Gates says he "hopes" to cut more troops in Iraq than Bush promised

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This is just pre-election propaganda to make it look like the administration intends to end the occupation. Gates is playing a shameful game if he's not going to actively work to change Bush's mind. If he can't, he ought to resign. As a former member of the Iraq Study Group, whose report was used and then tossed aside by Bush, Gates has been unusually silent in the period leading up to the address the other night. He's worthless and complicit if he doesn't actually do something to change the WH policy.

Btw, 100,000 by the end of 2008 may be preferable to what we have now, but it's still an unacceptable occupation, just scaled down and more dangerous for the troops left in harm's way.


Here's the report:

Gates says he hopes U.S. can cut troops to 100,000 by end of 2008

By ROBERT BURNS
Associated Press
09/15/2007 08:17:05 AM EDT

WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates raised the possibility Friday of cutting U.S. troop levels in Iraq to 100,000 by the end of next year, well beyond the cuts President Bush has approved.

Stressing that he was expressing a hope, not an administration plan, Gates said it was possible that conditions in Iraq would improve enough to merit much deeper troop cuts than are currently scheduled for 2008.

Asked at a news conference whether he was referring to lowering today's level of about 169,000 U.S. troops to about 100,000 by the end of next year, Gates replied, "That would be the math." He quickly added, however, that because "there is no script" in war, his hoped-for cuts could vanish.


Gates was particularly pointed in his criticism of a proposal by Sen. James Webb, D-Va., to require that troops be given as much time at their home station as on deployments to the war front. Today, active-duty Army units are on 15-month deployments with a promise of no more than 12 months rest, and Marines who spend seven or more months at war sometimes get six months or less at home.

Gates said that while he believed such proposals are well-intentioned, they have serious flaws. He said, for example, that Webb's amendment, if enacted, would force him to consider again extending tours in Iraq.

"We would have to accept gaps in capability as units that rotate home aren't replaced right away for periods perhaps of weeks," Gates said. It also might put troops' lives in greater danger by reducing opportunities for incoming units to get acquainted with their responsibilities by working for a few weeks with outgoing units, he said.

"The other message that I worry that some of the amendments send is that it sends a signal to potential adversaries that we're stretched so thinly and that we are so strained that we cannot adequately respond to crises elsewhere in the world," Gates said. "And that's not a correct view, if others should take it, but it is a worry."

article: http://www.yorkdispatch.com/nationworld/ci_6904163