Gates sees US role in Iraq continue to shrink

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Gates sees US role in Iraq continue to shrink
By Robert Burns - The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Sep 15, 2008 7:11:10 EDT

BAGHDAD — Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Monday that although no additional U.S. combat brigades are to withdraw from Iraq this year, he expects the U.S. combat role to keep shrinking.

“We are clearly in a mission transition,” he told reporters on an overnight flight here from Washington.

U.S. troops will increasingly play a backup role, Gates said, as Iraqi security forces take on more of the responsibility for fighting an insurgency that has lost much of its power and influence over the past year.

“The areas in which we are seriously engaged (in fighting) will, I think, continue to narrow,” Gates said.

The No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin, told reporters later at the main U.S. military headquarters outside Baghdad that he remains optimistic that the trend of improving security will continue. He said key measures of security have improved about 80 percent over one year ago; while “there is a degree of fragility” to the situation, he said, it is “somewhat less” fragile than just a few months ago.


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