The Same, Only Different
Jun 25th, 2006 at 9:58 am by Susie
So we’re cutting troops in Iraq, so there’s the cutting, and we’re planning to have the majority of them out by December 2007, so there’s the running. Cut and run, get it? The very thing the Republicans just voted against last week.
If there was every any doubt that their allegiance is to their party and not their country, I think that settles it:
According to a classified briefing at the Pentagon this week by the commander, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the number of American combat brigades in Iraq is projected to decrease to 5 or 6 from the current level of 14 by December 2007.
Under the plan, the first reductions would involve two combat brigades that would rotate out of Iraq in September without being replaced. Military officials do not typically characterize reductions by total troop numbers, but rather by brigades. Combat brigades, which generally have about 3,500 troops, do not make up the bulk of the 127,000-member American force in Iraq, and other kinds of units would not be pulled out as quickly.
American officials emphasized that any withdrawals would depend on continued progress, including the development of competent Iraqi security forces, a reduction in Sunni Arab hostility toward the new Iraqi government and the assumption that the insurgency will not expand beyond Iraq’s six central provinces. Even so, the projected troop withdrawals in 2007 are more significant than many experts had expected.
I just saw this quote on a re-airing of MTP (and btw is it just me or is Feingold swiftly moving up the ladder to Democratic Presidental nomination in 08).
My first thought is, if this was a classified briefing, how did it get leaked, and when can we expect the Adminisration to start the investigation? But that last sentence, the withdraws are more significant than what experts had expected, really stands out, doesn’t it? Since when did the Bush Administration listen to experts on such political matters as War? That’s what Karl Rove is there for.
Majority of who? The article makes it clear that this proposal would only bring 25,000 troops back home — and perhaps eventually redeploy them somewhere else (Aghanistan?). It’s not the same.
That isn’t to say that the Administration won’t tout this as a sign of progress. But we shouldn’t fall into the trap of accepting this sort of incremental conditional withdrawal–particularly when the Administration is commmitted to a long-term presence (think South Korea or Germany) in permanent bases larger than any others in the world.