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Obama Wars Title: Panetta Says U.S. to Act Alone Against Iran-Backed Attacks Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told American troops in Iraq that the U.S. will “do what we can unilaterally” to stem Iranian-backed attacks on their bases and convoys, in addition to working with Iraqi authorities. “Number one, we’ll put pressure on the Iraqis to go after” Shiite Muslim militia groups, Panetta said today in Baghdad, expressing frustration that the Iraqi government isn’t acting more quickly on a number of issues. That includes Iraq deciding whether it will ask the U.S. to keep some forces in the country beyond a planned December withdrawal, he said. Panetta, who was sworn in July 1, said the U.S. is starting joint operations with Iraqi forces to halt the attacks. Unilateral U.S. measures include stepping up security, patrolling and improving the protection of bases, Colin Kahl, a deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East who is traveling with Panetta, told reporters after Panetta spoke. The defense chief is seeking to reassure the 46,000 American soldiers still in Iraq and the public back home that the U.S. will act swiftly to curb attacks by militants using arms supplied by Shiite-led Iran. The American death toll in Iraq has spiked to 15 in June, the biggest one-month loss of U.S. lives in two years, he told reporters. Panetta arrived in Baghdad yesterday from Afghanistan on his first visit to the war zones as defense secretary. A former Army intelligence officer and member of Congress, Panetta served on the Iraq Study Group that was formed in 2006 to conduct an independent assessment of the then-deteriorating conflict. He took over as defense chief after more than two years as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, a job that also brought him into contact with many of the same officials he’s meeting with on this trip, albeit less publicly. While Iraq has made progress with a sense of national unity and democratic rule since a new government was formed after the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein, officials often have taken too long to resolve major questions, Panetta said. “Sometimes it can be frustrating,” he told the troops. “I’d like things to move a lot faster here, frankly.” Panetta said he will urge Iraqi leaders to reach a long- delayed decision on a U.S. troop extension and on the political accords needed to install ministers of defense and interior. The positions remain vacant almost a year after Iraq held elections. “Do they want us to stay or don’t they want us to stay?” he said in remarks peppered by swear words. “They want to get a minister of defense or don’t they want to get a minister of defense? Obama administration officials have said they would welcome a request to keep some forces in Iraq, and Panetta said they would “seriously consider” a proposal. “We’re in the process of drawing down,” Panetta told reporters before arriving in Iraq. “I’ll encourage them to make a decision so we’ll know where we’re going.” General Lloyd Austin, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said the longer the Iraqis take to make a request for an extension of the troop deployment, the more difficult it will be to alter the planned withdrawal. “When you get into the October-November timeframe, you’re really taking things apart that are difficult to put back together,” he told reporters traveling with Panetta. Sept. 11 Attacks Panetta will meet today with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al- Maliki, whose Shiite-dominated party has struggled to control the influence of Iran, and with President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd. Talabani said two days ago that he will give political leaders two more weeks to discuss an extension before reconvening, the Washington Post reported. During his meeting with the troops in Iraq, Panetta referred to al-Qaeda’s Sept. 11, 2001, attack on New York and the Pentagon, saying, “The reason you guys are here is that, on 9/11, the United States got attacked and 3,000 Americans -- not just Americans but 3,000 human beings, got killed.” Panetta said, “Innocent human beings got killed because of al-Qaeda and we’ve been fighting them as a result of that.” The issue has been controversial since then-President George W. Bush’s administration sought to link Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda as a justification for the invasion, a connection that was never proved. Al-Qaeda established a presence in Iraq after the invasion, sending in fighters and recruiting others to challenge U.S. forces. When reporters questioned Panetta about his remarks, he said he didn’t intend to suggest that al-Qaeda was the reason for the U.S. invasion of Iraq and “wasn’t going into the issues or the justification of that.” “It was more the fact that we really had to deal with al- Qaeda here,” he said. “They developed a presence here and that tied in.” Panetta flew to Baghdad at the end of a second day in Afghanistan, where he saw President Hamid Karzai and the defense and interior ministers in Kabul and then visited a U.S. Marine base and field hospital in the southern province of Helmand.
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#1. To: Brian S (#0)
Missiles fired at Panetta in Green Zone. Is the US going to fight EVERYONE? except Israel, eh?
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