The US ambassador to Iraq told Congress on Thursday that despite a recent rash of insurgent attacks, the US is on track to removing all its combat forces by August next year.
“We are holding to this timetable,” Christopher Hill told the House Foreign Affairs Committee in his first congressional testimony since taking over the top US diplomatic post in Baghdad in April.
The envoy faced skepticism, however, from lawmakers concerned that despite a general downward trend in violence, Iraqi forces may not be ready next year to maintain security amid declining US support.
Senator Richard Lugar, a top Republican, addressing Hill at a separate hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he was more concerned about how a US withdrawal is carried out than its exact timing.
“For our own part, serious questions remain about our policies going forward and our strategy,” Lugar said. “The president and the vice president continue to speak about troops coming home at the end of 2011, but we do not have a clear understanding of how that withdrawal will occur under optimal conditions, much less worst-case scenarios.”
At the House hearing, Hill said he was encouraged that the recent violence, including dual bombings of the Iraqi finance and foreign ministries on Aug. 19 that killed about 100 people, had failed to push Iraq back to the brink of civil war.
“The reality is that the Iraqis have stood firm and have rejected retribution and a new cycle of violence,” Hill said.
“The bombings in recent months show that we still have to deal with al-Qaeda in Iraq that tries to rekindle violence,” the envoy said. “To the great credit of the Iraqi people, however, they have not risen to the bait.”
One reason for the brake on a return to sectarian warfare, Hill added, is that Iraqi security forces have progressed so far in professional development that they are seen by ordinary Iraqis as being committed to “play it fair and they do their jobs.”
Under a plan he announced shortly after taking office, US President Barack Obama has set August next year as a deadline for removing all US combat forces. A separate agreement with Iraq, reached by Obama’s predecessor, requires a complete US withdrawal — including noncombat military forces — by the end of 2011.
Meanwhile, the No. 2 US commander in Iraq told reporters at the Pentagon that it’s too early to tell whether officials will be able to go forward with a possible acceleration of the drawdown of US troops.
Republicans and Democrats on the committee stressed their disappointment that Iraqi officials have rarely offered expressions of gratitude for the sacrifices made by US troops in Iraq since the 2003 invasion.
Hill, however, said that Iraqis are not reluctant to show their gratitude.
“I do hear it every day,” he said. “That is a daily occurrence in my life there.”
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