Word: pentagonal
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First and foremost, the political process--including significant Sunni participation--must pass its capstone test during the Dec. 15 election. Beyond that, Pentagon planners are tracking four main issues: enemy strength, the capability of Iraq's own security forces, effective local governance and technical and communication abilities to allow U.S. troops to talk to and support Iraqi forces when they need reinforcement. The U.S. military insists that all those benchmarks are trending in the right direction. For example, the Americans say that despite launching 50 attacks a day, the insurgents have been unable to derail political progress. Even more heartening...
...Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who tends to carefully calibrate every public utterance, dispensed with Foggy Bottom's typically foggy nostrums. "I do not think that American forces need to be [in Iraq] in the numbers that they are now for very much longer," she told Fox News. Although Pentagon officials bristled at Rice's venturing into military policy, they too have started discussing in public just how steep the drawdown should be from the 160,000 U.S. troops now in Iraq...
...military commanders, who have long argued that troop reductions must depend on conditions on the ground, warn against any abrupt cutbacks. "A precipitous pullout would be destabilizing," says Army Lieut. General John Vines, the top ground commander in Iraq. And the Pentagon expects a spike in violence in the run-up to the Dec. 15 election for a new parliament. But the debate over a withdrawal, spurred in part by Democratic Representative John Murtha's call two weeks ago for an accelerated departure, is now out in the open. Here are some of the key questions going forward...
There isn't one plan, but several, each containing various options for Army General George Casey, the top U.S. military officer in Iraq. Pentagon officials acknowledged last week that the number of U.S. troops could be cut to 100,000 by the end of 2006. But Casey will face two "decision points" next year--one in March, when he can fully assess the effects of the Dec. 15 election, the other in June, when major U.S. units have to be told if they will deploy...
...this stage, almost no one is talking about a rapid, large-scale troop drawdown. Inside the Pentagon, officers privately caution that troop levels could even rise if Iraqi security forces don't shape up as expected, if the insurgency grows more fierce or--of greatest concern--if civil strife evolves into full-fledged civil war. In fact, a senior Pentagon official tells TIME that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asked his planners last week to make sure they have a contingency option if things go very badly in Iraq next year...