Gates: Violence won’t change pullout plan

[unhappycamper]

Gates: Violence won’t change pullout plan
By Robert Burns - The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Mar 31, 2008 17:38:36 EDT

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — The flare-up in violence in Shiite areas of southern Iraq and Baghdad has yet to alter U.S. plans to withdraw more combat forces this spring, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Monday.

Gates, speaking to reporters traveling with him from Brussels, Belgium, to the Danish capital, offered a mildly upbeat assessment of the Iraqi government’s military intervention in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.

He said Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is to be commended for taking the initiative in Basra, and he described the Iraqi security forces as having performed reasonably well, with American support.

“Based on what I’ve seen, the limited reporting I’ve seen ... they seem to have done a pretty good job,” Gates said without mentioning that al-Maliki had promised a “decisive and final battle” for control of the southern oil capital of Basra when he ordered a military intervention there a week ago.

“We’ve all known that at some point, the situation in Basra was going to have to be dealt with,” Gates said. “It is the economic lifeline of the country and been under the control of a bunch of thugs, gangs (and) militias. Over the long term, it’s unacceptable.”


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/03/ap_gates_033108/

[thunder rising]

1. Declare VICTORY and run like hell. Spinning like a ballerina, gates drilled himself into the ground

to demonstrate the exit strategy.