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Obama ends 'combat mission' in Iraq
Barack Obama, the US president, has declared an end to the US war in Iraq and told Americans that restoring the country's sagging economy was now "our central mission as a people".
Obama, who inherited the war from his predecessor George Bush and is fighting another in Afghanistan, said he had fulfilled a 2008 campaign promise to end US combat operations in Iraq.
He said it was now "time to turn the page" after seven years of bloodshed, sacrifices on both sides and vast resources from tight budgets.
"Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country," Obama said in a televised speech from the Oval Office on Tuesday.
"Ending this war is not only in Iraq's interest, it is in our own," he said. But Mike Hanna, reporting from the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, said US optimism contradicts the lack of progress on the ground. "Anybody who wanted to watch that speech live on television would not be able to do so in most of the cases, simply because there is no electricity," he said.
"There is very little water in many areas, there's very little access to healthcare - so this is the situation within Iraq at present, at the very moment that the US president is saying that it is now capable of governing itself."
'Huge price'
Obama's address came ahead of a formal ceremony on Wednesday in which the US military will hand responsibility to Iraq's security forces. Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, arrived on a surprise visit to Iraq early on Wednesday to attend the change of command proceedings, seven years after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
Former president Bush launched the war in 2003 over suspicions that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Such weapons were never found. Almost a trillion dollars have been spent and more than 4,400 US soldiers and at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the invasion.
A recent CBS News poll found 72 per cent of Americans now believe the war was not worth the loss of American lives. A large contingent of combat-ready US troops remain in the country but the Iraqi army is now formally in charge of its own security.
However, Obama's declaration comes amid continuing violence and a stalemate in efforts to form a new government six months after an inconclusive election. The impasse in Iraq has raised tensions as politicians squabble over power and anti-government fighters carry out attacks aimed at undermining faith in domestic security forces. Hoshiyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign .
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