Reply #29: Iraq -- troop withdrawals will be discussed in next two weeks

[beachmom]

Okay, I'm just throwing this in, but after I watched JK, I watched Bill Maher that I had taped from Friday night. John Burns of the NYT was on, and the audience was still, listening quietly, as he lay out what was happening in Iraq. Here is a link to a lot of what he said:

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002157326

Relevant to what JK was talking about:

He also pointed to a key period coming up, as the top American generals decide over the next two weeks whether to go ahead with the planned "draw down" of U.S. troops starting this spring which, as it turns out, coincides with deteriorating conditions on the ground. The problem is, he said, U.S. withdrawals could lead to chaos there, with the Iraqi military not ready to take over; but not bringing troops home would prove to be a political disaster for the White House here.

Speaking from Cambridge, Mass., Burns observed that he had been on the ground for 24 hours and, of all the people he had interacted with so far, "no one supports this war."

The big headline, though, was that he felt our efforts in Iraq would probably "fail". Somebody on Kos called this a "Walter Cronkite" moment, but the media is so fractured now, who knows.

Anyway, we'll see what the military/administration decides on a troop drawdown. I didn't know that this was the crunch time now, but it is.