The top U.S. military official says he's comfortable with the president's decision on a troop pullout timetable from Iraq.
Under the plan, we start to seriously pull out in 2010 and our gone by the end of 2011:
Under Obama's plan, the 142,000 U.S. forces in Iraq would be drawn down to between 35,000 and 50,000 troops by the 2010 date. All forces would be withdrawn by the last day of 2011.
Training, support, and counter-terrorism missions are right. But we'll also be there to deter Iranian or Syrian aggression until Iraq's counter-insurgency army can handle conventional warfare. We'll need conventional combat brigades, preferably heavy brigade combat teams, regardless of what we actually call them on paper.
The 2011 timeframe is irrelevant to me, since this is what the current SOFA provides for, and I imagine that by the time we reach that point, a new agreement will be put in place to meet Iraqi and American defense needs after 2011.
Which makes this comment by one of our press most amazing:
Q Secretary Gates, one of the things that surprised me in the speech was the -- flat-out saying all troops would be out by 2011, at the end of 2011. And I know he referenced the status of forces agreement, but he seemed quite definitive about that. Can you explain what he meant? And is that what he meant -- everybody's out by 2011, no matter what?
SEC. GATES: I think what he was referring to was that under the terms of the status of forces agreement, which is what we are operating under now, all U.S. forces must be out by the end of 2011. It will require a new agreement or it would require a new agreement, a new negotiation, almost certainly at Iraqi initiative, to provide for some presence beyond the end of 2011. So in the absence of that agreement, the absence of any negotiation for such an agreement, it is in keeping with the SOFA that -- to say definitively that we will be out at the end of 2011.
Sometimes I stand in awe of our military leadership's ability to refrain from ordering a reporter hauled off and shot for ignorance and stupidity--let alone their bias.
The SOFA calls for an end to our presence by the end of 2011. And the Iraqis haven't even ratified it in the national vote in June. Does that reporter honestly think we should speak of an agreement as null and void? This is the agreement. We will leave as we agreed. I fully expect that we will both find it in our interests to negotiate new terms that will keep us in Iraq for years if not decades after 2011, but this is not the time to be discussing that. Until we revisit the agreement in a couple years, why speak of an agreement with still-wet ink as not governing our conduct? Might that not offend the Iraqis?
Truly, their intellect is stunning. I know I'm being unfair here and most reporters do their jobs well despite whatever biases they have, but really, sometimes I just shake my head in wonder.
