Reduction of Troops

Hmm. Seems like troop reduction is in the cards:

The U.S. generals running the war in Iraq presented a new assessment of the military situation in public comments and sworn testimony this week: The 149,000 U.S. troops currently in Iraq are increasingly part of the problem.

During a trip to Washington, the generals said the presence of U.S. forces was fueling the insurgency, fostering an undesirable dependency on American troops among the nascent Iraqi armed forces and energizing terrorists across the Middle East.

For all these reasons, they said, a gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops was imperative.

Well, it's all but guaranteed that the 1 battalion of Iraqi troops who are ready to fight will be a huge reduction in troop numbers.

I'm all for the criticisms these guys are putting forward. But do any of us think that at any point in time they're going to reconsider the entire proposition? The current presence of American troops in Iraq isn't the fuel for the Insurgency there: the fuel was America's damn invasion of Iraq. All of this sustained violence is a direct remnant of this piss-poor policy by leaders who have absolutely no geo-political wisdom. Will the generals ever say that? "The real problem with Iraq was that we all allowed our leadership to invade in the first place." I doubt it.