Our Future in Iraq

This is a paragraph from an MSNBC article about the Iraqi Eelections.

"The pullout agreements — including a July 2009 deadline for turning urban security over to the Iraqi military and the departure of all U.S. military forces by December 2011 — were signed two months before Obama's inauguration. In one of his first major foreign policy decisions, Obama inserted an interim withdrawal date, pledging to remove all designated U.S. "combat" forces by August this year, with 50,000 troops remaining to carry out training, diplomatic security and select counterinsurgency missions with Iraqi counterparts for 16 months."