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After weeks of heated debate over plans for an Islamic community center near Ground Zero - the site of the 9/11 attacks on New York - it seems Muslim leaders will soon back down, agreeing to move to a new site. ...

CAMP ARIFJAN, Kuwait – The U.S. military is moving mass amounts of equipment out of Iraq in accordance with President Barack Obama’s plan to withdraw the majority of U.S. assets out of theater by Aug. 31. The 1st Theater Sustainment Command’s Distribution Management Center here is playing a key role in the move, the largest U.S. military logistics movement since World War II. Warrant Officer Brian Gaines, 1st TSC, DMC, said the 1st TSC and its supporting units are working to meet the president’s deadline to pull an estimated 1.5 million pieces of equipment out of Iraq. "We're having units...

Danny Yatom, who was head of Mossad during Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's first term, said Thursday that the premier then agreed to withdraw from the entire Golan Heights in a future peace deal with Syria. President Shimon Peres and... Yatom told Israel Radio that although Netanyahu's agreement didn't bind him now, "he has to admit" that he did agree to withdraw from the territory. Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud) told the radio station that the prime minister had said numerous times that he would not agree to such a pullout, and that anyway, there

WASHINGTON (AP) - An Army colonel's colorfully worded memo arguing for the U.S. to declare victory in Iraq and leave next summer suggests the possibility of an important shift in the debate about U.S. withdrawal plans. Until now the question has been whether thousands of U.S. troops might need to stay beyond a December 2011 deadline for a complete U.S. pullout, in order to continue training and advising Iraqi forces. The memo written by Col. Timothy R. Reese, a U.S. adviser to the Iraqi military command, turns that question on its head by asking whether it makes more sense to...

WASHINGTON, April 14, 2009 – U.S. soldiers could remain in Mosul, Iraq, past June 30, when Iraqi forces are scheduled to assume full security responsibilities for the entire country, a senior U.S. military commander in the area said today. Army Col. Gary Volesky, commander of the 1st Cavalry Division’s 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, said in a video news conference from Iraq that the Iraqi government will make that determination. “We are conducting an assessment right now with our Iraqi counterparts to determine what the way ahead is for security in Mosul,” Volesky said. “If the Iraqi government believes...

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama conferred with senior Iraqi leaders, U.S. officials and military commanders Monday, as a spokesman for the Iraqi government declared that it would like U.S. combat forces to complete their withdrawal by the end of 2010. The comments by spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh mark the second time in recent days that a senior Iraqi has endorsed a timetable for U.S. withdrawal that is roughly similar to the one advocated by Obama. Dabbagh suggested that a combat force pullout could be completed by the end of 2010, which would be about seven months longer than Obama's 16-month formulation....

That's the headline over at The Caucus, where Jeff Zeleny reports Barack Obama dropped a not so subtle hint today in North Dakota that his fixed, 16-month timetable for pulling US troops out of Iraq beginning in January 2009 may in fact not be so fixed: "I've always said that the pace of withdrawal would be dictated by the safety and security of our troops and the need to maintain stability. That assessment has not changed," he said. "And when I go to Iraq and have a chance to talk to some of the commanders on the ground, I'm sure...

LONDON — Britain's Defense Ministry said Tuesday that no final decision is imminent on withdrawing all remaining British troops from Iraq, as the BBC reported that the government would outline pullout plans by the end of the year. The British Broadcasting Corp. reported that Cabinet ministers plan to announce within months a final pullout of troops, provided a lull in violence holds. Britain has 4,000 troops remaining in Iraq at a base on the outskirts of the southern city of Basra. Prime Minister Gordon Brown's office said he will discuss the U.K.'s role in Iraq with U.S. President George W....

How badly would an American pullout affect Iraq?  According to the nation’s foreign minister, all of the security gains would evaporate and bring the country back to the brink of civil war.  Hoshyar Zebari spoke to the Associated Press to make sure Americans know exactly what is at stake: Iraq’s foreign minister said Tuesday that he believes his country has averted a civil war after five years of “tears and blood,” and warned that an abrupt U.S. troop withdrawal would be disastrous.Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told The Associated Press that mistakes had been made by all sides but Iraq has...

No retreat from the War on Terror If the West backs out of Afghanistan the consequences would be plainly catastrophic David Aaronovitch In recent days, and unsurprisingly, it has become common to hear the mournless rites being read for liberal interventionism. If anyone has opined publicly about Afghanistan in the last week - and plenty did - it was to regret our presence there and to wish us away. If ever an argument was being won by default this was it, especially since those making the case for quitting were far too exuberant to want to slow up and allow...

In his final State of the Union address tonight, President George Bush plans to announce that the U.S. economy has become such a quagmire that the federal government will begin a phased withdrawal. The nation’s chief executive will reportedly tell the American people that the government got involved in the U.S. economy under false pretenses, has mismanaged the effort from the beginning, and the president believes now that “the only way forward is backward.” The president will propose immediate reductions in taxes, regulation, government spending and federal bureaucracies.

Democrats snub Republican Iraq pullout timelineFri Sep 28, 2007 10:37pm ET By Susan Cornwell and Richard Cowan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Several Senate Republicans proposed drawing down U.S. forces in Iraq over 15 months, but Democrats rejected the plan because it stretched to after the November 2008 election, both sides said on Friday. It was the latest manifestation of a Senate stalemated over how to end the unpopular Iraq war launched by President George W. Bush in 2003. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, sounding frustrated with the Senate, said her chamber would take up several Iraq bills next week, although none dictate...

Putting Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in a tight political position, the state Assembly voted Monday to place a measure on California's Feb. 5 ballot urging President Bush to immediately withdraw American troops from Iraq. The 43-32 roll call left the proposal one step from Schwarzenegger's desk. It was sent back to the Senate, which approved a slightly different version of the bill in June. Final approval by the Senate would send the bill to the Republican governor, who could risk angering members of his own party by signing it and putting it on the presidential primary ballot or veto the bill...

From crating up the bombs and bullets, to shrink-wrapping the helicopters, to counting up the endless tiers of port-a-potties, the pullout of U.S. combat forces from Iraq, when it inevitably comes, will rank as the longest-planned withdrawal ever. Despite the years of preparation, the Pentagon's painstaking planners just as inevitably will be challenged by the unknowables of a country at war, the vagaries of politics, the harshness of terrain and climate. "Coming out of any theater of operations is tough," says retired Lt. Gen. Gus Pagonis. But packing to go home from that distant desert presents special problems, as simple...

Betty Williams, who received the Nobel Peace Prize for helping start peace talks in Northern Ireland, said the other day, “"Right now, I could kill George Bush." Though the New York Times isn’t suffering that bad a case of Bush Derangement Syndrome, its July 8 editorial said: “President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have used demagoguery and fear to quell Americans’ demands for an end to this war. They say withdrawing will create bloodshed and chaos and encourage terrorists. Actually, all of that has already happened -- the result of this unnecessary invasion and the incompetent management of this...

WASHINGTON, July 6, 2007 – A premature withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq would leave the country at the mercy of its enemies, a senior U.S. military officer said today. Thanks to surge-provided reinforcements, U.S. and Iraqi security forces participating in Operation Marne Torch are now making “significant progress” in knocking out insurgent sanctuaries located within his battle space, Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of Multinational Division Center and the 3rd Infantry Division, said today during a satellite-carried teleconference with Pentagon reporters. However, “it would be a mess,” Lynch emphasized, if the surge forces were withdrawn as part of...

WASHINGTON, May 9 (UPI) -- Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie is lobbying U.S. politicians in Washington to keep U.S. troops in Iraq to avoid anarchy. Monday and Tuesday, Rubaie visited two Democrats leading the Congressional charge to reduce troop numbers by fixed dates -- Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan and Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, the New York Times reported. "I know that they are running out of patience, and I understand this very well," Rubaie told the Times in an interview. "And we have to play the political game. But I feel we are on the last mile...

The US commander of multinational forces in Iraq, General David Petraeus, said Wednesday that efforts to quell unrest in the western Sunni province of Anbar have made almost “breathtaking” progress. Speaking to reporters about the new US strategy to curb sectarian violence in Iraq launched two months ago, based on a US troop increase, Petraeus said: “We are ahead, I think, with respect ... to the reduction of sectarian murders in Baghdad. “Progress in Anbar is almost something that’s breathtaking,” he added. The general illustrated his positive evaluation by citing the killing Friday of an Al Qaeda kingpin, identified by...

As Democrats push to withdraw troops, they seek to undermine Republicans by creating repeated chances to side with an unpopular president. WASHINGTON — As congressional Democrats move to force President Bush to veto a war spending bill that would start a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, they are simultaneously pursuing a carefully crafted offensive aimed at another target: Republican lawmakers. In the charged debate over the war, the strategy aims to achieve Democratic objectives on both policy and political fronts, according to party leaders and aides. Convinced that Bush will never listen to their calls to bring troops home,...

Senior Democrats are calculating that if they keep the pressure on, eventually more Republicans will jump ship and challenge the president — or lose their seats to Democratic contenders. "It's at least my belief that they are going to have to break because they're going to look extinction, some of them, in the eye," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., of his Republican colleagues. Added Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.: "We're going to pick up Senate seats as a result of this war." "It has been a way that we have moved forward," Reid said. "Not with a large number...