Word: troop
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...rapidly as it was a year ago. The level of violence in Iraq, he appeared to be arguing - although his metrics were widely contested - has been reduced to those of the summer of 2006. Should such progress continue, it will be possible, he said, to reduce the U.S. troop commitment in Iraq by the summer of 2008 to the force levels of the summer...
...nation that a light shines at the end of the tunnel. But it has been widely known by everyone in Washington - and, no doubt, by the field commanders of the various enemy formations America confronts in Iraq, who also watch CNN - that the U.S. could simply not sustain the troop levels of the surge much beyond next spring without seriously damaging its military. The drawdown, in other words, is not necessarily a sign of progress; it was inevitable given the current size of America's military...
While the Democrats will demand an accelerated troop reduction, that position may be more politically convenient than practical. By invading Iraq, the U.S. irreversibly altered the balance of power throughout the Middle East; now, Iraq cannot be treated as a policy decision in isolation from the full spectrum of U.S. interests throughout the region - all of which will be calamitously weakened if the U.S. were to precipitously retreat...
...Tuesday's end, it was becoming clear that Congress is not impressed by President Bush's plan, in a Thursday night address to the nation, to embrace Petraeus' proposal to reduce the 160,000-troop contingent currently in Iraq to 130,000 by next August. And it was not only Democrats asking the questions suggesting that remaining in Iraq was futile. "The greatest risk for United States policy is not that we are incapable of making progress, but that this progress may be largely beside the point, given the divisions that now afflict Iraqi society," said Senator Richard Lugar...
...what a smaller U.S. troop presence can accomplish is less certain and much less discussed. Some lawmakers want the U.S. to pull out of Baghdad to Kuwait or Kurdistan. Others have called for the military to concentrate on training the Iraqi army - a project that has already cost the U.S. billions, to little effect. American soldiers complain that their nominal allies in the Iraqi police and army are more loyal to Shi'ite militias than to the national government. An American intelligence officer in a western Baghdad suburb reports that the Iraqi police there are so thoroughly infiltrated by insurgents...