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Obama says Iraq war 'ending,' calls country 'sovereign'
VINEYARD HAVEN, USA
Petroleumworld.com, Aug 30, 2010Three days before the official end of the US combat mission in Iraq, US President Barack Obama said Saturday Iraq was now a "sovereign" nation free to determine its own destiny.
"On Tuesday, after more than seven years, the United States of America will end its combat mission in Iraq and take an important step forward in responsibly ending the Iraq war," Obama said in his weekly radio address.
The president, who is spending his last full vacation day Saturday on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, is to deliver on Tuesday a nationally-televised Oval Office address on Iraq.
"As a candidate for this office, I pledged I would end this war," he said Saturday. "As president, that is what I am doing. We have brought home more than 90,000 troops since I took office."
US troop numbers in Iraq fell below 50,000 last Tuesday in line with Obama's instructions as part of a "responsible drawdown" of troops, seven years on from the invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.
American troop levels are now less than a third of the peak figure of around 170,000 during the US military "surge" of 2007, when Iraq was in the midst of a brutal Shiite-Sunni sectarian war that cost thousands of lives.
But more than 4,400 US servicemen and women have lost their lives in this war since it began in 2003, according to an AFP count based on data from www.icasualties.org , an independent website.
And violence in the country, while down from the worst levels seen at the height of sectarian strife, continues to threaten stability in the nation, spooking investors, terrorizing religious minorities and raising the specter of a return to chaos after the end of US combat operations.
Particularly vulnerable are the Sunni Arab militiamen who sided with American soldiers against Al-Qaeda but now fear a surge in bloody revenge attacks against them.
The fighters have already been targeted in a number of attacks, including three killed Friday night in northern Iraq.
The US combat mission in Iraq is to officially end on August 31. The remaining US troops, who will have a support and training mission, are scheduled to leave the country by the end of 2011.
"But the bottom line is this: the war is ending," Obama said. "Like any sovereign, independent nation, Iraq is free to chart its own course. And by the end of next year, all of our troops will be home."
The president also used his address to call on Americans to honor those who have served in Iraq by sending them messages via such social networking Internet sites as YouTube, Facebook, Flickr or Twitter.
A strong critic of the war, Obama has always drawn a distinction between former Republican president George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq and the daily fights US soldiers were waging in the country.
Addressing disabled veterans in Atlanta, Georgia, earlier this month, Obama noted that the Iraq war had sparked a vigorous debate in the country and that there were American patriots both in favor of and against the war.
But "what this new generation of veterans must know is this: our nation's commitment to all who wear its uniform is a sacred trust that is as old as our republic itself," the president said Saturday. "It is one that, as president, I consider a moral obligation to uphold."
Story from AFP
AFP 08/28/2010
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