Mullen: Hasty Iraq withdrawal a bad idea

[unhappycamper]

Mullen: Hasty Iraq withdrawal a bad idea
By William H. McMichael - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Feb 28, 2008 19:17:28 EST

The nation’s top military officer didn’t name names, or political parties.

But Adm. Mike Mullen said Thursday that with a presidential election coming up, he worries that a rapid withdrawal from Iraq by the next president, “whoever he or she might be,” would reverse recent security and political gains made within the still-struggling country.

“I do worry about a rapid withdrawal ... in a situation that wouldn’t call for that in terms of the conditions on the ground, which would then ... basically turn around the gains that we have achieved, and struggled to achieve, and turn them around overnight,” Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told reporters following an “all hands call” meeting in the Pentagon basement with several hundred members of his Joint Staff.

Mullen declined to describe in detail his idea of a “rapid withdrawal,” other than to call it “a withdrawal which would be so fast that it ... really leave us in a chaotic situation. The gains that we’ve achieved would be lost.”

At the same time, Mullen, whose tenure as the president’s top military adviser will carry over into the new administration, stressed that the military must gear up for change and for lending the new administration its undivided support.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/02/military_iraq_nextpresident_022808w/