Iraq major sponge for U.S. time, attention, says senior U.S. official

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: Iraq was a major distraction and a major sponge of U.S. time and attention, according to a former top official in both Bush administrations. “Stability in Iraq has reached its peak and conditions probably won’t improve before the U.S. pulls out its troops,” said Richard Haass in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing this weekend “There’s a ceiling on how good it can ever get, given the nature of Iraqi society, given the schisms,” he said. “I’d be happy, quite honestly, in two or three years, if Iraq looked no worse.” Haass, now president of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, recently returned from a visit to Iraq. President Barack Obama plans to withdraw combat forces by Aug. 31, 2010, and all troops by the end of 2011, and focus more on the war in Afghanistan. Haass, who served in the White House under President George H.W. Bush and then as a State Department policy planner under George W. Bush, said the U.S. is still paying the “so-called opportunity costs” of the Bush administration’s war in Iraq. “It (Iraq) was a major distraction,” he said. “It was a major sponge of U.S. time and attention.” Obama, during a stop in Baghdad last month, urged Iraqi leaders to press harder for political unity among the country’s religious and ethnic factions. The commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, General Raymond Odierno, said last week that the interim step of pulling troops from major cities by June 30 is “on track,” even with a recent spate of suicide bombings. AmR (S) 1