Drawdown plans are being slightly more fleshed out. It's a little like watching episodes of a TV show with a story arc involving a mystery. Teeny pieces are revealed episode by episode until the shape of the solution to the mystery begins to appear, and then gradually comes into focus.
Unfortunately, I do not think that conditions on the ground will allow any major drawdown next year, except for a drawdown by necessity, with the accompanying instability. Put another way, we are not going to be able to drawdown troops significantly in 2006 based on succeeding at our mission. We will only reduce our troop levels because we simply do not have the resources to maintain them, regardless of the consequences of doing so. And I suspect that (a) whatever unrest we are currently holding back is significant, and (b) reduced troop levels will severely inhibit our ability to hold it back, unless of course we decide to hold it back through sheer brutality (killing any insurgent, and his family, and his neighbors; wiping out recalcitrant villages, that sort of thing).
But it is nice that the government is finally coming up with at least some hazy pieces of a plan.
Nota bene: I am not saying that a troop reduction shouldn't happen. Even if we are holding back the blood-dimmed tide in Iraq, I think that we can only delay the inevitable, and the longer we wait, the worse it will get. I am just saying that I don't think we should anticipate that we are going to leave Iraq in a better state than it was in at the beginning of the war.
That is all.
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