Neo-cons warn against losing Iraq peace [View All]

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WASHINGTON - A familiar group of mainly neo-conservative hawks, many of whom championed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, released an open letter to President Barack Obama Thursday urging him to retain a substantial military force in that Middle East country beyond this year.

Released by the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), the successor organization of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) that championed the 2003 US invasion, the letter warns against reported plans by the administration to reduce Washington's troop presence to 4,000 after December 31, the date by which, according to a 2008 US-Iraqi agreement, all US forces are to be withdrawn.

Washington has about 45,000 US troops in Iraq, down from an all-time high of 170,000 in late 2007, when they were used to tamp down sectarian violence that brought the country to the edge of all-out civil war.

The letter was signed by 40 policy and defense analysts, including a number of former senior George W Bush administration officials who played key roles in the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq; among them, the former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), Paul Bremer; his spokesman, Dan Senor; former undersecretary of defense Eric Edelman; vice president Dick Cheney's Middle East aide, John Hannah; and former White House aides Karl Rove, Marc Thiessen, and Peter Wehner.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MI17Ak01.html