military personnel with experience in Iraq have told him him that "there's a growing consensus that we're not even halfway through combat operations in Iraq and that we're still going to be in combat operations in Iraq by 2015."



"There's a lot of people inside and outside off the Pentagon that have designs on obscuring this difference between combat and residual force and use it to keep combat operations going," he added.



This video is from MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast Feb. 25, 2009.









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