THEIR FIGHT:

Report: U.S., Britain planning troop withdrawal (AP, 7/11/05)

Britain and the U.S. are trying to build a new strategy to exit Iraq that could see British troops leaving the country by Christmas, a newspaper reported citing a government memo written by the defense secretary.

The Mail on Sunday reported that British Defense Secretary John Reid drafted a secret paper for Prime Minister Tony Blair outlining how most of the country's 8,500 troops could be sent home from Iraq within three months, with the rest by the end of the year.

The document also said the U.S. was looking to cut back its own troop levels to 66,000, down from the 135,000 there now.

Christmas 2003 would have been preferable, but such reductions were open knowledge, U.S. Commanders See a Reduction of G.I.'s in Iraq (ERIC SCHMITT, 4/11/05, NY Times)

Two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the American-led military campaign in Iraq is making enough progress in fighting insurgents and training Iraqi security forces to allow the Pentagon to plan for significant troop reductions by early next year, senior commanders and Pentagon officials say.

Senior American officers are wary of declaring success too soon against an insurgency they say still has perhaps 12,000 to 20,000 hard-core fighters, plentiful financing and the ability to change tactics quickly to carry out deadly attacks. But there is a consensus emerging among these top officers and other senior defense officials about several positive developing trends, although each carries a cautionary note. [...]

The American military's priority has shifted from waging offensive operations to training Iraqi troops and police officers. Iraqi forces now oversee sections of Baghdad and Mosul, with American forces on call nearby to help in a crisis.

More Iraqi civilians are defying the insurgents' intimidation to give Iraqi forces tips on the locations of hidden roadside bombs, weapons caches and rebel safe houses. The Pentagon says that more than 152,000 Iraqis have been trained and equipped for the military or the police, but the quality and experience of those forces varies widely. Also, the Government Accountability Office said in March that those figures were inflated, including perhaps tens of thousands of police officers who are absent from duty.

Interviews with more than a dozen senior American and Iraqi officers, top Pentagon officials and lawmakers who have visited Iraq yield an assessment that the combination of routing insurgents from their sanctuary in Falluja last November and the Iraqi elections on Jan. 30 has given the military operation sustained momentum, and put the Bush administration's goal of turning Iraq over to a permanent, elected Iraqi government within striking distance.

"We're on track," Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview. But the insurgency "kills virtually every day," he warned. "It's still a very potent threat."

That is a view shared by virtually all senior American commanders and Pentagon officials, who base their judgments on some 50 to 70 specific measurements from casualty figures to assassination attempts against Iraqi government officials as well as subjective analyses by American commanders and diplomats. They recall how plans a year ago to reduce American forces were dashed by resurgent rebel attacks in much of the Sunni-dominated areas north and west of Baghdad, and in Shiite hot spots like Najaf. "I worry about being excessively optimistic," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters on March 29.

Precisely when and how many American forces withdraw from Iraq hinges on several factors, including the security situation, the size and competence of newly trained Iraqi forces, and the wishes of the new Iraqi government. Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top commander in Iraq, told CNN two weeks ago that if all went well, "we should be able to take some fairly substantial reductions in the size of our forces" by this time next year.

General Casey has declined to describe the size of any possible troop reductions, but other senior military officials said American force levels in Iraq could drop to around 105,000, or about 13 brigades, by early next year, from the 142,000 now, just over 17 brigades. Much of the force is now combat-hardened, with some soldiers and marines starting their third tours in Iraq.

Even some of the administration's toughest critics now express cautious optimism about an Iraq operation that costs more than $4 billion a month, as the nascent political process and slowly improving economy appear to drain away tacit support for the insurgency from the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians the military calls "fence-sitters."

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 11, 2005 7:05 AM