No final decision has been made to reduce the number of American forces in Iraq to 3,000, but "it's headed in that direction," administration officials told NBC News on Tuesday.
The 3,000 would be part of a "training mission" with the Iraqi military, and that considerably small number would be "more than adequate" for the task, the officials said.
Great. I figured we needed 25,000 to have enough for security, combat missions just in case, special forces, logistics and other support functions, air defense, and training. I even hoped that with 10,000 there might be ways to work around the limit to do all the things I thought we needed to do with imaginative deployments and definitions.
If this is authoritative, we risk disaster in Iraq and the reversal of all we gained as such a cost.
UPDATE: Perhaps the initial reports are inaccurate:
The New York Times reported that Panetta supported a plan to keep 3,000 to 4,000 U.S. troops in Iraq past the year-end drawdown deadline agreed in a bilateral security pact. Fox News issued a similar report earlier in the day.
The Panetta-backed plan was significantly smaller than the 14,000 to 18,000 proposed by General Lloyd Austin, the senior U.S. commander in Iraq, the Times said.
Still, the Pentagon and the White House denied there had been a decision on the number of U.S. forces that may stay behind in Iraq, saying that would only come after negotiations between Washington and Baghdad.
I hope bigger numbers are in play. If strategy won't get more numbers, I hope that the prospect of being blamed for losing Iraq by committing too few resources will do the trick. Sometimes the right thing can be done for the wrong reasons and that's all you can hope for.
