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Born at the Crest of the Empire

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Bush administration cutting and running on a timetable

This is the big announcement from the "unusual" joint press conference by General Casey and Zalmay Khalilzad.
U.S. officials said Tuesday Iraq's government has agreed to develop a timeline for progress by the end of the year, and Iraqi forces should be able to take full control of security in the country in the next 12 to 18 months with minimal American support.

Funny how the White House pushed this pretty major announcement out to the "commanders in the field."

What is substantially different about this statement than previous claims of handover, greater responsibility, etc.? An election/political statement? And what about the ISG?

They should've just "stayed the course" in their rhetoric.

(I have changed this post. My first reading of this was factually incorrect.)

4 Comments:

  • This is not even close to the Murtha plan! The Murtha plan was Cut & Run---Bush's new course to stay is Snip & Jog.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 8:35 AM  

  • I fail to appreciate any irony on this. It is clear that commanders at the battalion, brigade and division level knew that the Bush plan was going to fall apart. Eventually, they went to their guy in Congress and told him to speak out. He did. He was called a coward by the actual cowards. Now, events have forced the complete collapse of the Bush plan in Iraq. We have benchmarks and a timetable.

    However, the situation has degraded in those 10 months. Lots of young Americans and Iraqis are dead or hurt terribly as well.

    There is no irony in this. It is just a tragedy.

    By Blogger Bravo 2-1, at 10:52 AM  

  • I fail to appreciate any irony on this. It is clear that commanders at the battalion, brigade and division level knew that the Bush plan was going to fall apart. Eventually, they went to their guy in Congress and told him to speak out. He did. He was called a coward by the actual cowards. Now, events have forced the complete collapse of the Bush plan in Iraq. We have benchmarks and a timetable.

    However, the situation has degraded in those 10 months. Lots of young Americans and Iraqis are dead or hurt terribly as well.

    There is no irony in this. It is just a tragedy.

    By Blogger Bravo 2-1, at 10:52 AM  

  • Hey guys, I caught that. I posted this in a hurry early this morning on the first article, and didn't read it right.

    There is no concomitant drawdown of US troops. So I pulled down the Murtha line.

    All this is apparently is another statement of another plan with nothing backing it up.

    Sorry for the confusion.

    Mike

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 11:30 AM  

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