Obama is set to deliver a speech this afternoon laying out his plan for withdrawing troops from Iraq. USA Today carries the details, which were released to reporters this morning:
"The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq's leaders to resolve their civil war is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. Not in six months or one year - now," Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama plans to say this afternoon, according to excerpts sent to reporters this morning by his campaign.
And EyeOn08 has the analysis:
What does combat troops mean? Earlier in the year, I was told by an Obama staffer that their plan invovled about 100k troops staying in Iraq. General Patraeus has a picture (that plenty have pointed out has problems). But in that picture, "Leading" maps approximately on to "combat troops". Perhaps about half of the 170k in Iraq now. So Obama is proposing to start removing troops now… And stopping at 100k.
How different is that really from the Patreaus plan?
On a deeper level, what is the anti-war left going to do when they realize that even the anti-war top-tier candidate is closer to Bush than the anti-war left? While the Republicans have plenty of problems going into 2008, the Democrats have a big one. They are continuously out of touch with their base on Iraq.
This point was also made by Michael Crowley writing at the Plank, though Crowley was looking more specifically at the problems of Democratic leaders in Congress:
In a press conference after a meeting with George W. Bush today, Democratic leaders talked tough about the Iraq war. But one aggressive reporter, who didn't identify himself, asked Nancy Pelosi a quite pointed question: Given that it now appears likely that US troop levels will be roughly unchanged since she took power in January, hasn't the Democratic Congress "been a failure"? Pelosi was understandably taken aback. But she didn't have much to counter with. She conceded that the prediction about troop levels may prove correct, while insisting that Democrats have "changed the debate" over Iraq and will "hold the president accountable" (whatever that means) for his policies. Fine. Given that "make-or-break" September seems to be turning into status-quo September, however, Pelosi will no doubt he hearing that question over and over in the months to come--not least from MoveOn.org.
If Pelosi doesn't preside over a steep reduction in troop levels, and Obama's troop numbers are pretty closely mirrored by General Petraeus, Kos & Co. are going to be very unhappy with their party.
