There are currently 134,000 US troops in Iraq. It’s estimated that by 2010 there will still be more than 100,000 troops stationed in the country. In 2003, the year of the invasion, there were slightly more troops on the ground than there is now.
The Status Of Forces deadline is looming. The bold print seems rather straightforward – all US troops are to be withdrawn from Iraqi cities by June 30th, five days from now. The fine print, as I’ve mentioned in the past, is another matter altogether. In truth, some 50,000 US troops will remain in various locations after the deadline, indicating that, like the Surge, SOFA is beginning to look more like PR than reality.
For example, there are 3,000 US troops at FOB Falcon, but US commanders have claimed that even though its’ technically within Baghdad, it’s not within the city proper. Then there’s the whopping 132,000 plus military contractors in the country, 36,000 of them being American, which aren’t even addressed in the agreement. And then there’s the fact that Congress just allotted funds in the latest supplemental bill to accommodate continued military construction.
The big test will come when Iraqis vote in a referendum at the end of July regarding the agreement, a vote that both the US government and members of the Iraqi parliament have worked to postpone. At present, an estimated 73% of Iraqis are against the presence of occupational forces, so if the vote is held the reality is that the agreement will be struck down, and given that US forces would no longer enjoy legal immunity they could be forced to withdraw from the country. If the US refuses to, or looks for a loophole to justify their continued presence – let’s not forget that Congress just gifted the Iraq war effort billions of dollars – things could get quickly out of hand.