Marine commander: 'Time is right' for Marines to leave Iraq

[babylonsister]

Marine commander: 'Time is right' for Marines to leave Iraq

By Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers


WASHINGTON — The top Marine commander said Friday that his forces already had begun pulling equipment out of Iraq and that nearly all of his troops could be out in as little as six months.

"The time is right for the Marines to leave Iraq," Gen. James Conway, the commandant of the Marine Corps, said at a breakfast with reporters. Any "sustainment force" in Iraq, he added, will be almost exclusively from the Army.

The Marine withdrawal from Iraq is one of many efforts to shift forces from Iraq to Afghanistan, where President Barack Obama has pledged to send more U.S. troops. At the Pentagon, which until now has focused principally on Iraq, officials are reassessing their tactics and reconfiguring their equipment to shift toward Afghanistan.

Conway said that he didn't want to maintain a large Marine presence in Iraq when the military was expected to send as many as 20,000 more Marines to Afghanistan this spring. Nearly all of them will be stationed in southern Afghanistan, where most of that nation's opium poppy crop is produced, much of it sold to pay for Taliban operations.

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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/60623.html

[theoldman]

1. The Marines have been greatly misused in Iraq.

They should have been pulled out a long time ago. They do not belong in afghanistan either. Marines are trained to fight a battle; then give the enemy the finger and go home.

[Captain Hilts]

3. It didn't make sense they were dug in at Khe Sahn and the Army was traipsing...

through the Mekong River Delta either.

[Captain Hilts]

2. The Marines didn't want to go there in the first place. Neither'd the Army, actually. nt

[formercia]

4. Get rid of Blackwater

and give Embassy duty back to the Marines. They deserve the perk.