Obama dodges debate over Iraq as troops leave

US: The presidency of Barack Obama was nurtured by the political firestorm whipped up by the Iraq war -- but in ending the conflict, he is leaving recriminations to history.

Obama, honoring a promise to end the war, is remembering America's dead and turning a political page as the last US troops come home this month.

He must delicately reconcile praise for troops who sacrificed for their nation with his own early dismissal of a "dumb" war, while avoiding a fresh wade through the bitterness and misadventures of a divisive conflict.

What Obama is leaving unsaid, suggests the scars of war remain raw.

"I think history will judge the original decision to go into Iraq," Obama said, refusing to thrash again through arguments about the case for war he made as a state lawmaker in 2002, as he met Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Monday.

But the president said it was "absolutely clear" that Iraq could now chart its own destiny owing to nine years of sacrifices by US soldiers and civilians and its own people.

As he greeted American troops Wednesday who have just returned home, Obama went further, hailing an "extraordinary achievement" and honoring the nearly 4,500 US troops who died.

"We are leaving behind a sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people," Obama said, despite some fears Iraq remains volatile and prey to interference by Iran.

The White House explained Obama decided not to revive old debates about the war because he had no control over the decision by the previous administration of George W. Bush to launch it in 2003. "The president's position on how we got into the war hasn't changed," said White House spokesman Jay Carney.

"His responsibility was to make sure that his policies created the best possible environment for Iraq going forward, which would thereby make the extraordinary sacrifices of the men and women in uniform, as well as the broader American public, validated." Obama's early opposition to a war that turned sour, and votes cast in favor of it by other key Democratic politicians including Hillary Clinton, provided an opening for his White House run in 2008. In speeches and appearances marking the end of the war, Obama has not brought up Bush, who went to war over never-found weapons of mass destruction in what the Republican's critics proclaim as a foreign policy disaster. AFP