•• No war has ever been won on a timetable and neither will this one.

•• We expect, but cannot guarantee, that our force posture will change over the next year….

Translation: We’re thinking about a timetable, but we’re not actually following one.

There are several proposals currently under review by the White House and the Pentagon; the most ambitious calls for American combat forces to be reduced from a hundred and fifty-five thousand troops to fewer than eighty thousand by next fall, with all American forces officially designated “combat” to be pulled out of the area by the summer of 2008.

I think what Hersh is saying is that Bush believes we’re on the road to victory, dammit, and thus a drawdown ought to be possible soon (even though it will require the replacement of ground fighting with air strikes).

Swami has it right. A month prior to the 2006 elections there’ll be a token withdrawal heralded with hosannas from the usual 1001 administration shills. The Bushies will claim partial victory— just as the Johnson and Nixon Administrations on numerous occasions in ‘Nam.

The neo-cons will leave it to the next administration to withdraw troops. When Iraq totally disintegrates the conservatives will blame Fifth Column liberals and weak-kneed Dems for not pursuing the original disasterous plan.

OWNING A WAR is tough for Democrats and Republicans alike. Hillary Clinton is owning up to her vote for the war and still thinks we need to finish what we started. Donald Rumsfeld who went to war with the

You are the woman.

Bush will have his peons tell us whatever bullshit they think will shut us up,while they just do whatever the hell they want.MAYBE, MAYBE if the political pressure gets hot near election time they will throw us a bone and draw down the numbers until right after the elections..maybe there will be some huge “mission accomplished” moment but it will be as meaningless as the last one,, and I for one am sick of buying banners for this asshole to stand in front of while he lies..

As for the thought of them replacing boots on the ground with air power,,I think this is the part that makes me terrified for the people stuck in that hellhole that we have created for them….Can you even bare the thought of us putting the INNOCENT people of iraq thru more bombing now? Can you imagine your own life now if you were waiting for an airplane to drop bombs on your neighborhood whenever?How is doing this to the innocent people of Iraq going to make us safer? Where is the humanity?
We made this huge mess in Iraq we can’t solve and to keep it from getting messing for bush and to drop our body count so the reps can try to win the election in 06, lets just drop bombs on neighborhoods..Good friggin plan ..
This is SICK ..what we are doing in Iraq is SICK .What we are doing to our troops is SICK .One bomb at a time we are performing one giant late term abortion on a whole country full of born PEOPLE….ok fine bush didn’t lie ,, he just had bad intell …we are killing our own and innocent iraqis for WRONG intell,,an unjustified war,, what the hell are we doing? Point to me one thing the iraqi people have ever done to harm us?Did they even have bad thoughts about us? I would say the American people had bad thoughts about Iraqis before the war , because no one seems to care about their lives now, but i would be willing to guess the iraqi people didn’t think of us very much at all in their day to day lives, they were just trying to get by.Is there no mercy for them?Does it fit into gw’s ego trip?