Here it comes! Here comes the admin framing of "victory in Iraq"!

[TheGunslinger]

Rumsfeld Announces U.S. Troop Reduction in Iraq
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/23/AR2005122300266.html

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced today that the number of U.S. troops in Iraq would be reduced by two brigades early next year, a move which would cut U.S. forces there by 8,000 to 10,000 troops.

The "adjustment," as Rumsfeld called it, would leave between 129,000 and 131,000 troops in the country, down from a baseline of 138,000. That baseline number was augmented for Iraq's election by another 12,000 troops.

...

"The adjustment being announced today is in recognition of the Iraqi people's progress in assuming added responsibility for their country," Rumsfeld said. He added that all reductions were "conditioned" on events.

"We anticipate future coalition force-level discussions at some point in 2006, after the new Iraqi government is in place and is prepared to discuss the future," Rumsfeld said.

There you have it. Even though an extra 22,000 troops were added to provide extra security for the recent elections (as has been done for other milestone political events in Iraq), the administration is using the withdrawal of only some of those extra troops as some sort of victory knell.

The administration has no shame.

[Botany]

1. Declare Victory and Get Out

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article334476.ece

The elections rejected all pro western candidates, split the country into 3 camps, laid the ground work for
a civil war, and helped in the setting up of a pro Iranian Shi ite theocracy for much of the country.

[Roland99]

3. The PNAC choice got less than 1/2 of 1%!

Quite the slap in the face to the "liberators".

[Botany]

4. When is somebody going to jump up and yell?

The whole thing is screwed up. From top to bottom and side to side.
And staying there longer will not change that. And it is not the troops
fault it is the fault of the people who sent them knowing that their was
no connection to 9/11, al Qeada, or WMDs.

[Donna Zen]

2. Iraq: Game Over

Richard Dreyfuss

snip...

The last hope for peace in Iraq was stomped to death this week. The victory of the Shiite religious coalition in the December 15 election hands power for the next four years to a fanatical band of fundamentalist Shiite parties backed by Iran, above all to the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Quietly backed by His Malevolence, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, sustained by a 20,000-strong paramilitary force called the Badr Brigade, and with both overt and covert support from Iran's intelligence service and its Revolutionary Guard corps, SCIRI will create a theocratic bastion state in its southern Iraqi fiefdom and use its power in Baghdad to rule what's left of the Iraqi state by force.

For Bush, the results present an almost excruciatingly difficult problem. The White House will begin to look ridiculous as it touts Iraq's scandal-plagued, fraud-ridden election as the birth of democracy, especially as a brutal Shiite theocracy begins to take shape. The continuing resistance will make it impossible for the president to cite progress in the war. When President Bush starts to order a drawdown of U.S. forces in Iraq, as he must, he will not have the convenience of a peaceful, stable Iraq to point to. And the rise of Iran's power in Iraq presents another Rubik's Cube conundrum for the president. Some eager neocons, of course, will start to argue that the United States has no choice but to take the failed war in Iraq into Iran, to batter those who torment the U.S. occupation in Iraq. For others in the Bush administration, who at least live on planet earth, the problem of Iranian power in Iraq vastly complicates their ability to put a positive spin on the Bush administration's Iraq project.

I've been keeping up with Dreyfuss at TomPaine for some time now, and while he may be stating the now obvious, he does know what he's talking about. What Dreyfuss does not cover is how this is going to effect our country's long term economic prospects.

This war was the greatest blunder that its elected representatives have ever made. EVER! For me, it is not about some bogus WMD story, it is about: "...why the fuck would anyone have ever supported such a stupid fucking geopolitical strategy?"

[NYCGirl]

5. I don't give a shit how they frame it, as long as they end it. NT

[TheGunslinger]

6. *I* give a shit, as it will affect the 2006 elections.

If the GOP can frame it properly and claim "victory" and people see troops coming home, it will lessen the chances that the Dems will retake one of the houses of Congress.

[annabanana]

7. What? huh?...'cut and run?"

how very confusing