Odierno: Iraq’s military ‘ready to assume full operations’

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The commander of US forces in Iraq said Sunday that Iraq’s military is ready to take over operations in the country.

“We do believe they are ready to assume full operations in Iraq,” Gen. Ray Odierno told ABC’s Christiane Amanpour Sunday.

“This is something we’ve been working for a very long time with the Iraqi security forces. For the last 20 months, we’ve been slowly and deliberately turning over more and more responsibility to them and they have stepped up. They continue to do broad scope operations across all of Iraq,” said Odierno.

Odierno said it wasn’t the security profile that gave him the most concern ahead of the August 31 deadline.

“There will be people who attempt to take advantage of the opportunity of the attention being brought upon the August 31 date. And so there will be groups who try to take advantage of that and show weakness on the government of Iraq and create some sort of lack of confidence of the people in the process as we move forward,” he said.

This video is from ABC’s This Week, broadcast Aug. 8, 2010.

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