Salazar back from Iraq, pushes combat pullout

Alan Gathright, Rocky Mountain News

Published September 17, 2007 at midnight

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U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar returned from Iraq today and vowed to push legislation to pull American troops from a combat role "to force the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people to secure the peace for Iraq."

Although the surge of U.S. troops has reduced violence, the Colorado Democrat warned that stability in the war-torn nation cannot be sustained unless Iraqi leaders achieve a national reconciliation to halt sectarian bloodshed.

"Otherwise the war will continue endlessly and our brave American troops will be left to keep the top on a powder keg that may explode at any time," Salazar said from Washington in a telephone press briefing today.

Salazar's return from his third Iraq tour in as many years comes as the Senate girds this week for debate on Iraq war funding and a bill to mandate increased home leave for troops worn down by extended combat tours.

Salazar, who visited Iraq as part of a bipartisan group of senators, said believes he has across-the-aisle support for his bill that would mandate shifting the U.S. troops from a combat role to a training, equipping and counterinsurgency role. This would include a "significant withdrawal" of forces.

"So long as our American troops are there in the huge numbers we currently have, we become the security blanket for the Iraqis," he said. "In my view the Iraqis need to develop their own blanket and they need to do it expeditiously."

Salazar was clearly frustrated that earlier U.S. military assurances that Iraqis were on track to take over their own security — first by the end of 2005, then by the end of 2006 — had failed to materialize.

Iraqi leaders have strongly opposed an American troop withdrawal in the past, but Salazar said he felt a change in meetings over the weekend with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister and Sunni leader Tariq al-Hashimi, and Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani.

"I sensed a significant openness among them for us to do something different than what we are currently doing," the senator said.

Salazar said he asked Talabani what he thought of shifting U.S. troops from combat to support and counterterror work.

"(Talabani) said he thought that was a good idea," Salazar recounted.

Salazar, who ventured out on a patrol last night with troops from Colorado's Fort Carson, said some U.S. soldiers candidly favored change in how the war is being prosecuted.

"Some of them believe that they have been there for too long and have been away from their family for too long," he said. "Some of them believe that they need to stay there longer" in hopes of ending the conflict.

"But I will tell you there were some members of our armed forces who ... said to me that it was time for the United States Congress to cut off the funding, because that's the only way that we would be able to end the war," Salazar said.

Salazar said he will support a bill introduced by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., to shield war-weary troops by requiring that they have as much time at their home station as they do deployed to Iraq.

Salazar rejected criticism by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who on Sunday called the Webb proposal a dangerous "backdoor way" to draw down additional forces. Gates said he would recommend that President Bush veto it.

"I think for Secretary Gates to come out and to take that position is not being, frankly, sensitive to the sacrifice of the men and women that we have in uniform on the ground," Salazar said.

"This war is a war that has been fought on the ... backs of our men and women in uniform," he added. "I think when you ask our American troops to go through extended deployments, multiple deployments, it creates problems for them that we are now seeing ... that weakens our American military."

The senator said "the high levels of divorce from the huge absences fathers and mothers are having from their families has a huge impact on our American men and women that we ask to fight the fight. I had lunch yesterday, for example, with a young woman from my state who has been through several deployments, who has now been divorced and lost her family."

Meanwhile, the senator said he remains wary of funding restrictions. Yet, as Pentagon leaders come to Capitol Hill with a request for $200 billion more for the war, Salazar said: "We need to comb through (the funding request) and see whether there are things that we can do differently."

gathrighta@RockyMountainNews.com

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