Opinion (Gareth Porter): A US recipe for endless war in Iraq

WASHINGTON - The language on a timetable for US withdrawal from Iraq voted out of the House and Senate conference committee this week contains large loopholes that would apparently allow US troops to continue carrying out military operations in Iraq's Sunni heartland indefinitely.

The plan, coming from the Democratic majority in Congress, makes an exemption from a 180-day timetable for completion of "redeployment" of US troops from Iraq to allow "targeted special actions limited in duration and scope to killing or capturing members of al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations of global reach".

The al-Qaeda exemption, along with a second exemption allowing US forces to re-enter Iraq to protect those remaining behind to train and equip Iraqi security forces and to protect other US military forces, appears to approve the presence in Iraq of tens of thousands of US occupation troops for many years to come.

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