Bush Wins Again

"Beyond the gesture of pulling back one brigade, officials who have been involved in the preparation of General Petraeus's Congressional testimony to be delivered next week say he will discuss the possibility of far deeper withdrawals beyond January that, over a number of months, could bring American force levels down to about 130,000 troops, where they stood at the beginning of 2007."

As Sanger and Cloud explain: "Still, the White House is nowhere close to committing to the deep reductions being discussed by Democrats and some Republicans, which would extend beyond the additional five combat brigades that Mr. Bush sent to Iraq. Some have endorsed a recommendation by the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan advisory panel, which called in late 2006 for a pullback of all combat brigades by the end of March 2008.

"There are now some 20 American combat brigades in Iraq. Administration officials have signaled that even the most aggressive drawdown being contemplated by the White House would leave at least 10 combat brigades in Iraq by the end of 2008, down from the 15 in place before the troop increase began."

Charles M. Sennott of the Boston Globe describes his e-mail exchange with Petraeus in which the general writes: "Based on the progress our forces are achieving, I expect to be able to recommend that some of our forces will be redeployed without replacement. That will, over time, reduce the total number of troops in Iraq. The process will take time, but we want to be sure to maintain the security gains that coalition and Iraqi forces have worked so hard to achieve."

The Bush Turnaround

Gerard Baker writes for the Times of London: "By now Mr Bush should be a governing irrelevance, a liability to his party, the object of scorn and derision. Every Republican candidate with an ounce of instinct for self-preservation in his blood should be running away from the President as though he were a burning building.

"But what is this? Next week Mr Bush seems certain to score one of the most important political victories of his presidency. General David Petraeus, the commander of US forces in Iraq, will testify before Congress, along with Ryan Crocker, the US Ambassador to Iraq, on the progress of the 'surge' Mr Bush ordered earlier this year to much domestic political opposition.

"A couple of months ago this event was viewed as a kind of D-Day in reverse for the war in Iraq. . . .

"Although General Petraeus was always likely to give a guardedly optimistic report about the surge, the politics seemed increasingly hopeless for the Bush team. The Democratic majority in the Senate was backed by the momentum of overwhelming public opinion. And yet Mr Bush now looks just about certain to get his own way on Iraq."

Paul Krugman writes in his New York Times opinion column (subscription required): "Here's what will definitely happen when Gen. David Petraeus testifies before Congress next week: he'll assert that the surge has reduced violence in Iraq -- as long as you don't count Sunnis killed by Sunnis, Shiites killed by Shiites, Iraqis killed by car bombs and people shot in the front of the head.

Here's what I'm afraid will happen: Democrats will look at Gen. Petraeus's uniform and medals and fall into their usual cringe. They won't ask hard questions out of fear that someone might accuse them of attacking the military. After the testimony, they'll desperately try to get Republicans to agree to a resolution that politely asks President Bush to maybe, possibly, withdraw some troops, if he feels like it."

Krugman also notes that "no independent assessment has concluded that violence in Iraq is down"; "Petraeus has a history of making wildly overoptimistic assessments of progress in Iraq that happen to be convenient for his political masters"; "any plan that depends on the White House recognizing reality is an idle fantasy"; "the lesson of the past six years is that Republicans will accuse Democrats of being unpatriotic no matter what the Democrats do"; and "the public hates this war and wants to see it ended."

Tim Grieve of Salon chronicles how seriously Bush and his top aides used to take all these political benchmarks for Iraq that apparently don't seem to matter anymore.