The President's Plan for Iraq

Iran - 27Feb2008:

Leaving troops in Iraq serves the second purpose of maintaining a threatening presence on Iran's flank. This will, I think become the primary purpose of our force in Iraq.

Iran is a real cause of concern and this retains one of our "sticks" in place for almost 3 more years. At the same time, we will be increasing the size of our force on Iran's 2nd flank and hopefully placing that force in a more powerful and secure position than they are now. In other words, our Afghan force will become considerably more threatening.

Many of us are profoundly disappointed by The President's announcement today. As with other things, however, his style is to go for a "twofer" whenever possible and it's difficult to be patient about his approach. I personally believe that he is trustworthy, both regards his intentions and his judgement. Of course he will make errors. I hope he will not make big ones.

28Feb2008:

It's 34 months, not 19: I am very disappointed by The President's announcement yesterday that we will retain a very significant force in Iraq till the end of 2011.

This is contrary to what he repeatedly asserted during his presidential campaign. There he promised a 16 month drawdown at the end of which he would leave a small force to guard our embassy and perform other comparable security tasks. 35,000-50,000 troops is far more than is needed for these tasks.

With regards the deadlines he stated of Aug 31, 2010 and Dec 31, 2011, the latter of these is already in place in the Status of Forces Agreement President Bush signed with Iraq. In addition, the SOFA presents June 30, 2009 as the latest date by which all of our forces must have withdrawn to "agreed facilities and areas outside cities, villages, and localities to be designated ..."(Page 16) The SOFA is online at:
http://publicservice.evendon.com/SOFA-17Nov2008M.htm

The President did not mention the advantage of maintaining a significant force in Iraq as an aid to our diplomatic efforts aimed at Iran. Nor did he mention any changes in plan may have been forced by the recent decision by the Krygystan government to eliminate our base there. I am inclined to trust The President. But he has clearly reneged on his campaign promise of 16 months.