Iraqi MP: US Trying to Restore Military Presence in Iraq

The US is trying to reestablish its military presence in Iraq, a lawmaker disclosed on Monday, stressing that the Baghdad government is strongly against the plan.

“Given the existing challenges that the US is facing in the region, it is trying to find a base in Iraq and for that reason it is trying to return to Iraq’s Al-Assad military base,” member of the Iraqi Parliament Kazzem al-Shimri told FNA on Monday.

He said that the request by the US has been rejected by the Iraqi government since Baghdad views such a military presence as “reoccupation” of Iraq.

Shimri also stated that the strategic agreement between Baghdad and Washington, bans any form of US military presence in Iraq.

Nearly nine years after American troops stormed across Iraq’s border in a blaze of shock, US officials quietly ended the bloody and bitterly divisive conflict in Iraq last December, but the debate over whether it was worth the cost in money and lives is yet unanswered in the US.

Nearly 4,500 Americans and 100,000 Iraqis killed. Another 32,000 American and tens of thousands of Iraqis have been wounded and the war cost the US taxpayers billions of dollars.

On December 31, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki declared a new dawn as Iraq celebrated the departure of American troops.

The day marked the end of the 2008 security pact agreed by then-President George W. Bush and was the last day for US troops to withdraw from Iraq, nearly nine years after the invasion that toppled Dictator Saddam Hussein.