Iraq’s Future Still A Concern for Obama

The words “Mission Accomplished” will not be spoken but Barack Obama, the US president, will take something of a victory lap this week as the war in Iraqwinds to a close. As well as meeting Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, Mr Obama has a full schedule of military related events which will allow him to tell a country tired of war that the troops in Iraq are coming home, if not quite by Christmas, then by the end of the year. “We’ve got a whole bunch of them who are going to be coming back this month because we’ve ended the war in Iraq, as I promised,” Mr Obama told an Indiana television channel at the weekend. The president called the Iraq conflict a “dumb war” when he was a little-known state senator. Read the full story on the Financial Times' website.