Gen. Pace to recommend substantial troop reduction in Iraq.

Post #291,459 by Another Scott 8/24/07 11:26:15 AM Reply	Gen. Pace to recommend substantial troop reduction in Iraq. [link\|http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-pace24aug24,0,2280364,full.story?coll=la-home-center\|LA Times] via [link\|http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003987.php\|TPM Muckraker]. August 24, 2007 WASHINGTON -- The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is expected to advise President Bush to reduce the U.S. force in Iraq next year by almost half, potentially creating a rift with top White House officials and other military commanders over the course of the war. Administration and military officials say Marine Gen. Peter Pace is likely to convey concerns by the Joint Chiefs that keeping well in excess of 100,000 troops in Iraq through 2008 will severely strain the military. This assessment could collide with one being prepared by the U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, calling for the U.S. to maintain higher troop levels for 2008 and beyond. Petraeus is expected to support a White House view that the absence of widespread political progress in Iraq requires several more months of the U.S. troop buildup before force levels are decreased to their pre-buildup numbers sometime next year. Pace's recommendations reflect the views of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who initially expressed private skepticism about the strategy ordered by Bush and directed by Petraeus, before publicly backing it. According to administration and military officials, the Joint Chiefs believe it is of crucial strategic importance to reduce the size of the U.S. force in Iraq in order to bolster the military's ability to respond to other threats, a view that is shared by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. I don't expect Bush to go along with the recommendation easily. I'm also a little concerned about the end of the excerpt. Having flexibility is important, but too many people are advocating major military actions against Iran. Perhaps keeping a high level of troops in Iraq would prevent Bush from going after [link\|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad\|Ahmadinejad] and the Ayatollahs... :-/ Cheers, Scott.
Post #291,478 by a6l6e6x 8/24/07 3:45:08 PM Reply	Islamofascist suporrter, if not worse! [image\|/forums/images/warning.png\|0\|This is sarcasm...] Alex Nobody has a more sacred obligation to obey the law than those who make the law. -- Sophocles (496? - 406 BCE)
Post #291,797 by jb4 8/28/07 3:57:45 PM Reply	Does anyone really expect that Petraeus' remarks will be his I mean, given that "Petraeus's report" will really be written by the White House. jb4 "It's hard for me, you know, living in this beautiful White House, to give you a firsthand assessment." — George W. Bush, when asked if he believed Iraq was in a state of civil war (Newsweek, 26 Feb 07)
Post #291,803 by Another Scott 8/28/07 4:37:45 PM Reply	It may not need to be written in the White House. [link\|http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_08/011956.php\|Kevin Drum] in the Washington Monthly: August 28, 2007 THE PETRAEUS REPORT....The Washington Post reports that Gen. David Petraeus managed to get the [link\|http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/27/AR2007082701917.html\|recent intelligence assessment of Iraq toned down]: The NIE, requested by the White House Iraq coordinator, Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, in preparation for the testimony, met with resistance from U.S. military officials in Baghdad, according to a senior U.S. military intelligence officer there. Presented with a draft of the conclusions, Petraeus succeeded in having the security judgments softened to reflect improvements in recent months, the official said. This reminds me of something. I don't remember if I've ever blogged about this before, but until recently my guess was that Petraeus's September report to Congress would be pretty sober. My thinking was that he's a smart guy, and realizes that trying to paint too pretty a picture would ruin his credibility. So instead he'd present a basically realistic assessment, but stud it with just enough signs of progress to convince everyone that he deserved more time to make the surge work. Now I'm not so sure. Petraeus has been very shrewd about providing dog-and-pony shows to as many analysts, pundits, reporters, and members of Congress as he could cram into the military jets criss-crossing the Atlantic to Baghdad on a seemingly daily basis this summer. And those dog-and-pony shows don't seem to have been subtle: rather, they've been hard-sell propositions complete with "classified" PowerPoint presentations (always a winner for people with more ego than common sense); visits to a handpicked selection of the most successful reconstruction teams in the country; a plainly deceptive implication that the surge played a role in the Anbar Awakening; feel-good stories about how local power generation is a good thing; the recent insistence that civilian casualties are down, which increasingly looks like a book-cooking scam that wouldn't stand the light of day if Petraeus allowed independent agencies access to his data; and, of course, the ongoing campaign to scare everyone by kinda sorta claiming that Iran and al-Qaeda are ramping up their activities and then getting suddenly slippery whenever anyone asks if they have any real evidence for this. [...] We'll see. I must admit I've been surprised by the wide-spread positive reaction to the relative successes of the "surge" thus far in the MSM. Closer examination leads me to believe that much of it has been a [link\|http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/08/22/the-surge-is-working-because-we-say-it-is/\|spin-job]. Whatever is in the report, I don't expect it to change Bush's policy. Cheers, Scott.

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