Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, said Sunday a specific time frame for withdrawing U.S. combat troops from Iraq could jeopardize political and economic progress, leading to "dangerous consequences."
"Based on my time in and out of Iraq in recent months, I think the conditions-based assessments are the way to go and they're very solid. We're making progress and we can move forward accordingly based on those conditions."[. . .]
Mullen, asked about the possibility of withdrawing all combat troops within two years, said, "I think the consequences could be very dangerous."
"It hard to say exactly what would happen. I'd worry about any kind of rapid movement out and creating instability where we have stability. We're engaged very much right now with the Iraqi people. The Iraqi leadership is starting to generate the kind of political progress that we need to make. The economy is starting to move in the right direction. So all those things are moving in the right direction," Mullen said.
The military buildup in Iraq that began more than 18 months ago has ended. In recent days, the last of the five additional combat brigades sent in by Bush last year has left the country.
In the following video from Mullen's appearance on Fox News Sunday, Mullen talks about the progress which has resulted from the surge:
The surge is a key issue on which we can evaluate the judgment of the presidential candidates.
Senator McCain, not only supported the surge, he long advocated that more troops were needed to win in Iraq.
Obama opposed the surge and incorrectly predicted it would not only fail, but could even make the situation in Iraq worse. Obama's criticism of the surge has been removed from Obama's campaign website in silly effort to hide how wrong Obama was about the surge.
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