Shhh... US Winning Iraq War- Military Plans Troop Reduction

What? No ticker-tape parade?
This may be the first unofficial announcement by the mainstream media that the US is winning the War in Iraq.

In only 4 years the US has ousted one of the world's most brutal dictators ever and helped replace his regime with a democratically elected government- Doing this without the backing of one political party, without liberal Hollywood, with numerous security leaks, with interfering politicians, and with a hostile antiwar press that continually misfires with bogus news stories.
Not bad!


Numbers via Murdoc and ICCC.



The AP announced today that the military is "focusing on reducing the U.S. combat role in 2008 while increasing training of Iraqi forces."
The military is doing this not out of retreat but after analysing the situation on the ground:

U.S. military officials are narrowing the range of Iraq strategy options and appear to be focusing on reducing the U.S. combat role in 2008 while increasing training of Iraqi forces, a senior military official told The Associated Press on Monday.

The military has not yet developed a plan for a substantial withdrawal of forces next year. But officials are laying the groundwork for possible overtures to Turkey and Jordan on using their territory to move some troops and equipment out of Iraq, the official said. The main exit would remain Kuwait, but additional routes would make it easier and more secure for U.S. troops leaving western and northern Iraq.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because internal deliberations are ongoing, emphasized that the discussions do not prejudge decisions yet to be made by President Bush. Those decisions include how long to maintain the current U.S. troop buildup and when to make the transition to a larger Iraqi combat role.

It is widely anticipated that the five extra Army brigades that were sent to the Baghdad area this year will be withdrawn by late next summer. But it is far less clear whether the Bush administration will follow that immediately with additional drawdowns, as many Democrats in Congress are advocating.

Bush has mentioned publicly that he likes the idea, first proposed late last year by the Iraq Study Group, of switching the emphasis of U.S. military efforts from mainly combat to mainly support roles. But he also has said that this should not happen until Baghdad in particular is stable enough to enable Iraqi political leaders to make hard choices about reconciling rival interests among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

There are now 162,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, of which 30,000 have arrived since February as part of Bush's revised strategy to stabilize Baghdad and to push Iraqi leaders to build a government of national unity.

Military efforts to stabilize the country effort have made strides in recent months, but political progress has lagged.

Note: Now that the military efforts are seeing results- the focus for the media and democrats will be completely on the "lagging" political situation.

A grand example of this is Hillary Clinton who acknowledges that the "surge is working" but that she still wants to surrender, anyway.

Jeff Goldstein has more on Iraq.

Related... Michael J. Totten has this from his present excursion in Iraq:

“When you came and liberated this country,” he continued, “Iraq had 25 million Saddams. America is turning us back into human beings. That soccer field is not for a specific person. It is for everybody. We appreciate that. We believe that if Americans have something that is ours, they will return it to us. If the Iraqi government has something that is ours, we forget it.”

Our host for the evening nodded in agreement.

“We support you,” the man continued. “You support our back, we support your back. But you must understand: If you pull back, we will pull back. I will have no choice but to pull back if I can’t depend on you. It will be much harder for us to stand together. But as long as you stand firmly behind us we will support you against Moqtada al Sadr and the other bastards in the area.”

More from Dean's World.