CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Jan. 23 (UPI) -- The Bush administration should withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq except for training and support personnel, a think tank said Tuesday.
"What is most important now is to recognize as bankrupt the Bush administration's crusader vision -- its notions of coercive transformation. We must set a distinctly new course, beginning with Iraq," the Project on Defense Alternatives,a think tank in Cambridge, Mass., said in a statement.
"Iraq's best hope for peace resides in a quick withdrawal of almost all U.S. military forces from the country. 'Quick' and 'almost all' means a reduction to no more than a few thousand U.S. troops by mid-March 2008," the PDA said.
"Iraq will continue to need substantial external assistance, but a new multinational framework is essential. The current one -- which rests on U.S. military power - is provocative and untenable. The new framework should be formed under U.N. auspices with separate sections addressing governance, development, and security," the think tank said.
"Those few U.S. troops remaining in Iraq would constitute a minority contingent within a broader force comprised principally of troops from Arab and Muslim nations not bordering Iraq. The U.S. contingent would serve only in a training and support capacity," it said.
"Until these changes occur, 'nationalist' and 'rejectionist' sentiments and elements in both the Sunni and Shia communities will continue to prompt violence in Iraq," the PDA warned. "By contrast, a cooperative international effort -- including all of Iraq's neighbors -- might use the prospect of U.S. withdrawal as a lever to move Iraq's communities toward a new national compact," it said.
