Vice President Joe Biden launched a new American military mission in Iraq yesterday, ushering in a fresh phase in a seven-year deployment that has cost the lives of more than 4,400 troops.
Addressing soldiers near Baghdad a day after the US combat role here officially ended, Mr Biden sought to rally the near 50,000 American soldiers who will remain in the country until a total withdrawal at the end of 2011.
The vice president acknowledged that the 2003 invasion had split US public opinion but he called for unity around the new training and advisory mission and said he believed the Iraq conflict’s “darkest days are now behind us.”
“It is no secret that this war has divided Americans but they have never shrunk from the united support of the United States military,” Mr Biden told an audience of around 1,000 troops and invited guests.
“Now is the time to put these differences behind us,” he said at Al Faw Palace, the former hunting lodge of toppled dictator Saddam Hussein which falls within Camp Victory and is now the US military’s Iraq headquarters.
Mr Biden said the new training mission – Operation New Dawn – would continue US engagement with Iraq, but he also acknowledged Iraqi lives lost.
“Tens of thousands of security forces and innocent civilians have been killed,” he said, noting the impact of a brutal insurgency that swept the country in the years that followed Saddam’s ouster. “The Iraqi people have rejected their ugly face of violence,” Mr Biden added, referring to the insurgents.
A total of 49,700 US troops are currently in Iraq for the new training and counter-terrorism mission, which follows President Barack Obama’s pledge to end combat operations and bring American troops home.
Thousands of US soldiers have left Iraq in recent months and Mr Obama used a speech from the Oval Office on Tuesday to note the end of combat operations.
Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who was also in Iraq to mark the launch of Operation New Dawn, told troops based in the country their work remained vital despite an increased focus on the war in Afghanistan.
“You should know your work here going forward is critical to the future of this part of the world, and to the national security of our country,” he said.
Mr Gates also acknowledged the domestic controversy in the United States over the war.
“The problem with this war for many Americans is that the premise on which we justified going to war proved not to be valid,” he told reporters ahead of yesterday’s ceremony, which saw the appointment of a new US commander in Iraq.