Seems Withdrawal Is A Plan After All

And it was the new fall guy war czar who said it(Watch him say it).

Gen Douglas Lute: Whatever the political arguments, Charlie, there are at least two good operational reasons that we would like to see a smaller, lighter, less prominent U.S. force structure in Iraq. One is this perception of occupation that a large American force brings with it. Today, there are about 140,000 American troops on the ground in Iraq. We would like to bring that down and undercut the enemy propaganda that in fact we have designs on Iraqi resources or Iraqi bases and so forth, and that in fact we`re really just masquerading as an occupation force. So we want to undercut that perception.

The other thing, though, Charlie, is that we’ve learned in post-conflict scenarios like Iraq but elsewhere, in the Balkans and so forth, that if you’re not careful to avoid what we call the dependency syndrome, that American soldiers will do it all, they’ll do all that they can and then some. This is the sort of person we recruit into the armed forces today. And as they do it, those who we really want to do it, the Iraqi security forces, will be content to stand by and watch.