Democrats Cite Report on Troop Cuts in Iraq

[Rose Siding]

Senate Democrats reacted angrily to a report yesterday that the U.S. commander in Iraq had privately presented a plan for significant troop reductions in the same week they came under attack by Republicans for trying to set a timetable for withdrawal.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said that the plan attributed to Gen. George W. Casey resembles the thinking of many Democrats who voted for a nonbinding resolution to begin a troop drawdown in December. That resolution was defeated on a largely party-line vote in the Senate on Thursday.

"That means the only people who have fought us and fought us against the timetable, the only one still saying there shouldn't be a timetable really are the Republicans in the United States Senate and in the Congress," Boxer said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "Now it turns out we're in synch with General Casey."
....
Casey's meeting with Bush followed an eventful several weeks in Iraq that included the death of insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the completion of a new Iraq government. It also followed particularly rancorous debates in the House and Senate, in which GOP lawmakers -- with the encouragement of the White House -- went after Democrats for being insufficiently supportive of the war effort and said that decisions about issues such as troop deployments should remain with the president.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/25/AR2006062500764.html

Those "eventful several weeks in Iraq" also included the deaths of thirty-three Americal troops.

[Sherman A1]

1. wasn't there

a report in the media last week, that indicated military equipment was starting to be cycled back to the U.S. That would be the first indicator of a drawdown of forces if I guess correctly. It will take years to get everything back, refurbished and semi useable after this debacle, and everything takes time. With that said, just having a plan to withdraw, does not a withdraw make. There are folks at the Pentagon that just do plans and plans and plans which is what they get paid to do. The proof is in the pudding.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

2. damned cowardly military wants to cut and run, eh?

well, I say we keep them there, and use GOP congresscritters to lead the next trips to Falujah.

Does anyone else suspect that karl rove's training wheels fell off and his Big Wheels has a flat? It seems like everything they try is falling faster and flatter.

[wisteria]

3. I have to laugh at how Luger seems to think he knows more than

Gen. Casey and PM Miliki. Obviously, Rove and Bush were playing election year politics with our troops.

[gratuitous]

4. Not just Rove and Bush

Remember that the Pentagon itself issued a 74-page briefing document, providing talking points for Republicans that emphasized using the phrase "cut and run" and other handy little sound bites to paint the Democrats as weaklings, cowards and traitors. It would seem that the Pentagon, far from being the nonpartisan group it's supposed to be has cast its lot with the Republican party.

Which makes sense, I guess, as it is the GOP that is the last bulwark against public airing in the United States of the military's atrocities and war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the CIA's fly-and-flog torture program. There are a lot of maggots festering under the rocks, and there is a concerted effort to keep those rocks from being turned over.