No Deal, No Bucks, Odierno tells Iraq

[unhappycamper]

No Deal, No Bucks, Odierno tells Iraq
October 28, 2008
Knight Ridder/Tribune

BAGHDAD - Army Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, informed Iraqi officials last week that if their country doesn't agree to a new agreement governing American forces in Iraq, it would lose $6.3 billion in aid for construction, security forces and economic activity and another $10 billion a year in foreign military sales.

The warning was spelled out in a three-page list that was shown to McClatchy Newspapers on Monday. Iraqi officials consider the threat serious and worry that the impasse over the so-called status of forces agreement could lead to a crisis in Iraq. Without a new agreement or a renewed United Nations mandate, the U.S. military presence would become an illegal occupation under international law.

Odierno's spokesman, Lt. Col. James Hutton, said that the list "provided information as a part of our normal engagements with many in the government of Iraq."

If no new mandate or agreement is in place on Jan. 1, the U.S. would stop sharing intelligence with the Iraqi government and would cease to provide air traffic control, air defense, SWAT team training or advisers in government ministries, according to the document. The list also says that there would be no "disposition of U.S.-held Iraqi convicts" without a security agreement.

Odierno's letter adds that American forces would stop training Iraq's Security Forces and its barely functioning navy and air force, patrolling its borders and protecting its waterways. The U.S. military would stop employing some 200,000 Iraqis and wouldn't refurbish 8,500 Humvees it's given to the Security Forces. Nearly every Iraqi unit works in tandem with the roughly 151,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and American training teams are training Iraqi Security Forces nationwide.


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/news/article/no-deal-no-bucks-odierno-tells-iraq.html?col=1186032310810&wh=wh

[dhpgetsit]

1. Awesome!

The Iraqis can spend their own money! We can use the 6.3b at home!

[Old Codger]

2. Nature

Abhors a vacuum, there are most likely several countries that will gladly step in to fill that one....

[Freedomofmind]

3. So. we do this and they run to China and Iran?

:shrug:

[Porschenut1066]

4. This must be the Republican version of CUT and RUN