Gradual Exit Strategy Tied to Iraq's Stability
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 19, 2003; Page A01
U.S. military commanders have developed a plan to steadily cut back troop levels in Iraq next year, several senior Army officers said in recent interviews.
There are now 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. The plan to cut that number is well advanced and has been described in broad outline to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld but has not yet been approved by him. It would begin to draw down forces next spring, cutting the number of troops to fewer than 100,000 by next summer and then to 50,000 by mid-2005, officers involved in the planning said. …
The cuts are being planned even as other major changes are being set in motion. Most prominently, preliminary steps have been taken to ease out Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who became the top U.S. commander in Iraq slightly more than four months ago, a senior Army general said. …
In another shift in the U.S. presence, plans are being made to withdraw U.S. and British forces from some major Iraqi cities, [which might] be followed by a withdrawal from some "well-policed" neighborhoods in Baghdad, but there would not be a complete pullout from the capital…
Further changes are also in the early planning stages. They include dropping the unproductive search for WMD, teaching the troops to reply "No Hablo Ingles" to all press inquiries, cutting back on security patrols that might "rile up" the local population, "avoidance of all eye contact," replacing all American flag insignia with Canadian flag insignia, discontinuing the use of coalition name tags that read "Hi! My name is Bob, and I spit on your faith!", withdrawing all U.S. forces into one isolated base camp in Western Iraq, and telling Iraqi citizens "Do whatever the Hell you want with this scrap heap."
Nonetheless, the Pentagon vehemently denied that the proposed changes, either individually or when viewed as a group, represented a stepping back from responsibility for post-war Iraq. "This is definitely not the old idea of 'declaring victory and going home' that worked so well in Vietnam," said Major Humbert Humvee of the Pentagon's Office of Keeping a Straight Face, somewhat wistfully. "For one thing, we're not going home. We're going to be right next door in Syria, or maybe Iran, working on that next domino. Secondly, we're a loooooong way from being able to declare victory."
Remember, Kids, the part in bold is actual 100% news-flavored media product.
The rest is the fakey part.
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