Mid-East Meets Midwest

Col. Timothy Reese (courtesy of Antiwar.com)

A senior military adviser in Iraq, issued an internal memo urging the US to significantly speed up its pullout from Iraq.  In this memo leaked to the New York Times, Col. Timothy Reese pushes for the U.S. to simply “declare victory” and have announce that all troops will be out of the nation by August 2010.

Bluntly, Col. Reese says keeping US troops in Iraq “isn’t yielding benefits commensurate with the effort and is now generating its own opposition.” He asserts that America has overstayed it’s welcome, saying, “guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.”

With the opinion that the U.S. is no longer making enough progress toward improving Iraq to justify the effort, Reese writes:

The general lack of progress in essential services and good governance is now so broad that it ought to be clear that we no longer are moving the Iraqis “forward.” Below is an outline of the information on which I base this assessment:

1. The ineffectiveness and corruption of GOI Ministries is the stuff of legend.

2. The anti-corruption drive is little more than a campaign tool for Maliki

3. The GOI is failing to take rational steps to improve its electrical infrastructure and to improve their oil exploration, production and exports.

4. There is no progress towards resolving the Kirkuk situation.

5. Sunni Reconciliation is at best at a standstill and probably going backwards.

6. Sons of Iraq (SOI) or Sahwa transition to ISF and GOI civil service is not happening, and SOI monthly paydays continue to fall further behind.

7. The Kurdish situation continues to fester.

8. Political violence and intimidation is rampant in the civilian community as well as military and legal institutions.

9. The Vice President received a rather cool reception this past weekend and was publicly told that the internal affairs of Iraq are none of the US’s business.

Reese’s thoughts regarding withdrawal are markedly similar to the pullout strategy touted by Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign.  On the campaign trail Obama promised he would take all troops out of Iraq by May 2010. His advisors quickly revised this policy to removing all combat troops from the nation. This was further revised to note that the troops remaining would still be conducting combat missions, but wouldn’t be officially called combat troops.

The Obama administration maintains that the pullout remains “on schedule,” but there is little doubt the Reese memo will raise further questions about whether that schedule is the right one.