14 December 2008: New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER; Alissa J. Rubin contributed reporting from Baghdad.
BALAD, Iraq - The top American commander in Iraq said Saturday that some soldiers would remain in a support role in cities beyond summer 2009, when a new security agreement calls for the removal of American combat troops from urban areas.
The commander, Gen. Ray Odierno, said American troops would remain at numerous security outposts in order to help support and train Iraqi forces. ''We believe that's part of our transition teams,'' he told reporters in Balad while accompanying Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who arrived on an unannounced trip Saturday.
General Odierno declined to say how many American troops might remain in Iraqi cities past the summer and said the number still remained to be negotiated with the Iraqi government under the terms of the so-called status of forces agreement. ''But what I would say is we'll maintain our very close partnership with the Iraqi security forces throughout Iraq even after the summer.''
Later on Saturday, a spokesman for General Odierno, Lt. Col. James Hutton, reiterated that the soldiers staying in cities would not be combat forces but rather ''enablers,'' who would provide services like medical care, air traffic control and helicopter support that the Iraqis cannot perform themselves. He said that all their actions would be closely coordinated with the Iraqi government and that all tenets of the security agreement would be followed.
Mr. Gates met with General Odierno for an hour and then was scheduled to return to Washington. Before the meeting, Mr. Gates held a question-and-answer session with American soldiers and repeated the Bush administration's pledge to the Iraqi government of a complete troop withdrawal by the end of 2011.
But General Odierno said Saturday, as Pentagon officials have said previously, that the agreement might be renegotiated with the Iraqi government. ''Three years is a very long time,'' he told reporters.
Mr. Gates came to Baghdad from Manama, Bahrain, where he warned that foreign powers should not try to ''test'' President-elect Barack Obama with a crisis in his first months in office. He said the new administration would be committed to security in the Gulf and criticized Iran as trying to destabilize the region.
''The president-elect and his team are under no illusions about Iran's behavior and what Iran has been doing in the region and apparently is doing with weapons programs,'' he said.
Mr. Gates, who was speaking at a conference on regional security, said that Mr. Obama and his advisers had done more extensive planning across the government for the transition than any other incoming administration he could remember and asserted that they would therefore be prepared from their first day in office. Mr. Gates, who is staying on as defense secretary, has worked for seven presidents; Mr. Obama will be his eighth.
''So anyone who thought that the upcoming months might present opportunities to 'test' the new president would be sorely mistaken,'' Mr. Gates said at the conference. ''President Obama and his national security team, myself included, will be ready to defend the interests of the United States and our friends and allies from the moment he takes office on Jan. 20.''
In response to questions from audience members after his formal remarks, Mr. Gates said that although the Pentagon would be sending thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan over the next months, he was ultimately worried about the size of the American presence on Afghan soil. The United States plans to add some 20,000 troops in Afghanistan in 2009.
''I am more mindful than most that with 120,000 troops the Soviets still lost, because they never had the support of the Afghan people,'' Mr. Gates said. ''I think that after we complete these troop increases that we're talking about, we ought to think long and hard about how many more go in.''
Asked about the problem of piracy of commercial ships off the coast of Somalia, Mr. Gates said he did not think the United States had enough information to launch attacks on pirate bases on land, but he said such attacks might be possible in the future. The comment appeared to put Mr. Gates at odds for now with a United Nations resolution that the United States began circulating in the Security Council on Wednesday that would increase interdiction efforts by permitting foreign forces to conduct land-based attacks.
Mr. Gates said there were a number of ''minimally intelligent things'' that ship captains could do when pirates approached, like ''speed up'' and ''pull up the ladders.'' He added, ''This is not rocket science.''
At a brief news conference in Kandahar, Afghanistan, an Afghan reporter asked Robert M. Gates, President Bush's defense secretary, the first, pertinent question: Just what was President-elect Barack Obama's policy for his war-weary country?
Mr. Gates's response was swift, as if he had been working for Mr. Obama for months.
''The president-elect has been very explicit throughout the campaign and since the election that he believes that waging this fight in Afghanistan is a high priority and he would like to see more resources devoted to this fight, including more troops,'' Mr. Gates said at the news conference, held Thursday at a military base in Kandahar, the ideological center of gravity for the Taliban. ''So I think that you will see a continuing American commitment to defeating the enemies of the Afghan people during the administration of the president-elect.''
Mr. Gates, who will be staying on as Mr. Obama's defense secretary, is making his own transition from one commander in chief to the next.
The metamorphosis was particularly startling last week on his unannounced trip to Afghanistan and Iraq, where he traveled as an emissary and reconnaissance agent for his next boss.
What was originally conceived as a goodbye tour for a lame-duck defense secretary instead offered a preview of the president-elect's strategy for winding down one war, building up another and tackling the issue of Iran. Mr. Gates acknowledged that effectively working for two commanders in chief created certain strains.
''I'm not forgetting at all, for a second, who is the president until noon on Jan. 20,'' Mr. Gates told reporters on his plane en route to Afghanistan. Nonetheless, he said, the transition ''does create some occasional awkwardness.''
For example? ''Well,'' he said, offering a sampling of apparent recent conversations with schedulers in the West Wing, '' 'I would love to come to this meeting at the White House, but I actually have a meeting with the transition.' ''
More substantively, Mr. Gates's four-day trip was an indication that Mr. Obama would be continuing much of the Bush administration's latest policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, at least for now: reducing American troops slowly in Iraq but adding some 20,000 next year in Afghanistan.
Mr. Gates, who said he had had discussions with Mr. Obama about both wars, also signaled that Mr. Obama would take a forceful line against Iran.
''The president-elect and his team are under no illusions about Iran's behavior and what Iran has been doing in the region and apparently is doing with some weapons programs,'' Mr. Gates said Saturday at a regional security conference in Manama, Bahrain, where he stopped between visits to Afghanistan and Iraq.
Mr. Gates, 65, who had planned to retire in January and spend more time at his vacation home north of Seattle, stayed on, his advisers said, because he did not believe in saying no to the commander in chief. (The deal was sealed on Nov. 10, when Mr. Obama asked Mr. Gates during a secret meeting at the fire station at Reagan National Airport if he would remain in the job.)
Mr. Gates is also a proponent of continuity in national security, a view he underscored to the leaders of the Persian Gulf nations assembled in Manama. ''I bring from President-elect Obama a message of continuity and commitment to our friends in the region,'' he told them.
Mr. Gates's advisers say he is able to make the transition from Mr. Bush to Mr. Obama because over a 42-year career in government, much of it at the Central Intelligence Agency, he has worked for seven presidents of both parties; Mr. Obama will be his eighth.
Over the next weeks, Mr. Gates, with heavy feedback from the Obama transition team, will be assembling his new staff, including his deputy defense secretary. ''It's a dialogue,'' he told reporters, adding that the team was sending him names and he was in turn making recommendations on them to Mr. Obama.
But he knows who is boss. ''I believe I have substantial influence over those decisions,'' Mr. Gates said. ''But if the president of the United States wants to appoint somebody to a job, nobody in the executive branch has a veto.''
