Gates says some troops may remain in Iraq for years

in The New York Times online

by Elisabeth Bumiller Published April 8, 2011

Mosul, Iraq -- Some American troops could stay in Iraq for years, well beyond the scheduled withdrawal of all United State forces at the end of 2011, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said on Friday.

In remarks to American soldiers in Mosul, north of Baghdad, Mr. Gates said that the United States and Iraq would have to negotiate the terms of any American presence in the country beyond this year. But he held out the possibility that it could happen, or at least that he had been thinking of several scenarios that might keep American forces in Iraq, perhaps indefinitely.

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But what Sec. Gates doesn't realize, is that Jeremiah prophesied 2,600 years ago that the occupiers would abandon Chaldea out of frustration that reconstruction had failed, after the cities burn and all their efforts are wasted -- "'I shall set fire to his cities, and it will devour all his environs'... 'We applied healing to Babylon, but she was not healed; forsake her and let us each go to his own country, for her judgment has reached to heaven'... So the peoples toil for nothing, and the nations become exhausted (because of the) fire..." (Jer 50:32; 51:9,58).