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 All forces are scheduled to be withdrawn by the end of 2011.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 “hooh-uh.”
He thansidential 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.
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Associated Press writer Mark Smith contributed from Washington.
