Washington (AP) - President Barack Obama is ready to say he's ending the Iraq war by pulling all combat forces out of the country by Aug. 31, 2010. That's not as fast as he promised in his campaign, but still hastens the exit of most U.S. forces from the war zone.
Obama was to announce his strategy Friday at Camp Lejeune, a huge Marine Corps base in North Carolina. The move comes as Obama adopts the opposite approach in the slipping war in Afghanistan, where he is adding 17,000 troops, including about 8,000 Marines from Camp Lejeune itself.
Obama's Iraq plan will withdraw all combat forces over the next 18 months, or 19 months dating to his inauguration. He had promised a slightly faster pace of 16 months after taking office. Obama settled on a time frame after extensive consultation with military and security advisers.
Yet, in a sign of the shifting war debate in Washington, Obama isn't facing scrutiny over the exact timing of the withdrawal, but rather how deep it really is.
Obama told a closed-door meeting of Republican and Democratic leaders from Capitol Hill that 35,000 to 50,000 U.S. troops would remain in Iraq, congressional officials said.
That sizable force would stay in Iraq to protect U.S. interests and conduct limited counterterrorism efforts. The maintenance of a residual force for a period of time is not a surprise, but some leaders of Obama's own party pushed back on just how big it will be.
"When they talk about 50,000, that's a little higher number than I had anticipated," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said before the briefing. He was joined in the White House session by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, and others.
All U.S. troops must be out of Iraq by the end of 2011 under an agreement the countries reached at the end of George W. Bush's presidency. So the war already had an end in sight.
The costly Iraq conflict dominated Bush's presidency and helped fuel Obama's candidacy.
Now, violence is down significantly in Baghdad and most of the country, although many areas remain unstable. U.S. military deaths in Iraq plunged by two-thirds in 2008 from the previous year, a reflection of the improving security after a troop buildup in 2007.
A CBS-New York Times poll this week found that 63 percent of people say things are going well for the United States in Iraq right now. That's the highest reading in five years and up from a low of 22 percent in June 2007. Yet, the war is still deeply unpopular.
More than 4,250 U.S. military members have died in the war since it began in March 2003.
The president is going for a modest withdrawal that still allows him to adjust the time frame as conditions merit, said retired Army Lt. Col. Nathan Freier, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Still, the war is not over yet.
"You have to recognize that the conflict, to some extent, will persist in Iraq for the foreseeable future," Freier said. "But the idea of decreasing the U.S. commitment to the theater is an indication that the American component of the war is ending. It is ending over time, but it is coming to an end."