Rusted Sky

100,000 U.S. troops could leave soon: Iraq president | International | Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - At least 100,000 U.S. troops could return home from Iraq by the end of 2008, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said in an interview aired on Sunday although he proposed that several American military bases stay in Iraq.

Speaking on CNN television, Talabani envisioned faster U.S. troop reductions than U.S. commanders have discussed in public. But he stressed that the pace of withdrawal was up to those commanders and did not explain why he foresaw a faster pullout.

Iraq isn't front-page news any more. Only one story today above the fold at MSNBC - and it's about Blackwater. One story on Fox - Petraeus saying Iran's causing the problems in Iraq. (Big surprise, right?

Things have been pretty quiet. Supposedly AQI was going to have a Ramadan offensive, but that kind of.. fizzled. Instead, a lot of the Al Quaeda suppoers have been turned off by the iraqi extremeism - and they've been turning in or killing them off themselves. All things considered, it looks like it really sucks to be Al Quaeda at this point. As the proxy fighters have lessened from Iran and Syria (and you've got to wonder if maybe something else got targeted aside from the Syrian nuke depot, a well-packed training camp maybe?) and the home-grown insurgents have come to the realization that maybe cooperation to get a fair-sized piece of a very large juicy pie might be better than trying to grab all of a very small, dry and unappetizing pie - I think we'll be seeing less and less news from Iraq... and that will be less and less consequential.

It's often been bandied about that we won't know what a 'win' looks like in Iraq.

I don't know about you - but I think we're seeing it.

J.