U.S. plans possible 10,000-troop Iraq follow-on force

By Laura Rozen | The Envoy – Wed, Jul 6, 2011

The United States is planning for keeping as many as 10,000 U.S. troops in Iraq next year, the Associated Press reports. The decision would require a formal request from the Iraqi government, which as yet has not issued it, though U.S. leaders have dropped numerous hints it might be a good idea.

"Already ... the White House has worked out options to keep 8,500 to 10,000 active-duty troops in Iraq to continue training security forces in 2012, according to senior Obama administration and U.S. military officials," the Associated Press reported, citing foreign diplomats in Baghdad who have also been briefed on the matter.

"We have said for a long time now if the Iraqi government asks us to maintain some level of troops beyond that end of the year deadline, we would consider it," White House spokesman Jay Carney told journalists Tuesday, adding the United States has not yet received such a request.

"Right now there are no plans to keep troops in Iraq beyond" the end of the year, National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor told the Washington Post Tuesday. He added that an Iraqi request for a follow-on force "would be given serious consideration by this administration."

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If, however, the U.S. pulls all its troops out of Iraq and no burning of the cities has occurred, we can know with certainty that the current events in Iraq are NOT the fulfillment of the Jeremiah 50-51 prophecy of doom on the land of the Chaldeans. That is because the prophecy is clear -- the abandonment of Babylon by the occupiers who had invaded her and punished her "arrogant one" is precipitated by the burning of her cities, so that the foreigners become "exhausted" because of the "fire."

But if the cities burn, so that the leader of the occupying reconstructionists declares, "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," then we can know with certainty that the events in Iraq today ARE the fulfillment of the nine judgments on Babylon.

Invasion, occupation, punishment, burning, abandonment, civil war, plundering, flooding, drought. Complete desolation in our time.