Thursday - November 30, 2006

Throwing In The Towel Again?

In 1973 they called it “peace with honor” and several other fancy terms. I wonder what they will call it this time. Help me come up with a new term to describe what happens when politicians decide to throw in the towel and run away from a fight because of partisan bickering and a general unwillingness to look at the big picture.

Back in the good old days, folks just called it “defeat”. In today’s culture, we don’t use plain words like that any more so I’m polling readers to come up with a new term for it. Be creative but be sure to hide the true meaning of this abominable action. “Redeployment” has already been taken however “downsizing” is still free for use ....

_{Larry Wright - The Detroit News}

Study Group to Call for Pullback
But Iraq Panel Has No Timetable
_{(WASHGINTON POST) - Thursday, November 30, 2006}

The Iraq Study Group, which wrapped up eight months of deliberations yesterday, has reached a consensus and will call for a major withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, shifting the U.S. role from combat to support and advising, according to a source familiar with the deliberations.

But the recommendation includes a series of conditions and qualifications that would govern any drawdown of forces, the source said. “It describes a process by which combat brigades could be pulled out, but there wasn’t a specific timetable on it,” he said. The source demanded anonymity because members of the bipartisan panel have been pledged to secrecy until the report is officially issued Dec. 6.

The issue of a timeline for drawing down troops—both a specific date to begin a withdrawal and the pace—had been major points of contention within the panel. The Bush administration has firmly rejected specifying a date for withdrawal, but Democrats have favored setting a time frame as a way to put pressure on the Iraqi government.

The recommendations in the still-secret report were agreed to after three days of closed-door discussions. The report, which is about 100 pages, will offer a comprehensive look at regional political and security issues as well as the troubled U.S. deployment in Iraq, according to sources close to the panel.

For weeks, the panel has debated reaching out to both Syria and Iran, an approach that the Bush administration has so far firmly rejected. Commission members have also backed the idea of a regional conference to bring all the neighbors into the process of stabilizing Iraq. Contents of the panel’s report were disclosed yesterday evening by the New York Times.

Under the recommendations of the commission, led by former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former congressman Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), the emphasis of the U.S. military presence in Iraq would shift from fighting the insurgency and containing sectarian violence to backing up Iraqi security forces dealing with those problems.

This approach would place less emphasis on combat operations and more on logistics, intelligence and training and advising Iraqi units. Also, a large residual combat force would be required to protect all the personnel involved in those operations and to provide a security guarantee to the Iraqi government.

Thus, even if the combat forces were withdrawn, the person familiar with the group’s thinking noted, the recommendation envisions keeping in Iraq a “substantial” U.S. military force.

Some people knowledgeable about the group’s deliberations said it might be possible in a year or two to halve the U.S. military presence, to about 70,000 troops. Earlier reports that said that the group simply had decided to call for withdrawing combat forces from Iraq were “garbled,” the source familiar with the panel’s recommendations added. “It wasn’t as specific as that, and it was a lot more conditional,” he said. He declined to discuss those conditions.

“We reached a consensus, which in itself is remarkable,” said another source close to the 10-member panel of prominent Republicans and Democrats. Divisions had been deep in the run-up to this week’s final deliberations.

The findings dovetail with recommendations being considered by the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, who are conducting their own review of Iraq policy. That group is leaning toward an option that involves a brief surge of troops in Iraq, followed by a partial drawdown and a shift from combat operations to training and advising, according to sources familiar with the process. Troops would remain in Iraq for five to 10 years under this option, which is known within the military as “go long.”

- More ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 11/30/2006 at 10:37 AM   
Filed Under: • Iraq • Politics •  
• Comments (3) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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