One Utah

Center for American Progress has just released a report titled How to Redeploy: Implementing a Responsible Drawdown of U.S. Forces from Iraq. The center’s recommendation for withdrawal over a period of 10 to 12 months is based on consultation with military planners and logistics experts.

I think it’s reasonable to infer that this redeployment plan parallels the still-secret Pentagon planning, and may even be more comprehensive because it takes into account the resettlement in the United States of more than 100,000 Iraqis who helped during the occupation.

Units would move using a combination of their own ground transportation and intra-theater air support. The American military footprint would shrink from the outside to the center, starting first with withdrawal from the most northern bases—excluding the 3rd Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division and the 3rd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne, which would redeploy from around Kirkuk and Tikrit north of Baghad to Iraq’s Kurdish region to support a temporary U.S. commitment to resolve outstanding Turkish-Kurd issues. The remaining units would then redeploy from the rest of northern Iraq followed by Diyala to the west and Anbar province to the east. Our forces would then be consolidated in Baghdad, from which they would withdraw until all American forces—save a temporary residual presence in Iraq’s Kurdish region—would eventually be gone.

The latest report is a follow-up to the report issued in June on strategic reset of U.S. ground forces.

UPDATE: Over at Slate, Fred Kaplan explains that at least a partial withdrawal from Iraq has to happen soon, no matter what President Bush says. We’re out of combat troops.

The long and short of it is that by next spring some of the 20 U.S. combat brigades currently in Iraq—perhaps as many as a quarter to a half of them—will be pulling out, and nobody will replace them. This is a mathematical fact, quite apart from anything to do with the upcoming election or the war’s diminishing popularity.

UPDATE: Over at The Utah Amicus, Steve Olsen cites columnist Mark Shields and suggests that President Bush is aware of the fact that an Iraq withdrawal is inevitable. He plans to blame it on the Democrats, hence the rhetoric and the sudden adoption of Vietnam as a model.

This entry was posted Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 at 3:07 pm and is filed under Iraq, Military, War. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.