Troops out of Iraq; Backlash on Capitol Hill
KITTY PILGRIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Thanks, Wolf. Tonight President Obama sets a timetable for withdrawal of troops from Iraq, this after the success of the surge and a strategy the president opposed when he was a senator. Also tonight, new outrage over charges the Obama administration wants to take away your Second Amendment rights to bear arms. And we'll tell you what the head of the National Rifle Association is saying about that. Also tonight, top officials in the state of West Virginia are receiving hefty pay raises. But many state workers make so little, they qualify for welfare. We'll have a special report you'll see only on LOU DOBBS TONIGHT, all that and much more straight ahead here tonight.</s>ANNOUNCER: This is</s>LOU DOBBS TONIGHT: news, debate, and opinion for Friday, February 27th. Live from New York, sitting in for Lou Dobbs, Kitty Pilgrim.</s>PILGRIM: Good evening, everybody. President Obama today promised to bring all our troops home from Iraq with honor by the end of 2011. Now the president said our combat mission in Iraq will finish by August 31st next year. But up to 50,000 of our troops will remain until 2012. Now, many Democrats, though, are unhappy with the president's plan. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others want a much quicker withdrawal from Iraq. Dan Lothian is traveling with the president and reports from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.</s>DAN LOTHIAN, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Almost six years after the war in Iraq began President Obama told Marines at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, unequivocally, the end is near.</s>BARACK OBAMA (D-IL), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Let me say this as plainly as I can. By August 31st, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end.</s>LOTHIAN: But the president's plan to withdraw troops which he calls responsible will leave 35 to 50,000 U.S. troops still on the ground in Iraq to take on an advisory role, training Iraqi forces, supporting civilian operations, and conducting counterterrorism missions. All of which could involve combat and getting killed despite what the president announced.</s>UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Combat (ph)...</s>ROBERT GATES, DEFENSE SECRETARY: Yes. The president's been very explicit and was very explicit I think in his speech, that this remaining force will engage in counterterrorism operations.</s>LOTHIAN: The president's plan to pull troops out of Iraq in 19 months is longer than the pledge he repeated endlessly on the campaign trail.</s>OBAMA: We would have our combat troops out in 16 months, out of Iraq within 16 months.</s>LOTHIAN: The White House says Defense Secretary Gates and military commanders wanted more time to ensure stability on the ground during Iraq's parliamentary elections in December and to make the transition easier.</s>OBAMA: The drawdown of our military should send a clear signal that Iraq's future is now its own responsibility.</s>LOTHIAN: A recent CNN Opinion Research poll shows 69 percent of Americans want most troops out of Iraq. But some experts are more cautious.</s>MICHAEL O'HANLON, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: Well it's certainly on the fast side of what I would say is advisable. And the 23-month option that was apparently developed would be even better by my eyes.</s>LOTHIAN: The president's speech got a mostly tepid response from 2,000 Marines, until he said this.</s>OBAMA: We will raise military pay and continue providing...</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thanks so very much for coming.</s>LOTHIAN: Eight thousand Marines from Camp Lejeune will soon be deployed to Afghanistan. Private First Class Eric Dorsey (ph) who gave a salute to the president's speech is one of them.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To fight for something that you believe in, yeah.</s>LOTHIAN (on camera): The Pentagon won't say when the troops affected by this plan will start pulling out of Iraq. But there is a deadline looming for all 142,000 troops, December 31st, 2011, that's the date agreed to last year by the Bush administration and the Iraqi government -- Kitty.</s>PILGRIM: Thank you, Dan -- Dan Lothian reporting there from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. Well Defense Secretary Robert Gates today suggested some U.S. troops might stay in Iraq after the president's withdrawal deadline of December 31st, 2011. Now Gates was saying what he called a modest force might remain to assist Iraqi troops and police. Top congressional Democrats tonight say the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is too slow and they're particularly concerned about plans to leave as many as 50,000 of our troops in Iraq until the end of 2011. Many Republicans, however, support President Obama's plan. Dana Bash reports from Capitol Hill.</s>DANA BASH, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Here's something you never thought you'd hear from John McCain about his former rival on Iraq.</s>SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: I'm cautiously optimistic that the plan as laid out by the president can lead to success.</s>BASH: After all, McCain spent all of 2008 pounding then Senator Obama's plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq.</s>MCCAIN: He wants to reverse the gains we have made and set a date for withdrawal, which would endanger our progress in Iraq.</s>BASH: But now McCain supports President Obama's withdrawal plan, because he leaves as many as 50,000 troops in Iraq. McCain calls that imperative for stability. Ironically, it's the president's fellow Democrats launching criticism. In a Capitol hallway, Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan told CNN...</s>VOICE OF SEN. BYRON DORGAN (D), NORTH DAKOTA: I would prefer to see him draw that down further because you know what happens it's just as in the case of Korea, they just stay there forever.</s>BASH: The Democratic chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin said, "I'd expected that the size of the residual force would have been lower than 35 to 50,000 troops. Other Democrats are less diplomatic. California Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey (ph) ripped into the president's plan saying, "Such a large number can only be viewed by the Iraqi public as an enduring occupation force. This is unacceptable." Congresswoman Donna Edwards challenged and beat a fellow Democrat who voted for the Iraq war. She's not happy either, and will be demanding more details.</s>REP. DONNA EDWARDS (D), MARYLAND: Many of us in Congress are going to be asking, you know you tell us what every single one of those troops who are left, after the major withdrawal of the majority of the troops, what they're left and what they're doing.</s>BASH: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said this to reporters Thursday.</s>VOICE OF SEN. HARRY REID (D-NV), MAJORITY LEADER: That's a little higher number than I had anticipated.</s>BASH: And at a White House briefing, CNN is told Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi expressed their concerns directly to President Obama.</s>BASH: CNN has learned from sources familiar with that private White House meeting that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told the president that he thinks he will have an easier time selling his plan if he highlights the lower range, 35,000 troops in Iraq, and we're told that he actually urged the president to focus his rhetoric on that range, saying 35,000 to 50,000 troops, which we did hear President Obama say today and it really is interesting, Kitty, it gives you a sense of how sensitive politically and otherwise Democrats still are to this issue.</s>PILGRIM: Yeah. It certainly is a tough one. Dana, we're hearing this outcry, but will it really lead to anything do you believe?</s>BASH: Probably not. You know what was interesting in talking to some Democrats today that they said that they really wanted to get an accounting from President Obama of what these troops are going to do, how they're going to be used, but at the end of the day, likely not. I mean I think that they realize that it is what it is. And what President Obama is doing is based on what he's hearing from his leaders at the Pentagon.</s>PILGRIM: Thanks very much. Dana Bash -- thanks, Dana. Well in Iraq, insurgents have killed another one of our troops. Now this soldier was killed in Baghdad; 15 of our troops have been killed in Iraq so far this month; 4,251 of our troops have been killed since the war began; 31,089 of our troops have been wounded; 13,706 troops wounded seriously. Let's turn to our worsening economy. The federal government today launched a major new effort to rescue Citigroup. Now this is the third rescue plan in five months. The Treasury Department will take control of as much as 36 percent of Citi's common stock. The government though is not giving Citi any additional cash, but this does expose the taxpayer to more risk. Citigroup has already received $45 billion of government bailout money. More trouble tonight for another big bank, Bank of America. Now the New York Attorney General's Office served a subpoena on the bank to force it to reveal details of bonuses paid to Merrill Lynch staff. And those bonuses were handed out just before Bank of America took over Merrill Lynch on January 1st. One leading Democratic Senator, Byron Dorgan, accused top financial executives of nothing less than bank robbery.</s>DORGAN: A whole lot of folks have robbed big banks in this country of their financial viability; have robbed those banks of their strength through horrible decisions, even as they have taken from those banks massive amounts of money for themselves. That's bank robbery. No, it's a different kind. There's no violence. They're wearing suits, flying in private jets.</s>PILGRIM: And for the record, we should point out that Bank of America has received $45 billion of government bailout money. It's the same as Citigroup. New evidence today of the impact of the financial crisis and the recession on our economy, the government is saying that our economy shrank by more than six percent in the last three months of 2008. That is the worst decline in more than a quarter century. And that economic report and the news about Citigroup helped push the Dow Jones Industrial average down 120 points today. Citigroup was down 39 percent. The Dow is down more than 50 percent, below the record high that it set in October of 2007. Still to come the battle over who will benefit from the president's massive new budget, a budget that will redistribute wealth in this country. Also, dangerous wildfires in Texas, ash is raining down on towns and we'll have the very latest on that next.