President Obama flew into Iraq for the first time as Commander-in-Chief today to hail the "extraordinary achievement" of American troops in a war that he says should never have been fought and has promised to end.
Air Force One landed at Baghdad International Airport at 4.42pm local time and Mr Obama was taken immediately to a nearby military camp where he presented medals to some of the 140,000 US soldiers in the country. He spoke with General Ray Odierno, the top US commander in Iraq.
The President's surprise visit, coming at the end of a five-nation tour of Europe and Turkey, had been kept a closely guarded secret to all but a handful of advisers until he was airborne. Hours earlier a car bomb had exploded in a Shia neighbourhood of Baghdad, killing nine people and wounding 18 – a reminder of the violence that has killed 4,266 members of the US military since March 2003.
Mr Obama met with Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister, Gen Odierno's home after plans to have talks in the Green Zone was abandoned. The had military advised that the rainy weather conditions made it unsafe to take helicopters into the fortified area.
At the military base, Mr Obama walked out in front of around 600 troops in front of a huge American flag. "I love you," shouted a soldier. "I love you back," replied the President. He thanked the troops for helping to turn Iraq into a fledgling democracy in the face of "strain, sacrifice, controversy, difficulty, politics".
The next 18 months, he said, could be a critical period as the US prepared to withdraw forces so that Iraqis could take responsibility for their country. Mr Obama promised: "As long as I'm in the White House, you are going to get the support that you need."
Afterwards, Army Specialist Joshua Tisdale, 24, told reporters: "It makes me feel like he actually cares to where he'd come out here and talk to us."
Shortly after taking office, Mr Obama announced plans to pull most US combat troops out of Iraq on a 19-month timetable, with numbers falling from 140,000 to about 50,000 by August 2010.
Scaling back in Iraq will help Mr Obama to boost troop numbers in Afghanistan. He has accused George Bush of being too fixated on Iraq to focus on the fight against Islamic militancy in the other war he inherited.
Before leaving Turkey for his secret flight, he spent some of the morning touring mosques in Istanbul and then cited Iraq as an example of the need to implement policy change cautiously. "Moving the ship of state takes time," he told a group of students, adding that the US withdrawal had to be done "in a careful enough way that we don't see a collapse into violence".
Aides said that Mr Obama and General Odierno talked about security incidents being at their lowest level since the war began, despite recent bombings, and that the President emphasised that even though his main priority was Afghanistan, there was still work to be done in Iraq.
It is Mr Obama’s third trip to Iraq, but his first as President. He last visited as a candidate last year.
Source:the times
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