As Sandwich Repairman mentioned earlier, President Obama today announced his plans for a withdrawal from Iraq by Aug. 31, 2010. This represents a slightly longer timetable than he ran on, but what's interesting is that he made a point of admitting as much in his speech.

As a candidate for President, I made clear my support for a timeline of 16 months to carry out this drawdown, while pledging to consult closely with our military commanders upon taking office to ensure that we preserve the gains we've made and protect our troops. Those consultations are now complete, and I have chosen a timeline that will remove our combat brigades over the next 18 months.

Let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end.

What was always a concern to many was the issue of residual troops and as expected, once combat forces have been withdrawn, President Obama anticipates that tens of thousands of troops will remain in Iraq to assist the Iraqi government.

After we remove our combat brigades, our mission will change from combat to supporting the Iraqi government and its Security Forces as they take the absolute lead in securing their country. As I have long said, we will retain a transitional force to carry out three distinct functions: training, equipping, and advising Iraqi Security Forces as long as they remain non-sectarian; conducting targeted counter-terrorism missions; and protecting our ongoing civilian and military efforts within Iraq. Initially, this force will likely be made up of 35-50,000 U.S. troops.

One thing Obama never committed to as a candidate was a date by which ALL US troops -- combat, security, residual, etc. -- would be gone from Iraq. Today President Obama committed to removing them by the end of 2011 in accordance with the Status of Forces agreement.

Chris Bowers puts this news in context.

This is huge for no residual forces proponents. Now that President Obama has made this pledge, in public, it will be difficult for him to go back on it. This is especially the case since turning back on a promise with a deadline of December 31st, 2011, means violating a pledge during 2012--the year President Obama will be running for re-election. Anti-war proponents need to be prepared to raise holy hell during 2012 if this promise is not kept.

It is frustrating that it took the Iraqi government, rather than internal anti-war pressure, to finally secure a no residual troop promise from the American government (and they actually succeeded in wringing it out of the Bush administration, something Democrats were entirely unable to achieve). Still, as someone who has opposed the Iraq war for more than six years, and who been has writing about the need for no residual American military forces in Iraq for more than two years, any promise of no residual forces from the American government, backed up by a binding, public document like the Status of Forces Agreement, it an extremely welcome development no matter how it was secured.

Indeed.

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With the rejection of the stimulus by House Republicans, and the Senate Republicans wrangling as well, it looks like the bipartisan cooperation President Obama hoped for is going to be hard to come.  Not only is he having difficulty with the stimulus package, it now appears allies of the Pentagon are going to launch a public opinion campaign and try to turn the country against troop withdrawal from Iraq.  Stunning, considering the Pentagon has justified every ill-conceived strategy of the last 8 years with the position that they simply implement Presidential orders, without opinion or comment.

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Several Democratic senators have given away their hand before sitting down at the table to negotiate war funding and a timetable for getting our troops out of Iraq.  I'd really like to play poker with those guys.  I'd win a fortune.

A.B. Stoddard makes an excellent point at The Hill.

Knowing they are likely to lose some votes of anti-war Democrats by softening the terms for withdrawal, some Democrats are pushing a plan to keep sending 60-day amounts of war funding to drag this out. But since Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, seems to think June 1 is a final date for Congress to submit a funding bill that won't be vetoed, that 60-day calendar would have had to start by now.

Clearly the Democrats need to drag this veto standoff out as long as possible, but it still looks like there is no way for Bush to lose this fight.

Click through to comment on Stoddard's post, and your comment may be read by your senators and congressman!

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

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Although no one likes an extended trip through the medina of Congressional lore and practice more than I do, the hard fact is that figuring what to best do with a bill always starts with the numbers.

The Senate numbers on Iraq appear to be these: around 25 favoring a withdrawal timetable, a tad below 60 favoring Warner-Levin, a tad over - Novak says 70 - favoring Gregg.

So far as I know, we have no suggestion of the likely count for defunding, either of the surge or the war as a whole; I shouldn't be surprised if that came out as less than for the timetable.

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Since we have the Politico Senate poll on Iraq (Chris's piece earlier today), which includes a question on the surge, I thought I'd play about with the numbers.

Chris says that 58 senators pronounced themselves against the surge (it's PDF, rather than Excel - I'm not going to count it manually!).

So far as I can see, of Dem senators, only Lieberman, Lincoln and (for obvious reasons) Johnson failed to to so.

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