Currently a rumor, it would be a stunning about face!
Og he’p me, I hope it’s true!! 
Bush is giving a speech? People are still listening to that guy?
I’m sure there’s a catch.
Remember (as per the Cecil article), Neo-con philosophy is say one thing, do another.
So a couple of units that were already scheduled to be returned are declared “withdrawn” instead. Other units have some extra troops added to make up the deficit. Good PR if the media and Congress doesn’t ask any questions.
Note that there are Congressional elections next year and a lot of Republicans are extremely worried. Expect that after the elections that the withdrawals will be unannounced. (Remember “Peace is at hand.” from Kissinger in 1972?)
At best, the article states that Bush will announce a timetable for troop withdrawls. It’s clear from the article that detachment from Iraq is not only cynically motivated but is also fraught with problems and is going to be a slow and painstaking process. Which we all knew.
Not really worth the capitalization and the exclamation points. The shouting – it hurts my head.
My bet is that the “timetable”, if announced, will be as vague as a lot of the rest of what comes out as “information” about this conflict. My cynicism holds.
Hmmmm, if so, it’ll be interesting to hear why all of the sudden timetables won’t embolden the terrorists.
I love it when Bush flip-flops so dramatically. How many times in the last weeks/months has the administration claimed that even talking about leaving, let alone the “T word”. I can’t wait to watch them try and pass this off as being consistent with earlier policies and as being their idea.
Normally they wait a bit longer, so that the public will forget that they railed against something before they support it and claim the idea as their own.
I don’t know what the issue is, we are doing pretty well over there and the Iraqi’s are ready to assume more of their duty. Nothing new or exciting here, just the plan from the start, but hey what ever floats your boat. :rolleyes:
I can see the headlines: Bush Announces Withdrawl Of Troups From Iraq!
(And in the last paragraph, "…plans are for one soldier to be withdrawn from Iraq every month until the last American soldier is brought home.)
I bet the spin a few years from now will be that we had the insurgency on the ropes, but the anti war people forced us to pull out.
Today’s Houston Chronicle contains a reprint of a Washington Post editorial by Sen. Joe Biden giving a likely timetable for a partial withdrawal. Biden’s estimate is that about 50,000 troops will be pulled out by the end of '06, mainly because it will be impossible to maintain the current levels without taking the political poison of additional tours or tour extensions for units already there. Chances are a similar number will be withdrawn in 2007. It seems pretty clear, however, that the administration expects to maintain some sort of more-or-less permanent military presence in Iraq.
Given the above, announcing a timetable for partial withdrawal just before Christmas makes, I suppose, good PR sense, if one is of a cynical turn of mind. And, well, I am.
On the news a few days back, they were interviewing soldiers to find out what they thought of the anti-war debate in the US. There was a lot of “if we only had a little bit more support, we could win this thing” attitude.
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I’ve heard enough of that crap about Vietnam
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I don’t care what soldiers on the ground think about US policy. They are the instruments of policy, not the makers.
So yes, I’m sure we will hear a lot of that in the decades to come.
Funny, I’ve been giving the troops all the support I can muster.
Of course it will be.
I took a night class last summer called “US Experience in Vietnam” and, despite admitting that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was almost certainly cooked, the professor basically hinged his entire thesis on how the hippies lost us the war.
I really liked the class but when asked on the last day how he would’ve handled the war, the instructor replied, “Operation: Linebacker II, September of 1965.”
That was a real headscratcher, and I bet it was very similar to how neocons will answer the question about Iraq II several years from now.
Um, yeah. So they’re saying they’re not trying as hard as they could, but that’s all somebody else’s fault. That’s what that argument comes down to, no matter who’s making it.
If the concern is over inadequate troop strengths or equipment, well, whose fault is that? The protesters’, right?
News this AM is to expect Bush to lay out a strategy for winning the war, not pulling out - something along the lines of “staying the course”.
“My fellow Americans:
I have decided today to WITHDRAW ALL THE TROOPS IMMEDIATELY fromAntarcticaandsendthemstraighttoIraq. That’s right, America. IMMEDIATELY!”
If any of you had been paying attention, you’d would note that troop levels and actions have been dropping anyway. Trained Iraqi units have been coming up to par and getting organized and cracking for some time now. There aren’t many companies yet which can fully do the job of an American one, but we’re working on that and they are, apparently, coming along nicely. Which is why Bush can afford to be so gracious about this now. It’s what we were planning on doing for some time.
We will almost certainly retain several military bases in southern Iraq, however. Maybe some in Kurdlandia, too.
So much for this rumor.