withdrawal

Former Vice President Dick Cheney worries that the U.S. troop withdrawal from urban Iraqi areas might “waste all the tremendous sacrifice that has gotten us to this point.” Andrew Sullivan writes that he’s really just trying to establish a narrative whereby the Obama administration gets the blame for a war that spirals out of control. [...]

Yesterday’s Pentagon briefing featured a telling exchange about Iraq between a reporter (whom I think was McClatchy’s Nancy Youssef) and  spokesman Geoff Morrell. If the United States is on pace to withdraw from Iraq, the reporter wanted to know, wasn’t the United States declaring victory? Morrell came up with a couple of unsatisfying evasions — [...]

For the past several weeks, the U.S. military command in Iraq has repeatedly floated the prospect of asking the Iraqi government to extend the deadline for ending U.S. combat operations in certain Iraqi cities beyond the June 30 date stipulated in the U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement. It made me wonder if the decision — [...]

Via Eric Kleefeld, a new CNN poll shows President Obama’s plan to end the war in 2011 to be astoundingly popular: 70 percent approve and 29 percent don’t. It’s hard to remember that this issue was once the most controversial in American politics.
As Eric notes, the poll doesn’t (so far) break down why the 29 [...]

From the office of Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee:
“President Obama’s plan establishes a reasonable timetable for redeployment of most of our forces from Iraq by August 2010 as promised by President Obama during his campaign.  However, I had expected that the size of the residual force would have [...]

Later today, President Obama is scheduled to give a speech at Camp Lejeune, N.C., announcing his troop drawdown plan. Basically, it’s a fixed timetable for withdrawing combat troops by August 2010, the exact sort of thing that former President George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain used to say was the height of irresponsibility. But [...]

The Associated Press reports:
The United States plans to withdraw most of its troops from Iraq by August 2010, 19 months after President Barack Obama’s inauguration, according to administration officials. The withdrawal plan would fulfill one of Obama’s central campaign pledges, albeit a little more slowly than he promised. He said he would withdraw troops within [...]

The latest — and possibly final — text of an agreement on America’s future role in Iraq reveals that practically every effort made by the Bush White House to lock in the occupation as enduring U.S. foreign policy has failed.

My colleague Matt DeLong caught Sen. John McCain’s interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and passed along a quick discussion about the U.S.-Iraq basing deal that calls for a total withdrawal of all U.S. forces by Dec. 31, 2011. Long story short: Either McCain hasn’t read the latest text or he’s just making stuff up. (Transcript [...]