Pentagon Report to Call for Steep Iraq Drawdown

[babsbunny]

http://www.newsweek.com/id/145848?from=rss

Barack Obama is taking heat for hinting that he might refine his 16-month timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. But a forthcoming Pentagon-sponsored report will recommend an even steeper drawdown in less time, NEWSWEEK has learned. If adopted, the 300-page report by a defense analysis group at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., could transform the debate about Iraq in the presidential election.

Expected to be completed in about a month, it will recommend that U.S. forces be reduced to as few as 50,000 by the spring of 2009, down from about 150,000 now. The strategy is based on a major handoff to the increasingly successful Iraqi Army, with platoon-size U.S. detachments backing the Iraqis from small outposts, with air support. The large U.S. forward operating bases that house the bulk of U.S. troops would be mostly abandoned, and the role of Special Forces would increase.

The report's conclusions have been discussed inside Secretary Robert Gates's Defense Policy Board, a body of outside experts. And they've found favor with some former members of the Iraq Study Group, such as former White House chief of staff Leon Panetta. "That's basically the approach we thought made sense--embedding some of our forces at smaller outposts, transferring major combat to the Iraqis," says Panetta.

[madokie]

1. forgetting that what they are doing there in the first place is criminal

Git the hell out and leave the Iraqi people alone is the only right thing we as a country can do. If its not the oil then there is no reason for us to be there and if it is the oil then I want to see some ropes stretched mighty taut.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

2. watch mccain criticize Obama for

not listening to the miltary leadership, and forcing our men to suffer there unnecessarily for 16 months, whereas he- McCain has always wanted them out now.

[spanone]

3. last year karl rove said the iraq war wouldn't be a factor in the elections......

with the help of chimpy