The 1600 Crew is starting to look more and more like the old Politburo in Red Square in May Day. The out-of-favor apparatchik was always erased from the pictures of the ruling clique. Beloved Leader's Saturday Radio Saga gave nary a mention to the vanquishing of Evil-Doers in Mesopotamia, despite the bloody last few days that the Ohio Marines have suffered. A lot of good young men will never get to go hang out at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, right near the Navy and Marine Corps Reserve Center in Cleveland again, because well, it's just a cakewalk over there in the Vacationland in the Sand. Now, with the mid-term elections approaching, that same issue that the republicans used to spread lies about honorable Democrats who were not quite sure whether going to Iraq was the right thing to do are looking for ass-cover in a huuuuge way.

In a classified briefing to senior Pentagon officials last month, the top American commander in the Middle East outlined a plan that would gradually reduce American forces in Iraq by perhaps 20,000 to 30,000 troops by next spring, three senior military officers and Defense Department officials said Saturday.
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Senior administration and Pentagon officials, as well as political leaders in both parties, say there is mounting anxiety over the $5 billion-a-month cost of the war, an overtaxed military, dismal recruiting in the Army and National Guard, dwindling public support for the operation, and a steadily growing number of casualties, punctuated this week by the death of 20 marines in two separate attacks in western Iraq.

"When you wake up in the morning and lose 14 marines, people say, 'What's going on?' " said Newt Gingrich, ...
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How and when that handoff will take place is a sensitive issue that Mr. Rumsfeld addressed in a speech in Los Angeles on Thursday. ...
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"We are training the Iraqi security forces as fast as they can be trained," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "We are passing off pieces of real estate to the Iraqis as fast as they're capable of taking it over."

As noted here and elsewhere, training Iraqi troops probably consists of "This your rifle, this is your gun; one's for killing the other for fun...and boys don't run off and join the insurgents at least until our Freedom Flight has left, we wouldn't want to make Prezint Lying Fuck look toooo bad, after all, you'll get all the MRE's and bottled water you can eat, drink or sell to your neighbors when we're gone...". The mid-term elections will determine the exact readiness level of the Iraqi Security Forces, you know it's true...strange how that works out, isn't it?