Yet We've Received No Request

There seems to be a growing acceptance by American and Iraqi leadership that American troops should remain in Iraq after this year. Neither Iraq's military nor its democracy are ready to stand on their own without added risks of failure under pressure.

I'll repeat that I'd like to see three combat advise and assist brigades, plus special forces, plus logistics, intelligence, other support, and training elements remain. I assume that would require 25,000 troops total based on the simple base of having 6 advise and assist brigades and just under 50,000 troops in Iraq now (I divided by two). But I could be over-estimating what we need based inside Iraq. We could certainly rotate troops through Iraq for missions without them technically being "in Iraq," I assume. For example, would a combat brigade in Kuwait that escorts supply convoys going from Kuwait to Baghdad be counted as being in Iraq? I doubt it. So that's why I want to specify the combat force units, which is how I'll really judge this.

With a paratrooper brigade in Italy, a Marine expeditionary unit afloat, and prepositioned equipment for two Army heavy brigades and a Marine brigade in the region, we could quickly reinforce our troops in Iraq in a crisis to a strong fighting force (with superb assistance from the Navy and Air Force, of course).

Could fewer than what I want work? Well, my number isn't written in stone (or calculated with rigor). Indeed, I'd rather keep the current amount in Iraq for now. But I'm scaling back for reality's sake. If we retain only 10,000 (with maybe only a single advise and assist brigade in northern Iraq), that's better than nothing and will certainly reduce the chances of failure. And even keeping the current amount doesn't guarantee success. Again, it is about reducing the chances of failure and reducing the hope of enemies that they can even try to win with a reduced American presence.

But for all the apparent acceptance that American troops should stay, it is June and we've received no request from the Iraqi government to stay. If we're not asked, it won't happen.