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Obama in surprise visit to Iraq
Paul Thompson07.04.09
BARACK OBAMA landed in Iraq for his first visit as US President today only hours after a car bomb ripped through Baghdad.
Amid strict secrecy, the US President flew into the country following a tour of neighbouring Turkey and was briefed by the American military on plans for withdrawal.
Mr Obama, who opposed the war in Iraq, landed in Baghdad after a car bomb exploded in a Shia neighbourhood. The blast was the latest reminder of the violence that has claimed the lives of more than 4,200 members of the US military since March 2003.
The President was spending his day at Camp Victory, where he arranged to speak to some of the 140,000 US troops stationed in the country.
He was awarding medals to several. Plans to travel to the Green Zone — the heavily fortified US nerve centre in Baghdad — were scrapped because of bad weather.
Officials said that instead the President would speak by phone to Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki and president Jalal Talibani.
The visit rounded off the President's first overseas trip that included the G20 in London, the Nato summit in France and Germany and two days in Turkey.
Shortly before leaving Istanbul, Mr Obama held out Iraq as an example of the change he seeks in policies inherited from former president George Bush.
“Moving the ship of state takes time,” he told a group of students. He noted his long-standing opposition to the war, yet said “now that we're there,” the US troop withdrawal has to be done “in a careful enough way that we don't see a collapse into violence”.
In office only 11 weeks, Mr Obama has already announced plans to withdraw most US combat troops on a 19-month timetable. The drawdown is to begin slowly, so American forces can provide security for Iraqi elections, then accelerate next year.
As many as 50,000 troops are expected to remain in the country at the end of the 19 months to perform counterterrorism duties. Today's visit to Iraq was Mr Obama's third, and his first since taking office.
Because of security concerns, the White House made no advance announcement of the visit, and released no details for his activities on
the ground.
Mr Obama said before leaving Turkey: “I am personally committed to a new chapter of American engagement. We can't afford to talk past one another, to focus only on our differences, or to let the walls of mistrust go up around us.”
The visit to a nation that straddles Europe and Asia was designed to signal a new era. As a candidate he had pledged to visit a majority-Muslim nation in his first 100 days in office.
Earlier, US defence secretary Robert Gates signalled a change in priority as he outlined a £354 billion budget for the coming year. The US military is to focus on tackling insurgents in places such as Afghanistan rather than fighting conventional wars.
He said his proposals represent a “fundamental overhaul”, with some of the Pentagon's most expensive projects shelved, including production of the F-22 Raptor single-seat fighter planes which cost £93 million each.
He also plans more funding for hi-tech equipment, including the Predator and Reaper-class pilotless drones that have targeted al Qaeda hideouts on the Afghan-Pakistan border.
