By Kayleigh Harvey – Talk Radio News Service
Following President Barack Obama’s address at Camp Lejeune, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates hosted a conference call where he discussed Obama’s strategy to end the war in Iraq.
In his opening comments Secretary Gates said: “The atmosphere here at Camp Lejeune for the speech was very warm, very enthusiastic and I would also say that the welcome has been pretty extraordinary.”
“On the substance I am obviously very supportive of the option the President has chosen and the decision he has made as is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Frankly, this is where both the Chairman and I thought this should come out and it was a very thorough and deliberative process where a lot of different options and a lot of different analysis were examined,” said Gates.
Asked about Obama’s statement that all troops would be out of Iraq by 2011, Secretary Gates said: “Under the terms of the status of forces agreement which is what we are operating under now all U.S. forces must be out by the end of 2011. It will require a new agreement, a new negotiation, almost certainly at Iraqi initiative to provide for some presence beyond the end of 2011. So in the absence of that agreement and the absence of that negotiation, for such an agreement, it is in keeping with the sofa to say definitively that we will be out by 2011.”
Asked what would happen if Iraqi forces asked for the U.S. military to remain in Iraq to assist with training and strengthening, Gates said: “It’s a hypothetical the Iraqis have not said anything about that at this point…My own view would be, that, we should be prepared to have some very modest size presence, for training and helping them with their new equipment and providing perhaps intelligence support, beyond that.”
In his address Obama said that all combat troops would be out of Iraq by August 31, 2010. Asked whether the remaining non-combat troops would have combat capability, Gates said: “Those that are left will have a combat capability…there will be target counter-terrorism organizations, there will be continued embeds with some of the Iraqi forces, training capacities…but the units will have gone and the mission will have changed, so the notion of being engaged in combat, in the way we have been up until now, will be completely different.”
