6 Years In, Troops Glimpse Real Path Out of Iraq

By STEVEN LEE MYERS
NYT

MAHMUDIYA, Iraq — As he returned to base here after a day patrolling a place once called the Triangle of Death, Capt. Landgrove T. Smith of the First Battalion, 63rd Armor, summarized the war in Iraq in a way that would once have been unthinkable.

“We’re in the endgame now,” he said.

President Obama’s plan to withdraw American forces called for the end of combat operations by August 2010, but here in Mahmudiya, as in many parts of Iraq, the war is effectively over already, the contours of an exit strategy having taken clearer shape than at any time before.

There is no guarantee that Iraq will remain stable, that the nihilistic violence of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia will not continue, or that the sectarian bloodletting of 2006 and 2007 will not return. Crucial questions about how to share political power and oil money are not yet answered. While Iraq’s security forces have greatly improved, they remain heavily dependent on the Americans.

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