DID ANYONE BESIDES THE NEOCONS THINK WE WERE STAYING?:

Hot Topic: How U.S. Might Disengage in Iraq (DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC SCHMITT, Jan. 9, 2005, NY Times)

Three weeks before the election in Iraq, conversation has started bubbling up in Congress, in the Pentagon and some days even in the White House about when and how American forces might begin to disengage in Iraq.

So far it is mostly talk, not planning. The only thing resembling a formal map to the exit door is a series of Pentagon contingency plans for events after the Jan. 30 elections. But a senior administration official warned over the weekend against reading too much into that, saying "the Pentagon has plans for everything," from the outbreak of war in Korea to relief missions in Africa.

The rumblings about disengagement have grown distinctly louder as members of Congress return from their districts after the winter recess, and as military officers try to game out how Sunni Arabs and Shiites might react to the election results. The annual drafting of the budget is a reminder that the American presence in Iraq is costing nearly $4.5 billion a month and putting huge strains on the military. And White House officials contemplate the political costs of a second term possibly dominated by a nightly accounting of continuing casualties.

By all accounts, President Bush has not joined the conversation about disengagement so far, though a few senior members of his national security team have.

A senior administration official said in an interview this weekend that Mr. Bush still intended to stick to his plan, refining his strategy of training Iraqis to take over security duties from Americans, but not wavering from his promise to stay until the job is done.

Nothing's changed--we'll start drawing down after the election and leave when the new government asks us to.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 10, 2005 12:55 PM