Maryland U.S. Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-2nd, said U.S. troops in Iraq should pull back and allow Iraqi forces to patrol their streets as a show of their independence.
“There needs to be an event to show that we?re going to cut the apron strings and let the Iraqis patrol the urban streets of Baghdad,” Ruppersberger said. “They will be dependent on us until they patrol their own streets.”
Ruppersberger suddenly found himself on a plane bound for Baghdad last Thursday, his second trip to Iraq in six weeks.
He accompanied House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Reps. Ray LaHood, R-Ill., and Adam Putnam, R-Fla., and met with members of the newly formed Iraqi government.
“I was really encouraged to hear the Sunni leaders talking about one nation,” Ruppersberger said. “They?re talking about job creation and security.”
During the congressman?s last visit in late March, Iraq?s newly elected parliament and prime minister had not formed a government and the threat of civil war loomed large. This time, Iraqi military and government leaders assured the U.S. delegation that they were close to being able to handle security, but Ruppersberger said he still has not been given a specific timetable.
The congressman, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said pulling U.S. troops back to the perimeter of Baghdad?s Green Zone would free them up to “go after more high-profile targets,” and could lead to a gradual draw-down of troop levels.
The allegation of the intentional murder of civilians by a handful of U.S. servicemen “holds us in a bad light all over the world,” Ruppersberger said.
“The military has a system to investigate it, and we need to let them investigate,” he said. “From a congressional point of view, we need to use our oversight to find out what happened and who was responsible.”
