Iraq: What Will Last 50,000 U.S. Troops Do?

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U.S. Army soldiers in Baghdad as they begin their journey home on Aug. 13, 2010


Iraq: What Will Last 50,000 U.S. Troops Do?
By Mark Thompson / Washington Friday, Aug. 20, 2010

There was a sigh of relief at the Pentagon Wednesday as the U.S. Army's final combat brigade crossed from Iraq into Kuwait. Generals and their staffs have spent nearly a decade juggling soldiers to meet the needs of two wars, bruising many of the units and stretching the Army nearly to the breaking point in the process. Military experts agree that reducing troop strength in Iraq will ease the strain on the force, although it could allow tensions inside Iraq to flare. But the campaign's sunk costs — more than 4,400 U.S. troops dead, 30,000 wounded (and far higher Iraqi casualties), along with a price tag that amounts to $2,500 for every person in America — is far higher than anyone expected when Operation Iraqi Freedom began on March 20, 2003.

But it's not quite over yet. Just what will those 50,000 U.S. troops staying behind in Iraq be up to if not fighting? And what will fill the gap they've left? Nearly all of them are slated to stay in Iraq until they are required by a U.S.-Iraqi agreement to leave by Jan. 1, 2012. The U.S. troops have four missions, broadly defined as "stability operations":

1. Training Iraq's security forces, now 660,000 strong.
2. Providing intelligence, aircraft and other assets to support Iraq's counterterror campaign.
3. Protecting U.S. and allied civilian agencies as they continue to try to rebuild a shattered country that is still trying to put together a government five months after an election.
4. Preparing to go home.

The heart of the remaining U.S. force, while labeled "advise-and-assist brigades," has combat power that far outstrips that of the Iraqi military, and which could be deployed if Baghdad sought U.S. help and President Obama agreed.

General Ray Odierno, who has just finished a tour as the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said the remaining U.S. troops and their Iraqi allies can handle anything insurgents can throw at them. "I get a little frustrated because people think, 'Well, you're going to 50,000,'" Odierno said recently. "Fifty thousand U.S. soldiers is a lot — it's a lot of capacity and capability." Odierno, who has spent 55 months on three deployments commanding U.S. troops in Iraq, believes the Iraqi people are tired of fighting. "My personal opinion is that Iraqis went through a significant amount of obviously sectarian violence and almost civil war in 2006 (and) the beginning of 2007," he said. "My read is most of them are beyond that."