The US military will be involved in Iraq for another one to three years, the now-retired US general who led the 2003 invasion said on Thursday. General Tommy Franks said when he launched the invasion last year he expected US forces to be involved in Iraq for three to five years. "Well, we're a couple of years into that, so ... another one to three years, I think we'll be involved helping the Iraqis build their own capability," he told reporters at a conference in the Portuguese capital Lisbon.
Pentagon officials have declined to give a timetable for the length of the war or US military commitment in Iraq.
Franks said the offensive to crush insurgents in the Iraqi city of Falluja was "moving in the right direction".
"Falluja won't be the end of the problem in Iraq, but it is the beginning of the end of the problem in Iraq," he said.
Franks was addressing a conference on leadership in times of crisis and the war on terror, which was arranged by the Diario de Noticias newspaper.
The general, who also led the campaign to topple the Taleban in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks on US cities, retired last summer.
Franks was confident the war would be won.
"If you associate winning with the ability of the Iraqi people to control their own country with a representative form of government, to exercise control over their own wealth and resources, then of course it can be won," he said.
"The people in Iraq over time, one year, two years or 25 years, will come to recognise, like the people in this room recognise, that freedom is a good thing to have, the opportunity to be capitalists is a good thing to have," Franks said.
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