Petraeus: Don't Even Think About Troop Cuts for 45 Days!

I saw only a few minutes of General David Petraeus' testimony today before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (I watched streaming video online at work), but as I noted earlier, Hillary Clinton was toeing the implacable antiwar line in her questioning (more about that later).

It turns out Petraeus would not even consider discussing additional troop reductions beyond current plans, a period terminating in 45 more days.

The New York Times has the story:

Telling Congress that progress in Iraq was “fragile and reversible,” the top American commander recommended Tuesday that consideration of any new drawdowns of American troops be delayed until the fall, making it likely that little would change before Election Day.

The commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, refused under persistent questioning from Senate Democrats to say under what conditions he would favor new troop reductions, adding that he would not take the matter up until 45 days after a current drawdown is complete in July. His recommendation would leave just under 140,000 American troops in Iraq well into the fall.

Tuesday’s hearings lacked the suspense of last September’s debate, when the focus was on measurable benchmarks and heightened expectations of speedy troop withdrawals. But they thrust the war to the center of the presidential campaign, as General Petraeus faced questioning from the two Democrats and one Republican still vying for the White House. He told them that progress in Iraq had been “significant and uneven.”

General Petraeus’s tone was notably sober, and he acknowledged that “we haven’t turned any corners, we haven’t seen any lights at the end of the tunnel,” despite an intensified American military campaign over the past 15 months that at its peak had more than 160,000 American troops committed to the five-year-old war.

The increased troop commitment sharply reduced insurgent attacks across much of Iraq last year, but the stretch of relative calm was broken last month when the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki ordered an assault on Shiite militias in Basra, setting off renewed violence there and around Baghdad.

At times, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, the Democratic candidates, and Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, seemed to be talking about two different wars. “We’re no longer staring into the abyss of defeat, and we can now look ahead to the genuine prospect of success,” Mr. McCain said.

That's because they are talking about two different wars.

The Democrats are rehashing the "lessons" of Vietnam, from which they hope for an Iraqification of the war, with just enough troops left behind to secure the U.S. embassy in Baghdad (so those evacuation helicopters will have a place to land).

McCain, on the other hand, sees gradual progess, which has been achieved at tremendous cost and against the odds. Perhaps the war he has in mind is World War II, where many battles were close run, often overcoming the odds in achieving allied victories ...

I'll have more analysis in the morning.