Gates hopes to cut Iraq troop levels to 100,000

Number withdrawn less than 30,000
In an Associated Press interview Thursday, Petraeus suggested the number would be less than 30,000 but he would not provide a specific figure. He said his staff was working out redeployment details.

It appears the reduction will be closer to 25,000, possibly less. Forecasts of future troop levels in Iraq are hazardous, as history has shown, because of the unpredictable nature of the conflict. Large reductions were planned for the latter half of 2006, but a flareup in violence killed that proposal.

In the interview, Petraeus mentioned one concrete example of a support element that likely will be kept after the "surge" combat forces leave. He cited some 2,000 military police sent last spring to help manage the extra detainees captured in stepped-up U.S. offensives in Baghdad and elsewhere. Some of those, he said, probably would remain after the extra combat units are withdrawn because detainee control will remain a challenge.

He gave other, largely overlooked examples during his congressional testimony. In an exchange Monday with House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton, D-Mo., he said other forces were brought to Iraq this year for a variety of tasks.

They include an unspecified number of personnel associated with work on countering the insurgents' weapon of choice, the roadside bomb, Petraeus said. He also mentioned, without elaboration, that additional "intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance assets" were added to the force. He did not say how many would be brought home as the "surge" winds down; he described them as resources and people that "we would have wanted regardless of whether we were surging or not."

White House report
Meanwhile, the White House told Congress Friday that Iraqi leaders gained little new ground on key military and political goals.

The report underscored the difficulty of Bush’s argument that continued American sacrifice was creating space for Iraqi leaders to make gains on tamping down the sectarian fighting that leaves Iraq persistently fractured and violent. Bush reinforced that theme from Thursday night’s Oval Office address.

The first assessment, in July, showed the Iraqi government was making satisfactory progress toward meeting eight of 18 goals and unsatisfactory progress on eight others. Two others couldn’t be rated for performance.

Friday’s follow-up report to Congress concluded Iraqis have done enough to move only one benchmark — allowing former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party to hold government positions — from the unsatisfactory to satisfactory column.

But White House press secretary Tony Snow said in a statement accompanying the report that there have been other, equally important developments, including passage of a budget, the sharing of oil revenues among the provinces even without legislation and local reconciliation efforts that could trickle up to Baghdad.

“These are precisely the ’effects’ the benchmarks were intended to produce, even if the formal benchmarks themselves have not been met,” Snow said.

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