The U.S. is abandoning plans to keep troops in Iraq past a year-end withdrawal deadline, according to The Associated Press, but Obama administration officials insist to Fox News that discussions with Iraqi leaders are "ongoing."
For months, U.S. officials have been debating whether to stick to a Dec. 31 withdrawal deadline that was set in 2008 or negotiate a new security agreement to ensure that gains made and more than 4,400 American military lives lost since March 2003 do not go to waste.
In recent weeks, Washington has been discussing with Iraqi leaders the possibility of several thousand American troops remaining to continue training Iraqi security forces.
But a senior Obama administration official in Washington told The Associated Press Saturday that all American troops will leave Iraq except for about 160 active-duty soldiers attached to the U.S. Embassy.
A senior U.S. military official confirmed to the Associated Press the departure and said the withdrawal could allow future but limited U.S. military training missions in Iraq if requested.

good news

Obama needs to pull the troops out to send them to central Africa.

Why on earth would we conduct more business in Iraq than in, say, China? The billions of dollars for Halliburtonand KBR are drying up. The multi-billion dollar permanent bases will have to be abandoned. We are not going to be maintaining garrison forces of more than 200,000 troops there. The American oil companies lost out on the big contracts and areonly going to get crumbsfrom China. There is no apparent reason to maintain 16,000 State Department personnel inIraq, plus 5,000 extremely well-paid"security" contractors. Inmost countries there are no more than a couple of hundred State Department people.