Bush in IraqBreaking! Bush May Bring Some Troops Home!

Just a rough guess, but I suspect there have been at least 100 stories in the MSM since January, and 10-15 or so in the last month explaining that the extra 30,000 troops Bush sent over for the “surge” could not stay there beyond next April because we’d have to rotate them out. Secretary Gates and others promised they would not extend the length of the Army’s 15-month Iraq tours, and there were no additional troops we could rotate in to replace those we have to take out to keep that promise. We’ve had story after story explaining that we’re already breaking the Army and being cruel to their families, and we have to end this.

So no matter what, the US is going to reduce by about 30,000 the number of troops in Iraq starting in the next 6-8 months. No matter what, we’re going to bring them home. We’re going to do it whether the “surge” is a “success” or a “failure,” whether we’ve achieved the latest version of our objective or we haven’t, whether al Maliki gets an oil law passed or sells all the oil to China, or whether he rehires all the ex-Baathists Bremer fired or deports them to Tom Tancredo’s District with fake Social Security cards.

General Casey and the Joint Chiefs have told us repeatedly we can’t sustain the extra 30,000 soldiers in Iraq; they’ve told Bush that in face-to-face meetings. The New York Times and the Washington Post just reported the meetings in which these messages were delivered. In fact, the Times story reported that one of the issues discussed in the meetings was whether it was wiser to start the draw down earlier and more slowly, to give us a strategic cushion we currently don’t have, or to wait until April, when the withdrawal would need to occur more rapidly and inflexibly to meet the inexorable rotation requirements.

Notice I haven’t given a single link, because that’s the homework assignment I’m giving to the nation’s major media. They can use Teh Google. After they find the dozens of links to their own stories, they can use the corrections and apologies page to explain the following mindless stories, complete with misleading headlines and unchallenged White House propaganda from Monday-Tuesday:

From The New York Times (New England Final print ed.):
Bush, in Iraq, Says Troop Reduction Is Possible

The Times then reports without critique the President’s claim “that only making Iraq stable would allow American forces to pull back.” And then there’s this:

After talks with Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, and Ryan C. Crocker, the ambassador to Iraq, Mr. Bush said that they “tell me that if the kind of success we are now seeing here continues it will be possible to maintain the same level of security with fewer American forces.”

Mr. Bush did not say how large a troop withdrawal was possible. Nor did he say whether he envisioned any forces being withdrawn sooner than next spring, when the first of the additional 30,000 troops Mr. Bush sent to Iraq this year are scheduled to come home anyway.

Still, his remarks were the clearest indication yet that a reduction would begin sometime in the months ahead, answering the growing opposition in Washington to an unpopular war while at the same time trying to argue that any change in strategy was not a failure.

Nowhere does the Times explain that 30,000 troops must come home, and that it doesn’t matter whether Petraeus thinks we can do as well with fewer troops. It’s not just a “schedule,” it’s a required rotation out with no replacements.

Administration officials rejected the notion that the trip was a publicity stunt. They said Mr. Bush wanted to meet face-to-face with General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker, who are to testify before Congress about progress in Iraq next week . . .

That’s funny. I thought I read an article by the Times’ Mr. Sanger that said Petraeus was just in Washington to be part of the “face-to-face” Pentagon briefing to the President. The whole gang was there. A prize to the NYT editor who finds this article. Hint: five of you read that story, and you should read this.

From the Washington Post:
In Iraq, Bush Cites Gains
President Suggests Continuation Could Allow Drawdown

There is no mention in the WaPo story even hinting that the 30,000 have to be rotated out in April or so. But the WaPo does turn over the rest of its article to the White House, printing the following WH spin without the slightest analysis or critique:

Administration aides said the choice of location was intended to signal that gains here could be replicated in other parts of the country.

No, the choice was dictated by the fact that a remote desert air base in total US control, with a 13-mile perimeter guarded by 10,000 US combat soldiers and 120 miles from Baghdad, was perhaps the only safe place Air Force One could land. Is that the model the WaPo thinks could be replicated?

Bush said that he and other members of his national security team “came here today to see with our own eyes the multiple changes that are taking place in Anbar province.”

Absolute rubbish. They didn’t see Jack. The entire time they were on a remote US airbase guarded by 7,000 Marines and 3,000 Army combat troops. 120 miles from the continuing horrors in and around Baghdad. The base has electricity 24/7, running potable water (plus showers and flushable toilets), a PX, basketball courts, probably a Pizza Hut. Condi showed up in a pants suit with high heels and a purse; Gates was in a business suit — in 120 degree temps. The visitors saw a permanent US air base that no Iraqi can even come close to without permission, a security check, a retinal scan and an armed escort.

Bush stressed that any drawdown of troops was conditioned upon continuing improvements in security. No decision had been made on a reduction, he said. But security had improved to the point that he could “speculate on the hypothetical,” he said.

Fantasyland. The math of rotating in/rotating out dictates the withdrawal by April. The only question is whether to start it sooner for purely tactical reasons. And once again, the claim this wasn’t just a stunt:

“I don’t think a presidential visit will cause people to vote one way or the other,” he told reporters on the plane.

Right. The WaPo apparently believes that all the cameras waiting at the bottom of Air Force One, where Secretary Gates and the Generals were dutifully waiting when the President came down the ramp, with feeds directly back to the US for the evening news cycle were just fortuitous. And they just happened to have a set of klieg lights handy for Bush’s nighttime statement in front of the armored Humvees. Iraqis should look to New Orleans for what comes next.

From the NYT’s sister paper, the Boston Globe, which reprints the WaPo article: Bush Says US Troop Reduction Is Possible

Reuters: Bush Cites Iraq Progress and Says Troop Cuts Possible

CBS News: Bush Envisions Possible Troop Cutbacks

PBS NewsHour: President Bush Delivers Prospect of Troop Cut in Iraq

Associated Press: Bush Sees Possible Troop Cuts in Iraq Oh, and AP: did you notice you just got punked, again? How many times is that?

WASHINGTON – President Bush’s senior advisers on Iraq have recommended he stand by his current war strategy, and he is unlikely to order more than a symbolic cut in troops before the end of the year, administration officials told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

When Abraham Lincoln may have said you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all the people some of the time, this is how that can happen. All it takes is a lazy, gullible and complicit media.

Update: Eric Boehlert of Media Matters has an excellent article on how the media spent its summer trying to forget about Iraq.

Extra: Each week Selise compiles an annotated list of Congressional hearings for the week. You can always find them here. Thanks, Selise.

Photo: AP/Charles Dharapak

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