General Foresees Gradual Withdrawal From Iraq

President George W. Bush will soon be huddled with security advisers in a two day meeting on Iraq — and a top general has a prediction: a gradual withdrawal from Iraq will soon begin:

On the eve of President Bush’s summit on Iraq, the top U.S. commander in Baghdad predicted Sunday that coalition troops will gradually move out of the country in the coming months.

Gen. George Casey said he thinks it will be possible to withdraw some of the 130,000 U.S. forces in the months ahead as long as Iraq’s government and security forces make progress.

Casey would not say whether he plans to advise Bush on a troop reduction plan during two days of meetings with the administration’s top national security officials that begin Monday at Camp David in Maryland. But the general hinted the time soon may come for such a recommendation.

“I was waiting until we got a government seated before I gave the president another recommendation so we have some sense of what we’ve got,” Casey said on “Face the Nation” on CBS.

Iraq’s prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, took office last month and appointed the key final ministers last week.

“I think as long as the Iraqi security forces continue to progress and as long as this national unity government continues to operate that way and move the country forward, I think we’re going to be able to see continued gradual reductions of coalition forces over the coming months and into next year,” Casey said.

There seem to be several reasons for this, if reports over the past few months are accurate: (1) U.S. forces are stretched thin, (2) there is a general feeling that the process has to begin where U.S. forces let Iraqi forces take over major operations, (3) Bush is under a lot of pressure not just from his poll numbers but from GOPers who fear the war is a pair of cement shoes threatening to sink their re-election campaigns.

But, as the Telegraph notes, there are also reports that the U.S. plans to retain some 50,000 troops in Iraq for many years, no matter what happens in terms of yearly pullback:

America plans to retain a garrison of 50,000 troops, one tenth of its entire army, in Iraq for years to come, according to US media reports.

The revelation came as George W Bush summoned his top political, military and intelligence aides to a summit on Iraq’s future today at the presidential retreat at Camp David.

…Military planners have begun to assess the costs of keeping a 50,000-man force in Iraq for a protracted period of time. At present the total number of serving American troops is about 500,000.

The plan has not yet received presidential approval. But it would fit with the administration’s belief that while troops numbers will fall, American forces will have to remain in Iraq beyond Mr Bush’s departure from the White House in early 2009.

Military analysts have noted that significant American spending is already being committed to permanent bases in Iraq. They say Iraq’s military may soon be able to fight by itself, but it cannot feed or supply itself and it has no air force to speak of.

So it appears that the U.S. will have a long-term troop commitment presence in Iraq, in some form or another. Permanent bases would have strategical value to the U.S., but they will also extract a political price if the war sours further this year.

And Bush’s meeting? The New York Times notes, Bush’s big meeting is an attempt to fine-tune strategy and get it right — perhaps a last chance to do so:

President Bush’s two-day strategy session starting Monday at Camp David is intended to revive highly tangible efforts to shore up Iraq’s new government, from getting the electricity back on in Baghdad to purging the security forces of revenge-seeking militias, White House officials said.

Three years of efforts to accomplish those goals have largely failed. Billions of dollars have been spent on both electricity and security, yet residents of Baghdad get only five to eight hours of power a day, and the American ambassador acknowledged on Friday that the city is “more insecure now than it was a few months ago.”

One of the senior officials involved in the strategy session characterized it as a “last, best chance to get this right,” an implicit acknowledgment that previous American-led efforts had gone astray.

He said the decision to hold a joint cabinet meeting on Tuesday, between Mr. Bush’s top advisers and the newly appointed cabinet of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq via a video link from Baghdad, was intended to set an agenda for the new government that could begin to win the loyalty of disaffected Iraqis. It is also an effort to hand off leadership to Mr. Maliki’s government and, in an analogy used by several American officials, to begin to let go of the bicycle seat and find out if the Iraqi government can stay upright with less American support.

For Mr. Bush, the session comes at a critical moment in Baghdad and in Washington. His efforts to prop up two interim prime ministers with similar pledges of support largely failed. At home, he is trying to create a sense of political progress at a time when some Democrats — and some in his own party — are calling for significant numbers of American troops to come home by the end of this year, a debate that will be taking place in Congress this week during arguments over spending bills for the war.

In other words, it’s going to be a tempestuous few months: there will likely be announcements that some troops will be withdrawn, but others will point to those still there and the media and critics will be looking for signs of troop increases elsewhere. Meanwhile, if the administration talks about a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, others will point to the fact that the U.S. is shoring up plans to keep a permanent presence in Iraq.

And all during election year……….