British Troop Withdrawal

The national security advisor Stephen Hadley said earlier this week that the British pulling their troops out of Iraq is, "an indication that progress is being made". The sentiment has been bouncing around all week, most notably repeated by Dick Cheney ("it is actually an affirmation that there are parts of Iraq where things are going pretty well").

Who, exactly, do they think they're kidding?

It's a good thing the British are leaving 'cause that means we're winning... and, oh yeah, we want to send 21,500 more of our troops. Huh?

Nancy Pelosi summed it up rather succinctly, "If it's going so well, we'd like to withdraw our troops as well."

I wonder if the administration- as chummy as they are with Tony Blair- knew well before announcing this troop surge that the British were going to pull out, and the 21,500 are meant (in part) to be a stopgap measure? But because it was suggested before the public knew about the Brit pullout it looks less like a desperate ploy and more like... I don't know? Crossed wires? In any case, it doesn't look good.

There are 7,200 British troops in Iraq now, soon to be reduced to 4,500. Taking up their duties won't take a huge bite out of the 21,500 additional American troops (assuming they get sent at all), but any bite is too big considering the common wisdom that 21,500 isn't nearly enough to make the kind of necessary impact to (maybe) make Iraq managable.

And they keep saying 21,500 more troops, but don't those troops need to be fed? What about paperwork? Transport? Security? That many troops means an awful lot of additional support personnel. There's some discussion to that effect, but not nearly enough. I remember seeing a blurb on CNN a few weeks ago, and hearing about it on NPR, and, naturally, on a few blogs, but not much otherwise. I'm willing to bet the majority of Americans have "21,500 troops" in their head and haven't considered that it will actually end up being twice that many (or more), with all the attendant costs. Obviously it behooves the administration to keep people thinking it's only 21,500, but shouldn't the newspapers be shouting "40,000! maybe more!"