Gen. David Petraeus who oversees U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan said on Tuesday that the military is on course to reduce the number of U.S. forces to 50,000 by the end of August. Petraeus said the situation in Iraq, despite declining violence and the high turnout in the recent national elections, remains fragile and that an additional headquarters in unstable Northern Iraq might be created.
“There’s a possibility that we may want to keep an additional brigade headquarters, as an example, but then slim out some of its organic forces and some of the other organic forces elsewhere,” Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.
On Afghanistan, Petraeus said that 2010 will be a difficult year and that fighting in Afghanistan will “likely get harder before it gets easier.”
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