White House: No exit date for long-term troop presence in Iraq

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(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

On Wednesday, the White House announced that 450 more American troops will be sent to Iraq, though press secretary Josh Earnest wouldn't offer any exit date for these soldiers or the more than 3,000 U.S. troops already in the country. "I wouldn't put a timeline on it other than to say that the president has acknowledged since last year that this won't be a short-term proposition," Earnest explained.

The count of U.S. troops in Iraq has steadily increased over the course of the last year, accompanied by swelling ranks of contractors:

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.